The Binge Crimes: Deadly Fortune - Fade to Black | 8. Occam’s Razor

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

We retrace Gary Devore’s movements—with new information about his physical state the night before he disappeared—reassess the original DNA tests on his remains, and reveal what a trip back to the original crash site at the California aqueduct can tell us about what may have actually happened out there. Unlock all episodes of Witnessed: Fade to Black, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Witnessed show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. Campsite Media. The Bench. Sometimes I walk in my living room and I look at the couch where we were sitting and I have this picture in my living room. I've known Gary like most of my life. I think about him every day.

Adrian Gordon, or Adie as she goes by, grew up with Gary DeVore. They dated at one point, but were primarily just lifelong friends. Adie lives in New Mexico now, not far from Marsha Mason's house, where Gary went to finish his script for The Big Steel. And whenever Gary was

in New Mexico, he'd visit Aidy. He used to come here because he needed a break. He loved it here. He visited her, in fact, the night before he got in his truck and began that fateful drive back to California. Aidy's describing a premonition, a vision she had sitting on the couch that night with Gary. As she tells it, she saw, or sensed, the presence of two familiar spirits.

I've known Gary since I've been 15. I knew who they were. I might have met him years ago. And they were close friends of his that had already died. I know. I realize we're talking about spirits again. About ghostly visitations. But Aidy isn't one of the many psychics

who descended upon Wendy after Gary disappeared. She's one of Gary's oldest friends. And this is the first time she's ever retold this part of the story. This last known moment with Gary DeVore. And she's very serious about what she's saying. I was home to him in a way. He could trust me

because I'd known him forever. He still would not show his vulnerability. And yet? He was also very secretive, too. So... Really? I think so.

Yeah, in a way, I think he was. Our lead writer and reporter Evan Wright found 80 through the California Mate Report, the 30-page state investigation of Gary's apparent crash into the Highway 14 aqueduct. In the Mate Report, investigators established that 80 was likely the last person other than Marsha Mason to see Gary. On Thursday, June 26, 1997, Mr. DeVore spent most of the day in his room writing. On that evening, Mr. DeVore visited with a longtime friend, Ms. Adrienne Gordon, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mr. DeVore and Ms. Gordon had been friends for over 41 years. Mr. DeVore arrived at Ms. Gordon's residence at 6.20 p.m. During his visit with Ms. Gordon, he had dinner and engaged in conversation. Mr. DeVore departed at 10 p.m., returned to Ms. Mason's residence, and went to sleep.

But when Evan reached Aidy on the phone, now some 25 years later, she was finally able to reflect on Gary's state of mind that night. He was absorbed with his film, and he, you know, he just seemed off to me. And on this night, for the first time Aidy could remember, Gary made a point of telling her... He said he had a gun in the car. I don't know, but obviously he got mixed up with something he shouldn't have.

I think that he was scared, I really do. Then, as Gary left Aidy late that evening... know what happened, but he disappeared. It took him out. He knew something was going on. I don't know if it was the movie he was making or right. I don't know. I don't know. I think he got mixed up with the wrong people. I do, obviously. He knew too much.

Adia's read all the reports. She knows what the authorities have stated, but she doesn't believe any of it. I know he was taken out, but they didn't find him. You look back on something when you're going through it, and God, the clues were all there, but you didn't know it. It's a pretty irresistible bit of tape. The idea that clues were there all along

to suggest what Wendy still believes, what so many people believe, is true. That Gary DeVore wasn't just an unlucky guy who suffered a tragic accident. That forces we've yet to identify did something to cause his death or disappear him from this earth.

But is this actually true or just wishful thinking? This week, we go back to the crash site, retrace Gary's steps since leaving 80s home, and re-examine if all the clues really do add up to something nefarious, or if this is just a case of a simple story warped by time. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Witness, Season 5, Fade to Black. Episode 8, Occam's Razor. As we've reported out this story, the leads we've received have mostly come from Wendy and Gary's friends.

The search for what happened to Gary DeVore turns out to be rooted in his friendships. Gary's best friend and former writing partner, David Devin, revealed to us that in the early 90s, he wrote a series of mystery books starring an amateur sleuth named Albie Marks, set in a highly satirized version of L.A. And the third book in that series,

titled Murder at Five and published two years before Gary disappeared, features a character named Norman DeVore, who's basically an affectionate caricature of David's pal Gary. He's introduced like this. I've been told he's well-known in the movie business for writing hits and engaging in psychotic behavior.

When the main character, based on Devin himself, next sees the Devor character, he's in his office, writing a screenplay with a shotgun by his side and two toads in a cage. Devor grabs one of those toads and squeezes it until yellow goo seeps from its skin. He says, Take a lick. This here's bufatenine, the ultimate psychedelic. It'll blow you sky high. Devin, novel version, declines.

But for the next three pages, the Devor character smokes the toad venom until he's blasted out of his mind, then hops on his motorcycle with Devin on the back in order to go searching for Devor's girlfriend, the femme fatale of the book, a murderer. Devin's character doesn't really want to go, but in the novel, and probably also in the friendship,

he just goes along with Devor, because his, quote, madness is so compelling. He just radiates this excitement that compels you to follow him. But in the book's climactic scene, we want you to pay careful attention to the final words that Devin, as narrator, asks. He's on the back of Devor's motorcycle, moments after the character has snorted more psychedelic toad venom.

Racing through the Hollywood hills on a motorcycle, chased by police cars with lights and sirens, Devor is having the time of his life. Whooping and shifting gears, screaming and swerving. Where does he think this will end? Gary DeVore was, as Wendy often points out, a cowboy. And not just literally because he loved horses and boots and ranches. Gary was a maverick, an outlaw. So this version of him in the book may not even be all that exaggerated. And we include this fictional scene written by Gary's best friend of careening recklessly through canyons while tripping on psychedelics,

having the time of his life, because of some new information we obtained in the course of reporting this show. Gary DeVore took ecstasy, also known by its chemical signature, MDMA, the night before he disappeared. This is according to a source who asked not to be named, but who witnessed it. Gary DeVore, the source says,

ingested ecstasy around the time of his dinner at 80's house, about 8 p.m. 80 agreed to speak with us about her last evening with Gary on the grounds that we'd not ask her about this. She has no comment on the matter. But knowing that Gary was using a recreational drug known for making you feel happy and ecstatic makes 80's memories of Gary's agitation stand

out even more. I think that he was scared. I really do. But what if Aidy and others have been focusing on the wrong clue or factors leading to Gary's disappearance? Aidy naturally focuses on the intensity of her experience that final night, the apparent visitation, as well as Gary's talk of a gun and not seeing her again. Wendy remembers Gary flipping the blanket, talking about his need to protect her. And numerous friends have referenced Gary's boast that his latest work, The Big Steel, would blow the lid off the CIA.

In an interview for the film The Writer With No Hands, director John Irvin describes a lunch he had with Gary about a week before his friend left for Santa Fe. He was troubled. Something was bothering him. He wasn't really in the conversation. He was having trouble with the script he was writing, which he talked more about about not the script but about a government very very sensitive

inconvenient truth he's speaking more as a journalist than he was as a screenwriter with 80 and so many of gary's close friends describing his fraught condition those final weeks, when he was trying so hard to finish the rewrite of this script that carried so much weight, it all seems to lend some credence to the theory that Gary was in danger, murdered, or abducted. If Gary was this worried, he must have had reasons. But what about this other clue? The fact that Gary apparently took a powerful stimulant

and hallucinogen little more than 12 hours before leaving on his nearly thousand-mile drive home. Almost from the moment Gary's Explorer was discovered in the aqueduct, Wendy and those helping in the search were skeptical. PI Don Crutchfield told Wendy the discovery of the SUV in that spot looks staged, like a Hollywood stunt.

A lot of the skepticism that persists stems from the belief, a fact in the minds of many of these people, that the water in the aqueduct had been searched by the ex-military guys, hired by Gary's ex-wife, Claudia Christian. But that fact now seems to be not actually a fact. Also, Wendy assumed that Good Samaritan Douglas Crawford, who appeared from out of the blue with this theory that Gary simply drove the wrong way and crashed, possibly due to fatigue and disorientation, was some sort of plant. Because she believed, still believes,

that Crawford's theory was impossible. The truck couldn't have been there because the site was searched. But maybe Douglas Crawford was right. This new wrinkle that Gary did ecstasy the night before he took off sure casts that theory in a very different light. And there's one other thing that inevitably keeps coming up, like from John Irvin in Matthew Alford's film. Why were his hands cut off?

The image of Gary DeVore's handless skeleton is so provocative that Alford chose it as the title for his film. And the story, as recalled by Wendy, has really, as much as anything, fueled the theory that Gary DeVore's hands were removed in a deliberate act. Wendy was horrified, traumatized by her experience in the morgue, when she realized that this otherwise intact corpse, which they were telling her was her husband, had no hands. It became a centerpiece of Wendy's story in the media.

But like so many other things, this whole storyline is murky. There were actually two autopsies of the body found in the SUV, one by the county, shortly after the vehicle was found, and a second one in 1999, when Wendy hired a private specialist, David Posey, to go over the results of the coroner's official report.

We'll talk a bit more about Posey in this second autopsy shortly, but neither report found striations on the bones that were still attached to Gary's corpse. Strongly, some would say, definitively, indicating that the hands were not cut or torn from the body. In other words, the removal was almost certainly not a deliberate act. There's a lot of speculation about DeVore's hands having been detached from his body. Well, a body submerged in water for a year, the first bones to fall off from the body are almost certainly going to be the fingers. All the carpal bones are going to fall from the hands, unless he's wearing gloves, and the gloves are gauntlet gloves that go up over the wrists. That's Nils Gravilius, a private detective who specializes in necro-searches, aka investigating death sites,

as well as missing person cases and much more. Detective Gravilius is a U.S. Army combat veteran who later worked in intelligence. As a Pasadena-based PI, he's worked on many high-profile cases, including the four-on-the-floor murders,

fictionalized in the film Boogie Nights, and which Gravilius solved, identifying porn star John Holmes as a participant in the murders. Most relevant to our story, Graviliius solved, identifying porn star John Holmes as a participant in the murders. Most relevant to our story, Gravillius has worked closely with the L.A. County Coroner's Office and has handled several cases involving corpses that spent time in the water. I remember when DeVore went missing, and I remember when his vehicle and body were found. Contemporaneous with that occurrence, I was pretty tight with the guy at the coroner's office.

I've vetted some of the material in tabloid media and blogs that's available on the internet, and some of it's hysterical, and some of it's quite relevant. Remember, the corpse Wendy was shown was basically just a skeleton, a skeleton dressed in Gary's clothes. Gravillia says that clothing

helps protect the integrity of the skeleton from decay and destruction of the flesh by scavengers, like fish. There's going to be almost complete decay. So it's going to be skeletal remains within clothing. Plastics like rayon,

acetate, polyester, nylon, those things won't deteriorate. Now, a lot of clothing that is cotton has nylon thread or polyester thread in it at the seams. So that won't deteriorate. Think about the elastic in your socks. There's going to be synthetics there as well. So that's going to hold those bones together. After speaking with Gravilius, we rechecked the mate accident report and zoomed in on a key detail.

The SUV's windows had been shattered and it was filled with fish when it was pulled out, including more than a dozen catfish, scavengers that feed on rotting flesh of all kinds. The mate report also states that the hand and finger bones were found in the muck of the truck after it was pulled from the water, which tracks with something else Gravillia said. Submerged in water over that period of time, the hand bones would detach, and gravity or buoyancy would take its course.

But despite all of this, Wendy still insists that the corpse recovered was not Gary's. And this goes back to that first shock when she was asked to view the body at the L.A. coroner's office, when no one had warned her that the hands were missing. Someone who is very close to me had told me that when you're dealing with the LA coroner's office, you have to be very careful because you may get misinformation. You may get, it's very difficult to trust them sometimes. And so Wendy paid for a private autopsy with

specialist David Posey, who lists himself as a, quote, forensic pathologist working out of Beverly Hills. Wendy hired Posey's clinic to go over the findings of the original report. She says that at some point she spoke with Posey, and he explained that his final conclusion would be that Gary was murdered. When he spoke, he spoke loosely because he was talking to me,

and I, because I have a bit of, you know, nursing background, I wanted to be in there, in the mor nursing background, I wanted to be in there in the morgue and I wanted to be in there for any kind of an autopsy. And that's when he talked to me about that. And he, yeah, I mean, it was kind of like a murder, kind of like a house.

I mean, nobody knew. So he didn't know either. In the version of the autopsy report we've seen from Posey, while he doesn't actually state definitively that this was a murder, the report does say, although the cause and manner of death are undetermined, it is the opinion of this observer that the manner of death is homicide. But then goes on to conclude the report with this line, but the official cause of death is listed as undetermined. Posey has never explained

this apparent inconsistency, and Evan made several inquiries to his clinic, offering him a chance to explain or deny that he'd first described Gary's death as a possible murder. Hi, I'm actually calling looking to see if I could speak to Dr. Posey about some past work he did on The Journalist. The receptionist asked what the inquiry was about. Well, it's regarding Gary DeVore. Let him know. And according to Evan, the receptionist went cold and quickly ended the call. Here's what we do know.

As part of his study, Posey sent fragments of finger bones to a DNA lab in Canada. And while working on a book also called The Writer With No Hands, Matthew Alford released partial information from a report indicating that the Canadian lab had difficulty pulling DNA from the samples Posey sent. It was this result from a partial report, which became the basis for Wendy's theory that the finger bones were obviously not Gary's, and that they were placed in the vehicle by the coroner's office to silence her. But in the final days of putting this podcast together, we heard from a guy we'd reached out to many times. by others as well. This is a very interesting and challenging case. It looks like it's drawn

a lot of attention from different groups of people. Dr. David Sweet is an internationally recognized DNA specialist based in Vancouver, Canada, who Posey contracted to analyze the samples. I was really only asked to compare DNA samples from a known source to a body and then draw conclusions about whether that body belonged to the same person that the personal attacks belonged to. Dr. Sweet confirmed that indeed, as Wendy tells it, the original DNA samples were lost on the way to him in 1999, and then recovered, so he was able to perform the tests. So I've done that, and I wrote a report. So why is there still confusion?

Sweet explained that he was hired by Posey, who's not talking to anybody, and so there are some complications to him releasing the results of his report. In other words, he couldn't really say anything definitively until we'd cleared some hurdles. It would be really sad if we had to leave the story here, because the million-dollar question would still remain. Is that corpse that Wendy was shown Gary DeVore, or not? But we don't have to endure that suspense anymore. That is, if we trust in the work of Dr. Sweet. We obtained a copy of Dr. Sweet's seven-page report, which we were assured is valid. The first few pages recount his inability

to extract DNA samples from teeth attributed to Gary's supposed corpse. This portion of Dr. Sweet's report seems to have been leaked in the past, giving rise to the notion that Gary's remains lacked human DNA. But what seems to have been leaked in the past, giving rise to the notion that Gary's remains lacked human DNA. But what seems to be misleading here is that DNA cannot always be extracted from human remains,

especially if they've been exposed to decay underwater. It's the last two pages of Dr. Sweet's report which contain news that hasn't been reported before, at least widely. I'm reading directly here. The probability of finding this genetic profile if the questioned samples had originated from some person other than Gary DeVore is 1 in 3.6 million.

In other words, according to this respected Canadian DNA scientist, the chance that the corpse pulled from the SUV is not Gary DeVore is only 1 in 3.6 million. Here, in the end, is how Dr. Sweet sums it up in his report. These results constitute a positive identification of the decedent as one Gary DeVore. I love when the sponsors of our programs are selling products I already use.

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quince.com slash cases. Hello, it's your beauty and wellness BFFs and we're here to answer all your burning questions. slash cases. thoughts always. Listen to Lipstick on the Rim now on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. The last image of Gary DeVore alive on Earth was taken at a Unical station in Flagstaff, Arizona at 6 p.m. by a surveillance camera as he paid for gas. In the video still,

he's wearing his cowboy hat. He stopped again for gas at 10.10 p.m., three hours and 253 miles further west in Fenner, California. There's no video from that location, but we know this from his credit card records. 12.38 a.m. is when he called Wendy to say that he was going to a Denny's for a cup of coffee. The California Mate investigators reconstructed Gary's movements from Santa Fe. Using their report as a guide, we picked up Gary's trail at Denny's, his last stop, presumably, until somehow ending up in the California aqueduct 36 miles south. The Mate report essentially follows the theory about Gary DeVore's crash

that was first proposed by Douglas Crawford, that unemployed lawyer from San Diego who located the SUV. Crawford said that he'd developed a theory of his own, based on media accounts and by studying the area where Gary vanished, and then contacted the highway patrol. Many saw Crawford as a suspicious character, Wendy especially. The man Wendy DeVore is questioning is Douglas Crawford, whose one-man investigation led police to this grisly discovery. DeVore's missing Ford Explorer submerged in a California river. As police work to identify the remains found inside, Crawford says instead of feeling like a hero, he was questioned like a crook.

The Maitreport actually credits Crawford with not just telling authorities where to find the vehicle, he also came up with a theory to explain how it got there. Crawford explained all this in a 29-page fact to the highway patrol, apparently so convincing that authorities mounted a search the next day and located the SUV. The theory outlined in the Maitre report, based on Crawford's hunch, boils down to the idea that Gary was driving in the wrong direction, away from Los Angeles. Maybe because he made an illegal U-turn on the freeway

in an attempt to cross the median and get into a lane in the opposite direction to make an exit. But maybe Gary was disoriented and drove right through what could have looked like an exit, but was actually a gap in the bridge's barrier, essentially a drop right into the aqueduct. What made Crawford's theory so credible was that it is based on a flaw in the design of the bridge itself. Crawford discovered that three years earlier at a different freeway crossing over an aqueduct,

a woman attempting an illegal U-turn at night apparently thought a gap in the fence created for service vehicles was a freeway exit. She drove through it, leaving no skid marks or scratches on the side of her vehicle. And that bridge had the exact same design as the one on the 14 freeway. We attempted to contact Crawford to ask him to visit the crash site with us, but he didn't return our calls. So instead, Evan Wright and Megan Donis went out to the desert with a different expert. We are sitting in a darkened booth at the world's famous Denny's,

the last place where Gary talked to a human being, really. Came in, talked to the waitress here. So we make the movie. He's got to be sitting at the counter, right? That's Damon Reiser again, sitting with Megan and Evan at the infamous to this story, Mojave Desert Denny's.

Remember, Damon was friends with Gary's third wife, Claudia Christian. The California Mate team investigators confirmed that Gary stopped here a little after 1230. There are a few lights beyond the parking lot, and it was an exceptionally dark night with a waning crescent moon that still hadn't risen yet. You know, sitting here with the old neon and the lighting and everything else, that it has this very film-esque sort of look to it.

And my thought is that I think one of the reasons that this story has continued to... I wouldn't say it grows. I would say that it continues. You know, is that everything about it is on the edge of film noir. It's on the edge. It's not 100%, but it's close enough where people are fascinated by it. Donna Booth, the sole server on duty that night, gave investigators a detailed and accurate description of Gary

and what he was wearing more than a year after she served him a cup of coffee. He'd clearly made an impression. She said that Gary appeared tired, but was not intoxicated and didn't smell of alcohol. He stayed about 20 minutes. Gary was one of those quiet guys that really observed the world. Like any writer, he loved a good story.

I mean, I am sure walking in here at 12.30 at night in this place being dark, every kind of story or that kind of shot in a movie or that kind of, you know, paragraph in kind of you know paragraph in a book i'm sure totally came into his head damon started working for claudia in his early 20s when she and gary were married i spent essentially the entire time they were married in their house like every day. Gary was generally a cool guy. I mean, Gary could be gruff. He was very much a man of his time. He was that sort of 1970s, 1980s tough guy guy, which I think is one of the reasons Claudia liked him. I think it's one of the reasons Wendy liked him. I think it's because

you felt totally protected with Gary. He was the kind of guy that would totally protect you and totally do whatever it took to make sure that you were safe. The Denny's where Gary had that last cup of coffee overlooks a desolate commercial street with a couple of fast food restaurants, some motels, and a vast boneyard of huge airliners abandoned in the desert behind it. Presumably, Gary would have walked out and gotten into his truck, but there's no footage of that because the camera was out.

From the lot where he would have parked, Megan, Evan, and Damon drove the same 36 miles that Gary did to the fateful aqueduct where his SUV was found. Testing, testing, one testing one two three. It's recording. We're recording. So Damon can you tell me where we are right now? We are at Vista Point. It's an overlook over the LA aqueduct approximately a quarter of a mile away from the bridge that Gary would have driven off of. Actually, where is, get your map out, get that overhead shot. We have these overheads, which are beautiful.

Evan, Megan, and Damon were standing at a scenic overlook by the freeway, a quarter mile past the Aqueduct Crossing, away from LA, looking at near poster-sized aerial shots of the freeway, taken by investigators right after the SUV was found. It's really interesting because California is mountainous. When people say desert, you think of this flat thing. The whole canal and turn where the car went off were located on the side of a hill. The aqueduct is actually elevated over the lake. So it's this very twisting, mountainous freeway that is intertwined with a body of water flowing beneath it. Gary would have been on the southbound lanes as he approached the aqueduct.

At the time, the freeway crossed on two separate bridges, one for the southbound lanes toward L.A. and another bridge for the northbound lanes toward the Denny's. The 14 freeway is almost entirely unchanged today, except that all lanes now cross on a single bridge with a broad median strip between them. There's no gap dividing the spans. But in Gary's time, it was two bridges, with a 34-foot empty

space between them. What the crash scene suggested to investigators is that after crossing the southbound bridge, Gary seems to have turned around and driven back north on the inside shoulder of those same lanes, to the left of the slow lane. Back then, that shoulder, which was paved, abruptly ended in a sheer 33-foot plunge into the aqueduct below. There was no sign, no markings, no lights. On each side of this gap, guardrail fencing, but to anyone driving toward the gap in the dark, those guardrails could easily have been mistaken for an exit. This is the design flaw Douglas Crawford identified, and nine years after Gary's crash, the flaw was corrected. The two bridges were turned into one. Today, there is no way to

drive off the highway between the north and southbound lanes. The aqueduct is 120 feet wide and looks like a river but is paved entirely in concrete. The water at its deepest point is about 20 feet deep and Gary's SUV was found fully submerged pointing north as if he had crossed the bridge going south then immediately pulled a u-turn and began driving in the wrong direction on the shoulder. Crawford hadn't offered any explanation as to why Gary would have pulled a U-turn and began driving in the wrong direction on the shoulder. Crawford hadn't offered any explanation as to why Gary would have pulled a sudden U-turn, but MAID investigators suggested one possibility. Radio logs indicated on June 28, 1997 at 2.04 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department conducted a felony stop at Vista Point Rest Area.

Northbound State Route 14 lanes were closed. Approximately six to eight Los Angeles County Sheriff's Patrol vehicles made a stop on a vehicle suspected of armed robbery. Standing out there now, looking from the Vista Point Rest Area, Damon Reiser had a realization. I always assumed that when I first heard about the police closure, that it was seriously much farther away. I honestly thought that, you know, I figured you were talking a solid mile at least. He pointed back to the oversized overhead photo of the freeway, taken at the time of Gary's disappearance.

Gary comes over the bridge. He looks up. He sees this line of police cars. Now, if you've closed the freeway at night, those police cars are going to be lit up like Christmas trees, right? Blazing. He's got a gun in the car. He's been driving all night. He's got another couple of hours before he can actually get home. He sees all these cop cars in the middle of the freeway, half a mile, quarter mile, whatever they were from where he is. Either he thinks, get home, he sees all these cop cars in the middle of the freeway. Half a mile, quarter mile, whatever they were from where he is. Either he thinks, oh shit, the freeway's closed. Oh shit, they have a

drink, right? DUI. Stop. Right? Right. It's the weekend before the Holyfield fight. The Holyfield fight. They tend to do things like that. Right. Okay. He gets over the bridge. He goes, fuck. Any criminal charges, like driving under the influence,

could have caused serious problems for Gary, threatening his ability to get insured as the director of his film. As Damon sees it now, if Gary saw flashing police lights ahead, he would have had a strong incentive to just turn around. This was his directorial debut, right? He wanted this. This was his dream, right? He's not going to do something to fuck that up. This was over 24 hours since Gary apparently took ecstasy, so the effects would have passed, but it's very possible he hadn't slept much or at all. He could have been delirious from

exhaustion. Investigators also found a bag of marijuana in the glove compartment, and the autopsy revealed the presence of marijuana as well as Welbutrin and an antihistamine for allergies. There was no alcohol in his system, and it doesn't seem that the body was tested for MDMA. There was also the gun in his car, possibly unregistered. One lingering question is that Gary's truck was found with the headlights turned off. But Damon has an explanation for that. I also know why absolutely he turned his lights off. The fact is, you know, he probably saw him back here. He's getting closer, you know, he probably turned his lights off before he even went over the bridge, right?

I also know why he was doing 70. When he made that U-turn, he wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible. It wasn't a matter of lingering and turning around and driving. He gunned it. Because he wanted to make sure that they didn't see him. Gary's friends describe him as a very competent driver, but he could also be impulsive.

His third wife, Claudia Christian, told Evan Wright that when Wendy first told her that Gary had disappeared while driving home, her initial thought was road rage. And Damon has another idea for why Gary might have attempted a U-turn here. Now, again, you have to remember the way the 14 looked back then. It looked like the, think of the 5 freeway, okay? If you saw something up ahead, could you two do a U-turn on the 5 freeway, go back the other way?

What Damon means is that for years on the 5, one of the most heavily traveled freeways in the state, if you went past your exit in a rural area and were willing to risk a ticket, there were gaps in the fence between the lanes. But if Gary had seen cops and thought he could do the same thing on the 14, the aerial photographs from 97 show why that would have been a bad idea. That unlit, unmarked gap in the guardrail fencing was 17 feet wide, wide enough to drive two cars through, leading directly to the drop-off into the aqueduct below. Today, that's all gone, but Evan, Megan, and Damon walked down from the Vista Point rest area and used the aerial photographs to get a sense of just how large the gap was back in 98. Looks bad. This is insane that this just looks like someone chopped off the road and

this thing it looks like a Bugs Bunny cartoon like the joke like the road just ends like you're on the road on the road on the road and boom no more road you're on the road, on the road, on the road, and boom, no more road. Your feet are, like, pedaling through the air. We can never know for sure if Gary made the series of mistakes that would have led to this colossal error. The authors of The Mate only suggest this theory as most probable. They also note that in the 90s, there were 17 to 18 wrong-way collisions

on Los Angeles County freeways every year. And 78% of them involved drivers going the wrong way in the number one lane or the shoulder next to it. And the majority of drivers who survived were disoriented and thought they were going in the right direction. Damon is now convinced that this is what happened to Gary. My guess is when he turned the lights off, he thought, I got away with it, I got away with it.

He was still thinking about it on the drive back to L.A. He literally drives straight through. And it's like, fuck. And trust me, if that's what happened, Gary knew the second he hit that wall, the second he went over, I can imagine the look on Gary's face. Like, fuck. Damon Reiser has another expertise here, in another area that helps.

He moved to L.A. hoping to be an actor, but ended up going in a different direction. I am a line producer in Hollywood and have been for almost 30 years. I was a special effects producer at one time. I've done pretty much every job you could do. Five years after Gary disappeared, Damon was hired as a production supervisor

on a music video that featured a stunt in which a car was launched at high speed into a harbor near L.A. So if Gary's crash were staged, as has been suggested, Damon truly understands what that would take. Now in the movies, we take the engine out, we take the fuel cell out,

we take everything that has to legally be removed from the car. Damon explains that the private detectives who casually talked about a cover-up in which Gary's truck was launched into the canal via a Hollywood stunt have probably watched too many movies. To get a two-ton car airborne in a film, the first thing they usually

do is strip it. The inside is empty. You'd also need a tow vehicle, a massive cable, and release hardware, some of which would have still been on Gary's truck in the water, unless someone went into 20 feet of water and stripped it all off. And if you want to do, let's go the crazy route, right? Let's go the full-on conspiracy route. First of all, you'd have to close the freeway down in both directions.

You can't just close down on one side. You'd have to close it down on both sides of the bridge, right, to make sure that nobody actually drove up. You'd need a cable. You're talking about a cable that would literally be probably a quarter of a mile, if not a half a mile long. In other words, getting a truck into the aqueduct by a stunt that nobody saw without leaving any marks is maybe the most implausible conspiracy theory of all.

Reiser asked about Douglas Crawford and why he hadn't come, especially because what we found out there transforms him from a mysterious character to what seems to have maybe been just a good Samaritan who wanted to help and actually did. Evan explained that Samaritan who wanted to help, and actually did? Evan explained that Crawford is now difficult to reach,

perhaps because of an incident that occurred in 2016 and was covered in the news. He's alleged to have threatened another lawyer with a stun gun during a deposition. Crawford was disbarred and hasn't been heard from since. There's one other person who was a big part of the story back then and who we would have loved to speak with. Michael Sands, the publicist who showed up in Wendy's life claiming to have CIA ties and who once told a reporter that Gary had faked his own disappearance. When Evan asked Wendy for an introduction,

she said that wouldn't be possible, because Sands died in 2012 in the strangest possible way. He choked to death on a... You know those trays where they give you a sample? Well, this was at Gelson's. Gelson's is a high-end grocery store in Hollywood, and that day

they were offering beef samples. And he took the sample and he choked to death and they had people there that were well-versed in being able to do everything heimlich's everything they could not stop it i still have the picture of him all hooked up dying in the hospital with his son there i mean it just blew my mind. It's like I'm the godmother of his child. I knew this man very well because of everything that had happened and how much he had tried to help. Very odd guy, but he had very much tried.

This is absolutely true. Michael Sands, the publicist who claimed to be an undercover operative, choked to death on a beef sample at a Hollywood deli counter. Matthew Alford, the British academic, finds this all very odd, especially because the two of them were scheduled to do another interview for his film. I think it was the last time I spoke to him. He said, I'm back in the CIA. And when he said, I'm back in the CIA, he did jazz hands over Skype. Like, I remember thinking that is the most amazing thing to come up to immediately ring someone. And he hadn't even spoken to me.

You know, he hadn't spoken to me for a while. And he just came on the camera. I'm back in the CIA. And I was like, that is, I wish I'd recorded that. It would be immense. But that was my abiding image of Michael Sands. It's hard to know what to think of Michael Sands. He was highly eccentric, possibly even a bit of an imposter.

Certainly an exaggerator. But we probably shouldn't completely dismiss his claims. Because when Professor Tricia Jenkins was working on her book about the CIA in Hollywood, she interviewed Sands himself. I think he maybe made some claims about his role with the CIA and in Hollywood that are exaggerated. But it's clear that he did have a role. So he is somebody who seemed responsible, especially like in early days, of introducing people at the CIA

with his Hollywood connections. That's not it either. Sands may have played a role in the capture of a notorious terrorist too. Abu Abbas, architect of the infamous hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Laro. And he tried to take credit

by basically setting up a documentary film production that was going to interview a terrorist who was of interest to the United States. And so this guy had agreed to be a part of the documentary series, and Michael says that he sent, like, the location, the address of the terrorist and where they had done the filming to the CIA or to the government,

and that helped lead to his capture shortly thereafter. I don't have any way of verifying that his claims are true. He was a PR guy, and my assessment of his personality, and I only feel comfortable saying this because he's dead now, is that he definitely had a role in introducing people from the CIA to people in Hollywood, but how valuable those connections were is... It's hard for me to verify. This is just one of those stories where the moment you've started to achieve a little clarity,

some bizarre fact or event just sets you spinning again. Like Michael Sands and the Gelson's beef sample. It's just hard to completely and totally accept Occam's razor here. Which is why Evan Wright felt the need to go back to Frank Thorwald, Wendy's government security specialist friend. What if the CIA wasn't directly involved or involved at all, but it also wasn't an accident? What then? Not that you're saying this, but you're talking generally. But as it applies to Gary, it would be if, for instance, Chase introduced him to people in the Panama government, Gary scared them.

They made a decision to come and kill him. If you're somebody like a Noriega who is in power, you certainly have your own intelligence community, you have your own criminal organizations you're connected with. And if you have a lack of understanding about Hollywood or how things are going, you could end up having a strong concern that something is going to cause you a major problem. You could send somebody from your organization to kill someone and to cover it up. You might remember that Frank doesn't hold Chase Brandon

in very high regard. He just can't forget the time that Chase told Frank he had information he might be interested in and then sent him a link to a porn site. And now, if you're Chase, you are not guilty of anything, but now there may be ramifications that not even Chase, any person in his,

in that position, they may want to cover up the crime to not just protect themselves, but also the policies of, of our government. Because if we found out that the Panamanians killed a screenwriter, maybe we would be mad. Or let's say it is another government. Let's say it was another government that was dealing in drugs.

They could have sent somebody up to assassinate him now is is there a cover-up after that is what what possible motive again now we're back at that big question mark but I think that kind of scenario is also a strong possibility as well. Back in 2010, a public information officer from the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office named Mike Burrage gave an interview to Matthew Alford for an article in Fortean Times, a magazine that focuses on the fringes. Burrage said that he was at the aqueduct the day Gary's SUV was pulled from it, and he spotted something peculiar.

He said that he was watching the recovery when a network news cameraman pointed out a black helicopter with no apparent markings flying overhead. It was not a police chopper or a news chopper. And according to Burridge, when he asked the cameraman to swing up and film the bird, it flew away. He also says the camera guy later looked at his footage and saw, quote, no tail number, no end number, and everybody inside the helicopter was wearing dark clothing.

I mean, who knows, right? We have no way of locating this camera guy. But Laura Manitos, that ABC local news reporter who spent so much time with Wendy, also heard a version of this story. So I just remember the sheriff's department telling me about some suspicious black helicopter in a place where Gary was suspected of being. And that that was the only thing, other than Gary's disappearance, that they didn't have answers about this unexplained black helicopter that was reported in some area around where Gary went missing.

You might remember that Gary's car was found just a short drive from Edwards Air Force Base. And right next to that is the Lockheed Skunk Works, creators of many secret military hardware projects, including the so-called stealth bomber. And this reminded Evan of something Wendy's daughter Brittany had said, a memory of something Gary once told her. He did say that he had special security clearance because he wrote something about the stealth bomber, I think called Stealth or something. This is true. Gary did write a film about the stealth bomber called Stealth that was in development at one point. And I remember him telling me after he had finished writing it, he was like, I can't

tell you all the things, but I get to see some pretty cool shit. I remember him saying that and thinking, I bet you do. Because the Stealth Bomber was this new, like, super secret, you know, he was like, I mean, he's like, it's just so crazy the capabilities that they have. The possibility of access like this, of security clearances into secret projects, would have been irresistible to a guy like Gary. When Evan finally got Chase Brandon on the phone,

sitting on his deck, smoking the cigar, Chase mostly wanted to emphasize the nature of his relationship with Gary as a dear friend. Beyond that... Um, I know a lot about Gary, and which I'm not even remotely inclined to speak to you about. as a dear friend. Beyond that... Um, I know a lot about Gary, and which I'm not even remotely inclined to speak to you about. That's our voice actor reading Chase Brandon again.

In the phone call, Evan asked if hearing more about the podcast might encourage Chase to elaborate. I think I would rather not want to hear it, because it might trigger something in me that I felt compulsively required to share it with you. And I just cannot do that. As for Chase, for the agency having anything to do with Gary's disappearance, Chase said, I'll tell you, a car accident is a far more realistic issue of what happened to Gary. And then he closed with this spicy number.

If I could have told you everything you wanted to hear, you and I both would have been in trouble because the agency would have killed me and you both. People who have endured tragedies are often very unwilling to talk to reporters, understandably. But Wendy was receptive of us poking around in her tragedy basically from day one. I mean, look, to me, and in your putting this thing together, you will do it the way you want it to.

Okay? But if you, if I were doing it, I would definitely have clips of me saying the reason that we are all here is because of the absolute, unbelievably untrue things that were given us by law enforcement as evidence that anyone could have done it better if they wanted to hide it. And if you were in Wendy's shoes with so many

conflicting reports and no clear answers over all these years, wouldn't you be confused and traumatized too? And given this lack of resolution, wouldn't you want to believe at least a little in the best possible outcome? As unlikely as it may be? When you have a missing person and nobody can tell you one fucking thing about this until it happens to them, okay? I don't give a goddamn who they are. I don't care if it's a psychiatrist. I know I'm right. When you have a person that you love that's missing and you progress in the missing until you know they're not going to be found this week and And you have to learn to live

with this. One of the things that happens is that you find ways to comfort yourself. I mean, you don't necessarily know you're doing that, but that's what you're doing. One of those ways for Wendy is to have hope, to always be open to the possibility that Gary is still out there somewhere. At one point, as Evan was going through boxes with Wendy, she told a story. Did I show you the picture of the man that I stopped? No.

You stopped the man thinking it was Gary? It was in Florida, and I was down home taking my father for a little while. And I got on an escalator. I was going up. And they were coming down. And I ran down the escalator. I ran up to him and I said, could I take a picture of you?

And he just looked at me. And I said, no, no, no. I said, I have a really good friend. You look exactly alike. I said, you know how they tell us everywhere there's someone who's your double? You guys are doubles for each other, and I would love to show him.

His name is Gary. No change in the eyes. And I said, what's your name? This poor, confused guy mumbled something like Bill. Whatever it was, it was not Gary. And I said, would you would you wait right here? I'll get you a cup of coffee. And he said, yes.

And I said, what do you want? And I wanted to see because I knew what coffee, Gary didn't drink coffee, but when he did, he would not drink it with milk in it, for instance. And I was, and I turned around to go and he ran off. I never saw him, I could never catch him again. Couldn't see him, he just disappeared. You don't think it was Gary though, do you?

No, I don't think it was Gary, though, do you? No, I don't. But the reason I don't is because all of my friends have looked at the two pictures and seen a difference in the ears. Really, an actual real difference in the ears. So I've got to take their word for it. You know, I was thinking about it. It's like Gary would be at minimal, what, 78 years

old? As of this writing, in October 2023, Gary would be 82. Even if he fudged his own death, the odds of him actually still being around are slim to none, eh?

And the other thing, too, is you'd be looking for an 80-year-old man. Yeah. Now, look, again, I truly believe she loves him. I truly believe it's something that she's probably never going to get over, because who would? But either he died in the aqueduct or he's vanished. And if he's vanished and he hasn't come back, he's not going to come back. There is one explanation that fits Wendy's belief that Gary could be alive, but not able to contact her. I know, just like other people all over the country

know, that there are witness protection programs. and when people are put into witness protection they can never contact anyone ever again from their other life now I'm sure and I have been told a couple of times by people way more knowledgeable than me or involved in these organizations than me, that there are similar programs for people in the intelligence community. If anything is driving Wendy, it seems to be this. What you're dealing with is realizing suddenly that there are falsehoods that you are being given.

False information, false... And you have to get to the bottom of it, or you can't go to sleep at night. It haunts you. Well, and it worries you, and, and you have to get to the bottom of it or you can't go to sleep at night. You know, it haunts you. Well, and it worries you and it scares you. Wendy isn't resisting closure. It just hasn't been possible. How about just one indication of something? To never know anything is just so fucking weird.

In many ways, this is a story about loss. Loss is a thing we all deal with, but few of us will ever go through a loss like Wendy's. What seems to bias her in this seemingly futile hope that Gary is somehow still alive out there isn't a rejection of grief. It's her ongoing love for Gary and her sense that somehow she failed him.

We know from documents shared with us that Wendy relentlessly badgered the FBI, the police, any agency she came across that could possibly be helpful. Their letters to congressmen,

phone calls to producers, all of them pleas for help in finding her husband, who, in her mind, is still missing today. Of all the interviews we did with people in Gary's orbit, as we tried to understand who Gary DeVore was, the one who made the strongest impression was a friend of Gary's,

who goes back even farther than David Devin. His name is David Thompson, and he met Gary in the late 60s in Los Angeles after 80, who he met at the beginning of the episode, introduced the two of them. Thompson describes a man who, in his 20s, without ever having published or sold or possibly even written a short story, decided to become a Hollywood screenwriter. He remembers Gary sitting on the beach in Santa Monica, reading the dictionary. Every day he would go through the dictionary until he came across a word he didn't know that he liked.

And then all day he would practice that word and including it into sentences and all of that. So he did that to strengthen his screenplay qualities, you know. So I would go there and say, well, Gary, what is the word of the day? Gary just loved stories. So Gary loved doing those scripts. He loved building thrilling pieces into them

and thrilling dialogue. And he really had a determination to want to have the screen explode for the for the viewer you know I don't know anything about it but I'm fascinated that this guy does and he just is thrilled by getting these his thoughts and his images onto the screen. He wanted to be, you know, the best thriller screenwriter there was. He probably at certain points thought that he was. After Gary vanished, the studio looked for a writer to take over the big steal,

but that didn't work out. And of course, Chase Brandon started his own career as a writer, taking on some of the trappings of Gary's life. But there was someone else, too. Wendy's old and then new again boyfriend, Chad Deal. In addition to his modeling and some commercial work, Chad has acted on the stage, and not simply to play statues. But his work in theater introduced Chad to the frustrating role

of the understudy, which seems to be the role Wendy gave to Chad after running into him nearly two and a half decades ago on a beach in Hawaii. Chad has heard all of the stories a million times. He sat patiently by as Wendy explained the torture she's endured since losing Gary. Told so many reporters, including us, that he could still be alive. On one of our many visits to Wendy's apartment in the Valley, we spoke to Chad and Wendy together, who can still joke about the unique nature of their relationship. I've had a good life.

I mean, I may be around for 20 years, but I may not. 20 years of you? Can you imagine? At one point, Wendy left. She went upstairs for something. And producer Megan Donis was left sitting with Chad. Chad has now been on this journey

with Wendy for more than two decades. Often hearing Wendy say that he's simply filling in for the role of Gary until the actual version shows back up. The thing is, I'm not sure anyone has ever asked Chad what he thinks of all this. This is a tough question, but I feel like we kind of have to ask everyone it, which is, what do you think happened to Gary?

Funny you should ask. I actually wrote a little treatment, okay? A little script, about 30 pages long, with all the information that I've been able to gather from Wendy, having been with her now for a few years. And I wanted to do it kind of like a a Bourne ultimatum the whole series of stuff to make it more like an action-adventure thing and I think when he saw that she needed a closure that he's the one that planted the car with the body okay however he did it with his

team right I definitely think he was an undercover agent of some sort. And I open the story with a black screen telephone ringing. And you hear Wendy half out of breath with a dog panting beside her and so forth saying, hello. And she's like, what? And then closes, blackout. Next scene is you hear the thumping of a helicopter and they're flying low into the aqueduct and they're coming up to the scene and he says okay hold it here in chad's version gary at least gets to be the hero of his own story but when it comes down to it gary's fate is just as dark and mysterious as it ever was and naturally an old cia pal is there to meet him in central america part of the plan all along. Gary's getting a wire planted on him by his friend who's with him, Chase Brandon, I think it was.

And then at the end, my closing for the movie, is that Gary and his friends in their helicopter come in for a landing at some obscure base somewhere. And Gary says, job well done, guys. Thanks a lot see you see you soon kind of thing turns to walk out and as he's walking down the steps a bag goes over his head and that's the ending That's all from Witness for now. But if you're looking for your next true crime podcast fix,

check out Smokescreen, My Fugitive Dad. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that your parent, the person you've known and loved your entire life, wasn't at all who they said they were? That's exactly what happened to Ashley Randall. Her dad, Thomas Randall, was by all accounts a normal guy. A great dad, a loving husband, a car salesman, and an unbelievable golfer. But on one unforgettable day, Tom shared a shocking secret with Ashley that would turn

her world upside down. It would also send shockwaves through the world of law enforcement and armchair detectives alike. Who was Thomas Randall, really? Join Ashley herself and co-host Jonathan Hirsch as they retrace the steps of her father's double life and try to find the truth beneath a sea of lies dating back over half a decade. Here's a preview. Okay, I guess if we're going to tell the story from the top, we kind of need to start with the movie. You got to give the people what they want. The Thomas Crown Affair was released in 1968. It was one of the most iconic heist films ever made.

Go. In the movie, Thomas Crown is a clever and charming businessman who pulls off an elaborate and inimitable robbery of a bank in Boston, Massachusetts. Steve McQueen is the lead. His character is already rich. He does it, seemingly, because he can. The getaway car, a wood-paneled station wagon,

exits the Massachusetts Turnpike, canvas sacks of money in the trunk. The driver drops them off in a trash can at the Cambridge Cemetery. A little while later, McQueen arrives in a black Rolls Royce to pick up the sacks. He drives home. His butler asks him about his day. Fine.

Just fine. He tells him, go home early. Thank you, sir. He walks into the ante room, pours himself a drink, looking sharp with his crew cut of golden blonde hair and tailored suit. He catches himself in the mirror

for a cheeky moment of primordial narcissism and toasts his own reflection, then reclines on the couch, biting into a thick cigar, and is unable to control his laughter. He's done it. And that's really where the film starts, as law enforcement and a special investigator slash love interest played by Faye Dunaway

are hot on his trail. It's one of those summer blockbusters that kids of the era must have flocked to, the flashy thrill of the chase and a leading man all the boys wanted to emulate. But there was only one young man watching that film among the millions who must have seen it that summer in small towns and big cities across America

that took his obsessive admiration for Steve McQueen a bit too far. He was a kid from Cleveland, Ohio, named Ted Conrad. He loved the movie, went time and again to see it in the theater. He loved it so much that he tried to pull off his own heist. And the crazy thing is, he did it. He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the story of a crime that impacted two families in profoundly different ways. One desperate for the truth and the other unwittingly living a lie. A cop with a life's mission to find answers. A family with no idea that they hold the key to solving the case. A key that once unlocked would transform their lives.

It's been over half a century since Ted Conrad stole a fortune from Society National Bank. And the real story of what happened has remained a mystery until now. From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smokescreen, My Fugitive Dad. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. I thought I knew my dad, but that was before I found out he'd been a fugitive for decades. You should probably introduce yourself. Yeah.

I'm Ashley. I'm actually Ted's daughter. But you weren't always aware of that. No. Could you have ever imagined your dad was a criminal mastermind? That's a no. He was absolutely unfaceable. I would never have guessed how many secrets he had.

You and your dad were unusually close, though, right? Like, you weren't just his only child. You were also sort of his confidant. Yeah, I think he would tell me things because he either thought that I could handle it better than my mom or that I just have this really terrible gift of being able to compartmentalize things and put it on a shelf and tuck it away. Maybe he would give her 10% of a story

and then I might get 30%. He would never give me 100%, but I was definitely getting more than she did. But now, at 38 years old, she found herself asking, what percentage of the story he told her was a lie? Was it all a lie? I deserve to know my father's name. I deserve to know my father's name. I deserve to know my name. She also deserves to know why.

Why did Ted take off with the money and leave his whole life behind? This burning question was how Ashley and I found ourselves on a journey in search of the real Ted. He wasn't a wise guy. I mean, he'd look you straight in the eyes. The only time I saw him was sad when he was saying that his parents were killed with his twin brothers in a car accident.

He was Ohio's most infamous fugitive. Some people portrayed Conrad as a, you know, a Robin Hood. And my dad called him nothing but a, you know, a thief. He kept plenty of secrets. And he said, if I tell you, you have to promise you will not look into it. I don't want you looking into anything. I don't want you telling anybody. Ted Conrad, it turns out, was a mystery, even to those who knew him best. And we'll tell you at long last,

not only how he did it, but why. Ready for the rest of the story? Search for Smokescreen to listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. and reported by Evan Wright and Megan Donis. Megan Donis is the senior producer, and Sheba Joseph is the associate producer. The executive producers are Evan Wright, Jeff Singer, and me, Josh Dean. Niall Kasson is the consulting producer. Studio recording by Ewan Lytram-Ewan, Blake Rook, and Sheba Joseph. Sound design, mixing, and original music by Mark McAdam and Erica Huang. Additional engineering by Blake Rook. Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions.

Additional field recording by Devin Schwartz. Fact-checking by Amanda Feynman. Special thanks to the voice actors in this episode, Peter Lindberg, Lindsay Kilbride, Mark McAdam, and Devin Schwartz. And to our operations team, Doug Slaywan, Destiny Dingle, Ashley Warren, and Sabina Mara. The executive producers at Campside Media are If you like the show, please take a minute to rate and review it, which really does help other people find it. Thanks for listening

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