Going West: True Crime - John Albert Gardner // 41

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

When two girls go missing within just one year in San Diego County, California, the entire community bands together to find them. In 2010, police discover that a local sex offender could be behind it all. This is the case of Amber Dubois, Chelsea King, and John Albert Gardner. Get 10% off your Vampire Wine order at vampire.com using promo code GOINGWEST at checkout! These incredible wines are perfect for a Halloween party or just a Fall night in. **Case Sources** https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/male-seen-walking-with-near-amber-on-feb-13-2009.97325/page-2 https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-escondido-where-is-amber-dubois-2010feb13-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sdut-amber-dubois-lamb-escondido-high-school-2016may24-story.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taken-the-amber-dubois-story-10-08-2011/ https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/a-robbery-that-was-really-an-attempted-rape/ https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/pomerado-news/sdpn-guilty-gardner-confesses-to-killing-chelsea-amber-2010apr17-story.html  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to Crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. We just want to let you guys know we're not coming out with an episode next week because Heath and I are about to move to Los Angeles, so going west. Yeah, definitely subscribe and help out the show. But before we get into our episode today We want to give some shout outs to some awesome people who left us five star reviews this week on Apple podcasts So a big thanks to Natalie from Utah and Ryan from Haverl, Massachusetts And thank you so much to L from Mantika, California and Amber from Las Vegas

And thank you to Angie from Bedford, Indiana, and Cory from Tucson, Arizona. Big thanks to Taylor from Boise, Idaho, and Abby from Iowa. And then we have Darma from Portland, and Amy from Indianapolis, Indiana. And thank you so much to our international reviews from Nancy, from Ontario, Canada, Shamina from Norway, and Felicity from PC, Canada.

Thank you guys so much. Yes, thank you so much, and we also have to give love to our newest patrons who subscribe to our Patreon account this week. Thank you to Rossio, Madison, Barb, Christina, Zoe, Shelby, Jay, Brittany, and one more Christina. Thank you guys. We just released a brand new bonus episode last week on the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer.

And that happened in 1989. We covered the whole case. So that is the newest Patreon episode. Make sure to check it out patreon.com slash going west podcast. And of course, fall is now upon us. And you know that we love Halloween and spooky things. So we're definitely going to have some very spooky content for you guys in October. So make sure you check that out as well.

Alright guys, this is episode 41 of Going West, so let's get into it. You have taken my daughter and my best friend. You have taken my youngest daughter's role model and her innocence. You have taken a bright shining star from this community and are ruled away and for what purpose to serve your sick, twisted, perverted mind. Today, justice is served. I do not hope that justice system guilty. I hold you guilty, guilty for robbing each of us of these beautiful girls. John Albert Gardener III was born on April 9, 1979 in Culver City, California, which is the city in Los Angeles, but he moved around a lot as a kid. His parents divorced early on in his life, and he mostly lived with his mother Kathy,

who was a psychiatric nurse, since his father, John Sr., was apparently an alcoholic and very physically abusive. John struggled with his mental health from a very young age, and he was put on psychiatric medication at just six years old. Throughout his childhood, he was on Ritalin, Zoloft, and Paxil, along with five other medications. A few years later, in 1989, he was put on a psychiatric hold for two months at the age of 10, but it's unclear what the reason was for this.

Afterwards, he moved to Running Springs, California, which is a blue-collar mountain town in San Bernardino County. He attended Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead and did pretty well in school, and he actually landed himself a GPA of 3.2 thanks to his high average IQ of 113. John was known around school to be incredibly emotionally disturbed and he didn't make friends well at all. We don't know much about his mental health diagnosis but at this time we do know that he had ADHD. While he was in high school, John worked as a lifeguard at a resort in Lake Arrowhead before graduating in 1997.

While John was a teenager, he didn't get in trouble with the law that much except for one count of trespassing at a high school. Once he graduated, he left his lifeguard job and moved to the Rancho Bernardo neighborhood of San Diego with his mom where he began working at a sporting goods store called Big Five. In 2000, which was a couple years after he moved, he molested his 13-year-old neighbor, and at this time he was 21 years old. The girl had been trying to ditch school to avoid being bullied by her fellow classmates. John, who had been hanging around the school, offered her a ride, and since she knew him as her

neighbor, she got in. They went over to his house, which in her eyes was supposed to be a totally platonic encounter, but after they put on a movie, he attacked her. He had been trying to get her to let him give her a massage, but she kept refusing. He was so fed up that he grabbed her and carried her to his bedroom. She was trying to fight him off and in return,

he hit her multiple times. And if you look at a photo of him, which you can find on our Instagram at Going West Podcast, you'll see that he's a pretty big guy. She ended up suffering marks on her neck and bruises on her face and her head. Once he stopped fighting her, he gave her a hug and said he was sorry and that he didn't know why he did that. Needless to say, the girl was horrified and she ended up pressing charges against him. That same year, he was convicted of molesting her and spent five years in prison for this attack.

Since she had been a minor when this attack occurred, he had strict rules after his parole, and one of them was that he couldn't live within a certain distance of schools. And he violated this term when he moved very close to a school in 2007. But this wasn't his only violation. During his parole period, he violated his terms seven times. As part of his parole, he also had to wear a GPS ankle and he had over 168 parole violations during his time with the Anklit on and they later argued this saying that they needed to be out in the field Not sitting at a computer watching everything that people do and they also stated that GPS was a quote Evolving science and I guess I compare GPS Enclips to

Disturbia, which is that thriller horror movie from 2006 with Shilabuff. Yeah, love that movie. Great movie. Um, because you know, in that movie, he, when he leaves a perimeter of his house, the Anclet Beeps, and the police are called. So, I don't know why this kind of thing didn't happen with John Gardner. And like I said, Disturbia came out in 2006, and this whole situation with John Gardner occurred in 2008.

So, I'm just kind of surprised that the police are saying that they would have needed to consistently check on his GPS rather than being alerted that he was violating it. I did read that they apparently didn't have ongoing alerts for everyone because they lacked the proper software to make this happen, but that system just doesn't seem very effective at all. Well, apparently they got alerts for things like low battery signals and stuff like that, but that was the offender's responsibility to charge it every 12 hours. They also would get messages when GPS would have a signal glitch or when an offender would drive past a school or a park, so apparently officers would often ignore these kinds of alerts.

It just doesn't seem like most people were very observant of this technology yet. And at that point, what's the point at all? I mean, at least they would have a record of the violations happening. But the whole idea is to catch them before it's too late. Right. And apparently the people who did keep up-to-date on tracking usually had interns do it for them since, like I said, they were often out in the field But not everyone has interned so that job just didn't seem to get done very often and I'm sure this changed many lives over the years Including John's victims because if he had been caught violating parole all these times before he committed the big crimes He did later he could have been in prison instead of out praying on younger girls

Yeah, I mean the fact that they didn't keep up to date on somebody who's kind of a vicious offender, I feel like was a little bit irresponsible. Yeah, like a little bit irresponsible in their part because I mean he definitely was violating his parole terms so I wonder why they didn't want to check up on that more often. So during his parole violations for his GPS tracking, he visited remote areas, which we'll discuss later, and he also went outside of daycares and schools. On one occasion, he visited a state prison, which he would have been convicted of a felony for, especially since he was suspected of delivering contraband to an inmate. The reason why they believe this is because when they did finally get to his GPS tracks,

they saw that he had been in the area of the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where contraband is sometimes smuggled. And if they know a certain area is often used to smuggle drugs, that also makes me wonder why that area wouldn't be patrolled better, but it just feels like people aren't doing their jobs. I mean, it feels that way for sure, especially like you said, I mean, there's an area where drugs are being smuggled in. You'd think that you'd want to put more watch or more care into that specific area. And obviously, not everybody can afford or obtain the staff to do

things like this, but I just thought that was interesting reading that they knew that drugs are smuggled into this area, and that was like a thing that was actively happening. Like that was commonly known. Right. Amber Dubois was born on October 25th, 1994 in San Diego County to her parents, Carrie McGonagall and Maurice, who went by Mo Dubois. Her parents separated when she was just a baby and her father Mo, who worked as an electrical engineer, moved to Orange County, California, which is just about an hour and a half drive north from San Diego on the way to Los Angeles. More specifically within San Diego County, Amber grew up in Escondido, which is a coastal

town that has a population of 151,000 people and is just 33 miles or 53 kilometers north of downtown San Diego. Within a few years, Amber's mom Carrie started dating a man named Dave Cave, and when Amber was 8 years old, Carrie and Dave had a daughter together named Allison. Amber would often refer to Dave as her stepdad since she knew him most of her life, and they actually had a pretty good relationship. According to Dave, for the most part, they were buddies. Amber was described as a bookworm and someone who loved her family and loved school. On Friday, February 13th, 2009, Amber was 14 years old, 5'5", 130 pounds, and a freshman at Escondito High School. She only had a few more months to go until

summer break and she was currently working on a science project where she would adopt a lamb. There was a program at school that she was a part of called Future Farmers of America and her project included her raising a lamb on her own. Since Amber has always had an interest in passion for animals, she was so excited to purchase the lamb that day and kept talking about it with her family. That morning, her mom gave her a kiss goodbye as she left for work. The last thing she said to Amber was that she would be home from work early and they would go see a movie together. Amber told her mom she loved her and thanked her for the lamb.

While Amber was eating her morning bowl of cereal, her stepdad Dave gave her a $200 check so she could go buy her lamb. While Amber was eating her morning bowl of cereal, her step-dad Dave gave her a $200 check so she could go buy her lamb. At 6am, he left the house to go to the gym. They were the only two home because, for whatever reason, Amber's six-year-old sister Allison was staying with her grandmother in Los Angeles at the time. It's believed that Amber left the house to walk to school around 7am that morning, since school started at 7.30 and although she had her cell phone on her, she turned it off at some point so the phone company wasn't able to track her movements later. Amber lived with her family at Dave's house on Fire Mountain Place and this was only about a mile from her school and on average a 22minute walk, and it would have been daylight since the

sun rose around 6 a.m. that day. It was pretty cold for Southern California that morning, averaging around 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 degrees Celsius, and it was slightly drizzling on and off, so she put on a black hoodie and a pair of black jeans. While Amber was walking to school, one of her neighbors saw her as he was driving home from dropping off his son at the high school at around 7.09am. Another neighbor saw her just minutes later while she was dropping off her son, and she actually almost stopped to ask Amber if she wanted to ride since it

had been drizzling at that moment. The reason why she didn't stop was because she saw Amber walking with a tall, dark-haired guy, who she assumed went to the high school. Both of these neighbors knew that it was Amber because she walked to school every single day around the same time, so they always saw her. On Esconditos High School Gymnasium, there's a camera. And funny enough, Amber would always meet her friends before school in front of the gym's camera. And this camera was located about 200 yards or 180 meters from where she was last seen. So what happened to her within that short distance? Hey gang, I gotta tell you about my favorite wine brand.

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camera. North Broadway, which is a four-lane road, is a very busy main road with lots of apartment buildings, cul-de-sacs, and businesses. It's actually known as a commuter's nightmare, because there is so much school and work traffic in the mornings and afternoons. And that was the street that Amber had been walking down pretty much her entire stroll to school, and the school is on North Broadway. So if you went to school or have kids, you can understand that particular kind of traffic, and to make matters worse for drivers on the morning of February 13th, 2009, there was

construction going on, and a bunch of construction trucks were lined up by Escandido High School's football stadium. So parents were dropping their children off earlier on the road than they usually would, forcing their kids to walk the extra way. So with all this chaos and all these people around, the fact that no one saw what happened to Amber is pretty remarkable. When police became involved in this case, they thought it was incredibly unlikely that Amber was abducted right off the street because there's just no way that no one would have seen a struggle at her.

Because of this, Amber's family started to feel like the person their neighbors saw in the hoodie wasn't Amber at all. But going back to that afternoon, at 4.30pm, Amber still wasn't home from school. This was incredibly unlike her. Amber had friends, but she didn't really like to go out or be social or go to the mall like some of her other friends did. She was always home after school unless something was planned. So Dave, her stepdad, became incredibly worried right away. Earlier that morning, when he got home from the gym, Amber wasn't there, and she usually wasn't at that time because she was always on her way to school. Dave decided to go to her school that afternoon and see if they knew where she was, and that's

when he discovered that she hadn't even shown up to school at all that day. At that point, he immediately called Carrie and let her know, and then Carrie called Amber's dad Moe to tell him that they couldn't find Amber. So, side comment, part of me feels like with all the chaos going on, it actually might be easier for people to not see something going on, especially when you're driving by something, it just goes by in a flash.

But on the other hand, there was so much traffic that if she would have been abducted off the street, cars probably would have been at a standstill if not somewhat at a standstill. So, I am pretty surprised that no one would have seen this. Definitely. I'm surprised that the fact that they didn't really notice the older man walking with her. The other part about that is, like you said, sometimes I drive past the high school, because it's on my route to my work.

So when I drive past there, or the middle school, I should say, there's actually a lot of kids out in the front. And so it's like there's so many kids and there's so many things going on. There's like people patrolling traffic. There's like buses moving. There's parents waiting to drop their kids off. So I feel like it would be easy to kind of not notice something that specific. Right. And I guess if we knew the details of the abduction, if we knew that she had been pulled from a parked car or whatever, it would be easier to be able to tell whether or

not it would have been obvious. But I also feel like if two people recognized her, aka her neighbors, it would have had to have been her, but I do think it's interesting as well that something would have happened to her just after her neighbor saw her. So that goes to show you that two people who knew her saw her on the street. So how did no one see her get abducted if two people had noticed her? I feel like there is a strong possibility that the fact that people didn't see her actually be abducted is because she was probably being coerced to go into a specific area or a direction that the abductor may have been directing her towards. So it's not like a lot of the time it's not like, hey, I'm just gonna snatch you up off the street. It's like, hey, let me gain your trust somehow by trying to manipulate you. And then you can go with me to this area and

then I'll abduct you. That's a good point. That's definitely a possibility. And that's not to say that there are instances where someone will just snap to child off the street. I mean I've seen it in videos and stuff and it's happened. We know that but I think in this sense directing your abducted child out of the area in which people could recognize her or see this happening was probably already planned out beforehand. Right, and especially if she's walking on a busy road, I don't think that anyone would be crazy enough to take someone so out in the open like that. It's definitely been done before I'm sure, but it just seems like a huge risk to take, especially if you're going to do something like that.

Police had more than 1,600 leads on Amber's case, and interviewed over 600 people, but they didn't find anything that brought them closer to finding Amber. And many of the officers agree that her case is the most frustrating that they've ever dealt with. Because there was absolutely no evidence of anything, it's as if she'd vanished. The Tuesday after Amber went missing, police blocked off the area where Amber was last seen, so that every single person who walked or drove through would be questioned about whether they knew anything. No one came forward as to have been walking with Amber that morning, so police believe that if that had indeed been Amber,

it was either her killer or some random guy who happened to be walking by her at that time. Which makes sense because unfortunately, Amber's neighbor didn't see if they were talking or how long they'd been walking together. Like I said, people driving by that morning It was just in a flash. So she only saw a moment of them standing next to each other But that doesn't really mean that they were together necessarily.

Right. We don't know how relevant this guy is to this case at all. But at the same time, if no one came forward, that's pretty suspicious. On Wednesday, February 18th, 2009, police saw that Amber's cell phone had been turned on and that someone checked the voicemails on her phone. The phone pinged off the cell tower on Amber Lane in Northern Escondito, so they knew that Amber, or whoever had her, was in the area. They just didn't know where. Cell towers generally cover a five-mile radius, so the phone could have been anywhere. But this definitely gave police and Amber's family some hope.

Police received all security footage in the area to see if Amber could be seen on any of them, but they didn't have any luck. But they did see a suspicious looking red truck come up on the school's camera, so they sent the video in to be analyzed. It was discovered that the car was a 2000 red Dodge Ram. They put their feelers out in the community to see if anyone recognized this truck, but it turned out to be owned by someone whose kid went to Escondito High School. After questioning the parent, they determined that they had nothing to do with whatever

happened to Amber, so this was yet another dead end. At this time, Mo, whose Amber's father was working as an electrician in Los Angeles, and he took a leave from work so that he could be an escondito to help find Amber. He was dating someone at the time, and they both stayed in a hotel for a while, working tirelessly with the rest of Amber's family to find her. But within just a couple of weeks of Amber being gone,

her stepfather Dave became a person of interest. When police originally questioned him, he had told them that after going to the gym that February 13th, he went to work at his scaffolding business. But police soon found out that he didn't go to work that day. On top of that, it was known that Amber and Dave hadn't been getting along for a little while. Dave says it's because Amber was a teenager and didn't like following his rules.

So for almost a month before she disappeared, they hadn't been speaking to each other. Dave states that just the night before Amber disappeared, she and Dave reconciled and even went out to the bookstore together to buy Amber some new books. The school had also called the house that morning to tell Amber's parents that she had not shown up to school. But even though Dave was actually home, he didn't get the message. Soon enough, Kerry became suspicious of Dave and also started thinking that he could have done something to Amber, because she noticed some weird things that day too.

On February 13th, since Dave didn't go to work, he decided to stop by Carrie's job to bring her chocolate-covered strawberries and roses since it was the day before Valentine's day. He hung out at her job for almost 45 minutes, and he had apparently never done anything like this before, so Carrie asked him to leave so she could get back to work. It didn't occur to Carrie until after she found out Amber went missing and an investigation began that Dave's behavior was a bit odd. She thought it was nice that he stopped by with a Valentine's Day gift, but she didn't know why he would do that the day before Valentine's Day. And since he hung around for a while,

she thought maybe he stopped by to cover his tracks and give himself an alibi for the morning Amber disappeared. When they brought Dave in for questioning a second time, police photographed Dave's entire body to see if he had any marks or cuts. They also questioned him intensely and gave him eight polygraph tests which he passed. So Dave says that the reason why they kept giving him the polygraph tests is because they wanted to pin it on him. Even though the police couldn't pin any crimes on him, Kerry didn't trust him anymore. So she ended up moving out because she was afraid that if she stayed with him, and it turned

out that he did kill Amber, that she would have been sleeping with a killer all that time. And she couldn't bear the possibility so she left and took their daughter, Allison. But on the other hand, she didn't believe that Dave was capable of premeditated murder. She thought, maybe, if anything, an accident occurred and he was trying to cover it up. Amber's disappearance completely destroyed the entire family. So, Kerry and Dave broke up. Dave's business went under because of the emotional trauma, and Mo lost his job

and all of his savings because he had been spending so much time funding Amber's search while also being out there looking for her himself. As if they didn't have enough going on with their daughter going missing, everything else falls apart. I mean, I can't even imagine the feelings that they're having right now. Obviously searching for Amber, and then at the same time relationships are falling apart, businesses are falling apart, it's just all so devastating for this poor family. Meanwhile, the search continued for Amber, and cadaver dogs were given some of Amber's

clothing to see if they could get a trail on her scent, which started at Escondito High School. The scent led the dogs and police to Palat Indian Reservation, which was about 15 miles or 24 kilometers away. The Palat Indian Reservation is a large and beautiful stretch of land and mountains, but Carrie noted that she didn't think Amber would be there because they never went there together. There would really be no reason for her to be there, so everyone began to believe that her abductor had taken her there. They did a large search throughout that area, but since there was so much land to cover, it wasn't gonna be easy. Eventually the

dogs lost her scent and none of the searchers found a thing. A year went by and there was still no sign of Amber Dubois. And then another teenage girl in the area went missing. Chelsea King was born on July 1st, 1992, to her parents Kelly and Brent King. And she was raised outside of Chicago with her younger brother, but she and her family eventually moved to the San Diego area. In February 2010, Chelsea was 17 years old and a senior at Poway High School in Poway, California, which is the town right under Escondido. Everyone that knew her said that she was a ray of light. No matter what mood you were in, it would be better just by being around Chelsea. She loved volunteering at school, whether it be helping freshmen at their orientation or being there for students with

special needs. She even supervised a peer counseling program, was an honor student, and tutored other kids in the area. She also really enjoyed spending time with her friends and was an avid runner. Chelsea was just a few months away from her high school graduation. On the afternoon of Thursday, February 25th, 2010, she went for a jog, which was very common for her since she was a cross-country runner, at the Rancho Bernardo Community Park after school. The park includes a big running trail that goes up into the mountains and then eventually will take you along a lake.

It also has basketball courts, tennis courts, and even outdoor bowling, so it was a very popular outdoor activity spot, and it was very close to lake Hodges, like I said. So you could actually just go run through the trails and eventually get up to the lake. Chelsea's parents were unaware that she went running after school. So when hours passed and she didn't return home, they were incredibly worried

and had no idea where she would be. So they finally decided to call police and see what they could do. The following evening, Chelsea's car was found locked at the Rancho Bernardo Community Center parking lot, so her parents immediately knew that she had gone for a run at some point. But since it was now Friday and they still hadn't heard from her and she didn't go to

school, they knew she hadn't gone running that day. But more likely, the day before. Police then knew something had happened to Chelsea. They first started looking into the license plates of the other cars in the parking lot, while also taking statements from people at the park to see if they could find anything suspicious. Tips poured in from everywhere,

and led to over 1200 tips in total. But none of them led them to Chelsea's body or killer. That same day, someone in the search team found a pair of size eight silver Adidas running shoes, and further north, a pair of socks and underwear were also found. To them, it looked like the items had been dropped, but since they weren't close to each other

or close to Chelsea's car, police believed that foul play was involved. Police showed the items to Kelly, Chelsea's mom, and asked if she recognized them to be's car, police believed that foul play was involved. Police showed the items to Kelly, Chelsea's mom, and asked if she recognized them to be her daughters, and she was pretty sure that they were. And she was especially sure about the shoes because Chelsea had apparently just bought shoes just like those in the same size. Regardless, police took them to the lab to have them tested for DNA, and they had to act fast, because they still believe there was a chance they would find Chelsea alive. They found a small amount of blood on the pair of underwear which they also tested.

And they tested the DNA on the clothing items against Chelsea's hairbrush and toothbrush to see if they would come up as a match and then they were going to look for a male DNA on the items as well to see if it matched any registered sex offenders. While they waited for test results to come back, the FBI started going around to houses that surrounded the Lake Hodges area to see if maybe Chelsea got injured and ran to a nearby home for help. All the residents were extremely helpful, but police didn't find anything useful. Police continued to interview Chelsea's parents, friends, her ex-boyfriend, and all her neighbors to make sure none of them knew of her whereabouts.

On Saturday, February 27th, so two days after Chelsea went missing, the search team found yet another clothing item. But this time, it was in a culvert, a ways away from the lake. And by the way, a culvert is an open drain or a tunnel. I had to look it up because I didn't know what it was, but if you don't know what it is and you saw a photo, you'd recognize it right away. So they found a sports bra. And since it was found in the drain, police believed that the rain had potentially carried it upstream after someone dropped it in a drainage area. When police showed Kelly the sports bra, she knew that it was Chelsea's because she had just bought a two pack of sports bras that were the same size and color.

The next day, the DNA tests were complete and they had discovered that the blood on the underwear didn't need belong to Chelsea King. They also found semen on them and that DNA was run against Kodis, which is the system they used to store all DNA profiles, and there was a match. The Seaman sample found belonged to John Gardner. DNA analysts inform police immediately that they had the name of the potential perpetrator, and they went to work. They looked up everything they could on John Gardner, where he lived, where he worked, what kind of car he had, and they found to work. They looked up everything they could on John Gardner, where he lived, where he worked, what kind of car he had, and they found out that John had four cars,

so they tried to locate each and every one of them so they could do a full search in the car. Within an hour, they found that his Pontiac had been in a junkyard, his Silverado truck had been purchased by someone in Los Angeles, his Ford Focus, which had also been sold to someone in Los Angeles, his Ford focus, which had also been sold to someone in Los Angeles, and then he had a black Nissan, which he had been using as his primary car. The junkyard gave police the Pontiac, and police ended up just buying the other cars from the new owners in Los Angeles so they could properly search them, because they needed to

basically tear the car apart to search it, so that's why they couldn't just borrow it, they had to basically tear the car apart to search it, so that's why they couldn't just borrow it, they had to buy them. While they had the guys searching all the vehicles, they also had police watching different residents connected to John Gardner, his mom's apartment, his apartment in Escondido, and his girlfriend's house. Little did police know John was eating alone at the bar of a local Mexican restaurant enjoying a beer and a quesadilla. And we don't know how police found him, either his mom or his girlfriend told police, or

they tracked his phone, or with the GPS tracking, because maybe that's where this came in. Probably. But while John was eating, two black SUVs pulled up in the parking lot and police swarmed the restaurant, and they all had their guns pointing at John Gardner. John didn't try to run away though, but he did tell police that he didn't think that they had the right guy. One of them put handcuffs on John and they took him down to the police station. And remember, this is just three days after Chelsea went missing. Since John had been sitting at the Mexican restaurant for a while, he had consumed at least four beers, so he wasn't in the best state for an interview.

But police tried anyways. They asked him where he was hiding Chelsea King, because again, they were really hoping she was alive, and he was just holding her somewhere, and he kept telling them that he didn't know who she was. John was giving them a whole range of emotions during this interview. He was extremely angry that they were suspecting him of doing anything to anyone, and then the next minute he was laughing hysterically, and not an appropriate laughter like nobody else was laughing it was only him.

He said that he didn't do anything with Chelsea, but that he did know who she was because she was all over the TV, and I mean everyone in town knew her name. They even told him that they had his DNA, but he just wasn't cracking. They kept trying to grill him, but weren't getting much from him at all, so they decided to leave the room while keeping a photo of Chelsea on the table. They watched him from the other side of the glass to see if he would react in some way, and then they saw John pick up the photo, look at it, and call Chelsea a bitch before turning the photo upside down so he didn't have to look at it anymore.

After they continued to question him, John finally told police that the day Chelsea went missing, he was at the Rancho Bernardo community park, which is where she disappeared from, but he said he didn't see her at all that day. He then told police that they were probably trying to pin him for that girl Amber's disappearance too. So during this interview, police never mentioned Amber at all because they weren't sure the two cases were even connected, so this statement really stuck to them. But he just kept denying everything, so they had to give it a rest for the night.

They arrested him since they had his DNA, and they took even more DNA from the rest of him while they tried to figure out another angle. So a few days earlier, police made the possible connection between Chelsea King's disappearance and the attempted robbery of another young girl named Candice Moncayo. In December 2009, so about two months before Chelsea went missing, a 22-year-old graduate student named Candice Monkayo was running the same trails that Chelsea did near Lake Hodges, and she was attacked. When she reported it to police, she said the man was overweight and wearing jeans, which stuck out to her as odd because they were on hiking

trails. Candice was able to fight him off and run away before anything else happened, but the whole situation was considered an attempted robbery, so police never did a composite sketch. So after police couldn't get anything out of John Gardner, they decided to contact Candace to see if this was the same guy who attacked her. Instead of bringing her in, they delivered her six photos of different men, and one of them was John Gardner. And police had to do this fast before John's face was all over the news, so the whole identification process

wouldn't be messed up. Within seconds of looking at the photos, Candice positively identified John Gardner as her attacker. With that, police charged John Gardner with murder. They also raided his, his moms, and his grandmother's houses, where they seized computers and even found a headless snake in their trash. Within two days of arresting John Gardner, they found a body in a shallow grave very close to the shore of Lake Hodges, which again was the lake where Chelsea had been running. They didn't immediately know whether or not it was Chelsea's, but they had a pretty good feeling that it was. Within a few days on March 2nd, police positively identified the remains to

be Chelsea's. She had been raped and stabbed to death. On March 6th, 2010, over a year after she went missing and just a few days after Chelsea was found, the skeletal remains of Amber Dubois were discovered in a very remote area of Palac California, which is right next to Escondito. They positively identified that it was her by using her dental records. Her case wasn't immediately connected to Chelsea King since they didn't have the same evidence they had in her case, but John ended up admitting that he murdered her too. He didn't give police or the court the details of her murder, but the parents of Chelsea and Amber visited him eventually and were told the whole story. He had made many statements that they were the only people he wanted to give answers to, and that he would answer

any question they had, because it's no one's business but theirs. On April 17, 2010, John Gardner, who was 31 years old, pleaded guilty to murdering both Chelsea King and Amber Du Bois. In a statement, John Gardner made in court, he said, I admit that on February 25, 2010, I attacked Chelsea King while she was running. I dragged her to a remote area where I raped and strangled her. I then buried her in a shallow grave. He then added, I admit that on February 13, 2009, I took Amber Dubois to a remote area of Pala where I raped and stabbed her.

I then buried her in a shallow grave. He also stated that he abducted her while she was walking to school and that she was dead within an hour and a half. John Gardner was given two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He also had no right to appeal and would not be eligible for the death penalty. He also pleaded guilty to attacking Candace Moncayo with the intent to rape and kill her, which he received 33 years for. In a prison interview, John stated, The picture of stabbing her is just not a memory I'd like.

I thought I'd like it, but I didn't. I like the raping part. I don't like the killing part, especially if it's bloody. I was aware of what I was doing, and I could not stop myself. I was in a major rage and was pissed off at my whole life and everyone who had hurt me and blew up and hurt the wrong people. I hate myself. I really do. There's no taking back what I did, and if I could, yes, I would, are you kidding me? But I was out of control. If I was able to stop myself in the middle of it, I would have, and I could not. I was

out of control." John Gardiner is currently incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison in California and will spend the rest of his life there paying for his crimes. He is currently 40 years old. And right now, I really want to give a huge shout out to that police department because if they wouldn't have found this evidence, if they didn't put in all this hard work, John would probably still be out there killing people.

I mean, he was on the path to becoming a multiple serial killer. I also want to give appreciation to Chelsea Kings family and Amber Dubois family. And Carrie, who is Amber's mom, she actually does a lot to help other parents of missing children. That's like one of her life missions now. She helps other parents of missing children or children

who have been murdered as well, just like she went through. She helps them get through the days. And I read an interview of her where she was saying how she helped this mom, whose daughter had been murdered, and that the mom said she would not have gotten through it without Carrie's help because Carrie has been there herself and so she knows how to help other families get through it as well and I just thought that was really awesome of her. Yeah, that's really, really cool and going back to kind of the beginning of this episode

and when we talked about John having these mental health problems and being diagnosed and having to take all this medication, I really do wonder how that plays into this whole situation. I don't want to get too much into it, but I wonder if that had an effect on him later. Well, also something I just realized we never mentioned is when he was a child, he had sex with his aunt more than one occasion, and his aunt was the one who forced it on him, and I think that was really where he got his hatred for women, or at least part of where he got it, because he is very vocal about his hatred towards women, and I feel like it's because he was, I mean, raped by his aunt, and that didn't help, I'm sure. It seemed like he came from kind of a messed up family.

Although John had these certain situations and grew up with this abuse, he still knew right from wrong because it sounds like he was remorseful for his crimes, I think that it's a really terrible situation for all the families involved and our hearts really go out to them. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everybody for listening and like we mentioned earlier, we will not have an episode next week because we are moving. So if you want some episodes,

go over to our Patreon Patreon.com slash going west podcast. We've got six bonus episodes, add free for you guys to check out. Yeah, make sure to get on that bonus episode binge, and also make sure to let us know what you thought about this case. If you guys have case suggestions, if you want to talk about this case, we just discussed. Make sure to check us out on social media. Our Instagram is at Going West Podcast and then make sure to go head over to Heath over on Twitter at Going West Pod.

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