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Ashley Flowers (1:03)

Oh, I got it.

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Detective Gerardo Cruz (1:07)

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Ashley Flowers (2:04)

Our card this week is Margaret Ryman, the Queen of Spades from California. When 73 year old Margaret Ryman was murdered in her garage while getting ready to leave for church in 1986, everyone immediately started pointing fingers at one particular relative. And in the investigation that followed, detectives uncovered a Decades long family feud grudges that had been festering for years and questions about just how far someone might go when there's money on the line. But almost four decades later, new DNA testing pointed them in a completely different direction. And now the case is hotter than it's ever been. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the deck. It was 5:30pm on Sunday, November 2, 1986 when Pat Wise pulled into her cousin Margaret's driveway for their weekly Sunday dinner. But that evening was different from the moment that she went inside Margaret's two story ranch house. Margaret was nowhere to be found. Neither was Pat's son Mark, who had actually just moved into the ranch house a few weeks before. Now the 73 year old lived on a sprawling stretch of farmland, 10 or 20 acres with other houses on it that she rented out. So Pat figured that she could have just been out somewhere on the property. But when she called one of those renters, Wayne Hoffman, that hope started to fade. Wayne said that he hadn't seen Margaret at all that day and Pat hadn't even noticed. But Margaret's newspapers, which she always collected in the morning, were still laying in the driveway. Plus Margaret's dogs hadn't been let out of the house all day either. And that is when Pat began to worry. So she started calling around to see if anyone had seen or heard from Margaret. There were no cell phones at the time so she couldn't contact her son Mark. But she was able to get in touch with another one of her children, 30 year old Elaine.

Elaine (4:35)

I remember that that day like a movie. My mom called me in the late afternoon and said that she hadn't heard from Margaret. She would usually go down there on Sundays and they'd read the paper. But I could tell that her voice, that she sounded stressed.

Ashley Flowers (4:55)

So Elaine, who lived nearby, decided to go down to the ranch to help Pat and Wayne figure out what was going on.

Elaine (5:03)

And we walked around in the yard, we were talking to each other and we went over to the garage door and noticed that there was a padlock on the garage door which had never been there before.

Ashley Flowers (5:18)

It was Wayne who noticed the padlock. Margaret's one car garage wasn't connected to her house. It was a separate cinder block structure about 100ft away with barn style doors. But it had never been locked before. Margaret usually just slid a drumstick through the latch to keep the doors closed. So Wayne peeked through a small window on the side of the structure to see if anything looked off inside. Margaret's 1965 Mustang was parked right where it always was, and everything seemed normal. So with a massive farm and multiple homes to search, Wayne, Pat, and Elaine moved on. At some point, Elaine's brother Mark came home and joined the search, and for a bit, even Elaine's then boyfriend. And together they looked everywhere, up to the edge of the property line for nearly five hours. But nobody saw any signs of Margaret. And with daylight now long gone, that's when they decided it was time to call for some professional help. Here's Ventura county sheriff's detective Gerardo Cruz, who is the lead investigator on Margaret's case today.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (6:23)

So I would say around like 10, 10:30, a call for service was made to the sheriff's office to report Margaret Reman as a missing person. At the time of the call, when the deputy showed up, there was multiple people at the scene. Some family members, some non family members. And they just reported that it was very out of the ordinary to not have heard from her or seen her. Mark Weiss, who lived in the house with her, had not seen her since the night before at dinner time. And one of the biggest clues for Wayne was that the newspapers hadn't been picked up. I guess she was rigid in her routine. And the newspapers had not been picked up all day.

Ashley Flowers (7:03)

So the deputy began searching himself.

Elaine (7:06)

An officer came down and drove around the property as much as he could with his lights. It was starting to get dark. And then he did some footing, and he didn't find anything strange. And he thought, well, you know, maybe she went somewhere. Not everybody tells everybody everything, but we pretty much knew.

Ashley Flowers (7:22)

The deputy didn't have the same gut feeling that Margaret's family did, though. And even after Wayne told him that in the 10 years he'd been living there, he'd never once seen Seen the garage door padlocked, ever. The deputy just took a missing persons report, told the family to keep looking around and call him back if Margaret showed up. Then he left, and they did call him back just 30 minutes later, but not because Margaret had returned. There was something about that lock on the garage door. Wayne just could not get it out of his head. So he grabbed a flashlight and went back to the garage window to look around a little harder.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (8:00)

He flashes it in, sees the vehicle, and then sees what he described like her hand on the floor. And that's when they realized she's in there.

Elaine (8:09)

So they were. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Both of them running back to the house. And to the point they came in, they were both frozen. They were both, like, white. And I leaned over to Wayne. And I don't even remember if they said, we found her or something. I don't even recall that. I just knew the sinking feeling. It was. I was frightened. I felt evil. And I said to Wayne, I go, is she there? He just kind of shook his head. And I go, do you think she's. I knew. I mean, it's a sense of fear came over me. And it was like I wanted them. I didn't want them back out there. I didn't know that she'd been murdered. I didn't know she'd fallen over. They didn't say a word. And I still see it in clips, but it's like a black and white movie. And so they came in and we called 911.

Ashley Flowers (9:03)

When deputies came back to the ranch around 11pm, they forced the garage doors open and immediately saw Margaret lying on her side on the floor in a pool of blood. This was on the passenger side of her Mustang. She was pronounced dead right there at the scene. Now, Margaret was fully clothed in an orange print dress, a beige coat and stockings. Her watch and diamond earrings were untouched, as was her purse, which was still on her left arm, with two church donation checks inside, as well as the keys to her Mustang. So that along with the cut to her neck and the blunt force injuries to her head that would be ruled her cause of death. Told investigators a lot.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (9:46)

If this was a robbery, whoever it was could have just punched her and then taken her stuff and taken her car or pushed her even, right? But to beat her and to slice the neck open, that's personal. In other attacks that I personally investigated, the more brutal it is, the more personal it is, the more violent it is, the more personal it is, as opposed to a random attack where it's a quick hit, get what you're trying to get, and then you leave.

Ashley Flowers (10:18)

Aside from the stuff on her, there was really nothing else valuable enough to steal in the garage anyway. Detectives said that Margaret kept it very neat, and the only things inside were car things like tools and parts and the drumstick that she used to secure the latch. Now, detectives did find and test a tire iron, but there was no evidence that it had been used in the murder. And nothing else inside the garage could really have been turned into a weapon. So whatever was used to kill Margaret, the murderer took with them. And it's possible that they brought the padlock that was on the door because nobody could say where it had come from. And no keys to it were ever found anywhere in or around Margaret's property. So whoever did this. They were prepared. They attacked Margaret in her garage before she even realized what was coming. And then to delay the discovery of her body, they decided to lock her inside of the garage.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (11:13)

There wasn't evidence that there was like a chase around the car. Her left knee had an injury to it, and a scrape means she could have fallen to one knee quickly as opposed to like running away. And her clothes weren't dirtied up like she fought on the ground. There was nothing to indicate it happened anywhere else but in that specific spot. Spot, which leads you to think it happened quickly. And this is just my opinions as an investigator. From what I saw, what I read, the the person who attacked her was lying in wait. So it was a purposeful, planned attack.

Ashley Flowers (11:50)

This was a clue to investigators that whoever killed Margaret must have known her routine, known that it was her car in the garage, known that she was going to take it out that morning and that she would be alone when she did. You see, Margaret lived a very regimented.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (12:07)

Life based on reports, actually, from Wayne, from Mark, from Pat, who knew her, knew that on Sundays she would get up around 5, 5:30, get ready and make the 6 or 6:30 mass at a local church in Camarillo.

Ashley Flowers (12:25)

Margaret lived around 10 minutes away from her church and would always drive there in her car. But she never made it to church that morning. Margaret's family said that before ever getting in her Mustang, she would always check its tires. And they think that's what she was doing when someone surprised her, which would explain why she was found on the passenger side of the car. Knowing that Margaret was planning to attend the 6:30am Mass as she always did, detectives estimated that her murder probably occurred around 6am right when she would have been planning to leave. Now, to learn just how many people might have been privy to Margaret's routine, detectives had to talk to everybody who knew her. But in doing so that night, everything they learned about Margaret only made her brutal murder more confusing.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (13:14)

The original reports indicated she was a very caring person, a very giving person, devout to her religion. She went to church regularly. She helped the community, like Mark, who needed a place to stay. Sure, you can come here. There was a landscaper who reported, sometimes she would just give me busy work so she could pay me right just to help him out.

Ashley Flowers (13:38)

Detectives also learned that Margaret never married or had any kids of her own. So she fostered a very close relationship with her brother, her cousins and godchildren. They affectionately called her Mai. Here's Elaine again.

Elaine (13:54)

She was around since the day I can remember she was more of a grandmother. She's also a cousin to my mother, but she's more than that. We spent a good deal of our childhood down on her ranch. Went for Sunday drives and fed the chickens. I was one of four. She treated us all like gold. We lacked for nothing. She was everything to us.

Ashley Flowers (14:25)

Margaret's cousin, Trudy hall, who was really more like a sister, reiterated the same.

Trudy Hall (14:31)

One word describes my cousin, Margaret Ryman. She was fantastic. Loved the Lord, loved people. Not a mean bone in her body. She was ever so helpful to so many people, family members, strangers, what kind heart she had. And that was one of the wonderful things about her that made her such a wonderful, gentle giant of a person.

Ashley Flowers (15:08)

But just because Margaret was nice to everyone doesn't mean that everyone was nice to her back. And there was one thing in particular at the crime scene that really seemed to suggest that someone might have had it out for Margaret. The thing is, no one noticed it at first because the simple act of opening the garage doors to get to Margaret hid the message left behind. But as part of processing the scene, those garage doors were eventually closed again. And as soon as they were, the message was clear. Handwritten in black lettering on the inside of one of the doors were the words take that. By that point in the investigation, detectives had learned from some of their interviews that there was someone who might have wanted Margaret to take what they believe she had coming to her. You see, by no fault of her own, in the years leading up to her murder, Margaret had been thrown into the middle of a bitter legal battle over her family's fortune. A tangle of lawsuits, appeals and court skirmishes all tied to a multi million dollar tomato field inheritance. And in digging into those disputes, one family member's name began to come up again and again. Someone who was not at the crime scene that night.

Trudy Hall (16:30)

Barbara Geisler Kennely.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (16:33)

Barbara.

Elaine (16:34)

Barbara.

Bill Wise (16:34)

Yeah, we, we automatically suspected my aunt and uncle Barbara and Paul, that's Bill.

Ashley Flowers (16:41)

Wise, one of Pat's other children, because.

Bill Wise (16:46)

Paul had mentioned something about that there was gonna be canon Abel in our family. So Paul said that. So we all know you know Cain and Abel's story. So. Yep, never think it's gonna happen to you. Then you get thrown into the Twilight zone.

Ashley Flowers (17:11)

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Elaine (18:43)

Well, it's just that she was a very entitled, she was intelligent and you know, she had the brains but just eccentric as all get up and you never knew which way you were going with her.

Ashley Flowers (18:59)

But before detectives could make sense of what this meant for Margaret, they first had to understand how everyone was connected in the family tree and how the tomato field inheritance came into the picture. And it is a big tree. So click the link in our show notes for a visual that might help you follow along. Now it makes most sense to start a generation back in Ventura county, there was a legacy farming family, the Rymans, whose assets and fortunes were divided between their children, namely John Ryman and Margaret Ryman Geissler. And this is a different Margaret than our victim. Now, when John and his wife died, their estate got passed down to their son and daughter. That daughter is our victim, Margaret. Now, neither that Margaret nor her brother had any kids and they got along with each other. So there was no drama on John's side of the family. But on Margaret Geissler's side, it was a different story. Now, According to the LA Times, when Margaret Geissler died in 1955, her husband was already dead. So her estate was split up between her relatives and her children. Her oldest son William got the physical tomato field land and her youngest son Ralph was named the trustee of the estate. And that arrangement worked for a long time. But eventually both brothers passed away. And by 1972, a bank was acting as the trustee of the estate. But William's widow, Angela Geissler, and their three daughters were still living on the field. The oldest daughter was Pat, who's been playing a role in our story. And then her sister Trudy, who you heard from earlier. And Trudy says that her and Pat were pretty much inseparable.

Trudy Hall (20:43)

And then, and then along came our, shall I say weird? 10 years later on Sister Barbara. Barbara was the last. And I think when I say weird, I don't think I have to say anything more, do I?

Ashley Flowers (21:05)

But Trudy did say more. She said that Barbara had one very specific motivator in life. Money.

Trudy Hall (21:14)

That is the word, that is her God. And too bad, and I'm sorry, but there are a lot of people that have that same attitude and well, it's the wrong thing, but you know, she was so weird and we didn't know what was going on. And you know, what the thing is or the fact of the matter, we really didn't care because if a relative wants to be that way, we have no control over that. And all we can say is love and peace. So that's what we tried to do. And we really feel sorry for her because she had such a negative attitude for no reason at all. But it must go back to maybe family history because some of the aunts and uncles, they were always fighting or something like that. And sometimes it was over land and I don't know what it was because we weren't that knowledgeable about what was going in the other aunts and uncles life, you know what I'm saying?

Ashley Flowers (22:23)

So when William died, Angela, Pat, Trudy and Barbara were living on the 22 and a half acre tomato field. And according to the LA Times, the bank, acting as the trustee of their estate, tried to sell it for roughly $200,000, which would have been more than $1.2 million today. But this is not what Angela and William's three now adult daughters wanted. So they fought back, accusing the bank of shutting them out and mishandling what their father had left behind. So Barbara's attorney, husband Paul Kennerly, stepped in in 1977 and was like, look, I'll handle the whole ordeal with the bank free of charge on this one condition, me. And then later, Barbara will be named trustees of the estate.

Trudy Hall (23:09)

We weren't surprised. And Pat and I knew what Barbara and Paul especially, what they were like. And Barbara was always the one, if you will, leading her husband by the ring in his nose. All right? Barbara thought she was the attorney and could do everything that she wanted to do.

Ashley Flowers (23:34)

Pat and Trudy wanted the land to stay in the family, so they agreed to the conditions. And the rift between them and Barbara grew deeper because of it. But things mainly just bubbled beneath the surface, at least until 1983, when everything came crashing down. That is, when the sister's mom, Angela, died. And if they were on bad terms before, this was the proverbial nail in the coffin, because now came the time to divide up Angela's estate. And as a part of that process, the trustees, Barbara and Paul, were required by the court to turn in a full accounting of how they had been managing it since 1977. And in doing that, they included a claim that they were owed over $319,000 for their trustee management services, even though Paul had initially promised to handle everything for free. And on top of all of that, there was the issue of the funeral.

Trudy Hall (24:36)

I'm sure you would like not to hear some family member doing this to their own family member. When my mom passed away at the funeral, her funeral, I came out from Texas with my husband. We flew out and Barbara was there with her husband. And we sat there and it was civil. We had to be. And later on, Barbara and her husband, Paul Kennerly, wanted to charge us, pat and I, $500 for their attending my mother's funeral. Doesn't that tell you what was going on? Unthinkable. Unthinkable. Right. Well, it does happen. That's when we said and went to court, we do not want Paul and Barbara Kennely anymore as guardians or trustees to my mother. And we did go to court over that and had him. I got him out of there, and I still have all of those papers from the courts in Ventura and the judges. And that's when Margaret Ryman Maillee became the trustee. And we knew that Mai would be very fair in taking care of the affairs of that land.

Ashley Flowers (26:11)

Margaret was the perfect person to handle the estate. She was a distant cousin with experience managing property, and her. The family trusted her. She was responsible, fair and thorough. Plus, Margaret had no reason to be weird about money because she came from the same lineage and was well off in her own right, having the ranch with its multiple homes that she would lease out to renters. And even with all she had, she still lived a simple life.

Trudy Hall (26:40)

She didn't flaunt anything, and she could have if she wanted to. She was like a person that only had two dresses and she wore them alternating times.

Ashley Flowers (26:54)

The LA Times reported that it was February 6, 1986, when Margaret Reiman officially became the new trustee. But Margaret would never get the chance to execute Angela's will because Paul and Barbara relentlessly contested it, apparently believing that they were entitled to more than what was designated for them. They filed dozens and dozens of motions against Margaret to stop the distribution of Angela's assets, the last of which came in September of 1986. But Margaret wouldn't even get the chance to respond that time.

Trudy Hall (27:31)

What happened was Margaret Mine was murdered. So she was only the trustee for just a few months. And guess what people were talking about the idea that maybe Paul and Barbara had something to do with her murder. Cause they were on such unfriendly terms. Do you see how it gets out of hand?

Ashley Flowers (27:59)

You can, right? Detectives could, too. And the story that they pieced together from interviews with family and friends revealed a strong motive for murder that pointed straight to Barbara and Paul Kennerly. The pair had easy access, too, because Barbara and Paul lived in a mobile home together. And one day, out of nowhere, they just decided to up and move the home onto the tomato field property where Pat and her children had been living. And this was only about a mile away from Margaret's place. Here's Detective Cruz again, so you can.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (28:34)

Imagine how uncomfortable that must have been. It appears one day they just moved a trailer back there and moved in there. Didn't tell anybody.

Ashley Flowers (28:42)

Our reporter Nicole Kagan asked Pat's son Bill about this.

Nicole Kagan (28:47)

How often did you see them? Like, would you have meals together, or was it just separate lives?

Elaine (28:50)

Oh, no, no.

Bill Wise (28:51)

It was all fenced off. They had a Doberman. You know, they had plants that grew up through the. Through the chain link that were real sharp, and they wanted to make it as secure as they could. They were real quiet and. And apprehensive to talk to. They didn't want to, like, talk to you, divulge information. They were always real, like, standoffish or paranoid.

Nicole Kagan (29:17)

So you didn't. Even though they were living on the property, you really didn't see them that much?

Bill Wise (29:21)

No. If I did, I'd flip them off and say, you better get a good lawyer. They always had, like, demonized, happy looks on their face when they'd stare at us.

Ashley Flowers (29:33)

So now that you have the whole history, it's not so difficult to read. Take that as some sort of message to Margaret that she messed with the wrong relatives. But even if Barbara or Paul were behind its writing, Detective Cruz told our reporter Nicole that he thinks that writing might not be connected to the murder.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (29:57)

It Turned out that based on interviews that that had been written long time prior. It was just never erased. It had nothing to do with the murder. Multiple people accounted for that. I can't remember the exact reason why, but I know they were able to like, say, okay, that's not. That wasn't written by the killer.

Nicole Kagan (30:15)

Wow. Because this totally seems like a threat.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (30:17)

100%. 100%. They were confident. And from what I read, I feel like, okay, that was disproven. It's not associated to the crime.

Ashley Flowers (30:27)

Bill Wise doesn't agree, though. He seemed to believe that that note had been written that Sunday morning that Margaret was murdered because he didn't remember ever seeing it before then. But regardless of when this note was written, the family was feeling a certain way towards Barbara and Paul after Margaret's death. And detectives still hadn't heard their side of the story. So on November 11, just over a week after the murder, they paid a visit to the Kennerly mobile home. But what Barbara told them only deep in the mystery.

Nicole Kagan (31:04)

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T-Mobile Advertiser (31:04)

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Ashley Flowers (31:06)

Whoa.

T-Mobile Advertiser (31:06)

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T-Mobile Salesperson (31:07)

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Detective Gerardo Cruz (31:09)

Wow.

T-Mobile Advertiser (31:09)

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Ashley Flowers (31:34)

Forget that.

T-Mobile Salesperson (31:34)

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T-Mobile Advertiser (31:35)

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Ashley Flowers (31:37)

Oh, I got it.

T-Mobile Salesperson (31:38)

I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with.

Ashley Flowers (31:40)

Hey, where are you going?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (31:41)

To T Mobile.

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Ashley Flowers (32:09)

When detectives visited Barbara, she told them that she hadn't seen Margaret since 1983, three years before the murder, even though they lived just up the freeway from each other. So detectives asked to speak to Paul. But Barbara said that he wasn't home and he would have to call them back later. And he did. The next day, he said that on the advice of his attorneys, he and Barbara would no longer speak to investigators and wouldn't take any polygraph tests. And that was the last anyone from the Ventura county sheriff's office was heard from Barbara and Paul Kennerly, and not for a lack of trying. Here's detective Cruz again.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (32:48)

The investigators are like, okay, give us your attorney's number. We'll talk to your attorney. Your attorney can be present. They made every effort to accommodate the Kennerlys to provide a statement. They never cooperated, Period. Everyone else in the family cooperated. Everyone took polygraphs.

Nicole Kagan (33:06)

Everyone.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (33:07)

Everyone minus the Kennerlys, cooperated with the investigation.

Nicole Kagan (33:10)

And what does that tell you, looking back?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (33:12)

Well, again, looking for motive. Who had most to gain, who was trying to gain, who would have gained from a murder of Ms. Reman? It pointed to the Kennerlys.

Ashley Flowers (33:23)

But because the Kennerlys invoked their right to an attorney, investigators couldn't interview them. They couldn't ask them where they were the night of the murder, Whether they had been to the ranch, how they saw the family disputes, or even whether they might have had the key to a certain padlock. According to detective Cruz, they never searched the Kennerly mobile home. Though, from the records today, there's nothing to show that investigators actually tried to get a search warrant to do so. Detective Cruise said that it could have been that there wasn't enough evidence to justify one, but today, he definitely would have at least tried to search that property. Now, neither of the Kennerlys had any sort of criminal history that detective Cruz could find record of. But for those who knew Margaret and her family, it didn't matter. They'd already made up their minds. People even began to talk about the possibility that the Kennerlys had hired a hitman. And on December 8, just over a month after Margaret's death, Someone wrote an anonymous letter to Barbara that read, quote, barbara, I didn't know that you could be so dirty as to have a nice person like Ms. Ryman murdered for money. You will be punished. A lot of people know how you were and know about you. End quote. Now, this letter only got into the case file because whoever wrote it wrote down the wrong address for Barbara. And when the people who did did live at the address where it was delivered, opened it, they realized that they needed to share it with law enforcement. No one ever figured out who the author was, but the message was clear in the court of public opinion. Barbara and Paul Kenerly had already been convicted, but only in the court of public opinion, because detectives didn't have enough to take them into a real court of law. And in their time investigating, no other suspects had surfaced. So with no other obvious direction to go in, the case stalled. Now tips did continue to come in, implicating the two suspects they already had and a hired hitman that no one could name, but no one offered any real proof that they could work with. It was all just hearsay, like this anonymous letter from May of 1988 addressed to the DA's office. Detective Cruz read it out for our reporter nicole.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (35:48)

It's a 9 by 6 lined paper with handwritten words, quote, they hired a hitman to kill Margaret Reiman. If you could get him to come forward, your case is solved. Ask Barbara Giesler Kennerly, end quote.

Nicole Kagan (36:05)

Does it seem like investigators are taking it seriously? Do they start looking with fresh eyes at 2?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (36:11)

There's nothing documented like from a detective saying, I received this, this is a good clue. I would imagine that for them it affirmed what they were thinking in 86 when they have the Kennerlys being completely uncooperative, who have either something to gain or something to lose from either Margaret's death or execution of the trust.

Ashley Flowers (36:34)

Detective Cruz said that there was an ask out for this letter to be dusted for prints, but it didn't. It doesn't look like that ever actually happened. And it's after this letter in 1988 that the case officially went cold. Cruise says that between then and 2022, when he started looking into Margaret's murder, no significant tips or leads came in at all. And the only reason he started looking into it was because he thought that this case sounded kind of similar to another cold case that he was working. From 1989, about 15 to 20 minutes away from where Margaret lived in Camarillo, the murder of 90 year old Florence Hackney. Florence was found dead in her own living room from manual strangulation.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (37:22)

And in that specific case, it appeared to be a burglary of some kind, forced entry, but nothing was taken in that one either. And she was sexually assaulted with no motive. She didn't come from money, she didn't have major assets. She was a grandmother. Her family all lived within the same community. It appeared to be a random act, but yet brutal. So that's what led me down this path of okay, who else? What other elderly, brutal murder, unsolved murders in Ventura County.

Ashley Flowers (37:52)

According to Detective Cruz, though, Florence was living on her own. Her kids lived nearby and checked in on her constantly. So even though it could have been pure coincidence, it's more likely that whoever killed her could have known when there would be a gap in those visits, just like whoever killed Margaret must have known when she would be alone in her garage. And once Detective Cruz started reading more about Margaret's case, he wasn't able to put it down. I mean, it seemed to him like there were things that could be done, especially given that the Ventura County Sheriff's Office had its very own forensic scientist assigned exclusively to cold cases. Her name was Kristin Kanko. So in 2024, Cruz reached out to her with the case file, and she left no stone unturned.

Kristin Kanko (38:42)

I read every single page. I even read all the reports that are not related to DNA. I read every service request that was ever submitted. I look at the property list. I literally dig through everything.

Ashley Flowers (38:54)

What Kristen and Detective Cruz found was that back in 1986, investigators took fingernail clippings from Margaret's hand to see if there was any blood or skin tissue under them. Now, in 2005, those were sent off for testing, but with technology available then, they couldn't find anything that was foreign to the victim.

Kristin Kanko (39:13)

So we wanted to go and revisit some old DNA extracts to see if we could get better foreign profiles.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (39:20)

So then some things take long. Like Kristen's a one man army with myself 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 seven investigators who request things from her. So she has a lot on her plate. She spins a lot of plates at the same time and keeps them all from trying to crash down. So you just wait in line.

Ashley Flowers (39:43)

It was worth the wait that, though. In September 2024, Kristin was able to develop a DNA profile from the material under the fingernails. There wasn't enough information for an upload to codis, but there was enough for a one to one comparison. And because Kristen didn't use the whole fingernail sample up in her testing, there was enough left to send it to a private lab in December of 2024 to do YSTR testing. And that focuses specifically on the Y chromosomes. From that cruise was able to get a male profile suitable for comparison with anyone along the killer's paternal line. Detective Cruz told Nicole he is confident that that profile is who police have been searching for all these years.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (40:28)

The evidence we have is great. I believe that male profile is the killer. Whoever's underneath that fingernail, that's the killer.

Nicole Kagan (40:36)

Why in your head is that male profile the killer.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (40:39)

She wasn't in an intimate relationship with anybody. There's no other reason for a single male profile to be underneath her fingernails.

Ashley Flowers (40:48)

When it came to getting male samples for comparison, Detective Cruz started out with Paul Kennerly. Unfortunately, he had died in 2015, but his DNA was on file at the medical examiner's office, available upon presentation of a court order. But the problem was the court order required the sample to be returned intact, which wouldn't be possible if DNA analysis was done. So Detective Cruise set out to find any male relatives of Paul. And through open source databases, he discovered three potential living nephews. So on April 8, 2025, he went door knocking. Oh, hey.

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Ashley Flowers (43:42)

The first Kennerly nephew door that he knocked on confirmed that Paul was his uncle. But when Detective Cruz explained the details of the case and asked for a DNA sample, the man explained that he'd actually been adopted into the family. So that was a strikeout. On to the next nephew, and we'll call him Andrew. It was April 30th when Detective Cruz knocked on his door.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (44:06)

He was young, very cooperative, very super cool. Like, hey, no, if we can help catch a killer, even if it is my uncle, they're willing to help. They volunteered the sample. And we compared the YSTR profile from the sample to Paul's nephew, and it completely excluded them. So it's no one within Paul's family. Male family line underneath the fingernail.

Nicole Kagan (44:31)

Would you still consider them persons of interest?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (44:35)

Yes. What makes it hard is I can't exclude them. I find success in being able to exclude people, being able to say, hey, you're not involved and I can prove it. For peace of mind, for reputation. And in this scenario, had they cooperated, maybe we could have proven their innocence. Maybe we could have proven they were not involved at all and relieved the family of this infighting and bitterness. And to this day, like, what ifs? And what was their actual, if any, involvement in this? That's the frustrating part. And when I say that I do find them as persons of interest, it's because of their lack of cooperation, not because I have any physical evidence to say they were there or they committed this murder. But I can't give a reason as to why not cooperate unless you're involved. Whether it was hiring a hitman or. Or not.

Nicole Kagan (45:32)

If it's not any of the Kennerlys and not a hitman, who are the other suspects?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (45:40)

None.

Nicole Kagan (45:41)

None? No.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (45:42)

Like there's no one who we could establish a motive. Someone who would benefit from her death. There is no one. Wayne Hoffman had lived there for 10 years. By all accounts, he was a good guy. Cooperated fully with the investigation, had nothing to gain from it. Mark Weiss, a relative, had been there six weeks. Within that six week, he took like a two week vacation with his brother to Texas. There's no nothing to dictate there was conflict.

Ashley Flowers (46:16)

Original investigators did get a list of the people who worked on the Ryman ranch, but none of their timelines seemed to line up with the timeline of the murder. The first ranch hand arrived around 8, 8:30 in the morning to feed the horses when Margaret would have already been dead for two hours. There's also no discernible motive for any of them. Margaret was their employer and a generous one at that. But as is the case with the Kennerlys, Detective Cruise wants to be able to rule the ranch hands out definitively.

Nicole Kagan (46:46)

Do you have that on your list? Like to contact those people?

Detective Gerardo Cruz (46:49)

Yeah. So after I got the results back from the YSTR testing, it's like going back to step one, right? Who did this, who can we test, what can we test? And starting over. And if they're not alive, hopefully their next generation can help us and give us a sample where we can do YSTR testing.

Ashley Flowers (47:09)

Detective Cruz is doing this work as we speak. Before Paul's nephew Andrew volunteered his sample, no one had ever been swabbed in this case. So Detective Cruz has been going back to everyone individually. As of this recording, he has swabbed all of the living male family and tenants who were at Margaret's ranch when her body was discovered. Her distant cousin Mark, who was living with her, is no longer alive. But Cruz is hoping that his brother Bill Sample will be able to rule rule out all males in the wise family line. He is waiting on grant funding to get all of those swabs to the lab. And there are other neighbors and ranch hands that he still wants to test to be able to cross them off the list too. But even if he gets negative results on all of those fronts, there's also the DNA comparison that he wants to do with the Florence Hackney case to check if it really could be connected to Margaret's. See, though Florence's case is still unsolved, Detective Cruz thinks that he may have identified the murderer's profile from some male saliva found on her breast.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (48:14)

But unfortunately, there's not enough of it to like, upload to a codis. There's enough for a one to one comparison.

Ashley Flowers (48:20)

Cruz put out a service request to compare the samples from Margaret and Florence's crime scenes after our interview with him in September of this year, and he's currently awaiting results.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (48:33)

Something tells me we know it's not, but I don't know why and could just be me hoping it's not, because then I got a serial killer.

Nicole Kagan (48:41)

Wow. Is there anything about that, though, that could bring you closer to a solve potentially, like, if you do.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (48:47)

Not really, because there's not enough DNA to compare on a national database yet. So I would literally have to go to each serial killer, get their profile from whatever investigation. Like, hey, can I have that so I can compare? Can I have that? It'd be literally one to one, and we don't really have the resources to commit that much time.

Ashley Flowers (49:08)

Even if he strikes out with that comparison, too, there is still yet another theory. See, the land that Margaret's ranch was on, it was prime real estate. And according to Margaret's family, in the time leading up to her death, developers had been making offers on it. Here's Elaine again.

Elaine (49:28)

People wanted to build a road through the backside of her ranch to go up the hill where all big houses were built and all. Something about the rights. And she didn't like change. She wanted to stay where her brother had been, where her parents, where she was raised. She wouldn't have known how to live in a little apartment or a palace somewhere else. That's all she'd known. She wasn't selling, so she was in the way. And she was only 73, and you'd expect, you know, you never know how long people are going to be around and they wanted to develop. It was worth billions, you know. So the way I look at it, big business, you know, it seems like it was to me professionally done, like, by somebody hired. And they probably don't live around here. And they probably went away and never looked back.

Ashley Flowers (50:21)

When she died, Margaret left most of her property to the church. And today her ranch house is still standing, as is the garage where she lived out her final moments. But the surrounding land that is now a gated residential enclave of multimillion dollar homes surrounding a golf course, all of which was developed after her death. The only problem with this land developer theory is this has the potential to open a whole new can of worms. Going after a corporation is a different beast than going after an individual person. And so before it gets to that point, Detective Cruz wants to be sure that he has ruled out every other option. Like Barbara, she's still alive now 86 years old and living in a rural area of Southern California. And Cruz wants to pay her a visit just to see if she's finally ready to talk. There's been no real communication between her and detectives since that first door knock back in 1986. I mean, investigators over the years tried to contact her at different court hearings during the civil litigation with the inheritance. That did continue after Margaret's death. But Barbara kept invoking her right to an attorney, just as she did in 1986. And speaking of the inheritance, the legal battle between Trudi and Pat and Barbara only got worse after Margaret's death. A big question for me in all of this was what was gained by getting Margaret out of the way? It's not like Paul and Barbara would become the executors of the will. So was this just an F you? If they did it, did they actually have a motive? And the answer is yes. Margaret cared for Barbara about as much as Pat and Trudi. So when she was deciding who got what, Barbara didn't think that she was getting her fair share. That's what all the legal battling was before Margaret died. So it's very possible that her and her husband believed that with Margaret out of the way, whoever took over as the trustee, even if it was a third party bank or something, maybe they would split everything up evenly among the three sisters, which is what Barbara wanted. But after Margaret died, Pat and Trudy fought harder to make sure that that didn't happen. They battled in court over their mom's will for 14 years, and in the.

Bill Wise (52:47)

End, see, what had happened over time is they were all at each other's throats for years. Right? Well, what happened is everybody got old and they went, oh, hell, we gotta settle this crap. We'll never get our money if we keep fighting. But when this started, it was $450,000 farm, and when it ended, it was $6.3 million. So the longer he held this out, he was making us money and him money, while they were keeping us in misery.

Ashley Flowers (53:21)

So Barbara did get what she wanted. A solution was finally reached in 1997 that the estate would be divided evenly between the three sisters, if any at all was left. After paying off 14 years of legal fees, one thing Barbara couldn't contest, though, was Margaret's will. When she died, Margaret left $100,000 each to pat and Trudy.

Bill Wise (53:48)

As for Barbara, Margaret left Barbara $1 in the will, so she couldn't contest the will. See, you can contest a will if you're left zero. But if you're left a dollar, you cannot contest a will. So that's what Barbara inherited.

Ashley Flowers (54:05)

Our reporter Nicole tried calling and texting, even sending letters to Barbara's address, but as of this recording, we haven't heard anything back. Which the Wise family says is not surprising. Barbara has never been charged with anything in connection with Margaret's death. As Detective Cruz has explained, the point is to rule out potential suspects where he can. Now, we know Barbara's DNA won't match the male DNA under Margaret's fingernails. There are other items in evidence, other things that the person who killed Margaret might have touched that day. The garage doors, the padlock, the drumstick. In initial rounds of testing, they yielded low amounts of DNA. But Kristin, the forensic scientist at the Sheriff's Department, hasn't given up.

Kristin Kanko (54:53)

We're looking for an improved collection method, and there are some private laboratories that use proprietary like buffers to help them get a better collection of DNA off surfaces. So we're hoping to outsource those to have a method like that.

Ashley Flowers (55:10)

Nicole also asked Kristen about the anonymous letters sent to Barbara Kennerly and to the DA's office in the 80s.

Kristin Kanko (55:16)

Yeah. So your interview has cost me some work because the letters came up and I also had never heard about them. So Cruz did call me this week. I think those could be interesting. I do question who wrote them and like, what the relation would be to the crime and how would DNA be relevant? Like, I don't know that the suspect would have written them. So even if they do yield a profile, I don't know where it could bring us that wouldn't be a CODIS eligible profile. So that gets tricky. Like, I think it's a good viable source of DNA. Somebody could lick an envelope or I even told them back in the 80s you had to lick the stamp. There's definitely could be DNA on these items. How relevant is it or how far can we get with that DNA? I don't know. So I think it's useful and really informative, but I don't know what we're going to be able to do with it.

Ashley Flowers (56:18)

Even if this DNA doesn't necessarily connect to the killer, it could lead to back to someone with information and give Detective Cruz the break that he's been working towards for the sake of the family Margaret left behind. Family like Bill.

Bill Wise (56:33)

I think about her every day still.

Nicole Kagan (56:37)

What do you think? What do you think about when you think about her?

Bill Wise (56:42)

I just. Well, I wish that they would. It would come to justice, whoever did this. All I know is somebody's had 39 years of freedom. I want that to come to an end. But, you know, that doesn't bring her back. But at least that gives you a little peace of mind and a little bit of, you know, faith in people, in the law system.

Ashley Flowers (57:06)

In Detective Cruz's eyes, that faith is not misplaced. Witnesses may be getting old and evidence may. May be degrading, but when it comes to cold cases, Detective Cruz has seen far worse.

Detective Gerardo Cruz (57:20)

The Hackney case, I think, has come to a complete dead end. Unless someone is willing to provide us a one to one sample, there is no more evidence to test. There's nothing left that was taken as evidence. This one still has legs. This one still has testing. This one still has people who need to be contacted. This, this. This is still workable.

Ashley Flowers (57:44)

Here's our reporter Nicole talking to Elaine again.

Nicole Kagan (57:48)

Regardless of if you knew who did it, if you didn't know them, whoever it turns out to be who did this, what would it mean to you to just have the closure after 39 years, to not have to wonder anymore?

Elaine (58:02)

You know, I mean, that would bring me some peace. Because justice, she deserves justice. She deserved more than this.

Ashley Flowers (58:13)

If you have any information about the murder of Margaret Mai Ryman In November of 1986 in Camarillo, California, please speak up. You can reach Detective Cruz directly at 805-384-4726 or by emailing coldcasentura.org and if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can also call the Ventura County Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477 or visit venturacountycrimestoppers.org to submit a tip by text or email. The Deck is an audio check production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, Visit the Deck podcast.com I think Chuck would approve.

Nicole Kagan (59:06)

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Ashley Flowers (59:29)

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Ashley Flowers (59:36)

Have you ever experienced something truly unexplainable? A moment that felt almost like a vivid dream, leaving you with a lingering sense of wonder, leaving you questioning everything you thought you knew? Perhaps it was a fleeting glimpse of something extraordinary, A chilling whisper in the dead of night or an undeniable premonition that comes to life. I'm Yvette Gentile. And I'm her sister, Racha Pecorero. Each week on our podcast, so Supernatural, we partner with the one and only Ashley Flowers, host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie, to take you on a journey of the world's most mystical mysteries. Ready to explore the unknown? Join us every Friday for a new episode of so Supernatural, available wherever you listen to podcasts.