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Hi, crime junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
And the story I have for you today is a perfect example of why we need to keep cold cases alive, by talking about them and revisiting them with fresh eyes.
Because when a detective went the extra mile to name a victim who couldn't speak for herself, His work led to a break in a case that seemed impossible to solve for decades and it led him to another case that could be connected.
But police still need more information to solve these cases once and for all.
So we need you crime junkies, to listen closely and share these details far and wide, in case someone out there is sitting on answers.
This is the story of the Mulholland Drive murders.
It's January 2003 and homicide detective Cliff Shepard is kicking off his year digging through boxes of paperwork in the LAPD's archive unit.
Detective Shepard's an almost three decade vet of the department, and he's recently been assigned to the cold case unit.
So he's reviewing cases from the late 1960s, especially ones with evidence that can be tested with new technology.
But the archives are a disaster.
I mean, over the years, files have gone missing or haven't been logged correctly.
Some case materials haven't been touched in decades.
And so he's sorting through it all, trying to make sense of a backlog that's been gathering dust, skimming case summaries, trying to figure out which files are even complete.
But when he pulls one box off the shelf and lifts the lid, he sees something that should never, ever be in these boxes.
A box tan lace bra stained with blood, not sealed, not tagged, just like shoved in this box with yellowing case files and this is not how he should be finding evidence but like, on the other hand, it like it's evidence.
It's still evidence, like evidence with blood on it that may still be testable, which is like kind of exactly what he's looking for, right?
So he sees the file it's in belongs to the case of someone known only as Jane Doe, 59 because she was LA.
County's 59th Jane Doe found in 1969.
Even if the blood just belongs to this victim, like he, sees huge potential to be able to use it to give her a name, which might actually kickstart an investigation that, as he goes on to read, didn't make it very far.
So what he sees is that on November 16th 1969 a 15-year-old boy was hiking Mulholland Drive to go birdwatching when he found the woman's body in a ravine, tangled up in branches and brush, about 15 feet down the hillside.
LAPD arrived on the scene by nightfall and determined that the victim was white, about 23 years old 5'9, and she had been stabbed in the neck over 150 times with what police thought was likely a small knife.
Now to them.
It looked like she'd been stabbed while laying on her back like maybe her killer like sat on top of her to like subdue her.
And she had her head turned to one side because most of her wounds were on the side of her neck.
But she fought back, or at least tried to block the blade from coming down on her, because she had defensive wounds on her hands.
Now, police didn't find the murder weapon at the scene, but they were pretty sure of one thing.
This wasn't where she was killed.
There were bloody drag marks left on Mulholland Drive like her killer had parked there, dragged her across the road and then put her body over the edge of the ravine until it like, fell down the hillside.
Were there any tire tracks nearby?
No.
None were mentioned in the case file, but you can see faint tire marks in some of the crime scene photos.
Like, problem is police wouldn't have known how relevant they actually were, because this was a busy road.
So like it could have nothing to do with this.
Okay, if this was a busy road, like how did no one see someone dumping a body here?
Well, Mulholland Drive had, or still has probably, some stretches with like houses right by the road and then stretches that had just like hills and ravines on both sides.
So the area where this woman was found was more secluded, like still near some houses, but like none of them.
Like overlooked this specific stretch.
So no one would have seen this car stop from their window or anything like that.
And it's very possible they dumped her in the overnight hours when traffic and activity in the homes would have been light.
There's not an exact time of death, though.
All the coroner could tell during her autopsy was that she had been dead like 24 to 48 hours and she had eaten about two hours before she died.
And there were no signs of sexual assault.
Her clothes a sweater, corduroy jacket jeans, boots and that tan lace bra.
Those were all still intact.
And not much else is found at the scene until a few days later when a road worker turned in a pair of prescription glasses found nearby.
Now, these were either missed by the investigators who did the initial search Or they were left there after and like so therefore, might not even be relevant.
But either way they looked like men's glasses and therefore theoretically could be connected to their killer.
Definitely not their victims.
Now, the CBC reported that work had already been done on this lead back in the day.
And all that police really got to was that the prescription was for a very nearsighted man.
But the brand was pretty common.
So it wasn't something they could actually trace.
Could there be any DNA still on the glasses?
So Detective Shepard told us that the glasses weren't in evidence when he picked up the file.
So like, I don't know if they're lost.
I don't know if they were destroyed over time, but there's no trace of them.
And so like when he... There's no trace of them, so there's no trace of DNA to test.
Right.
Did they try to test her bra or anything else at the time?
Well, a detective told us that back then all the bra could have been tested for was blood type, but he didn't even know for sure if they did that or not.
He also said that no one scraped under her fingernails or anything.
So like.
You know, there were definitely missed opportunities for sure.
And when no one came forward to claim this woman's body.
That's when she became known as Jane Doe 59.
They tried IDing her using the clothing that she was found in.
They thought that basically what she was wearing was a little heavy for L.A., even in November.
Plus, some of the clothes were made outside of the US, so they contacted law enforcement in Canada and Interpol checked with police throughout the US, ran her fingerprints but nothing came up.
And after that, the case just went real cold, real fast.
So this is what Detective Shepard starts out with.
This isn't the kind of case he usually looks for, like no ID, no suspects, all the evidence is basically gone.
And to top it all off, Jane Doe 59, was cremated by the coroner's office because her body was never claimed.
But there is this bloody bra, which at this point is like a North Star for him.
Now Detective Shepard told us that LAPD was a little behind other departments on when they started testing DNA.
But they finally got it going at around 2001 when the cold case unit was formed.
So this is like two years before he picks up the case file.
So right away, he submits the bra to the state's missing persons DNA program.
But even that was lagging behind.
And this is really what he needs because he's looking to ID the victim first and foremost.
So results are going to take a while and Detective Shepard has to put any investigation kind of on the back burner until he has something to investigate.
Right.
But even with 133 cold cases on his plate, this one stays in the back of his mind.
And he doesn't know what it is that jogs his memory or why it happens one random day in 2005.
But he starts thinking about the book Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi.
It was a book that he read back in 1976, like very early on in his career.
The author was a prosecutor in one of the most infamous murder trials in American history, the Tate-LaBianca case, which I'm sure like a lot of crime junkies know about.
And Helter Skelter was basically like the first definitive account of the Manson family and their crimes.
Anyway, for some reason, he feels compelled to pick this book up again.
And what do you know?
In the epilogue, there is a paragraph about Jane Doe 59.
In it, Bugliosi floats his theory that Jane Doe 59's murder might have been linked to the Manson family because of when she died.
Her body was found a week and a half after the mysterious death of a Manson follower.
By that time, the Manson family was under investigation for multiple murders.
So Bugliosi wonders whether she may have like, witnessed the follower's death and then was killed to keep her from talking about it.
Now, Bugliosi is clear that he doesn't have any evidence to back this theory up.
But honestly, it's not even all the Manson stuff that catches this detective's attention most.
I mean, yes, it's interesting.
Yes, it's how he got here.
But it's another detail in that paragraph that stands out to Detective Shepard.
Bugliosi mentions the name of another young woman, 17-year-old Marina Haba, who was also brutally stabbed to death just 10 months before Jane Doe 59.
And her body was found within two miles of Jane Doe 59's in a different ravine off Mulholland Drive.
And now Detective Shepard is thinking, what if these two young women are connected?
And if so, are they really connected to the Manson family?
Or does he have a different serial killer on his hands?
When Detective Shepard looks into Marina's case, he learns that it wasn't investigated by LAPD.
It was in a different jurisdiction, so the sheriff's department took it, which may be why neither department made any connection initially, even though Bugliosi eventually did.
But because Detective Shepard doesn't have the case file, he starts by reading through old news coverage.
He learns that in December of 1968 Marina, a college freshman and aspiring artist, was home for winter break after her first semester at the University of Hawaii.
She was staying at her mom's house off Sunset Boulevard, right where West Hollywood borders Beverly Hills.
On the night of December 29th, Marina went out with friends to celebrate New Year's a little early.
And around 330 am, so this would have been the morning of the 30th.
Now her mom finally heard her sports car pull into the driveway.
And then seconds later, she heard another car outside, one with loud pipes.
It sounded kind of like an older model.
It's been reported that she told detectives.
She looked out her window and she saw Marina's car parked in the driveway with a man standing next to it.
And then another car, a black sedan, was also parked in the driveway.
Now I'm sure this all happens fast, but the black sedan starts backing out and the man runs toward it yelling something like go before jumping in, and they speed off just as Marina's mom goes outside.
But when she's out there, there's no sign of Marina, even though when her mom checked her car, the keys are like still in the ignition.
And in an instant, this bad feeling just courses through her mom.
And by 345, she was on the phone with police reporting her daughter missing.
When they arrive at the house.
All she could tell them about the man she saw was that he was young like not super helpful.
Police do check out Marina's car and they made note that the glasses her mom said that she needed for driving and likely kept in her car, those were missing.
They also noticed that the emergency brake was pulled all the way up, like as far as it can go.
And I don't know exactly how they got to this from that, but they thought whoever pulled it used more force than Marina could have.
They say because she was a smaller girl.
And like, I don't know what this car is, but like I can fully pull up my emergency brakes.
I'm even thinking of like the trucks that I used to drive in high school.
I don't know how accurate this is.
Maybe we don't know the cars at the time or maybe men didn't know women at the time.
That's probably that one.
Yeah.
So even though police were quick to dismiss missing teen girls as runaways at the time, that didn't happen here.
They actually took Marina's disappearance seriously right away.
And that might have been because Marina's mom told them that they had a close relationship.
Marina didn't need to keep secrets from her.
And because her mom was an actress and her dad, a writer in Switzerland, was in the industry too, police wondered right off the bat if Marina may have been kidnapped for ransom.
So, while her mom waited by the phone for a ransom call, police worked on building a timeline of Marina's last known movements, pieced together by questioning the friend she went out with the night before and her date, a family friend named John, who she had known since she was little.
And John told police that Marina came over to his house in Bel Air on Sunday afternoon.
Around 8.30 p.m., they got in a limo with this group of friends.
One of their dads had like arranged it and they went to a club called Troubadour, which is still in West Hollywood today.
The group left at around 11.30 p.m. and the limo dropped Marina and John back off at his house.
He says they hang out until like 315 in the morning when Marina left to make the 20-minute drive from his house back to hers.
So that timeline would put her back at around 330 in the morning, exactly when her mom heard her car pull in.
And we asked Detective Shepard what he thought about all of that, like if he thought Marina drove herself.
And he says yes, he didn't think that whoever took Marina would go to the trouble of driving her car back to her house and like parking it in the driveway.
Mm-hmm.
He thinks it's more likely that she made it home and then was just taken as she pulled in.
Okay.
And we totally believe John, right?
Like I know, anyone theoretically could have followed her, but can anyone confirm that Marina was actually there for those four hours?
Where he said she was?
So that's the thing.
It seems like John was cooperative with police when they talked to him, but we don't know if anyone backed up his story or if police just kind of took him at his word.
I would love to ask John, but we just missed our window.
He passed away in 2024.
Wow.
And what did any of the other friends say?
Like how was Marina that night?
Was anything like off?
So this is the good news.
So we actually did get a hold of someone who was with her that night, like in that group.
And it's Marina's best friend's boyfriend.
And he told us the same thing he told police back then.
Like, everyone had a good time.
Everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
There was no drama that he noticed.
But and this hasn't been reported as far as we know he said that there was a rumor going around that night that Marina's boyfriend was married.
John?
So this is the catch.
He didn't know the guy's name, but it was whatever guy she was with that night.
And that night her date was introduced to them as her boyfriend.
So like we think so.
I can't prove it.
Yeah, we don't have anything saying definitively.
Yes.
Yeah.
And we showed him a photo of John and he said John's face looked familiar.
But all these years later, like he couldn't be sure if that is the person who was with them that night.
Now, he did remember that the man she was with seemed a little older than the rest of the group.
Most of them were around 18 to 21.
I know John was 23, which, you know, and at that age, it can feel older.
And I had our reporter try and find out whether or not John was married at the time.
Turns out John was.
He and his wife got married and had a child in 1967.
So why was he out on a date with a 17-year-old?
And I don't know if his wife was asking the same question, but they got divorced in 1970, a little over a year and a half after Marina's murder.
But then they remarried in 72 and then split for good a few years after that.
So scandalous if it was him.
I say if because, again, we don't have 100 percent confirmation that John was the one with Marina.
And, according to the Chicago Tribune, Marina's family said she and John were just friends and she had a different boyfriend who they didn't name.
Then a college friend of Marina's told the Honolulu Star advertiser that Marina had decided not to come back to the University of Hawaii after winter break because apparently her boyfriend was going to be discharged from the army soon.
And they planned to get engaged over the holidays.
So Marina wanted to transfer to a school in California to be closer to him.
Now, John wasn't serving in the army before the holidays.
But he just graduated from college in 1968, so maybe Marina was talking about him, but for whatever reason, like she like, fudged some details.
Like it's the only thing I can—if she's talking about him like some of the details are wrong, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And does the family know who the other guy is and they just like weren't saying?
Is he real?
Could she have made up a fake boyfriend because she was dating this older guy?
She knew it'd be a little bit scandalous.
I don't know.
Marina's parents have passed away.
Friends we reached out to haven't gotten back to us.
Like I said, we got that one person who was there that night and our FOIA request was denied.
So we haven't seen the case files.
That being said, if anyone out there does know anything about this or you were there, or friends or connected to the family email me tips at audio check.
Now her missing persons case only stayed a missing persons case for two days, because on New Year's Day Marina's body was found.
It was actually her purse that was found first at a Mulholland Vista point.
Nothing seemed to be missing.
There's still money, credit cards, some kind of ID inside.
And then her body was found a few hours later at around 4 p.m., not far away.
Police knew it was her right away because she was still wearing the outfit John described to them.
Brown capris, a white turtleneck and a fur trimmed coat.
She'd been stabbed at least twice in the neck, had six or seven stab wounds on the front and back of her torso, and there were signs that she had been strangled as well.
And she had what looked like a cigarette burn on her skin.
And along with two black eyes, her body was badly bruised.
Now, the coroner couldn't confirm sexual assault at the time, but we spoke with detectives who said that Marina had been sexually assaulted.
And it seems like a sexual assault kit was done.
But we are still unclear what happened to that kit based on our reporting.
Now, here's the part that really stands out.
When Marina was found, rigor mortis was still setting in and fresh blood found in her lungs, and airways hadn't clotted.
Blood usually dries and clots pretty quickly, so that, combined with the rigor, meant that she likely died within 8 to 12 hours of being found.
So probably between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. on January 1st.
Right.
And very interesting, she had eaten recently.
And the food had moved to her small intestine, which happens about two to five hours after a meal.
So that narrowed down her time of death to just a few hours after she ate.
And just as an interesting flag, that Jane Doe also ate two hours before she had died.
Like almost like someone had had a meal with both of them.
Like they'd both eaten a meal with possibly their killer before being killed.
Yes, and it could have been multiple people, because that's an idea that was entertained, because they believe more than one knife was used to kill Marina.
The coroner noted some of the stab wounds had two sharp edges.
Other ones had one sharp and one rounded knife.
Caveat here is yes, that could mean different types of knives, but it also apparently can also just mean different angles of entry.
So could be multiple, could just be one, but two makes sense, like at least to me, knowing that marina's mom saw like a guy by the car and then another guy who yelled go right clearly to another person that he was with driving.
Probably right yeah, but the question still is Who and why.
It didn't seem like a ransom plot to police anymore, though.
I mean, they never got any demands before finding her.
But they quickly find a new angle to explore.
They said there had been multiple sexual assault attempts in Marina's neighborhood before she went missing.
And they started to consider whether her kidnapping might have been connected to those.
So they put word out about this, even questioned at least one guy that they suspected in another abduction, but nothing ever stuck to him relating to Marina.
In August 1969 they investigated the Michigan co-ed killer, John Collins, because he'd allegedly killed girls from Northern California earlier that year.
But John didn't even arrive in California until June of 1969, which is months after Marina's murder.
So he gets ruled out.
Then came the Manson murders later that August.
Then Jane Doe, 59, was found dead that November.
And in December state officials sent LAPD a list of unsolved cases that might match the Manson family MO, particularly violent stabbing deaths.
And that list included Marina's death. and Jane Doe 59s.
Initially they thought maybe Marina was stabbed with the same knife used in the Tate murders by the Manson family, but that couldn't be proven.
And then there was nothing else physically connecting the cases.
So, even though more was able to happen in Marina's case than in Jane Doe 59's, they both ended up in the same spot by 2005.
Cold as ice.
Until Detective Shepard gets that bee in his bonnet and rereads Helter Skelter.
But he has the benefit of hindsight.
So he knows investigators in 1969 were eager to tie almost every unsolved stabbing murder to the Manson family at the time.
And he's taking Bugliosi's theory with a grain of salt.
Like to him, yeah, OK, the Manson angle is possible.
But without proof of that, anything is really possible.
So Manson stuff aside, does he think that the two are connected for sure, though?
He thinks there are a lot of similarities worth looking into.
And he wants to see if Marina's sexual assault kit still exists so he can run DNA tests.
Because if Marina and Jane Doe 59, were killed by the same person, the answer to both cases might lie in one piece of evidence.
So soon after, he contacts the sheriff's department about Marina's case.
But he can't get much out of them.
No one there seems to be actively working her case or even knows much about it.
And it's not like he can go over there.
He has no jurisdiction there.
He can't go banging down doors.
So he just like ends up not being able to get answers on her case.
Or answers as to where that kit is or if it still exists.
Right.
It could just be like stuffed in a box somewhere.
Like the bra he found.
Exactly.
And he ends up hitting another wall even in his own case, because the DNA that he does have isn't the slam dunk he was hoping for.
In May 2006.
So this is three years after he submitted that bloody bra for testing.
Detective Shepard gets word that the lab was able to recover a female DNA profile.
But the only national database they can put it into right now is CODIS, which isn't showing any matches.
So this is great if you can ever find a family member to compare it to.
But until then, she's going to still be Jane Doe 59.
So Detective Shepard has no choice at the time but to shift focus and tackle other cases with more promising leads.
Over the next few years.
His work helps bring down serial killers like I don't know if you've heard of him Rodney Alcala, the dating game killer.
Lonnie Franklin and Chester Turner.
In early 2012 he is set to retire, but still in the months before he does like he just wants to see Jane Doe's case solved.
So he reaches out to media outlets while he's like wrapping things up, hoping someone's going to run her story and someone out there will see it.
Someone out there is looking for her, but almost everyone he turns to turns him down, telling him to call back when he has a suspect and a better story.
But he won't have a suspect until he gets an ID which he can't get without press, which you aren't giving him.
Exactly.
One person hears him, though.
Michelle McNamara.
Michelle.
So for those of you who don't know, she was an incredible true crime journalist who wrote like infamous book I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
It's incredible.
Highly recommend.
Yeah, she's pretty big in, like, the true crime space, right?
And she...
It's kind of like us, right?
She's like doing her blog.
You're not like tied down by, like these big organizations above you, like telling you what you have to get.
She can kind of pick and choose what she's going to cover.
And she's like, I'll absolutely take this on.
But unfortunately, right then, that's not what moves the needle.
Mm-hmm.
So no one comes forward with new information by February 2012, when Detective Shepard retires after 37 years with LAPD.
He hands the case off to another detective, Luis Rivera, and hopes that someone someday will bring Jane Doe 59's name to light.
But his work wasn't for nothing.
Because in 2015, Detective Rivera gets a call from the coroner's office.
They've just heard from a woman in Canada who thinks Jane Doe 59 may be her sister, Reet.
And guess how she made the connection?
Michelle's blog.
She ends up telling Detective Rivera that she learned about the case from a friend.
She came across the blog post, which had a picture of Jane Doe 59's face taken during her autopsy.
And she thought the woman in the picture looked like this woman, Reet.
Reet Yervitsen, she was only 19 when she left Toronto for LA in late 1969.
Her friends and family lost contact with her after that and no one had seen or heard from her since.
So Detective Rivera asks for photos of Reed, descriptions of her jewelry, anything that he can compare.
I mean, you know DNA is going to be like the ultimate judge.
But before they can even get to talking about that, the description this woman gives of her sister's jewelry seals the deal for him.
She says her dad had two rings made from an old pair of cufflinks, one for each of his daughters.
And a ring found on his Jane Doe matches the one Reet's sister has.
So after all these years, they finally know who she is.
Jane Doe 59 is Reet Yervitsen.
And DNA ends up confirming it.
I can't imagine what it must be like to find out that your sister, who you thought was just gone, lived her life was actually murdered.
And not being able to claim her body is heartbreaking.
And because so much evidence was destroyed.
Even though Detective Rivera knows who Reet is, he has to start his investigation from scratch to figure out who would want her dead.
So Detective Rivera travels to Montreal to interview Reet's family and friends.
He learns that Reet was the youngest daughter of prominent Estonian refugees.
Her mom's uncle was actually the last president of Estonia before the Soviets took power.
And Reet was the free spirit of the family.
She spoke three languages, loved to make art, and she even sewed her own clothes.
And after she graduated from high school, she moved in with her grandmother in Toronto and got a job at a post office.
But before she left Montreal, she met a guy there in a cafe named Jean or John.
John, like Marina's friend John?
I realize it's a common name but like, Even though it is a wild coincidence, police say it is just a coincidence.
Okay.
Now this John.
I'm going to call him John as opposed to John.
This John might have had a French accent.
So...
He was probably French-Canadian and he had like long feathered, like 60s rocker hair, whereas Marina's John was clean cut.
So anyways, it seems like Reet fell hard for this guy.
Sometime around September of 1969, she followed him to LA, likely by bus, where he was thought to be staying with another friend of his, also named wait for it, Jean or John, also from Montreal.
I'm going to call him roommate Jean.
And then I'll call the other guy boyfriend Jean.
And then there's also John with Marina.
Marina's John.
Got it.
You got it.
So on October 31st, 1969...
This is Halloween.
Reet sent a final postcard to her family from LA and she wrote that she was happy she was going to the beach a lot and the people were super nice.
But this was the last anyone ever heard from her.
Years later a friend of Reet's ran into roommate Jean back in Montreal, long before Reet was ever identified, and asked him about her.
And roommate Jean said, yeah, she stayed with us for a couple of weeks.
Everything was good, but then she just left.
Now, Reet did plan to visit her brother in Arizona.
L.A. was always supposed to be just like a pit stop.
But we know she never made it to Arizona.
So her friend asked roommate Jean if he had any idea where Reet could have gone.
But he's like, no, all I know is that she left.
At the time, Reed's friend didn't speak French well and roommate Jean didn't speak English well.
So it is also possible something was lost in translation, or maybe he knew more, but like she didn't know how to get it out of him.
I don't know.
OK, but if she disappeared in LA and her brother was, I assume, expecting her in Arizona, why didn't anyone report her missing?
Or wouldn't be the first time, did they?
And the police missed it.
Her family never filed a missing persons report.
Detective Rivera told us that because Reet was so independent and her family, we found out, was like super religious and strict.
So everyone kind of assumed she just chose to cut ties with them and she was like starting over in LA.
And they did actually send a friend living down there to check on her at the address written on the postcard.
But when the friend rang the buzzer, a caretaker answered and told her that Reet moved out a while ago.
Didn't leave a forwarding address.
So this friend never went inside and knocked on Reet's door or anything.
And at one point, it's not like her family wasn't looking for her.
Like they even hired a PI to find her, but nothing came of it.
And they said that the sketches police circulated of Jane Doe 59 didn't look anything like Reed.
So they wouldn't have recognized her through those.
And, by the way, Reed's family was OK with us covering her story, but they wanted privacy and they didn't want to speak for it.
But in an in memoriam, her sister said they always believed Reed would reconnect with them someday.
Like they never imagined, even in all their searching, that she was actually dead.
And the CBC found a note written by Reid's mom asking anyone with information about her daughter to call her collect.
All those years, they never stopped looking for answers, even before her mom died.
And in 2006, Detective Rivera was fully ready to like pick up that baton that she had been carrying before her death.
And he starts with the address on the postcard Reed sent, hoping somebody, like a neighbor, could give him information about Reed's last days and about these Jean guys.
But the apartment building which in 69, stood right next to Paramount Studios.
It had been demolished by then.
Now, he does eventually find a former owner, but they don't have any records from the time.
And we're sure that roommate John isn't Marina's John or that Marina's boyfriend isn't French John.
There's so many Johns and like there's, it feels so unlikely.
Yeah, I know.
We've talked about boyfriend John was very different.
The roommate John didn't match Marina's John either.
Okay.
So just as like a quick description, boyfriend John, he's taller.
He's like over 5'9", has long, dark hair, dark eyes.
Roommate John, shorter, around 5'6".
He had short, black hair, blue eyes.
Marina's John didn't look like either of those guys.
At least not in the black and white photos I've seen.
It seems like he had short, lighter hair, light eyes.
Even though, interesting fact, her John, Marina's John, did spend time in Europe growing up.
Like, I don't know if he ever lived in France specifically.
And it seemed like he moved out of California pretty soon after Marina's murder, like probably before we even got there, and then never lived anywhere near her apartment or had any ties to Canada, as far as we know.
Okay, so why haven't either of the Jeanne guys come forward if they have nothing to hide?
Exactly.
They'd be like, what, in their 70s now?
Yeah.
I mean, they or someone who knew them...
Should still be out there.
Yeah, have to still be out there.
So yeah, that's how Detective Rivera feels.
Like the problem is nobody seems to remember these guys' last names after all these years.
And tracking down two guys named Jean from Montreal who were in LA in 69 feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Yeah.
But Canadian media outlets do manage to track down a painter who said that he remembered boyfriend Jean.
Back then, this painter was a waiter in Montreal and saw him with Reet a few times.
And he thinks boyfriend Jean was maybe a medical student.
Maybe his name was Pierre.
But still no last name?
So this painter and a friend of Reed's eventually sit down with a forensic artist to create sketches of both of these Johns which LAPD releases to the public.
But even having sketches, those haven't led anywhere.
We're going to put them in the show notes in case anyone recognizes these guys all these years later.
But like, who are they?
So I won't bring up the Johns again.
But in the end is there even a solid connection between these two cases?
Detective Rivera doesn't really get to dive into Marina's case right away.
Right.
Like that didn't happen for him because we know they didn't have the files.
They didn't have anything.
It doesn't happen for him to like 2016.
Right.
This time, even though there's still no one actively working the case, the sheriffs do pull those case files that Detective Shepard couldn't get access to.
And he told us that after kind of looking at everything, his gut feeling is that these are actually separate cases.
He's not closing the door on a connection between Marina's case and Reed's case.
There's always a chance they were killed by the same person.
But with everything he knows, it feels unlikely to him.
And maybe trying to connect these cases to the Manson family and then each other led to blind spots for police over the years.
So if we look at them separately, what are each of their individual theories for each case?
If they aren't connected and they are standalone, what does that even look like?
So in Marina's case, we're for sure side-eyeing John.
Okay.
Right?
But there are other roads to go down.
Detective Shepard told us Marina's dad apparently had ties to the OSS, like the early version of the CIA during World War II.
And Detective Shepard said that he'd heard rumors or theories that the dad's work might have somehow led to her murder.
What was his work?
So I asked our reporter, Malika Dhaliwal, to find out.
It turns out he was training U.S. soldiers in psychological warfare.
OK.
Yes.
So he was a journalist, and his main job was to make and distribute allied propaganda to demoralize Germans.
But he also interrogated German POWs in one case for three days straight.
So he probably made some dangerous enemies along the way.
And I would love to go all the way down this rabbit hole.
I mean, you see my face.
But this is all we know.
Though, like, again, props to Malika, because you can't even just Google this stuff.
Like the CIA, started to declassify OSS records in the 80s and now they're stored in the National Archives like in person.
Oh, so you have to, like, be there to access them.
Right, which like we are not located there and we didn't have time to go for the reporting.
So she got creative.
I guess some antique dealers sell World War II letters and she found an online antique store selling a letter Marina's dad wrote to his superiors detailing some of his post-war work, which is like wild.
But here's the thing.
Marina's murder seems more like a random act of violence, possibly sexually motivated, rather than like a targeted attack to get to someone else.
Yes.
Now Marina's stepbrother actually mentioned one possible suspect that fits in a 1988 LA Magazine piece.
He claimed that a detective believed Marina might have been killed by a biker and a drug dealer named Spanky.
Because interesting fact, police actually when they found her body, they found an old motorcycle frame at the crime scene.
And they actually took the whole thing into evidence.
And could they tie this guy to that motorcycle frame?
I don't know.
Marina's brother didn't say why the detective suspected him.
Like, in my mind, that's like, oh, I heard motorcycle gang and I know there's that piece there.
Like, I'm tying that together, but no one ever really does.
Now we were able to identify Spanky as a man named Kirk Smith, who has a criminal record a mile long.
He would have been about 18 in 69 when Marina was murdered.
And the first charge we found on his record was from just a year later, in 1970, when he was arrested for narcotics possession after an LAPD raid.
In 1976, this guy escaped prison while serving a 10-year sentence.
Don't know what for.
And then he went on to rob 17 banks before being caught and charged with armed robbery.
By 1980, he'd escaped again.
And while he was in jail awaiting trial for the attempted murder of other inmates, in 1981 he became a suspect in a beating, murder and a stabbing.
But wait, there's more.
While in prison, he joined the Aryan Brotherhood.
In 1987 he got involved in their conspiracy to murder correctional officers as revenge for the shooting of another member.
Now, we don't know if those were all the charges he faced.
We submitted a FOIA request for his full file, but we haven't received that yet.
And then he died in 1998, so we can't go and try and talk to him.
One of the most frustrating things, kind of across the board, that I've felt while you've been telling me about this is like how we can't get access to anything.
But also I feel like we wouldn't need to spiral as much if someone could just get their hands on this.
Her sexual assault kit.
Which we might.
So from what Detective Rivera remembers like there is physical evidence in her case that hasn't been tested yet.
Now, is that the sexual assault kit?
Is it something else?
I don't know.
And I don't know what, if anything, has been done, will be done or could be done.
And the question is, do they still have it?
Because I do know that at some point there was a pipe burst at the evidence facility.
And so it's possible that the reason we haven't seen or heard anything about this is that there has been water damage.
Like we haven't confirmed that with the sheriff's department.
Because it seems like somehow there still isn't anyone working Marina's case.
So like that's bad news but also good news, because maybe it is just sitting there and nobody's gone looking for it.
But like we're running out of time.
And like if someone in the sheriff's office is hearing this, like even just going down and knowing that that was there, that this could be solved, like I beg of you to take 20 minutes.
And we know most of the evidence in Reed's case is long gone.
Detective Rivera told us that the bloodstained bra has been tested to death and only Reed's DNA profile has been pulled from it.
And he said that Reed's murder, going back to like, are they connected?
He just said Reed's felt different.
Like it was so personal and so full of rage.
Like you have to be angry to stab someone 150 times.
And that's usually the kind of violence Detective Rivera sees when the attacker is like an intimate partner.
Now both detectives believe the key to solving Reed's case lies in finding those two Jeans, especially the one that she followed to LA.
But maybe, like Michelle McNamara's blog, one day this episode will find the right person who remembers Jean.
Now, by this point, Detective Rivera has retired too, but he still works Reed's case as a reserve officer on a part-time basis.
All of Marina's family and most of Reed's immediate family who knew her are gone now.
So Detective Rivera is relying on the public, you guys, to come forward with tips.
So talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents, share this episode, especially if they lived in LA or Canada at the time.
And contact police if you know anything.
Did you know Marina and have information about her boyfriends or anyone who drove a black sedan?
Call if you were with her that night at the Troubadour or saw a black sedan in that area.
Were you on a bus with Reet from Toronto to L.A. in the late summer or fall of 1969?
Did you work with her at the post office in Toronto and saw her with John?
Honestly, if you know any French-Canadian men with the name Jean or Pierre who lived in L.A. in 69.
Or if you lived at the Hollywood Executive Apartments on Melrose Avenue near Paramount Studios in late 69.
And then finally, you know there's a possibility if you went to medical school in Montreal or Toronto in the late 1960s and knew of anyone who was at medical school with you who moved to LA soon after graduation.
Like these are all the little things they're hoping like sparks memories for people.
So we're going to put in the show notes exactly who to call for each case because again, Reed's case and Marina's case are held by different jurisdictions.
Right, but if you know anything, please check the show notes for this episode.
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