The Deck - Dana Ramm (Jack of Hearts, California)

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Our card this week is Dana Ramm, the Jack of Hearts from California. When 20-year-old Dana Ramm’s body was found on the shoulder of Andrade Road, the Bay Area mourned her passing and wondered if a killer was lurking in the shadows. Dana disappeared forever while waiting for two friends, Tracy and Cody, at a Bay Area gas station one night in December 1986. Even though Dana’s body was identified the day after she disappeared, it’s been almost 36 years since she was slain, and police still haven’t thawed her cold case. The clock is ticking, but investigators are hopeful that they’ll one day give closure to Dana’s friends and family. If you think you know who Happy is, or if you know anything about what happened to Dana Ramm in December 1986, call the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office cold case homicide unit at 510-667-3636.  To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org

Our card this week is Dana Ram, the jack of hearts from California. Just shy of New Year's Eve in 1986, 20-year-old Dana Ram vanished from a gas station parking lot in a small California town. When her body was found the morning after she disappeared, her friends and family were heartbroken. But they helped police piece together the last moments of Dana's life. Without any tips generated for decades, police are now turning to the public for help identifying a biker who might be the missing piece in one of California's co-list cases.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. On Monday, December 29, 1986, a woman was driving to work on a country road near Senegal, California when she spotted something on the shoulder of the road. At first, she couldn't tell what it was because it was early, like, 730 and was one of those foggy, bay area mornings, on top of the fact that it was the week between Christmas and New Year's when you just can't fathom getting out of bed and dragging yourself to work. But as she slowed to peer out her window and get a better look, it came into focus. It was a woman lying naked and motionless on the side of the road. Part racing, practically beating out of her body, she sped up and continued down the road until

she spotted a public works crew doing some road maintenance. She stopped, told them what she'd seen, and led the crew back to the woman. Without getting too close to what they quickly realized was a crime scene, they could tell that the woman was dead. As they were about to leave to find a phone and call 911, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Officer also rolled up. They radioed for emergency crews to respond right away and a fire engineer cordoned off the road a couple hundred feet in both directions to stop any cars that tried to pass. Just as an ambulance pulled up, investigators from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office arrived and took over the scene.

Medics and investigators could tell that the woman was young, but they couldn't tell how she died or even how she'd gotten there. She was laying face up, her pale skin, reddish blonde hair and blue eyes, a harsh contrast to the dirt and gravel off the side of the paved road. She had a little blood coming from her nose and mouth,

some bruising on her neck and scrapes on her knees and elbows, or at least her right elbow, because that's all they could see. Her left arm was awkwardly trapped under her body and her knees were bent. There weren't any items left near her body, and her clothes were nowhere to be found. But there were a few things left on her body. She had some rings on her right hand and a necklace with a cannabis leaf pendant around her neck. The coroner's bureau didn't get there until after 10.30 a.m. but once they arrived on scene, they recovered the woman's body and took her away for an autopsy. While they hope the exam would offer some clarity to this growing mystery,

the question they wanted answered most was who was she. After she was taken away, detectives hung back and combed the area. They found some alcohol bottles and a leather glove, but they were several feet down the road. And we learned from our interview with Detective Patrick Smith at the Alameda County Sheriff's Office that this area was notorious as like a teenage hangout spot, a roadside shoulder where local high schoolers pulled over and partied on Friday nights. So detectives figured the items could just be litter from teens, but they collected them just in case. As soon as law enforcement processed the scene,

investigators and sheriff's office patrol units started canvassing, but there weren't exactly houses nearby where they could go door knocking. The area even today is pretty bare. Detective Smith took our reporting team to the exact spot where she was found and you can see a picture of it along with a map of the area on our blog post for this episode. That's at thedeckpodcast.com. There aren't any houses or businesses around just flatlands with grazing cattle flanking the road on

either side. So police started looking for witnesses a few miles north, closer to the highway where there was at least a gas station. But no one at the gas station up the road had any helpful information. One patrol unit paid a visit to the woman who had spotted the body on her way to work that morning. I mean, poor thing was so shaken up that she just turned around and went home instead of continuing on to work. But she didn't have much else to offer. The Sheriff's Office checked to see if they had any similar missing person's reports

on file, but they didn't. So the Sheriff's Office sent out a bulletin describing the woman to other police agencies in the East Bay, just in case any of their missing people matched her description. Not long after they put that bulletin out, at about 7 p.m. or so, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office got a phone call from a neighboring police department. Law enforcement in the nearby city of Pleasanton had just received a missing persons report

for a 20-something young woman named Dana. Pale, reddish blonde hair, and blue eyes. The Sheriff's Office was told that her two friends, Cody and Tracy, had been searching for her since the wee hours of that morning. This didn't seem like a coincidence, so Cody and Tracy were told to go to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and to bring a picture of Dana. As soon as they got there with the picture and a little more info on Dana, deputies ran her name and date of birth in their database, and they saw Dana's fingerprints, which police

had on file from a misdemeanor drug arrest earlier that year. And sure enough, it was her. 20-year-old Dana Ram. Detectives had Cody and Tracy stick around for questioning, while other deputies drove to nearby Livermore 20 minutes northeast of Sanol to notify Dana's family. Dana's sister Carla told our reporting team that she will never forget that night. I just got my tonsils out and then my mom and I were just watching TV and there was a knock on the door at 10 o'clock at night and no one comes to the house at 10 o'clock at night and the cops told my mom and dad,

and yeah, you can't get the screams out of your head. The Ram family was stunned. Like the way you would think about someone who has just been struck by lightning, in a single instant, their entire world changed. And all at once, it was too hard to breathe, hard to stand, and even hard to think straight. How could it happen that fast?

This has to be some kind of mistake. They hadn't talked to her in a while, but it wasn't unusual for them to go a few days, even weeks without hearing from Dana. So no one even knew to be worried about her. Dana's mom said that the last time she'd spoken to her daughter was just over a month ago. Right after Thanksgiving, she'd reached out to Dana after reading in the local paper that

Dana was involved in a bizarre incident. Apparently, Dana had gotten in a fight with her friend Tracey's sister. Now the fight was pretty convoluted and honestly not even worth getting into, but basically Tracy and her sister got into an argument over something, and their boyfriends both got involved. Dana ended up chiming in at some point, and then Tracy's sister and Dana started physically fighting each other. And the sister ended up biting off the tip of Dana's left ring finger, which is like,

whoa, so I mean, I get why Dana's mom was worried about her after reading that in the newspaper. But she got a hold of Dana and Dana was like, I'm fine, mom. And mom believed her for better or for worse. Now even though this was weird and maybe, you know, interesting to police as a potential lead, unfortunately, none of Dana's family had any more helpful information to give investigators. It would be up to them to piece together this puzzle. Dana's autopsy was done the next day.

And not like there was any doubt that it was her, but the coroner confirmed that she was in fact missing a fingertip. The autopsy results indicated that Dana died by his fixation from manual strangulation, and the examiner noted other scrapes on her body. Here's Detective Smith. You look at the evidence that she did have some bruising on her wrist. She had some abrasions or elbows and knees, but there wasn't a massive amount of evidence to suggest that there was a prolonged altercation of any kind.

In Dana's case, the autopsy report didn't indicate any trauma from sexual assault, but there was seam in present, though what they were really hoping for in 1986 were hairs or fibers, which they could actually use to match to a suspect, but they didn't find any of those. When detective started doing interviews to find out exactly what happened to Dana, Detective's first focused on Tracy and Cody, the friends who reported her missing. At this point, police weren't even sure who these people were to Dana,

so they needed to do some background work. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in, music playing, music playing in, music playing in, music playing, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing in background, music playing in, music playing, music Police started with Tracy, who told them that she and Dana had been friends for eight years. The more Tracy talked, the more detectives got a sense for the free spirit that Dana was. The East Bay Times called her a quote-unquote flower child, living in the 80s. And her sister Carla told us that Dana was, Erie, never stressed. She was a young, bright woman with a future ahead of her. She was clever, she loved children, and she loved writing her father's motorcycle.

Police learned from Tracy that Dana did what most young adults dream of doing. After graduating high school in June of 85, a year and a half before she was killed, Dana hit the road to do some soul searching. Carla told us that Livermore was kind of a cowboy town, and her sister yearned for something different. She's at a place to live her more. She just traveled 30 minutes up the road to Berkeley. She fit in. She was very hippie-ish, very... After working any odd job that she could find and spending time with a boyfriend in South Lake Tahoe,

which is about three and a half hours northeast of East Bay, Dana returned to the Bay Area in November. Tracy told police that the two of them only started hanging around Cody a few months ago, and during that time, Dana went between living in a hotel room in the East Bay and kind of van lifeing with Cody and Tracy in her rusted blue Ford 1966 van. Sometime around Christmas, the trio left their motel room and went on a road trip, initially driving with Cody to his family's house and then sleeping in Dana's van in some East Bay parking lots for a few nights after the holiday. Tracy said that the last day they saw Dana, December 28, nothing particularly eventful happened.

That morning, Dana told Tracy and Cody that she needed a break from the van and that she was going to go hang out with someone over at a nearby racquetball club. She asked Tracy and Cody to meet her there a few hours later, and they agreed to swing by it like four or four 30 pm. But Tracey said that Dana didn't stick to their plan. Instead, she went over to her on again, off again boyfriend, John's home in Livermore. Tracey knew this because when she and Cody

drove by the Racketball Club that afternoon and didn't see Dana's van parked out front, they assumed that she was at John's. And so they drove by his Rackaball Club that afternoon and didn't see Dana's van parked out front. They assumed that she was at Johns, and so they drove by his place to check, and just as they expected, Dana's van was there. The two left a note on her windshield, telling Dana to meet them at a nearby park. Drazy told police that she and Cody waited for Dana in the park, and they waited, but by the time it got dark outside, they were really starting to wonder where she was. So they drove back toward John's house,

and they practically bumped into Dana. They were both driving down the same street. They followed each other down town to get a bite to eat, Dana in her Ford van and the duo in Tracy's Old Mobile. They all ate dinner at Carl's Jr. and then drove separately for a few miles and then found a spot where Dana parked her van, and they all hopped into Tracy's old mobile. They all ate dinner at Carl's Jr. and then drove separately for a few miles and then found a spot where Dana parked her van and they all hopped into Tracy's car.

The three of them just kind of cruised around, stopping by friends' houses to see if anyone wanted to hang out. By 11 p.m. Tracy's car was nearly out of gas, so they pulled into a gas station in Pleasanton, just as the tank hit empty. So Tracy and Cody hopped out and pushed it the rest of the way to the pump.

Problem though, the gas station was closing so the pumps were turned off. The group needed to figure out their next move, fast. So Tracy said that by 1120, she and Cody started the two mile trek to where Dana parked her van. While Dana stayed in the gas station parking lot in the Oldsmobile. 1120, she and Cody started the two mile trek to where Dana parked her van, while Dana stayed in the gas station parking lot in the olds' mobile. Tracy told investigators that Dana gave them the van's keys and said that she left her

purse in the van, which also had some money in it that she'd gotten from John earlier, totaling a bit less than 20 bucks. Once at Dana's van, their plan was to drive it back to the gas station, sleep in it, and then use the cash the next morning when the pumps reopened. So that's exactly what they did. Now, since the gas station was exactly two miles from where Dana's van was parked, it would take the average person around 40 minutes to walk there, and like five minutes to drive back. To investigators, this would put them back at the gas station with Dana a little after midnight.

When they got back though, Tracy told detectives that her car was still there, but Dana wasn't. So immediately Tracy's worried that, you know, Dana's gone. And a way to get a hold of her. You know, they thought, well, maybe she's gone. She'll come back soon. They waited there in the parking lot there of the twin safe way and the Chevron gas station.

She did not return. Tracey knew Dana well. Dana didn't always play by the rules, sure. But Tracey knew that she would have left a note saying where she'd gone. This was pre-cell phone to the group often communicated with windshield notes. Tracy said that Cody tried to calm her down because she was already spiraling

as they looked across the parking lot and found no sign of her. Tracy said they pushed her car off the pumps and into a parking spot. And they just stayed awake until like three in the morning, sitting in the parking lot, hoping that Dana would appear and this would all be some big misunderstanding. But Dana never showed up.

It's likely she got in someone's vehicle where that was willingly or unwillingly. I do think that given the time of what she was wearing, knowing that her friends were coming back, you don't have cell phones in those days. So is it possible she could have went to a nearby pay phone and called somebody? Absolutely.

Whether she did that or whether someone just pulled up and saw her there, I do believe she got into a car and it's just a matter of, was that willingly or unwillingly? Tracy said that she and Cody eventually fell asleep in Dana's van and woke up at around 9 a.m. with pits in their stomachs when they realized that Dana's van and woke up at around 9 a.m. with pits in their stomachs when they realized that Dana still hadn't turned up. They took the money from Dana's purse and put some gas in Tracy's car and started canvassing

the neighborhood. Cody and Tracy didn't want to drive Dana's van because it had expired registration tag, so Tracy said that they just left it parked at the gas station. Through the late morning and early afternoon on December 29, Tracy said that she and Cody drove from Bren's house to Bren's house to see if anybody had heard from Dana. They stopped at the liquor store where John worked, but he told them that he hadn't seen Dana since she left his place at around 5 p.m. the day before. And all of their friends in Livermore had no more information than the next person.

But then, what Tracy said they did next had me scratching my head a little. They drove to the mall. They walked around and Tracy said she tried on some makeup, but like, why are you testing makeup while your friend is MIA? Detectives didn't love this either, but they wanted Tracy to keep talking, so they didn't dwell on it. Tracy said that after the mall she and Cody went back to the gas station parking lot one last time, just to grab a radio and a blanket from Dana's van.

They briefly hung out at a nearby park, again no real sense of urgency to find their friend here, but they made one last stop at a friend's house who suggested that they report Dana missing. Finally. So, that's when Tracy and Cody drove to a motel and used a phone booth to call in and report Dana missing. Police felt like they had a good sense of Dana's last movements after interviewing Tracy. So now they wanted to go talk to Cody to see

how his recollections stacked up against Tracy's. In his interview with police, Cody said that he'd met Dana and Tracy through this 24-year-old guy named Dennis, who Tracy was actually dating. You see, when Cody moved to Livermore like a month prior, he moved into the same hotel as Dennis, and Dennis hooked Cody up with a job as a carpenter's helper. Tracy and Dennis broke up soon after Cody came to town, but she and Dana still hung out with Cody. In fact, at some point, Dana had a little fling with Cody, but she ended that and also broke things off with a previous boyfriend to see where things might go with that John guy and live or more. The mention of a romantic relationship with their victim made deputies perk up.

But Cody said that he and Dana were just like casual hook-up buddies, and they never actually like dated, dated. He said it was totally cool with him if she wanted to see other people, so that was that. All Cody's answers and timeline matched with Tracey's. He said that the last time they saw Dana, she was sitting alone in the car. And that's actually a thought that pains Dana's sister. She was just a young woman.

She had a dress on. It was recorded the coldest night in history. And she's freezing, sitting in a car, and a gas station, all by herself. And the doors didn't work, the locks didn't work. So she couldn't even lock herself in or put the heater on. After talking to Tracy and Cody, police swiftly combed Dana's van and Tracy's car for any clues that could lead them to the killer.

Investigators actually did find a few interesting things in Tracy's car. Some articles of clothing and other items were spotted with mysterious stains, but when the items were tested, they realized the stains weren't blood. So if the physical evidence was a bust, then they were going to have to get info from witnesses. Starting with the gas station clerk, who'd actually seen Dana and her friends the night she vanished. The clerk told police that he actually remembered seeing Dana walk into the store and go to

the bathroom just as he was closing up shop on Sunday night. After Dana went back outside to the car, the clerk remembered seeing her talk with two other people, presumably Tracy and Cody. The Chevron attendant told police that he saw Tracey and Cody start walking north toward the interstate while Dana stayed at the car, which was still parked next to the gas pumps. The clerk told police that he closed up shop for the night and Dana was still sitting there when he left, but she wasn't the only one. According to him, around the same time that Dana and her friends were at the gas station

that night, there was another car there too. It was a Toyota coupe and the gas station attendant just so happened to know the guy who was driving it But he couldn't say for sure that the other car was still there when he left for the night Detectives tracked the guy down the one that was driving the coupe as well as the other people who were reportedly in the car with him that night. And they all remembered seeing Dana, Cody, and Tracy, but the groups didn't say much to each other, and they didn't see anything weird or suspicious, so they actually weren't much help at all. Detectives wasted no time in moving on talking to the other guy Tracy had mentioned during her interview.

John, the guy whose house Tracy said she saw Dana's van at on the 28th. The Sheriff's Office sent a patrol unit to John's house to see if he would come into the station for an interview, and he did. John was forthcoming with police. He said that he met Dana through a mutual friend on a softball team. And according to John, his relationship with her was casual and functioned when it was convenient for them. Like they would hook up when Dana was around

but didn't talk all that much when she wasn't in the East Bay. John told investigators that Dana cut things off with him the year before when she was dating someone else. But because they were both newly single, the two recently rekindled their romance. After seeing each other in early December, they had planned to meet up again after the holidays, and they ended up getting together on the 28th. Dana's last day alive.

Just as Tracy had suspected, John confirmed that Dana did drive to his house in her blue van. He said that they hung out with some other friends and watched the 49ers Rams game. Now, my research says that the Rams played Washington on December 28, 1986, but that's neither here nor there. Later in the day though, he said that he and Dana had sex. John told police that Dana left his house at around five that afternoon, and before she left,

she asked to borrow five bucks. John knew that Dana didn't have a ton of money saved up, so he took Dana to the bank with Drew 20 from his account and gave it to her. The two then drove back to John's place and Dana took off in her van. John was also able to give detectives a detailed description of exactly what Dana was wearing that day. A digital watch, a plaid skirt, and matching brown blouse. She was also wearing a necklace with a cannabis leaf charm, and calf length healed tan boots. After Dana left, John said he had a relatively average night on the town. He went to a local saloon, which he left at around 10 pm,

and then he stopped by a restaurant for an hour or so and finished his night at a club in Pleasanton. John drove back home from the club just before midnight because he said that he wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Detective Smith said John reacted just as anyone would react to finding out that a close friend had died. They had him take a polygraph and he passed. Now while the Alameda County Sheriff's Office were conducting all of these interviews, there was just one person they still really wanted to know more about. And that's Dana's last boyfriend, Stuart, who Tracy said Dana lived with in South Lake

Tahoe. But here's the thing, detectives weren't sure if he was still alive. You see, after she and Stewart broke up, Dana returned to the East Bay and told her friends that Stewart had died by suicide. But a few days after Dana's body was found on January 2, 1987, the Sheriff's Office got a call that stopped them in their tracks.

It was Stewart, and he was like, I heard you been looking for me. Stewart agreed to meet police at the station that same day. When he sat down for his interview, investigators first questioned it was a no-brainer. Why did Dana tell everyone you're dead? He explained it like their relationship was like a Romeo and Juliet relationship. And after they broke up, she just started spreading the rumor that you died. Detectives pressed him on their relationship and Stewart told investigators that he and Dana had known each other for three years. He said Dana broke up with him when she left South Lake Tahoe for the East Bay in November.

She just told him that she needed space. Up to that point, Stuart said that he and Dana were living together in South Lake Tahoe out of their van. Investigators obviously wanted to know Stuart's whereabouts during the time Dana was murdered, and he told them that he was actually in Oregon when Dana was killed, which ended up being true. Stewart's employer in Oregon told detectives that he was at work until 9 p.m. on December 28th, and he showed up to work the next day too. So with a solid alibi, police had no reason to hold Stewart.

They moved on, interviewing anyone and everyone in Dana's life. So the next person they turned to was a guy that you might remember from earlier. The one who helped Cody land that job in Livermore. Dennis. And Dennis was already known to police because on Christmas day, they were called to a home for a strange incident involving him. They were called to a home for a strange incident involving him. The President, Police Department, responded to an address, a residence in Pleasanton, where someone was reportedly threatening to subject with a handgun, and the two subjects were Cody and Tracy. If you remember from earlier, Dennis and Tracy had just broken up, which created some tension

between everyone. And adding to that tension was the fact that Dennis' car had been stolen around Christmas. And he heard that Tracy might have stolen it. So he was fuming. Dennis accused Cody, Tracy, and Dana of stealing not only his car, but also some personal belongings from his room when all four of them were living

at the motel. When Dennis' father heard about his son's suspicions, he took things too far. Just before 7 pm on Christmas Day, Dennis and his father went to Tracy's parents' home in Pleasanton. And when he got there, Dennis' dad pulled a revolver on Tracy and Cody. He yelled at them and told them they they were under some sort of citizens arrest and he threatened to kill them right there if they even thought about running. Dennis knew that the situation had gotten way out of hand, so he grabbed the gun from

his dad and stashed it in his dad's car. Tracy's dad called the police who found the gun in the car when they arrived on scene. Dennis' father was arrested and neither Cody nor Tracy were found in possession of Dennis' car. Now, notably, Dana wasn't there when all this went down, but police heard that Dennis wasn't very fond of Dana because he thought that she helped Tracy steal his car. Plus, according to rumors going around, Dana had refused a sexual advance that Dennis made.

Here's what Detective Smith had to say about Dennis and Dana, and just to clarify, we were asked to believe Dennis' last name. What it called made insults about her, and saying things that she was foul mouth and that quote unquote he would terror throw it out because he believed that Dana had helped tracing steal his vehicle. Despite the Christmas day incident and Dennis's clear aversion to Dana, police couldn't connect him or his dad to Dana's murder.

In fact, Dennis and his dad both took polygraph tests and passed. After they exhausted that lead, Dana's case went cold. The 80s were this grey area for DNA. Some agencies were able to test their samples, others weren't. It just really depended on the department, and I'm not sure Alameda County was ahead of its time. But finally, in 2001, DNA that had been collected from Dana's body, like samples from her fingernails, as well as reference samples from John, Tracy, and Cody, were all sent to a private forensic

DNA lab. The sample that came from the sexual assault kit, taken when Dana was found, matched John's DNA. But he and his friends at the House on December 28 confirmed that he and Dana had sex that afternoon. So it didn't really help investigators advance the case. And unfortunately, nothing came from her fingernail clippings. Again, this is one of the cases that we're looking into as far as re-examineining some evidence.

There's not a difficulty here is what this case is. The evidence from the scene where Dana's found, it's, there's not a lot. So, unfortunately, it's just been a small amount of stuff to work with regarding, you know, stuff related to a crime scene. We really have a crime scene we have, again, in all likelihood, her body is done there.

But where this strangulation took place, kind of like where are her clothing at? Her clothing is never found that. So obviously, where the murder took place is the actual crime scene. We have the evidence we find, you know, with Dana when she's found on the side of the road. Dana's case was formally reopened by detectives in Alameda County in 2005.

According to reporting by SFGate, a $5,000 reward was offered that year to try and breathe new life into the cold case, but no breakthroughs came from the reward announcement. But when detectives started to reexamine the case files, they became suspicious of a man who had never been considered a person of interest, a man who police connected to another murder that happened nearby in Livermore that same year that Dana was killed. On July 24, 1986, a 59-year-old nurse was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in her home,

and it didn't take long for police to find her killer. Almost eight months after the tragedy, investigators found physical evidence that put the nurse's 27-year-old neighbor, Richard Tully, right at the crime scene. Richard admitted that he was at the scene, but vehemently denied killing the woman. But no one bought that. Richard was eventually sentenced to death for her murder in 1992. Because of their proximity and age and similar locations, Dana and Richard had some mutual friends.

So detectives wondered if, maybe, Richard was responsible for Dana's murder. But police never found anything that linked him to the gas station or the area where Dana's body was left. Especially then, even now, living more is not a city. It's a very safe city. It does, they don't have a lot of violent crime. I don't work for Livermore. I grew up and lived in the area if they had one or two murders a year.

That's probably about it, on average, maybe three. That's a relatively safe city, so, especially when something like that happens and people have run the same circles, it catches your attention. Detective Smith checked old case reports, and he didn't think Richard Toley was ever interviewed or asked if he had anything to do with Dana's murder.

He said that Richard lived near the high school Dana attended, but that's the closest link any investigator could ever come up with. Richard isn't the only person of interest Detective Smith is still thinking about. You see when investigators searched Dana's man, they found something that they haven't been able to shake for 36 years. It was a letter. And Detective Smith isn't sure if any of the original investigators ever looked into its contents. The letter was to Tracy. It was dated September 7, 1986, which was just a few months before Dana was murdered.

And the letter muses about this person that Dana had met and had had a sexual encounter with while in South Lake Tahoe. It was a person that she called happy, and she said this person was from Sonneau. The tone of the letter was overwhelmingly positive, like she was crushing hard on this guy. But happy, whoever he is, has never been identified by police, and Detective Smith really wants

to interview happy, whoever he may be. The other details we have about happy are very limited because Dana didn't provide much description at all. But Dana made it sound like Happy lived in Senou for a long time, maybe even grew up there, and was in South Lake Tahoe for just a little while, most likely just passing through. Dana also wrote that Happy had previously lived in Hawaii, and they were a biker. She said that his dad was a biker too and they both owned Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Detectives need to know who happy is and what he was up to when Dana vanished into the night. Happy could be the missing piece in his convoluted puzzle,

but the clock is truly ticking. It's been 36 years since Dana was murdered and happy still remains nameless. She's found in Sanol. Sanol's a very small place. And you look at the area when you have killers who transport victims and dispose of their bodies places. You know, many times they go to a place they're familiar with because they know what's there.

There's their comfortability factor. A lot of times they're driving to a place because they know what a place they're familiar with because they know what's there. There's a comfortability factor. A lot of times they're driving to a place because they know where this place is at. Could this mean something? I would love to know who happy is and I've been all identified happy. Sometimes I tell you at the end of these episodes that the help you can give law enforcement is a shot in the dark or a reach, but I truly don't feel that way in this case. The impact this unthinkable tragedy has had on the Ram family is immeasurable.

My life has changed in so many ways, but every decade it's a different layer. You know, it's harder now than it was then. And that's the real mystery with this whole thing, is that for some reason, at this point in my life, I yearn for her more and mourn for her more than when it happened. We have so many reasons to stay hopeful that Dana's case will get solved. I mean, Alameda County Sheriff's Office is re-examining evidence as I'm recording this episode.

So listeners, if you think you know who happy is, or if you know anything about what happened to Dana Ram in December of 1986, do not let this case stay insult. Maybe you know something that could break this case wide open. It is never too late. Call the Alameda County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Homicide Unit at 510-667-3636. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck, visit the DeckPodcast.com.

So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?