Criminology - The Diamond Knot Killer

Episode Date: May 12, 2018

A double murder occurs in an affluent neighborhood of Ventura California. The press would dub the suspect "The Diamond Knot Killer" because of the intricate knots he used to bind his victims. It wouldn't be until years later that police would figure out that the Diamond Knot Killer was yet just another nickname for EAR/ONS/GSK. We speak to one of the victim's daughters who provides details and insight into the tragic murders.  You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/criminology  An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 12, season two of criminology. Now, if everything had gone the way we thought it was going to go, this would be the last episode in season two. But everyone knows that's not what happened. I'm still blown away, Morph. I'll continue to be blown away that they made an arrest. in this case, but they did. And because of that, you and I know there's a lot of information to

come out down the road and we're going to be there. We're going to continue to cover this as those events unfold. All right, Morf, let's give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Michael Escobito, Corey Kahana, Lori McCarthy, Alicia Lomas Gross, Jody Carroll, D. Gibson, Dave Rosen came out of our highest level. Scott Zodiac Stevenson came out of our highest level. Now that is a middle name. I wonder if it's the Zodiac. Well, I doubt it.

Scott will write in, well, what's he going to do? Is he going to tell us if he was? What fun would it be not telling us? Now, Scott's cool, though. He also supports true crime all time, so appreciate that. We had Maria Cumro, Shannon, Hodge, Mandy Hudson, Bailey Mattson, Megan Collins, DeNora Gollitz, who's also a supporter of true crime all time, much appreciated, Jacqueline Hoffman, Kelly Morris, Molly Raskin, and Taylor Honia, who I believe is also a supporter of true crime all time.

So a lot of cross support, which is unbelievable, more if you think about it, you know, people willing to support. support something that they like, something that they get for free, but they're saying, hey, we appreciate all the hard work and everything that goes into it. And that blows me away. It really does. I love that. And I think it's cool because I recognize a lot of those names that you just mentioned and they're very big supporters on social media. So, you know, big thanks to all of those people that you just mentioned and to all of our other Patreon supporters. We also wanted to remind you about our book, Criminology True Crime Podcast Presents, the case of the Zodiac Killer, based on season one of criminology, and that's available through Amazon or by going directly through our partner in this project,

Wild Blue Press. The book will be coming out soon. You can pre-order now, and Wild Blue Press has some other great true crime books as well. You can get more details by going to wildbluepress.com forward slash zodiac pre-orders, and Wild Blue Press is also offering our listeners a free audio book download. All you have to do is go to wildblupress.com forward slash audio dash books. And Morph is amazing as I thought it was that they arrested someone in the case we're working on now. There's actually a little bit of action going on in the Zodiac case.

They have submitted some DNA to pretty much along the same lines to the same. same site or sites that they did in this case. So just imagine if something breaks in the Zodiac. I'm going to lose it. It would definitely have to come back and visit that as more information comes out and maybe do an amendment for the book. So we'll see. You just never know. All right. Moore, if we got to talk about CrimeCon, we just got back. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, right? With the news about the arrest, CrimeCon was getting to come up. We were trying to get ahead on episodes because we knew we were going to be at CrimeCon, but it was awesome. It really was. You know, it was at the Gaylord Opry Hotel,

which is massive. It was a lot of walking to do. But we met so many great people. And a lot of them were, you know, some of our biggest supporters. Yeah, we saw a lot of great supporters there and people that were psyched to come and meet us and say hi and just take. in all the stuff that they had to do there. You know, Devi was there. He's one of our biggest supporters. And Tanya came all the way from Canada and hooked us up with some chocolates, which I can't say that I didn't eat a lot of them.

And that's the thing, Morf, neither you or I really need chocolates. But we're not going to pass them up either. Yeah, especially if somebody brings them all the way from Canada. You know, how do I turn that down? So just a big shout out to them, you know, for coming by and saying, saying high and everybody else that did as well. It was really cool. And not just the fans, meeting all the podcasters and the, you know, the people that

were there, the celebrities, if you will, in true crime circles. That was really cool as well. Yeah, it was a great time. I know we pumped it up ahead of time, but it's going to be in New Orleans next year. I really, really recommend anybody that's into true crime. And if you're listening to this podcast, you are. you will not be disappointed by taking in CrimeCon. It is that much fun.

Before we dive into episode 12, we wanted to bring you some up-to-date news right off the press, maybe you might call it. Just before we set down to record tonight, Joseph J. DiAngelo, the suspect in the Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist, original Nightstalker, almost too many names to mention, and we're going to add another one in this episode,

the Diamond Knot Killer. He was charged today in Santa Barbara County with four more murders. Yeah, Mike, so that brings the grand total of murders he's charged with to 12 in four different counties. And most of these murders we haven't even talked about yet on this season. Two of the murders he was charged with today in Santa Barbara County, we covered on the last episode of criminology. those were the murders of doctors Offerman and Manning in Galita. So this is really good news that will track and stay on top of. And I personally think there's going to be more charges and more victims.

And they haven't even gotten around to charging DeAngelo for the murder of Claude Snelling and Vysalia back in his ransacker days. But hopefully that happened soon as well. You know, and that just made me think more back to CrimeCon. We didn't even talk about who was there that was connected. to this case. There was a lot of people. Some of those people you've heard from on this season of criminology. Yeah, so you had what you would call the sister survivors is what they call themselves.

And they're, you know, survivors and family members of victims. You know, there's a Debbie, Domingo, Michelle Cruz, Jane Carson Sandler, Margaret Orlo, and Michelle, who you heard. tell her story for the very first time this season on criminology. So it was really cool to have all of them there, and it was really a party atmosphere. There was a celebration of this guy being caught, and there were a lot of laughs and some tears, but it was mostly just a true crime win, you know,

if you will, for people that wanted to see this guy caught and to see justice for these women, and that was awesome. And, of course, the one person that showed up was Paul Holes, who obtained rock star status at CrimeCon. You know, of course, he had a big hand in solving the case right as he retired. And, you know, we spoke to him at great length this season. And we hope to catch up with him again to get his take on things after he retired and after the arrest was made. But, you know, he's garnered a lot of attention and spun the new hashtag, hot for holes.

So, you know, it's great to see good things happen to good people. He's one of the good ones. So to see him getting some well-deserved attention for his efforts and identifying this guy, it's great to see. So to recap, episode 11, in late 79 in the city of Galita in Santa Barbara County, they had been besieged by a series of prowling events, burglaries, and a double homicide of doctors Deborah Manning and Robert Offerman by an offender, known locally as the Creek Killer.

And this left residents of this normally quiet city afraid and it left police there searching for answers. Now the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department eventually heard details about these crimes and they thought that the MO of the Creek Killer matched closely with that of the East Area

rapist who had vanished from Northern California in mid-1979. They reached out to Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department to warn them of their suspicions, but the connection was apparently dismissed by the Santa Barbara County authorities. So now, Morph, let's dive in to episode 12. Almost 40 miles southeast of Galita lies the city of Ventura, California, situated along Highway 101 between scenic and easygoing Santa Barbara County and the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. In 1980, Ventura had a population of just under 75,000 people.

For the most part, it was a middle-to-uperclass area and home to many attorneys, physicians, and other prominent citizens. Lawns were well manicured and the streets were peaceful. Ventura was not the place where you would have expected a horrifying double murder of a respected couple to occur. But in March of 1980, that's exactly what happened. On Sunday, March 16th, a 12-year-old boy by the name of Gary Smith, made his way to his father's home on 573 High Point Drive to cut the grass.

This was something that he did on a regular basis. High Point Drive was in the prestigious neighborhood known as Clearpoint. Although his parents had been divorced for some time, the young man frequently visited his father, Lyman Smith, 43 years old, who was a well-respected attorney in Ventura County. At the time, Smith was being considered by the governor for appointment to the county superior court. Gary, along with his two siblings, were close with their father and their stepmom Charlene, though as with any relationship that mixed teenagers and stepmothers, there were moments of anxiety

and times when members of the family would butt heads. But for the most part, they all got along. Charlene, who was 33, had been married to Lyman since mid-1976. She was a home decorator, dabbled in making jewelry, and everybody that knew Charlene thought of her as a beautiful woman. The pair seemed to have everything going for them, which is what made what happened next all the more shocking. Gary arrived at his father's home just before 2 p.m.

When he rode into the yard, he dropped his bike and made his way to the front door. He noticed two gardeners working in the backyard, which overlooked a lush greenbelt area. Gary didn't have a key, so he knocked on the door and rang the doorbell, but he didn't try opening the door. After not getting response from Lyman or Charlene, the 12-year-old walked around to the backyard. He noticed that both Lyman's and Charlene's cars were parked in the driveway. He stopped and asked the gardeners if Charlene was home. And the two men told him that she should be in the house. He checked the door leading into the garage area, but it was locked.

He didn't know what to think. Gary walked around to the front door once again, and this time he turned the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. He opened the door and stepped inside. And as soon as he stepped inside the house, he noticed that two large pillows were not in their proper spots on the couch, but were instead lying on the floor. And Gary knew this was something that Charlene would never allow to happen. It was then that a repeated buzzing noise from the back bedroom caught his attention.

He realized that it was the buzz of an alarm clock going off. He's nervous. Gary is very nervous at this point, but he wondered back to the master bedroom where the alarm clock was going off. And as he made his way, he noticed shreds of woodbark, fragor. leading down the hallway toward his father's bedroom. And again, you have to think of this as something highly irregular in what Gary knows to be a very clean, well-kept home. This is the way that Charlene kept her house. She would not have stood for all of these things out of place.

As Gary arrived at the doorway of the bedroom, he looked at the door. looked into the room towards the alarm clock, which was located near the bed. The only sound he heard was the buzzing from the clock. Other than that, there was complete silence. The scene was quite eerie. He noticed a sheet on the bed and could see that it was covering what appeared to be two people who he presumed were his father and stepmother. He inched closer to the bed and reached out for a corner of the sheet, slowly pulling it back,

what he found with something horrible, something no child should have to find. He had discovered the lifeless and bloodied. bodies of Lyman and Charlene Smith. Horrified, he picked up the phone that was next to the bed and called his mother, but she didn't answer. He then called the operator and told her what he had discovered. The operator relayed the information to the Ventura Police Department, and they were dispatched to the scene. Ventura Police arrived at the scene of the crime at 7.12 p.m. And they found the badly shaken boy Gary Smith outside on the front lawn waiting for them. The first officer arriving on scene called for backup because he knew that they had a very serious situation on their hands and an obvious crime scene.

The property was closed off with police tape and detectives soon arrived on the scene. Investigators noted the condition of the bodies and the home. It was obvious that both victims had been brutally bludgeoned to death. Detectives quickly determined that the murder weapon was a fire log, taken from the wood pile near the garage. There was blood spatter all around the victims and on the walls. And as they examined Charlene's body, they found the right side of her face resting gently on a pillow.

Her ankles were tied together with what appeared to be drapery cord. The bed sheet and blankets had been pulled completely over her entire body. She was found wearing no rings or jewelry. And the only thing that she had on was, a t-shirt. The coroner would later rule that she had been dead for about three days before her body was discovered and that she had been killed with one or two strikes to the left side of her head from a blunt object, likely the log, and it was described that this log would have come down with such force that it would have been in excess of 600 pounds per square inch.

Police then turned their attention to Lyman Smith's body. Lyman was nude and lying face down in the bed. Like Charlene, his head was also resting on a pillow. And also like Charlene, Lyman's ankles were bound with a drapery cord. In addition, his hands were bound behind him with cord. There were two very distinct and very difficult to tie knots in the bindings. These knots would later be determined to be diamond knots. The coroner would determine that Lyman was killed the same time.

as Charlene, and the cause of death was at least one savage blow to the right side of his head with a blunt object, causing a brainstem injury and almost instantaneous death. Near the head of the bed, investigators found a bloodied piece of firewood. The log measured about 21.5 inches long, and it was about three inches around on one end and four to five inches around on the other. Scattered around on the floor at the foot of the bed detectives noted large amounts of bark. Mixed in with this bark were 21 polished stone. These stones were found to belong to Charlene and were part of a business she was working on involving jewelry.

Officially, the coroner concluded that the Smith had been murdered while they laid in bed on the evening of Thursday, March 13th. Police examined the rest of the home. They found a piece of black claw. and some pine needles under one of the cushions on the living room couch. But they weren't able to find any signs of forced entry. At first, robbery didn't seem to be a motive. There was an assortment of jewelry, guns, and other valuable items that were left undisturbed. The victim's wallets, credit cards, and driver's licenses weren't touched.

Due to the lack of forced entry, no initial signs of robbery, and the frenzied bludgeoning of the victims. investigators started to think that this may have been a crime of passion or jealousy or revenge committed by somebody that knew the Smiths. However, the coroner found evidence that Charlene Smith had been raped and they were able to gather physical evidence and semen from the killer. At the time, DNA was not something known to investigators. But luckily, they did properly preserve all the evidence and years later, it would reveal the killer's DNA.

Police discovered that on the night of the night of the evidence, the murders, the last known person to speak with the couple was Charlene's former mother-in-law who spoke over the phone with Charlene. They had remained close and she described Charlene as sounding happier than she ever had before. This call was made at around 7 p.m. Establishing a timeline was important to the investigation. Police wanted to piece together if they could what happened between the phone call to Charlene's ex-mother-in-law and Lyman's 12-year-old son Gary finding the bodies. But after that phone call, the events of that night remained unknown.

Detectives fanned out to canvas the neighborhood and see if they could find any valuable information that might point to the killer or killers. One neighbor reported that a few days before the murders, they heard a prowler in their backyard. This person had tried unsuccessfully to enter the home through a bathroom window. Another resident on El Malabar Drive, which was just a few homes away from the Smith, noticed an out-of-place white car on the evening that the couple was killed. It was parked there for several hours, but was gone the next morning. Another nearby resident thought that they heard a couple of screams the night of the murders. The first one was louder, and the second one was possibly muffled.

They couldn't pinpoint where the screams had come from, but felt, they were likely from the Smith home. Still another neighbor was awakened by what they felt was a scream at around 2 a.m. But as they listened in the darkness, they didn't hear anything else and went back to sleep. At around the same time, the Smith's next door neighbors were awakened by their dog. They got up and let the dog outside and watched as the dog went over to the fence along the Smith's property and stood there looking to the Smith's yard for several minutes before returning into the house.

police found yet another neighbor who in the overnight hours had been awakened by some noise coming from downstairs in their home. Her dog went downstairs and was ground, and the woman sensed that there was somebody trying to get into her home. She raced back up to her bedroom and woke her husband up, and he went down to investigate. But if there was somebody trying to break in, they had vanished. While it seemed as if there was a prowler or maybe even multiple prowlers in the area leading up to the murders, police still felt that the killer may have been known by the victims. As investigators do in most murder cases, they started looking at the people closest to the victims

and worked outward from there. They started with family, and in particular with Lyman's oldest daughter, Jennifer, who, like many typical teenagers, didn't always get along with her father. But police quickly ruled Jennifer out. as well as the rest of the family. And as they started to build some background of the Smith's lives,

they uncovered some interesting details that seemed like possible motives for the murders. Investigators found that Lyman Smith had moved from Sacramento years before and still had family there at the time of the murders. He had established himself as a successful attorney and businessman before he divorced his first wife and married Charlene in 1976. he dabbled in various business ventures, including land development and trucking, and had an airline business, most of which were successful. Charlene had been divorced twice prior to marrying Lyman. Although they seemed like the perfect couple to outsiders, detectives found signs of trouble in their marriage.

The couple had briefly split, and Charlene had considered a divorce, but they reconciled. It was also discovered that Charlene had been having an affair for some time. detectives learned that the man she was having an affair with was one of their own, a police officer. While the affair piqued their interest, they quickly were able to rule out this man as having anything to do with the murders. After further investigation and initially suspecting that robbery wasn't a motive in the murders, police learned that there was actually several thousand dollars worth of jewelry missing. They estimated that perhaps 20 pieces of jewelry, including rings, necklaces, and earrings, have been stolen from the bathroom counter that Charlene normally kept them on.

After the investigation was in full swing, a neighbor of the Smiths contacted police to tell them of an incident that grabbed their attention. The neighbor reported that although he couldn't remember if it was Saturday or Sunday, someone had tried to enter his home prior to the bodies being found. It was early in the morning hours between midnight and 3 a.m. when his infant's son woke up screaming. His wife went in to check on the child, but found nothing unusual. Later that day, he was walking around his house when he found that his son's window had been tampered with. The screen was missing, and he saw that there was a one and a half inch diameter hole in the area of the window adjacent to its latch. There was also a crack running down the right side of the window. He

He had the window replaced, but later, after hearing about the murders, he contacted police who came and checked it out. But like with many things in this case, nothing came out of that. Investigators soon turned their attention to Lyman Smith's business dealings, which led them to one of his business partners. They suspected that this man may have soured over some business dealings with Lyman, or perhaps maybe even secretly coveted Charlene. Investigators felt that they might have found the killer

when they discovered a fingerprint that belonged to this business partner on a glass in the Smith home. They started to look closer at the business partner and they questioned people that knew him. A church associate of his told investigators that he had confessed to being the killer. And police wound up charging the business partner. partner in the murders of Lyman and Charlene Smith.

And this guy was in prison for almost a year. But in a preliminary trial, the accusations of the Church Associate proved to be false and the case against him fell apart. He was released soon after that. He left the state. You know, his reputation was obviously tainted at this point. And this didn't stop police from suspecting him of the murders. And years later,

would test the crime scene DNA against his, and it was not until that point that they found out no match, and he was finally ruled out once and for all. After the case fell apart against Lyman Smith's partner and the subsequent investigation not leading any real direction, police were left without much to go on. There seemed to be no real motive for the murders, and people that may have had one were ruled out. Perhaps after all, It really was a case of two people in the wrong place at the wrong time, victims of a random act of violence. Besides some marital volatility, both victims seemed like upstanding people. Neither was involved in any illegal activities.

A thorough investigation revealed that Charlene spent money quickly and without hesitation, racking up large amounts of credit card debt. At the same time, Lyman was always striving to be successful and to make more money, both in his legal career and through his business ventures. The Smiths seemed like so many other married couples in California. Good times and bad ups and downs. They weren't the perfect couple, but they were far from the kind of people

you'd expect to be victims of such a heinous act. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved.

until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Investigators in the double murders of the Smith would wind up comparing notes with investigators on other murder cases that occurred in Southern California. comparing notes in their cases, they concluded that these attacks were committed by different people. And this is a conclusion that would be proven wrong many years later. One of Lyman Smith's family members is Ann Penn. And as a direct result of the murders, she was motivated to write a book called Murder on His Mind.

Another relative of Lyman Smith, his daughter Jennifer, joined us to talk to. about her recollections of the murders of her father and stepmother. My name is Jennifer. In 1980, I had just turned 18 years old in February, and in March of that year, in the afternoon, Sunday afternoon, I was in the house with my brothers. It was a Sunday afternoon in March. My mom came into the house and looked shell-shocked. She had my little brother who ran into his bedroom with her, And then my other brother and I were there, and she told us that our father was dead. And at first, I thought possibly he had been in a fight with my stepmother, and I knew he had a gun. And I was really afraid that maybe something had happened with that.

But in fact, she said, no, both my dad and Charlene were dead and that they had been murdered. And as you can imagine, I still couldn't remember that moment so distinctly, like where I was sitting, where my mom was standing, how my brother reacted. and how it just didn't even make any sense at all because I couldn't imagine, other than in the heat of passion like a fight, I couldn't imagine anybody wanted to kill my dad. It just blew my mind. As a kid, in those days in 1980, the newspaper came at the end of the day. This news was breaking, but it was breaking among neighbors.

Essentially, my dad was very well known in Ventura County. So was Charlene. And the neighbors had come across. Some good friends of theirs had come across my brother, who was 13 at the time, who had discovered their bodies that Sunday, had discovered their bodies. The judge and his wife had stopped and had taken care of my brother, and they were neighbors that lived up the street from my dad. And so with that, the word started getting out. But again, remember, we didn't have mobile phones. We didn't have any way to communicate.

So this was definitely something that was happening from people going home and making phone calls. talking to one another. And by Sunday night, it was already a hubbub at our house. And it was, there was a lot of activity and it was all kind of hard to take in. We knew they had been killed with a log, which is so strange. The log had been taken. We found out later, the log had been taken from a wood pile outside their home. And essentially, their, their skulls had been smashed with this log. It was so brutal. And, and, And a lot of folks have asked how much my little brother saw, but he did not see that much. When he had gone to the house, he had gone to mow the lawn.

And when he walked in the house, he had heard an alarm clock going off. And it seemed so strange to him. And so he walked back to their bedroom and then kind of stopped him and going, oh, maybe I'm waking them up. Like maybe I shouldn't go back there. But the alarm didn't go up. So he walked into the bedroom. And the comforter had been pulled up over them so that they were both, including their heads,

were underneath his comforter. And my brother walked around to the side, my dad's side of the nightstand and pulled back the cover and noticed my dad had a skin cancer once. And he had a very definite scar on his right shoulder. And my brother saw that and knew it was my dad, put the blanket back up. The blanket was kind of stuck in his skull, as you might imagine, where the wound was. It had dried and it had been there. And he put the blanket back. And then he called 911.

That was right when 911 had just started. And then they had him go out to the street and wait for the police. And that's when our friends saw Gary outside waiting. As the days passed, it just, it was a freak murder. I mean, it didn't just, it just didn't make a lot of sense to anybody. Of course, it's a small town. Ventura was a fairly small town at the time. And like I said, everybody knew my dad and Charlene.

They just were, my dad had been a lawyer there for many, many years. and my stepmom had worked in law enforcement and as a legal secretary. She had been my dad's legal secretary for as long as I'd known her. She joined my dad when I think I was five years old. So she had been a part of our lives just like anything else from essentially as far back as I could remember Charlene had been part of our lives. So to have them both be dead and to have, it's just stumped the whole community. For me, I had graduated from high school early.

and so I had started junior college and essentially ended up dropping out because it was so stressful. There was so many things that happened because I just turned 18. There were some things I had to do as an adult child that kept me pretty involved with the activities. And for a few moments, right when the crime happened, I was a suspect, essentially because I didn't, I had not been getting along with my dad that well for quite a while. He and I really probably were too much alike. But I had just gone to see them a week before they were. killed. I had gone up to their house to see them, and it was the first time I got to see both

my dad and Charlene as an adult, and it was a pretty awesome time together because it was, I think probably a lot of folks can relate to this. When you're an adult and you have that conversation with your parents where you find out, oh my goodness, they've tried marijuana. 1980 again, that was a big deal that my dad and Charlene had tried marijuana. I also had found out that they had tried cocaine. And it was the first time we actually, I felt like peers, like I was hanging out with my peers as adults, and they were finally sharing information with me that was adult information. We spent a lot of time that night just sitting around the table, which now kind of freaks me out,

was it's faced the glass doors and it's faced the beltway, the green belt, where the police suspect that the killer sat and watched my dad and Charlene night after night as he was casing the house, which was his, which is what he tended to do. As you know, he planted ropes and things in other people's houses because he'd been there before. So it's a little freaky now to realize he could have seen me in their house that night a week before the murders. They were killed. We're actually not exactly sure when they were killed from what I understand from Larry Poole in Orange County. He was in the house a long time with them, a very long time.

And so we've never been able to really understand when they died. It's always, I always think of it as a three-day weekend, a 13th, 14, 15th of March is when I tend to think of them every year because that's, it would happen sometime during that weekend. When the murder happened in Ventura, as it started to play out a business partner of my dad's became a suspect. And they did have a hearing to a preliminary hearing to see if there was enough evidence to hold. him over. It turns out eventually that there was not and of course he didn't do it, but we didn't know that at the time. It was interesting to go through that. That's one of the things you find out when you're a victim of a serious crime when you're a kid is it does influence your life. And I became, of course, caught up in trying to understand murders and crime scenes.

And I know that I read the autopsy at that time, the autopsy report that was put out as this business partner was arraigned and tried for in this preliminary, went through the preliminary hearing. And ever since then, I've been interested in forensics. It's nothing I've ever done as a career, but it's been very interesting to look at forensics and how much information they have in that. And this is, again, before DNA, this is, I mean, the most interesting part of the forensics for me was understanding what was in their body, what they had eaten the night before.

It helped, I was very interested in trying to figure out when they had died because, again, At that time, it was still kind of vague. At some point in that weekend, they were murdered, but they didn't know exactly when. And interestingly enough, the police were very interested in the dishes in the kitchen. And now, of course, now that we know who killed them, we know dishes and eating were a big part of his MO as well. So it makes sense now. Then, of course, we thought it was just a business partner or someone else that knew my dad or Charlene and had murdered them. It wasn't until right around 2000 that I learned that I went to the police station and I just was checking in saying,

hey, where are we? You know, 20 years have gone by. Is there any news on this case? And I remember, I've never had anybody say this to me. I remember the police officer said, I'm going to need you to sit down. And I did. And then he explained that Lyman and Charlene's murder had been connected to a set of murders in Southern California through the Orange County closed case office,

which is where we met Detective Larry Poole, who has just been amazing, as far as I'm concerned. You never think you're going to know a detective for 40 years, and I've known this man, well, at least for 20, I met him in the 2000s. So he had put together the connection, and I'm sure he had help. But as far as I knew, Detective Pula put together these murders

and found the connection among them. And I know now in watching even these reports that a lot more people were involved behind the scenes, but he was my point person. And we went down to Orange County and talked to the cold case folks. And there have been two times in my life where I have been just blown away by something I've seen in the prosecution of this massive case. And the first time was when I walked into the cold case office and saw the list of victims. and they had had the victims on a big sheet of almost like butcher paper that went from the ceiling to the floor with victims names on it. And it just shocked me.

This I actually must have gone down to Orange County a little bit after they had put together the DNA with the East area rapids because that happened a little bit later. There was a giant butcher paper list of all the victims of all the crimes. and I just stood there. Like, it almost took my breath away. It just was astounding to see so many names on a piece of paper. And I have to say that the cold case crew, they had so much respect for those victims. It just, it was, it was a sense of reverence about it, and it felt very respectful. It didn't feel in any way.

Sorry, I'm not thinking of the right word, but it didn't. It didn't feel like they were doing anything bad. It felt very, very respectful to see this list on the wall. And it, like I said, it just took my breath away. And that's when we understood the connection among all the crimes based on this DNA, which for me made me really happy to know in a really weird way we had caught the guy. We may not have the person, but we have the DNA. And we specifically know who it is.

It's the person with this DNA. So no longer, I knew with the case of the rapes that he would have been past the statute of limitations. And so it was very good to know that those murders could be connected to him because if we could get the person, we would have the easy conviction, not even a question. The other time where my breath was taken away is when I went into the taping of unmasking a killer and Todd Lindsay, who had done just a ton of the investigative work, investigative journalism for the show, he had what I would call a crime room and he was able to take some of the data that I'd lived with my whole life understanding where the crimes had happened and when they had happened. But he had turned it into pictures and to see visually these crimes both on a calendar of when they happened and geographically how they moved throughout the state of California, which is, I'm like a third generation native. This California is my state and to see what this man had done to my state, it just, it was so upsetting to see the, the impact and the monstrosity. I mean, there was just so many crimes that had happened with these dots

through the state of California. We're seeing some of that on the show, actually, as they do, use it for openers and closers and things. That map, it's really significant. And it is, it maps to many places that I've been in my life in California. So it really is amazing to me. We asked Jennifer to tell us about any suspicions that her family had at the time of the murder. Right when the murder happened, there, gosh, there were not a lot of suspicions. There was a lot of talk. My dad had a lot of business deals. So there were a lot of folks that could be suspects.

He'd also been an active attorney. He had done some defending of criminals that they could have, they were definitely possible suspects. My stepmother had worked in law enforcement. enforcement and as a legal secretary and had been married to a former sheriff. So there were so many suspects. Our family did not have any sense of who it could be. Actually, my dad and Charlene were pretty good at fighting. So that's why I actually thought it could have been a fight that gotten out of control because we just were an extroverted kind of people. So I thought potentially that's really actually what I thought is it could have been a fight that had gone wrong. But it was really to think of people outside of that other than business contacts. It was, I mean, to find out later, the probability of a murder being someone you know is so high or, you know, a heat of passion or somebody that felt like they were somehow wronged, but to find out it was random, I remember it was extremely hard for me personally, and I think also as a woman, to find out that this was random,

that my stepmother was brutalized, that has, especially as I've grown up and really understood crime, that has been one of the hardest things for me. And even watching, unmasking a killer and some of the other shows, it has made the crime visual in a way that I think is different than when you just grow up with it and know it and it's been part of your life. But it's been how you know the story, not seeing it acted out or seeing, um, folks play out how it might have happened. And it's also really hard to see the pictures and the guy in the stocking cap. That I'm an old lady and it is hard for me to see that still. It takes my breath away when I see those things. Jennifer discussed the possibility that the killer somehow knew her father from his background in Sacramento. The killer, our suspect has been all over California. And our family had been all over California. My dad was raised.

in Sacramento. So as my mom, my stepmother was raised in Southern California. And I didn't think of a connection specifically between the suspect and my family in terms of where we had lived. I actually often think that the suspect very much paid attention to my stepmother, which is very attractive, very attractive, and was out about town. So if there was a connection, I mean, It's so random. It's so random. It's hard to think that there was any intent. But I didn't, I didn't particularly think that he knew them other than he picked them randomly. Jennifer explained to us how her family has dealt with the murders after almost 40 years. So I have two brothers that are younger than I am. I was, one was 15 and one was 13. And both of them have done really well. I tease my mom that, you know, in spite of our upbringing and all the things that happened, you know, she's lucky. She's got three great kids who have done well for themselves and have families and are pretty much regular members of society. Nobody went into law. Actually, my youngest brother did go into law, but he does it much more from a business standpoint, not from trying cases and litigating and that sort of thing. But everybody's turned out pretty remarkably normal. There are things that,

you when you have a there are things that change about you when there is a murder in your past like for me I keep bells on my doors and I've been fairly obsessed as a side a side interest in serial killers to crime the pathology the sociology of it and all of those things are very interested in the the pathology and what makes these kinds of people tick and why they choose to hurt other human I just that's hard for me because it's not just the person they hurt we all are in our own ecosystems You hurt everybody associated with the person it's amazing the level of hurt in fact Even a person on Twitter said would you buy a house if somebody had been murdered in it and the poor guy he was just joking

But I replied to him and I said interestingly enough that happened to us and we had a house we have to sell after a murder And these are things people don't even you don't even think about it like it affects so many things in your life. So anybody who's thinking of hurting somebody else, I'm going to tell you stop because you end up hurting so many more people and have such a deeper impact than you think. And it's just, it's awful.

I think for us, closure is a weird thing. I really would like closure for the rape victims because they live with a different kind of horror than I do. I know what happened, but it ended with them dying. So they, at least for my dad

and Charlene, there was a break. For the victims I feel horrible because they've lived with this their whole lives and and I understand what a huge earthquake this is in your life when it happens and they are remarkable remarkable men and women to me that they they got through this and that they're still willing to talk and share and be brave because it is scary I mean he's still out there it's that part is scary but like those victims I think none of us are choosing to live in fear we're actually choosing to stand up and fight be heard and to work hard to catch

this guy. We did this interview with Jennifer just a couple weeks before Joseph J. DeAngelo was arrested in this case. She had no idea at the time that we talked to her that in just a couple of weeks, she would learn the identity of the man dubbed the Diamond Knot Killer, who had murdered her father and stepmother. We planned to circle back with Jennifer and with all of the other victims and survivors to see how they're dealing with this big news. So, Morph, this is a good place to wrap up episode 12, but again, this is not going to be our last episode. In episode 13, we're going to find out that there would be more shocking and brutal murders in Southern California. Of course, in the meantime, we'll be compiling information and news about the suspect in the Golden State Killer

East Area Rapist case, Joseph J. DiAngelo. And we'll bring them to you as they develop. If you like the show and you haven't done so yet, please give it a five-star rating and review. That would be much appreciated. If you'd like to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter with the handle, Criminology Pod, or on Facebook by searching Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group called Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. And before we leave you, we want to tell you about a podcast, from our friend Shane and Gemma called Out of the Shadows,

True Crime Podcast, that if you've not checked it out, give it a listen. And who better to tell you about it than Shane and Gemma themselves? Hey, crime fans, this is Gemma Hoskins from the Keepers. I would like to invite you to take a listen to the new podcast series called The Redhead Murders. My friend podcaster, Shane Waters, has invited me to work with him on this very cold case of women who were murdered 30-some years ago, all in the same area of the United States. Of course, being a redhead myself and being a practicing PI, sort of, I am delighted to work with Shane. So I'm inviting you to listen to the new Redhead Murders on Out of the Shadows podcast.

You can also take a look at the Redhead Murder's Facebook page. Please join us. Please try and help us. Over and out. Peace. You can find our podcast, Out of the Shadows, in all podcast outlets. Visit us online at Shadowspod. See you there.

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