The Machete Murderer PT 1

Summary

Buried Bones – "The Machete Murderer, Part 1" (October 8, 2025)

Podcast Hosts: Kate Winkler Dawson (journalist) & Paul Holes (retired cold case investigator)
Episode Focus: Investigation into a series of 1971 orchard murders in Yuba City, California—multiple victims, transient workers, with modern forensic analysis and historical context.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Kate and Paul delve into the startling discovery of mass graves in the orchards of Yuba City, CA, in 1971—an area responsible for 40% of the world’s canned fruit at the time, and populated by transient orchard workers. Together, they reconstruct the crimes, consider forensic methods then and now, draw on Paul's field experience, and examine the vulnerabilities that made these victims targets. Part 1 closes as more bodies are uncovered and investigators home in on a pattern and suspect linked to a violent assault the previous year.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Scene: Yuba City, 1971

• Location & Context
  • Yuba City: 40 miles north of Sacramento; hot Central Valley, small town, agricultural, surrounded by orchards (peaches, prunes, plums, pears).
  • Large transient population due to seasonal agricultural work; workers often separated from families and vulnerable to predation.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [08:24]: "Anytime you have a transient population...they can be victimized. You see this also with people that ride the trains...several serial killers took advantage of these transients..."

Discovery of the First Grave

• May 19, 1971: Orchard owner Goro Kayiho discovers a shallow, freshly filled grave.

• Police find the body of Kenneth “Kenny” Whiteacre, a transient known to locals.

• Forensic notes:

  • Grave was impressively deep (3.5 ft), indicating substantial effort—unusual in most cases.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [11:26]: "Three and a half feet, this is a— I mean, that's a lot of work...many of them, they don't get past 18 inches."

• Investigation Techniques (1971):

  • Probing for more graves with metal rods (described in relation to a haunting historic photo).
  • Sifting removed dirt through mesh screens for evidence (cigarette butts, bone fragments, teeth, small items).
  • Use of plaster casts for tire and shoe impressions.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [22:34]: "As dirt is being brought up out of the grave, that dirt needs to go through this sifting process...so you can find, say, a cigarette butt."

Victim & Crime Scene Analysis

• Kenny Whiteacre: Middle-aged white male, transient, clothed, found with “homosexual literature” (possibly staged, unclear significance).

• Injuries:

  • Stab wound through chest, severing aorta.
  • Multiple chop/slash wounds to hands (defensive), wrist to the bone, cheek, and major skull wound.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [32:31]: "At least the injuries to his hands, that sounds consistent with defensive wounds..."

• Timeline: Last seen at 9:00 AM heading towards Bay Area; found dead later the same day. Sequence and accessibility of orchard suggest killer may have been trolling for victims or pre-planned the grave and lure.

  • Paul speculates: "We've got an offender that is out there literally trolling for victims...he's a fantasy motivated offender."

Pattern Emerges: More Graves, Similar MO

• Second Body: Discovered 5 days later at Sullivan Ranch (prune orchard), decomposed male, mismatched clothing, cause of death strangulation + stab wounds; identified as Charles Fleming.

  • Death likely occurred before Kenny, based on evidence (Safeway receipts dated May 8).
  • Paul Holes [46:41]: "The mismatched clothing on the victim...this victim is being redressed by the offender, and the offender has access..."

• Third Victim: Melford Sample, found near blood trail, wounds suggest very recent death (within 24 hrs).

• Forensics: Cigarette butts, receipts, other trace evidence at scenes.

Clues of a Serial Offender

• Escalating Discovery: Over a single day, multiple more bodies are found:

  • Some laid foot-to-foot, some in clusters, some buried naked from the waist down.
  • All victims are white, male, transient/agricultural workers; some severely decomposed.
  • Injuries: Stabbing (to chest), deep cleaver-type wounds to head, some signs of strangulation, many with genital exposure suggesting sexual component or postmortem humiliation.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [60:52]: "I think that that kind of answers the question. There's, there's a sexual component to what the offender is doing to these victims. So he's, he's a serial predator."

• Link to Prior Attack (Marysville, 1970):

  • Vicious cleaver attack at local restaurant; the survivor had near-fatal wounds (brain exposed). Assailant escaped.
  • Owner Natividad Corona present but cleared—police focus on other suspects.

The Challenge of Search, Evidence, and Forensics

• Vast Scale: Searching 400-600 acre orchards, grid patterns possible but laborious.
  • Use of scent dogs discussed.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [50:45]: "[If] we’re going to restrict ourselves to just this orchard…that would take a very, very long time to search."
• Careful Evidence Recovery: Importance of stopping excavations at night/rain.
  • Quote, Paul Holes [66:43]: "Nothing is going to change between now and in the morning. And all we're going to do is screw things up if we keep doing this in the middle of the night."

The Suspect & Next Steps

• Pattern and links point investigators to a suspect tied to the earlier meat cleaver assault.
• Clues: distinctive yellow Chevy panel van, the survivor's memory, and recurring forensic details.
• Promise to continue next week with the identification of the main perpetrator and full body count.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On vulnerability of victims:
  Kate [08:11]: “We talk about stories...of victims who are forgotten...killers...find the people who in their minds, nobody loves or nobody will miss. And so they prey on those people.”
• On the effort of grave digging:
  Paul [11:26]: “Three and a half feet, this is a, I mean, that's a lot of work...many of them, they don't get past 18 inches.”
• On possible staging of evidence:
  Paul [34:37]: “There’s a possibility that this is staged. That the offender planted this homosexual literature in a way to...disparage who the victim was, to throw law enforcement off...”
• On consistent MO and fantasy motivation:
  Paul [58:49]: “We do have a serial predator that's either...sexually motivated, fantasy induced, or...a mission. He has maybe a personal philosophy...these men are representative of being opposed to what this offender's philosophy is.”
• On cluster burial sites:
  Paul [63:27]: “This is interesting...you go to the Green River Killer case...he would put women's bodies in clusters...so he could remember where he had put them and he would go back and visit these women's bodies...”
• On halting an overnight dig:
  Paul [66:43]: “Nothing is going to change between now and in the morning. And all we're going to do is screw things up if we keep doing this in the middle of the night.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:38 – Setting the scene: Yuba City and Central Valley context
• 05:17 – Discussion of California's agricultural landscape and transient workers
• 09:27 – The scale and significance of the orchard industry
• 10:40 – Discovery of the first grave; police involvement
• 11:26 – Forensic challenges of grave digging/depth
• 13:35 – Crime scene methodology and documenting evidence
• 22:34 – Sifting and searching for evidence in soil
• 27:39 – Identification of victim Kenny Whiteacre
• 32:31 – Analysis of wounds and implications for the attack
• 37:38 – Victim timeline and forensic implications
• 43:21 – Discovery of the second victim on a separate orchard
• 46:41 – Clothing analysis and possible staging
• 50:45 – The challenge of grid searching a vast orchard
• 53:24 – Third grave; evidence of a fresh murder
• 56:28 – Autopsy report and crime scene consistency
• 60:52 – Discovery of clusters; sexual signatures in MO
• 61:04 – Victim backgrounds and offender familiarity with orchards
• 63:27 – Noting body clusters and suspect behavioral patterns
• 65:45 – Decision to halt overnight dig due to rain and darkness
• 67:42 – Confirmation of a viable suspect and setup for Part 2

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Episode Tone and Style

• Conversational with rich historical and procedural detail.
• Kate brings empathy, context, and a journalist’s curiosity.
• Paul grounds the discussion in lived forensic experience, frequently offering insight into what would happen then, versus now.
• Distinct blend of respect for victims, dark humor ("I think you’ll find this is an interesting one"), and fascination with criminal methodology.

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Summary Table: Discovered Victims (as of Episode End)

| Victim Name | Description | Injuries | Clothing/Notes | Time Found | |---------------------|---------------------------|----------------------------------------|-------------------------------|---------------| | Kenny Whiteacre | White male, transient | Stabbed chest/aorta, head, defensive | Fully clothed, literature | May 19, 1971 | | Charles Fleming | White male, transient | Stabbed chest/rib/lung, strangulation | Mismatched, layered | May 25, 1971 | | Melford Sample | White male, transient | Deep head cut, skull fracture, stabbed | N/A, 9 fingers | May 25, 1971 | | Donald Smith | White male, orchard worker| Stabbed, bludgeoned, partial nudity | Shirt/sweatshirt pulled up | Cluster group | | John Haluka | White male, orchard worker| Similar, details N/S | N/A | Cluster group | | John Doe #1 | White male | Bludgeoned, exposed genitals/nudity | Dragged to grave | Cluster group | | John Doe #2 | White male | Decomposed | Naked waist down | Cluster group |

Additional unnamed victims and partial information omitted for brevity.

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To Be Continued...

The episode ends with the promise of more discoveries and the unveiling of a main suspect (“the Machete Murderer”) in Part 2—along with further forensic evaluation and historical analysis.

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For case photos, diagrams, and additional evidence, listeners are directed to the podcast’s Instagram @buriedbonespod.

Transcript

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This is exactly right.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

Introducing IVF disrupted the Kindbody story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. It grew like a tech startup. While Kindbody did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.

[Bridget Armstrong]

You think you're finally like, in the right hands? You're just not.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

Listen to IVF, the Kind Body Story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream, it was a battlefield.

[Model Wars Participant]

It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

The Model wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriadis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Mod wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Hunting for Answers Narrator]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lachey Dungey. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. To hear this and more true crime stories, Open your free iHeartRadio app search hunting for Answers and listen now.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

[Paul Holes]

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Each week I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

[Paul Holes]

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

[Paul Holes]

Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This is buried bones.

[Paul Holes]

Hey, Kate, how are you doing?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm great. How about you? Is it getting colder there? It's October. Ish.

[Paul Holes]

It's starting to turn. You know, Colorado is always up and down when it comes to the weather, but usually right around Halloween is when we can expect our first snow.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So is the big weather. It has to be blizzards, right? Those are the big weather events. I mean, are there anything, is there anything that's so unusual you go, it's never going to happen here. And it happens because we get that a lot in Texas, frankly.

[Paul Holes]

Sure. Well, I would say when we first moved here in 2018, that's when we had this massive hail storm which totaled my Wife's minivan. We literally had the insurance company total it and buy her a new car. We had hail the size of oranges that were coming down. So it, I mean, crazy roofs were crushed. All the tile roofs in the neighborhood looked like they were in a war zone. And we're like, is this what we're going to be experiencing all the time? And it turns out, well, no. I mean, we get hail here routinely. You see a lot of cars that have a lot of dents and a lot of repair shops, but not hail the size of oranges.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

That was unusual when I was a kid and I think we've probably talked about this. We had tornado drills all the time. We didn't have active shooter like they do today. We had pretty much tornado drills and that was it. So, you know, I always thought we're going to get hit by a tornado. And where I am in Austin, we've had small ones, but we've never had what you would think about like in a twister or Kansas. Not as long as I've been around here.

[Paul Holes]

In Colorado, I had to go pick up my oldest son. He flew in this like three years ago. Had to go up to the Denver airport. And we just happened to have massive windstorms with over 100 mile an hour gusts. And driving on the freeway, you see all these big rigs literally overturned. The wind is, you know, tipping them over. And it was, you know, I, I'm in a higher vehicle, I'm in a Jeep, you know, which has a high center of gravity. And it gets a little bit scary, like, am I going to end up on my side?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

What about California?

[Paul Holes]

While I lived there, and I lived there since, what about 1981, up until I retired, the California weather is. It's kind of wimpy, you know, it just drizzles. It really is. I don't know, I get bored with California weather.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Oh my gosh, move to la. You see what happens to them in. Alexis is going to give you an earful in a little bit, but I definitely understand what you're saying, especially Northern California. Central California, definitely.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. That's where, you know, here in Colorado, I just, I enjoy the, you know, the storms, they're fun.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, I meant this to be a transition to our story today, which is set in California and we've done some California stories and I think you'll think this is an interesting one. So this is 1971 and you weren't even born yet, right, Paul? You weren't born.

[Paul Holes]

I was three years old. Are you kidding me? You were the one that wasn't born.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm trying to be complimentary, Paul. So 1971, and this is in Yuba City, so 40 miles north of Sacramento. Have you been to Yuba?

[Paul Holes]

Oh, yes.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I have never been to Yuba. Have you really? For crime stuff or for what?

[Paul Holes]

My ex wife had some family that lived up in Yuba. And believe it or not, for a case that I've just stopped working this past year, I went up and met with the Yuba County Sheriff. I was recently there.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Describe it now and then. We'll get into the story.

[Paul Holes]

Well, it's, you know, like you said, 40 miles north of Sacramento. It's in, you know, kind of Central Valley, California. So massive heat. That's one of the things that really stands out about anything within the Central Valley is the summertime is just miserable. Austin's probably, you know, I don't know about Austin, but, you know, it's not unusual for Yuba to be up in the 110, 115.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, so that's normal for Yuba.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, that's. It's. It's very hot. Of course, the geologic feature there is the buttes. These just two plateaued, call them mountains, you know, that you can see for. From forever, you know, so that's kind of cool. And then Yuba's got a very small town feel. It's not very populated. And there's a lot of little towns directly surrounding Yuba, like Marysville, Linden, and you know, just I would say, I guess I would say it's mostly agricultural.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. Well, let's go ahead and set the scene. So we talked about Yuba City. I spent some time, I've mentioned this before in Modesto, California, on the Gary Condit, the Chandra Levy case, which was almond country, and I'm assuming still is. So this is orchard country. And I'm assuming that's still the case. In Yuba City there were in the spring of 71. So this is almost 55 years ago, 18,000 acres of orchards, mostly peaches, but also prunes and plums and pears. So that is a vast amount of land. And of course, you know, with orchards come the workers, you know, who come in. And so we're talking about stories, I think here of victims who are forgotten. And we talk about this all the time with killers, how, you know, they find the people who in their minds, nobody loves or nobody will miss. And so they prey on those people. And I know that that's something that you've certainly dealt with. Before, is there another case? And I mean, I know we know about sex workers and how they're preyed upon, but is there another case that you could think of where you just know somebody is, you know, attacking these people because they think nobody's going to look for them?

[Paul Holes]

Well, this is where anytime you have a transient population, you know, you're talking about Yuba. You know, this is an agricultural area. This is very much like the east end of my county. And this is where you get a lot of the Hispanics coming up from Mexico. They're separated from their family and they can be victimized. You see this also with people that ride the trains, another transient population. And there's several serial killers that took advantage of these transients on trains, victimized them, killed them. And, you know, the family has no idea that anything bad has happened to their loved one.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, runaway kids, of course, would be another one. And.

[Paul Holes]

Sure.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So we're looking at that a little bit here. You know, one thing to mention, this is incredible. This area of Yuba City with all of these orchards. 18,000 acres worth of orchards produced 40% of the world's canned fruit. So huge ended. 40%, huge industry. I mean, amazing.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. You know, I didn't realize that Vacaville actually had a big dry fruit industry there. And it was one company, but it was, you know, a significant employer in Vacaville. And I just think the. This is where you get to the, you know, the weather, you know, how dry, how hot it is. It's probably easy for. For them to be able to produce this fruit.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, this is spring of 71. So let's go ahead and get into the story. You know, again, sometimes we start with the killer. Sometimes we start with the main victim. So we're gonna start with the mystery part of it. So this is May 19, 1971. And there's a farmer named Goro Kayiho who owns the orchard. He is walking around, and he notices that there is a very large but shallow hole in the. In between some rows of peach trees. You know, he thinks maybe one of his workers did it. He's not sure, but he's not alarmed. So large, shallow. When he comes back later in the day, and I don't know how long, but long enough for this to happen. It's mysteriously filled in. And because this is our show, we know what it is covering up.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So, you know, he calls the police. He thinks somebody's burying trash in his orchard. But when investigators show up, they dig into the soil between the sixth and the seventh rows of these peach trees in this orchard and they find a rubber boot and a human foot. So this is a grave that measures six feet long and is only three and a half feet deep. We have not gotten into the, I don't know if it's the physics or the geometry of digging a grave, but six feet long, I mean, I would presume that would mean the body could lay long ways, you know, or be legs straight out. But three and a half feet deep seems really shallow. What do you think?

[Paul Holes]

Well, that's actually impressively deep for a typical grave. Okay, I will tell you, you know, both just having experience doing a lot of landscaping in, in my backyard. You know, generally you get down through maybe 12 to 18 inches of topsoil and you're hitting, you know, really hard pan dirt. And, you know, with the cases that I have worked where bodies have attempted to be buried, many of them, they don't get past 18 inches. And these shallow graves often have body parts sticking up out of gosh, you know, so three and a half feet, this is a, I mean, that's a lot of work, you know, and I don't know in this crop type area how, you know, how much they till up the dirt in between the trees. Maybe it's looser soil than in other areas. So I'm kind of impressed. But it was just a boot and a foot. There wasn't the rest of the body.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So they see that sticking up first and then they find the body of their first victim. And there are multiple victims here. He is a middle aged white man. He is wearing a calf length gray overcoat. At first when I saw calf, I thought like a baby, like a baby cow. And I thought, that's unusual. And then I thought some more. So the sheriff, who is a guy named, he's a deputy sheriff, his name is Steve Sizelove. He says that, you know, he thought this guy would be hot because the temperature in Sutter county was peaking at a little over 75 degrees, which is winter for me. And I would wear a coat, but I understand how he wouldn't. So that's what he's. So he's, you know, he's clothed and then he's buried in this grave and they start looking for clues after that. So if you are the investigator, if you're Size Love on the scene, then you find this body in this orchard. It's relatively secluded. You know, what is kind of the first thing that you're doing? Is it to ID or what?

[Paul Holes]

You know, there's A whole process in terms of doing, you know, a dig. And you need to do that, that process step by step in order to maximize recovery of the evidence. You know, fundamentally you're documenting, you know, then you're starting to unearth the body. But the dirt that you're pulling out of the, the grave itself could potentially have smaller items of evidence. And so you need to have somebody that is sifting that dirt as well as just paying attention to, well, how was this grave dug? Do you have shovel marks on the side? Is there anything unique that you can document? You know, some striated aspects that could possibly be tied back to the tool used to dig the grave. And then of course, there's the body. And you process this body as you would if the body were in, you know, dead inside a house. In terms of trace evidence and you know, documenting injuries and blood flows and insect activity. You know, there's so much aspect that you have to take into consideration, but identifying the body as quick as possible is ideal because you can't really start an investigation until you know who your victim is. But the other aspect of this is you have the owner of the property who saw this pre dug grave.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah.

[Paul Holes]

And then later on saw it filled in with a body in it. Okay, so now you have a narrow time window in which somebody came into this location, was able to, you know, has access to the location to dig a grave and then had again gained access in order to be able to put the body in there. So now do you have any witnesses? Do you have any farmhands, anybody that's working in the, in the orchard area that could be witnesses saying I saw so and so coming in and you know, they had a tractor with them, dragging something behind it or whatever it is.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Go to Paul, go to page, page 14. Paul, this is a scene and you know, you can see in the caption what they're saying. And this might give you a good example or a good explanation for how soft the dirt is. Tell me what you see. They end up having to do this several more times. How are they trying to locate these bodies according to this photo or this body? Any more bodies?

[Paul Holes]

I'm looking at the photograph which is taken, looks down a dirt road that is lined on both sides with, I'm assuming are fruit trees. I can see what appears to be a car, possibly a law enforcement vehicle from that era down in the backdrop and then along sort of the road itself where, you know, it's a typical thing where you see two tire tracks, you know, and then you have Some vegetation in the middle. And then there's two men, in essence, dressed in white T shirts. You know, jeans are similar and shoes. And each one of them is. Is holding. I'm going to just describe it as a rod like object. Well, I know exactly what that is. That is a probe. And so one of the ways that we would use to find a body is you'd have a metal rod that's pointed at the thing so you can actually push it down into the ground. And oftentimes you would have. It'd be like T shaped up, up at top, where you could grab it and put your weight behind it to press this down into the ground. Well, if there is a grave in the area, you get a feel for how hard the ground is the deeper you go. But if you find an area where it seems hard and all of a sudden the probe just goes. You found an area in which the dirt, the ground underneath, is less dense. And this could indicate a grave location or, you know, you could potentially have just gone into a body, you know, but that's what these probe devices are used or how they are used.

[Bridget Armstrong]

I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Now we're getting a little bit older and it just kind of felt like the window could be closing.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

Bloomberg and iHeart podcasts present IVF Disrupted the Kindbody story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. Introducing Kindbody, a new generation of women's health and fertility care. Backed by millions in venture capital and private equity, it grew like a tech startup. While Kindbody did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.

[Bridget Armstrong]

You think you're finally, like, with the right people, people in the right hands, and then to find out again that you're just not.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Don't be fooled by what all the bright and shiny listen to.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

IVF disrupted the kind body story starting September 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises.

[Model Wars Participant]

It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity, there's no loyalty. That's all gone.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream, it was a battlefield.

[Model Wars Participant]

Book, book, book my deals.

[Paul Holes]

Let's get models in, let's get them out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And the models themselves, they carried scars that never fully healed till this day.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

The Model wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high stakes game where Survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriadis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Hunting for Answers Narrator]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lachey Dungy. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. To hear this and more true crime stories, Open your free iHeartRadio app search hunting for answers and listen.

[Bridget Armstrong]

Now.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Let me give you another example. A lot of the photos that we have are wonderful, but they're kind of described. I think they're conflating a lot of these orchards together.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

What I'm used to with, and people might correct me here with Modesto are these sort of beautiful, really kind of clean looking, smallish almond trees. And they're perfectly lined. And I could never see somebody burying a body there or keeping a body any. You know, they're not secluded. So why don't you take a look at page 13 and I think that this is kind of an example not only of a grave, but also the seclusion of it. I guess these are not as clean. You know, it looks pretty secluded. And this is a peach orchard.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, you know, I'm actually very familiar with, you know, with like the almond orchards. You drive down, you know, from Northern California to Southern California and you see all these almond orchards, you know, familiar with Modesto. I know exactly what you're talking about in this photo. It is a photo which is showing a group of individuals. I'm not entirely sure. They don't all look law enforcement, but there is a grave in the dirt, you see pile, you know, dirt that has been piled up on one side of this. I, at this point, I can't tell you if they dug this grave as part of searching for victims or this was another one of these pre dug graves that the offender had dug. And now they're looking at that. But to your point, the backdrop, you see the vegetation behind the individuals in this photograph. And it appears that this location is. Visibility of this location is probably quite restricted, you know, and so now that could potentially explain how an offender could get into maybe an operating peach orchard and be able to dig a grave and then come back with a body and fill that, you know, basically bury the body.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Mm. Let's look at one more photo because we talked about evidence that would be important, maybe buried with the body. So I don't know if this photo is connected directly with who will turn out to be, you know, our first victim, But I thought you would be interested in looking how. At looking, I guess, at how they're collecting evidence. So look, Paul, on page 11, it technically is a different spot, but I'm assuming, look at the method is what I'm, you know, getting at.

[Paul Holes]

Right. So what I'm looking at is a photograph of three men. One appears to be just standing off to the side. He's the supervisor. And then you, sheriff, you see the two men that drew the short straw with screens. And this is where the dirt is being sifted for evidence. So as dirt is being brought up out of the grave, that dirt needs to go through this sifting process. And oftentimes you're using different size screens, from large to smaller ones, which allow you to be able to find larger items. And then, of course, you may have to find smaller items. And this sifting process is, is great for just general physical evidence. Let's say, you know, the, the killer threw a cigarette butt into the grave site, and this is how you can find a cigarette butt. Right. Now, I don't know what the condition of these bodies are. So sometimes if you have skeletal remains, the sifting process is necessary to find the small bones, the victim's teeth, depending if there's dismemberment or there's been you of trauma to the body. So it's truly an archaeological dig. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to competently and adequately dig up a body and process that crime scene for evidence.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

What do you think about the space in between? I was looking at the mesh, the screen that they were using, and I was thinking, that seems kind of big, but maybe it will catch what they needed to catch if there's anything in there.

[Paul Holes]

So you're asking about the size of the screen size itself?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, like, of the. The holes in between. Like, wouldn't teeth fall through those? I was starting to think, what are they really looking for?

[Paul Holes]

At least with what I can see in this photograph, it looks like they are dealing with a screen that has about, I would say a quarter inch opening. And so this would be good for recovering just general physical evidence, recovering bone fragments. And it does allow the passage of the smaller particles of dirt and stuff. So now you can start to visualize, you know, not only do you have rocks or clumps of dirt that don't pass through, but this is where you can See the evidence that gets caught up with this size screen. Now, if you are finding things which appears. Let's say this was a situation where a body's been burned, basically almost cremated, and now the body's been crushed up. And you really, really want those teeth, in addition to recovering what. Whatever bone fragments are there, then you need to follow up what you. What you screen with at this size screen with a smaller size screen. But you can only go so small because at a certain point, the dirt doesn't pass through, it just clumps into the screen.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah.

[Paul Holes]

And then I ran into a situation where we were finding skeletal remains out in the tules out off of the. The Sacramento river delta.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah.

[Paul Holes]

And so we had mud that we had to scre. And so now we have to have running water. So when we put the mud into the screen, and now you have water to get the small particle, the clay and crap through the screen. So you can see. Do I have any bone in this mass of mud?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. Well, this seems like a nightmare scene to me. They find a tire track, a wide truck tire track, and they make a plaster cast. Is that something that we do today? Is it useful in any way?

[Paul Holes]

Well, yeah, you know, there's. Of course, when you're dealing with impression evidence out at a crime scene, it could be shoes, it could be tires. There's steps that you take in terms of documenting it. And photography with oblique lighting from multiple angles is really, really good. But then we would use a dental stone, which is really this fine particulate powder that you mix with water, and then you pour into the impression, like the tire impression, allow that to harden. And so, in essence, you. You are walking away with an exact replication of that impression evidence. And so this is what your tire. We had a guy that was an expert in shoes and tires, and so he has the photographs with, you know, lighting from different angles, and he actually has the tire impression in the dental stone to be able to compare to any suspect vehicle tires that are submitted.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, I mean, I was thinking this is an orchard. Doesn't everybody have a truck around here? But we'll see if this is helpful.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, but that's important, though. You need to know what is commonly operating in this area and then what potentially kind of doesn't look like it belongs. If something like that is there and it's right by the grave, then you'd probably focus in on that evidence.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. Okay. So the deputy sheriff is helpful in many ways, including he is able to identify. His name is Kenneth Kenney Whiteacre. The deputy sheriff knows him because he's a wanderer. He calls him a wanderer. Transient. Kenny was just somebody who was passing through town. I don't think he broke the law, and that's how the deputy sheriff knows. I just think the deputy sheriff's job is to know when strangers come through town. So Kenny came through. He had only recently come into the area from Palo Alto. He did have multiple arrests from public intoxication and robbery. And he had kind of gone back and forth between Washington state and California because he had some family there. And he also had been a truck driver at one point. So there's the victim. I have a description of the injuries that happened to him. I'm assuming you'd like to know that next.

[Paul Holes]

Absolutely.

[Bridget Armstrong]

I started trying to get pregnant about four years ago.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Now we're getting a little bit older and it just kind of felt like the window could be closing.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

Bloomberg and iHeart podcasts present IVF the Kindbody Story, a podcast about a company that promised to revolutionize fertility care. Introducing Kindbody, a new, new generation of women's health and fertility care. Backed by millions in venture capital and private equity, it grew like a tech startup. While Kindbody did help women start families, it also left behind a stream of disillusioned and angry patients.

[Bridget Armstrong]

You think you're finally, like, with the right people in the right hands, and then to find out again that you're just not.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Don't be fooled by what all the bright and shiny.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

Listen to IVF the Kind Body Story starting September 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises.

[Model Wars Participant]

It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream, it was a battlefield.

[Model Wars Participant]

Book, book, book my deals.

[Paul Holes]

Let's get models in, let's get them out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

And the models themselves, they carried scars that never fully healed till this day.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

The Model wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Gregoriadis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model wars on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Betrayal Weekly is back for season two.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

With brand new stories.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

The detective comes driving up fast and just like, screeches right in the parking lot.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

I swear, I'm not crazy, but I think he poisoned me.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I feel trapped. My breathing changes. More money, more money, more money. And I went white. I realized, wow, like, he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster. New stories, new voices, and shocking manipulation. This didn't just happen to me. It happened to hundreds of other people.

[Bridget Armstrong]

But these aren't just stories of destruction.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

They're stories of survival, of people picking up the pieces and daring to tell the truth.

[Bridget Armstrong]

I'm gonna tell my story, and I'm gonna hold my head up.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio.

[IVF Disrupted Narrator]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Kenny had been stabbed on the left side of his chest, piercing his lung and severing the aorta. And so this was about 8 to 10 inches through the chest. There's a cut behind the fifth finger on his right hand, described as a chop style, a chop type wound. There's a knife slice on the right wrist that penetrates to the bone. A knife slash on his left cheek. Multiple head wounds, largest of which was 4 inches long and deep cutting to the skull and into the cranial vault. And in this report, the physician estimated that the weapon was a 8 to 10 inch long blade. Let me stop there and then we'll talk about stuff that was found on the body, like just evidence from the body.

[Paul Holes]

Sure. Well, at least the injuries to his hands, that sounds consistent with defensive wounds. So the victim is aware he's being attacked. He's trying to ward off this, this, this offender who's armed with a knife. This 4 inch long sounds like an incisive injury, but it also penetrates through the skull. You know, that's, that's a significant amount of force, you know, and I've, I've got one poor victim. The knife was embedded in, inside his head and was left by the offender there. So knives will go through skull, you know, but this is, this is indicating that the offender is attacking this victim. The victim is aware. And then ultimately, you know, the fatal stab wound going into, I think you said the chest into the aorta, you know, and so now once the aorta is, is penetrated like that, it's possible the victim bleeds out internally very, very quickly.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, they are searching his body and in the pocket, the deputy sheriff finds what he says is homosexual literature. For the audio audience. I' quotes homosexual literature. We don't hear about this again. You know, we're wondering, we have a new researcher, Allison, and she's wondering if this even really, if the sizzle of the Deputy sheriff didn't really know what he was talking about because it's not brought up later on, but that's what they say is on him. And then, you know, I have a little bit of a timeline, but. But that's basically it. You know, he's just somebody who wandered in. It doesn't seem like he was somebody who worked on the orchard. But I asked Alison to look a little bit deeper into access. Cause I know you're gonna ask about access. And the orchard essentially is accessible to anybody. There are multiple roads, it's not hard to get into. We can see how isolated it is. He might or he might not have worked on the orchard, but it wouldn't have been difficult for somebody to get there. And maybe he was eating peaches. It's a peach orchard, you know.

[Paul Holes]

Sure. You know, if he's, if he's a wanderer and he, you know, needing some food. But. Okay, so this homosexual literature, this is 1971. Things that are popping into my head is, is this a, you know, something that had limited distribution as can this be traced back to a particular location in town or to maybe some other location outside of. Of Yuba? Is it consistent with what is known about the victim? Part of my concern is there's a possibility that this is staged. That the offender planted this homosexual literature in a way to at that point in time disparage who the victim was, to throw law enforcement off of whatever leads. The timeline, I think, is also going to be important because we know we have a pre dug grave. So when was this grave dug relative to the last time the victim was seen alive? Was this particular victim targeted? And the grave is dug, then the victim is lured to a location. I'm assuming there's no evidence that the victim was killed at the grave site.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

No evidence of that from what I can see.

[Paul Holes]

So he's killed elsewhere, and then the offender already has the grave ready to go, so he can dump the body, push the dirt in and get out of there pretty quick, you know, so that would indicate that the offender had pre selected the victim. You know, is there a relationship between the two? So there's, there's sort of questions and I think that's the next thing I'd want to know is, you know, what timeline do we have about this victim? And I know with a wandering type of victim, it's probably scant.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Here's the timeline for what happened with Kenny the day before. So there were a lot of interviews with community members and this is what they say. Now remember this is a guy who hasn't been in Yuba City very long. It's not like he has family there the day before they discover his grave. Kenny was seen at one o' clock in the afternoon in Tierra Buena, which is between Yuba City and Sutter. Then six and a half hours to seven and a half hours later, people see him walking back toward Yuba City. So that's at night, 7:30, 8:30 at night. On the day of the murder, he was seen at 9 o' clock in the morning and he seemed to be heading back to the Bay Area where his siblings lived. So the last time people saw him was 9am when his body was discovered later in the day by the farmer.

[Paul Holes]

Is he hitchhiking?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

You know, he must have been hitching. Hitchhiking. It doesn't say. But how else, how would he have gotten back to the Bay Area? Would he be walking?

[Paul Holes]

I mean, that's, that's a long walk. That's a.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Maybe the train, maybe hopped a train or something. I don't know what he was doing.

[Paul Holes]

Potentially hitchhike. 1971. Hitchhiking, of course, was a big, big thing that was just common. No, this is interesting because at least with his timeline, so 9am on the morning that he's literally found in a grave later on that day, he's trying to get down to the Bay Area and I'm going to say he's hitchhiking or something, but he's a victim of opportunity. How would an offender have known, you know, with Kenneth, his movement pattern like this, I have to consider the possibility that we've got an offender that is out there literally trolling for victims. Just, just like you have an offender that is going into a stroll area where sex workers are just trying to find somebody. This could potentially be an offender that is going, okay, here's a guy that needs a ride and I've got. And this offender wants to do something to this man. Maybe it's of sexual nature. That's part. He's a fantasy motivated offender and he's already dug the grave and he's going to try to get this, you know, victim isolated to do whatever and kill him and dump him in the, the grave. And you know, this, this comes into, you know, even though Kenneth is clothed, you know, is there a possibility that there was sexual interaction between this offender and Kenneth? And did they actually consider that? Chances are 1971 with a fully clothed male victim, probably not. But you know, that's just something that's. Now, you know, that that packet that homosexual literature packet or flyer or whatever it is that might be really significant to the offender himself. Like, this could be something that the offender either planted or maybe the victim is somebody that exchanges, you know, sexual acts with men for money or for drugs, whatever, you know, whatever his payment aspect is.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This book or whatever it was a pamphlet that doesn't come up later on in the story at all. But the media does talk about it. So there's some churn there. But it's also the media. You know, how we work in the media, we pick up on the most salacious things sometimes and amplify it.

[Paul Holes]

Sure.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

But I do think it's important to keep that in mind. So two days later, as they're investigating Kinney's case, the Sutter County Sheriff's department gets a tip from an officer in nearby Marysville. And so two days later, there is a assault that happened. There's a survivor, but there's an assault that happens. The vicious nature of this assault in Marysville reminds the sheriff there of the vicious nature of what happened with Kenny. So I'll tell you what happened. The folks investigating Kenny's murder get a tip two days later. Because this was such a vicious murder, it reminded somebody in a different area not far from Yuba city of an assault that happened the year before. What happens is February 25th of 1970, and at one o' clock in the morning, there's a man named Jose Romero Rea and someone at a bar restaurant had beaten him and cut him with a meat cleaver at the restaurant called Guadalajara Restaurant and Cafe. Police described the injuries with the meat cleavers so severe that they said, quote, the brain was leaking from one cut to the top of the head. And he survives this. This guy. I mean, that just seems unsurvivable to me, but maybe not.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, it all depends on what was. What damage was done. You know, we have people shot in the head, and they survive and are able to live a decent life afterwards. So is there any indication in terms of. I mean, was Rhea just attacked randomly while at this restaurant, or did he get into some sort of argument with another male? You know, is this like a bar fight gone bad?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

There's not a lot of information on that assault and what the motive was, but they did clear the owner, Natividad Corona, who had been there, and there was a patron who did the attack in the bathroom and then left. I doubt he brought a meat cleaver with him, but I assume that, you know, this was something that the offender got at the restaurant. But this tip came in, and this is something that happened a year earlier. I think it was the meat cleaver aspect of it that tipped everybody off. And so, you know, they just keep that in mind for right now. What happened in Marysville?

[Paul Holes]

Sure.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. Now we're five days after Kenny's body has been found. We're at a different orchard. We've gone from peaches to prunes. I'm not a big fan of prunes. Do you like prunes?

[Paul Holes]

I think I've had them once in my life, maybe.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm sorry. Don't give me any hate, you guys, if you love prunes. I've never gotten into prunes, which is weird because I love plums. I love grapes, hate raisins. So explain all that.

[Paul Holes]

You know, kind of. Kind of the same, I guess.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Really?

[Paul Holes]

I. I can't remember the last time I ate raisins.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm not a raisin fan. But anyway, so now we're on a prune orchard, and we're going to talk about a picture in a second. So get. Get your hand ready for the picture section here, because I want you to see the vastness. I've seen big orchards, but these are massive. So this is a different place. It's called Sullivan Ranch.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

And this is where we have a lot of activity happening. There is a tractor driver named Ernesto Garcia, and he's on the ranch. He works for the ranch. This is five miles north of Yuba City, and it's May 24th. He's breaking. Here's another piece of info for you. He's breaking up the soil on the prune orchard, and he sees a large indentation in the ground between the seventh and eighth rows. He thinks that the farmhand responsible for irrigating the area skipped a row, and so, you know, somebody wasn't doing their job. And there's an indentation, but the ground is soft, and there's a shallow depression which is about 6ft by 2 or 3ft deep. So I think there's no doubt that we've got a connection here. The next day, Garcia alerts his foreman, who is a guy named Ray Duron. I thought, the next day, why did he not alert somebody sooner? But Garcia actually waited because it was late in the day when he saw this indentation. And he had hoped that the foreman might say, oh, yeah, this is. You know, this was a new game plan. Don't worry about it. And he didn't want to look like he was being paranoid, even though word had gotten around about what happened. At the previous orchard. So he sees this thing and he goes, they can't be connected. There's no way. So then Duron, the foreman, contacts detectives. They show up, and in less than 10 minutes, they uncover a decomposed body. The person is wearing mismatched clothing. Two pairs of pants, a plaid shirt, a sweater, a suit coat and one shoe. He is in his 60s. He's a white man. And then I've got the injuries, but you can imagine they're probably pretty consistent. So, you know, what do you think about this so far? Different orchard.

[Paul Holes]

Well, it's interesting. So, you know, first addressing the indentation. And the body is decomposed. I'm wondering if that body had been buried there for a significant period of time. And as the body decomposed, now what you have is the dirt that's on top of the body ends up kind of compressing the body as the body's decomposing. And so what may have been level land before as that body decomposed, in essence, the dirt sunk down and now revealed the location of this grave site. That's one possibility. The mismatched clothing on the victim. You know, two thoughts on that. Is, again, are you dealing with a transient victim who, you know, is just wearing clothing wherever he could find articles of clothing and is just. That's what he's got on. But I think there's also the possibility of this. This victim is being redressed by the offender, and the offender has access, for whatever reason, to these articles of clothing. Two pants, a suit coat, one. What was it, one shoe or one boot. You know, that is odd. So at least that's what I can kind of discern from now. But obviously, there's gotta be strong suspicion that this case is connected to the previous case, even though it's in a different orchard.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So the person who did the autopsy is a guy named Dr. Clement. He says there is a stab to this man's chest that is so powerful, it shatters the fifth rib and cuts into the left lung. His face is slashed on both sides, and there is a third cut at the nape of the neck. At the morgue, they find matches and a couple of safeway receipts dated May 8th. This is May 25th. So, you know, a couple of weeks ago, a box of snuff and two bars of soap and a razor. So this man seems to be definitely a transient, Somebody who's kind of come in, a worker who's come in and come out of town. Dr. Clements says that the cause of death is strangulation. The extent to which his bronchial tubes are filled with blood, however, make it impossible to determine whether the chest or the head wounds were more lethal. Okay. And the decomposition of the body places the time of death at one or two weeks earlier. And the victim's name turns out to be Charles Fleming. So if they're right, and you need to tell me first if you think that they could be right, if they're right, this man, Charles Fleming, is killed before Kenny was killed. And remember, this is 75 degree weather. That's kind of it.

[Paul Holes]

Well, as far as the injuries, you know, if the pathologist is saying cause of death of strangulation, then he is seeing evidence in evaluating the neck that there's either hemorrhaging in the strap muscles of the neck, there's, you know, hyoid bone has been broken, there's a furrow around his neck. You know, if there was a ligature that had been employed at some point, maybe there's petechia still present within the eyes, but the state of decomposition might prevent him from seeing that. I'm a little bit concerned with the emphasis on the amount of blood in these victims lungs and that he basically drowned in his own blood. I don't think a pathologist would misinterpret, you know, but is there, is it asphyxial, you know, versus strangulation? But I'm just going to assume this pathologist knows what they're doing. And so he's seeing evidence that, yes, this victim is strangled, but then the stab wound into the left lung, the one that fractured the fifth rib, now you've got the bleeding internally and you see this where now victims are literally, they're struggling to breathe, they're coughing up blood. And you start to see this, what we call expiratory patterns of blood as they are just struggling to get air in. It's miserable. I can't imagine going through something like that. However, from a sequence standpoint, it seems more logical that this victim is being attacked with the knife first. And then once the victim is starting to succumb to those injuries, the offender is finishing the victim off with the strangulation. Okay, that is what I would guess is the sequence of how that happened. Kind of the finding of the matches, the receipts. Those receipts are huge. You know, it sounds like Fleming is alive on May 8 and is somehow is contacted by the offender after that date. State of decomposition would probably suggest relatively soon in a few days after that May 8th date. But it also tends to suggest he is more of a transient Type with the razor. So kind of similar victimology to the first victim.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. Why don't you go to your photos real quick and look on page two. I want you to see this Flippin Ranch. It's 400 to 600 acres. I just. If I were a deputy, I would look at this and say. Because now they feel like this is obviously a multiple murderer at this point. So I mean, can you imagine trying to do a grid search or anything on this land?

[Paul Holes]

Well, you know, obviously yes. This I'm looking at appears to be an arrow photograph showing sort of the primary structures on the ranch. Maybe a residence, maybe some barns for tractor housing. Tractors and stuff. But on either side of where the structures are located, you can just see the sprawl. But very organized orchard. Kind of like how you're describing the Modesto almond orchards. That's what this looks like. And so yes, if now the thought is, okay, we've got another buried body, how many more bodies are out here? The size of this, this orchard? If we're going to restrict ourselves to just this orchard, yes, that would take a very, very long time to search. However, it's because of the spacing of the trees. There's sort of a convenience aspect you can utilize, you know, the row and column aspect of the trees to organize your search pattern. If you find something, you're able to very quickly designate, you know, where that, whatever you found, where that's located on this orchard. And you easily walk through these trees. You know, when I've had to do some. Some searching, oftentimes I'm having to push through. I can think one case where I'm pushing through poison oak on the side of a hill. I'd much rather search this orchard than go, you know, hunt, you know, for other bodies in poison oak.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This is such a large space. But you're right, I mean, you could be a lot more organized on this kind of land.

[Paul Holes]

It's easy for dogs to run through this.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And different than the peach orchard. Seemed like a huge mess. But let's continue on. So they stay and look around because of course they fear that there are more bodies out there. And I'm assuming that there are people at the peach orchard who are also looking for more bodies there. Around six o' clock on the 25th, same day, they discover a clearing near the Feather river on the Sullivan ranch. And I have a photo of that if you want to see that. In the clearing is another grave. There is also something we haven't seen yet, which is a 15 to 16 yard blood trail that leads across a road to a red blood soaked patch of dry grass in the prune orchard. And there's dirt that's been sprinkled on the grass in an attempt to cover the blood. And there are shovel marks on the access road. And I had wondered if that's what happened was with the first two, that those are actually the murder scenes. But he managed to cover up with loose dirt and stuff.

[Paul Holes]

Well, yeah, this, this third grave, you know, with the blood trail and then what sounds like, you know, blood pooled blood that would suggest, yes, you have a victim that's been killed, was laying at that location for some period of time and is then moved, leaving that blood trail over to where the grave is. And if you are seeing that this sounds very recent, you know, you think about the dirt that's out there, you know, that blood is sticky. You know, as the dirt gets blown, you know, a lot of the blood is going to just get covered up by that dirt. It's just going to, you know, that dirt's going to stick to it. I'm somewhat surprised, but maybe not totally that the offender is isolating the victims out in his orchards and this is where he's killing them and burying them. But with the first one though, that, that grave, you know, unless, unless the offender and the victim, you know, the offender's got a knife to the victim's throat telling him to shut up as the witness, you know, goes by, you know, it would suggest that he's pre planning the location on where he's going to bring the victims, at least for body disposal. But it sounds like in this case he brought the victim to the location where he's disposing the body, but the victim is alive. And then he kills the victim here. Why is he killing the victim? Is this robbery? But I think you potentially are looking at a fantasy motivated offender. There may be a sexual aspect to what this offender is getting from his interactions with these males.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, let's keep going. They find a shoe print, they make a plaster cast in the grave with this latest person, they find a cigarette butt, a small dark feather and two folded receipts. And you know, of course when we say receipts, oh, that's, that's, you know, maybe it'll be part of this timeline. They don't think it's something that's going to be key because they look at the body and it's very clear to the pathologist that these are wounds that had been inflicted in the last 24 hours. Okay, he said that Is very clear. Is that based on the blood clotting or what?

[Paul Holes]

Well, it's going to be based off of his assessment of the condition of the body. Like you said, we're talking about 75 degree temperatures during the day. It's going to drop to cooler temperatures at night. You're putting a body into a ground that is going to be cool. So the body is being preserved somewhat. Now, 24 hours later, the pathologist is going to be taking a look at. Well, is there any rigor present? You know, do I have full rigor? Do I have partial rigor? He's assessing the temperatures, the location, you know, the body in essence is in a, I wouldn't call it a refrigerated state, but is in a somewhat of a cooled state. But when he's looking at these wounds, he's not necessarily able to gauge, oh, you know, this wound was inflicted five hours ago versus 24 hours ago. He's taken in the totality of what, what he is seeing and saying this is a fresh kill.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, well, let me tell you about the victim. They identify him. He's a white male, he's 59. His name is Melford Sample. And he has nine fingers, which I don't think comes into play, but there you go. He has been stabbed in the left chest, has a large deep cut in the back of the head. The wounds appear to have been inflicted within the last 24 hours. As I said, cause of death according to this physician is a skull fracture, massive compound right temporal parietal bone. Does this fit in with the same pattern?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, to a lesser or greater extent. But fundamentally the offender is using sharp edged weapon, maybe a meat cleaver. Again, something where you've got this, what sounds like a deep cut to the back of the head. Then you also have the skull fractures, which at least there's not enough in what you provided to say is that a result of some sort of bludgeoning? So maybe, or it could be a stomping. It almost sounds like this victim. You know, was this somewhat of a surprise attack? You know, where the victim's, you know, standing out there in the orchard. And now you have the offender says, you know, hey, what's that over there? And then pulls out a meat cleaver and brings it down onto the back of his head, fully clothed.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

It says it, yes.

[Paul Holes]

Okay, all the victims are white males. This victim, do we know, is he also transient?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

He is.

[Paul Holes]

And so I think, you know, going back to when you first started talking about this case and talking about Offenders targeting victims that would. Wouldn't be noticed if they go missing. Right? So this offender is preying on a certain population, purposefully preying on a certain population. And this is a population that doesn't have financial resources. Robbery does not seem to be this offender's motive. And now I'm thinking, okay, we do have a serial predator that's either he's sexually motivated, fantasy induced, or maybe he's, I'll use this term, missionary. He's got a mission. He has maybe a personal philosophy that somehow these men are representative of being opposed to what this offender's philosophy is.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

We've talked about this kind of case before where you have people who kind of had a vendetta, essentially, and they're seeking revenge. So we'll have to see where we land on this one. Okay, so now we have as far as victims, we have Kenny. Then we have an assault on Jose, who doesn't die, but has massive facial and brain injuries from the attack. We've got Charles Fleming. And then when we go to Feather river, we have Milford samples. And now they're going to continue to spread out because they feel like this is a hotspot. And they are right in 500 yards, the surrounding 500 yards, they find four more graves. There's one that's 100 yards north and a cluster of three victims less than 400 yards south of the first grave. And some of these are John Does. I can tell you about, you know, some of these. I mean, we could be here all day talking about this, but everything is very similar. So we've got four more graves. There is a white John Doe number one. He's been bludgeoned to death. His shirt and sweatshirt are pulled up over his face and his arm, he's not wearing pants and his penis is exposed. It appeared that he had been dragged to his grave. And then I can tell you about the three other that were, you know, three other victims that were kind of in a cluster a little south of where this initial grave was. We've got three middle aged white men. Donald Smith, John Haluka, and another John Doe, John Doe number two. So Smith, the first guy, has his shirt and sweatshirt pulled up over his face and arm. And nothing on John, the man in the center. But the third body was extremely decomposed. They've all been stabbed in the chest and cleaved in the back of their heads. And John Doe too, is naked from the waist down. Everybody is a, is a, you know, worker, transient worker, sure, you know, and.

[Paul Holes]

I think that that Kind of answers the question. There's, there's a sexual component to what the offender is doing to these victims. So he's, he's a serial predator. Fantasy motivated.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, let's talk about where these guys are from real quick. So Smith and Haluka are, you know, workers that have been on orchards, but they're pretty different. Smith was from Kansas. He was on his own on the road for a very long time. He had 97 arrests for drunkenness and misdemeanors. Haluka had kept to himself. He didn't drink. He kept his money in his pocket. But you know, they're on orchards and that's the common denominator. Right. He said he kept money in his pocket to avoid being arrested for vagrancy. To be able to prove he had money, it sounds like.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, well, obviously the offender is comfortable around these orchards. There's a reason why the offender is choosing orchards versus maybe more remote locations. You've got these four additional victims being found and one of the victims is severely decomposed. So now that might provide some sequence information in terms of the order in which these various cases occurred. And then we go back to the Marysville bar that happened a year prior to the start of these bodies being found. And that may be related. I think it is significant that in that case that's the only non white male that is being attacked and that was a Hispanic male. Just, I'm assuming, just based off of the name, you know, it comes down to, you know, who is that patron that attacked that guy in that restaurant, you know, and can you investigate whether or not he has any role in these homicides that are occurring on the orchards?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, let me give you a couple of more victims here. It just keeps going. It's 7:45pm that night, it's starting to rain. But the detectives just found two more graves, different states of decomposition. And they're laid foot to foot near a fork in the road that leads back to the main part of the Sullivan ranch. There are two 62 year old men and one of them had his pants pulled down. They've both been stabbed and cleaved like the other ones, both white.

[Paul Holes]

And then they're buried right next to each other.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, they're foot to foot is what it said. Near a road that leads back to the main road of the ranch. What does that mean? And it sounds like very decomposed. So.

[Paul Holes]

So, but they're saying two different states of decomposition. Sounds like they're killed at different times versus both of them are killed at the same time and buried. So this, you know, there's a certain, I think because there was a cluster of three bodies that were near each other that you said before. You know, this is interesting just because I go to the Green River Killer case, case where Gary Ridgeway purposefully put women's bodies in clusters. And when he was interviewed, the reason he did that is so he could remember where he had put them and he would go back and visit these women's bodies. And I'm not going to go into any details what he was doing with some of these women's bodies. But this is where, you know, I'm starting to wonder in this case, you know, are these grave sites so near each other? Because these are good body disposal areas and the offender is taking advantage of that or has the offender got a personal reason to put these bodies together like that?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

You know, these men are all the consistency is they sort of belong on orchards. They've been on orchards, they've worked on orchards before. But one of the men is not somebody who was a worker, a transient worker. He had lived in Marysville for 20 years and he'd been working on orchards and he had Social Security checks that he was cashing. He was last seen getting into a yellow looking Chevy panel van and he picked up his Last1 on May 1 and his friend alerted the police that there was a missing person.

[Paul Holes]

It was a Chevy van, a yellow Chevy van that had panels on it.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep.

[Paul Holes]

That seems quite distinctive. This is a clue that I'm sure the investigators started marching down on.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep, yep. So now we're at 12:10am and after multiple hours of unearthing victims in the rain, they find three more. But they're exhausted and they said we have to be done for tonight. And so, you know, they end up leaving the three graves for the next day. So this is all happening in one day. And I lost count of how many they discovered. I mean it, it maybe six or seven, I think. In one day.

[Paul Holes]

In one day, yeah. No, that's, you know, they, they made the right call trying to, you know, first I think with, with this type of crime scene, once it starts to rain, I think you're done. I think you have to call it a day and just wait. The worst for evidence, the worst for documentation, etc is trying to process a crime scene in the rain. And then when you now get into where it's now nighttime, I don't care how good your lights are, you know that you erect out there, it's not as good as sunshine. Yeah. So in essence, you know, they probably worked longer than they should have, but there's no reason to continue. They're making the right call. Let's do this right when we can see. And hopefully the rain has stopped in the morning.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. Because they're not going to become suddenly more decomposed or lose anything. If they're buried on that land, they're safely buried for 12 hours.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. In fact, I had a case. I at least started digging up a woman's body on Hell's Angels property. And this was within a year of me retiring. And I remember arguing with the homicide investigator because I said, no, we're done. I. This is a. This is a body. And we're going to get the crime lab out here to do a proper dig in the morning. And this guy was lighting me up. We're going to lose evidence. This. I was like, no, you're not. Nothing is going to change between now and in the morning. And all we're going to do is screw things up if we keep doing this in the middle of the night.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, that's obviously smart. And it seems like we have investigators who have it together, because we do have a suspect. You're right. It is connected to the assault that happened the year before. And, you know, we will talk about that, and we will talk about sort of the ending and how many bodies they end up discovering next week.

[Paul Holes]

Okay. Well, I look forward to it. This is a fascinating case.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Good. I know a good serial killer case. You love them. I'm spoiling you. I need to. I need to pace myself a little bit better.

[Paul Holes]

This is great. Thanks, Kate.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, bye. This has been an exactly right production.

[Paul Holes]

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com buriedbones sources.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi, research.

[Paul Holes]

By Alison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

[Paul Holes]

Our theme song is by Tom Breyfogle.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac, executive.

[Paul Holes]

Produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook @But buriedbones pod.

[Paul Holes]

Kate's most recent book, all that is a Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, is available now.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

And. And Paul's bestselling memoir, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

[Paul Holes]

Listen to Buried bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Listen to IVF the Kind Body Story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Model Wars Participant]

Fields, it's a freaking war zone. These people are animals.

[Vanessa Grigoriadis]

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[Bridget Armstrong]

I'm Bridget Armstrong, host of the new podcast the Curse of America's Next Top Model. I've been investigating the real story behind that iconic show.

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I ended up having anorexia issues, bulimia issues.

[Bridget Armstrong]

By talking to the models, the producers, and the people who profited from it.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

All, we basically sold our souls and they got rich. If you were so rooting for her and saw her drowning, why don't you help her?

[Bridget Armstrong]

Listen to the Curse of America's Next Top model on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.