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In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, as Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, Body Bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, iHeartra. Open your free iHeart app and search Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they gonna do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, he thought of Willy Wonka and the bfg. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, the Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either was this. Before he wrote his stories, it must have been okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Listen to the Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real, publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather, LLC and does not reflect the views or responsibilities of iHeartMedia or its affiliates. Previously on the Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor Anna Traynor disappeared from a commune. And back then, I lied to everybody. Anna Traynor was at a party in downtown Sebastopol. There were a lot of witnesses that said Anna. She had a fight with her boyfriend. I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, but we were actually in the woods. We were on the Tender Hearts property. It was the most weed I'VE ever seen in my life. And Willow burned it down to the ground intentionally. I'm not sure. Does that answer things or does that just create more questions? Right. I mean, that's kind of my whole. With this podcast. That's what I want to find out. My dad has this story he tells from when he was a teenager. One night, his friends told him to get in the car. Friends of mine that I grew up with said, hey, we have a girl that's living away from here who is willing to take us on and said, oh, yeah? Yeah, come on, let's go. And I said, oh, well, sure, you know, jumped in the car and there were three or four of us. They were all going to see Sally Chase, an older married woman who wanted to party with them while her husband was out of town. They parked the car and walked through the woods to go to a farmhouse. It was raining, started raining, real light. But this house is up on top of the hill. And side note, even though this really happened, this story in my imagination is animated. Specifically, it looks like the COVID of a Hardy Boys novel or any old timey book or movie poster with a haunted house or a spooky farmhouse. Anyway, when my dad and his pals, and they definitely called each other pal, got close to Sally Chase's porch, gunshots rang out. There's just one light in the window. And all of a sudden this guy yells out, I'll teach you sons of bitches. Come around here. And my wife, boom, boom. Sally's husband was there, yelling and brandishing a shotgun. So one of my dad's friends falls to the ground screaming in pain. The shots kept coming, and understandably, my dad panicked. And I turned and I ran as fast as I could out of there, not thinking of anybody else but the surviving. As I'm running, I. I come up this field ahead of me. I said, okay, right through there. And I run. Bang. He ran headlong into a fence in the dark. Cut up his forehead. I jump over the fence, and I finally found a place, another road that I could come out on. Blood was dripping down his face. He made it to the road. He flagged down a car as soon as he got in. The man who picked him up was concerned. My dad was embarrassed, scared, and didn't know what to say. But the driver had a very important, very telling question. They said, you haven't run up to see Sally Chase, were you? I said, no, I don't know what you're talking about, man. My dad denied it, but the guy persisted. You were up to see Sally Chase, weren't you? Goes, yeah, man, that guy up there is crazy. He shot two of my buddies, at least. And he said, no, no, man, that's a joke. What? It was a setup, a prank. One of these small town rituals that had been going on for years. So the guy gave my dad a ride into town where all his friends were waiting for him, laughing and welcoming him to the club of Sally Chase survivors, which was always this kind of funny story straight out of something like the movie Porky, some 1950s boys will be Boys Romp. But when I consider this story now, this memory, I have a hard time wrapping my head around what my dad was thinking. He was going to sleep with some random married woman in a farmhouse. Did he believe this woman was so excited to cheat on her husband that she just invited a group of teenage boys, sight unseen, to her house? Was it going to be some kind of orgy? Were they going to take turns? Did he really think this through? No, of course not. He just went along with his friends. Because when you're a teenager, you don't think these things through. You're caught up in the moment. In your age, in your friend group, you're completely in a bubble. Your hormones are going crazy, Your priorities are completely messed up. It's not that different from what my friends and I were doing the night that Anna Traynor disappeared. Just like my dad's story. When I think back and I try and remember my worldview, it just doesn't make any sense. We were out there for some kind of revenge, and there was a sex and porn element that is super fuzzy and makes me uncomfortable to even think about, let alone talk about into a microphone. It was just like my dad, this adolescent misadventure that if you look back with any perspective, you can't help but question your motivations, your intelligence, and even maybe your moral compass. The difference is, of course, that for my dad, it all worked out. His crazy night in the woods was a joke, and he was fine. They could laugh about it. They even went on to play the same prank on my dad's brother and other friends. But my crazy night in the woods ended with a fire that burned four houses and 100 acres. And after that night, Willow's sister Anna was never seen again. I am actor and filmmaker Ryder Strong. This is the red we, Sam. Before she killed herself, my friend Willow had let me out of a promise to keep a secret about the night her sister Anna disappeared. I'd gone back to my hometown to talk with reporters, police Family and other people from our lives. My friend Chris joined me. He was also in on the promise. But I had barely begun the process when Chris and I discovered that our versions of this promise were pretty different. Why would we be arrested? Because Willow accidentally started the fire. Accidentally started a fire? That is not at all what happened. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm playing with a pinky swear. Turns out Chris was with her. And she'd started the fire intentionally to burn down a barn full of cannabis, which back then would have called pot or marijuana. Or if you're my parents, grass. That's what you called it? Yeah. So I still call it. Yes. I don't know. No, it's grass. Yeah, I feel like growing up, you guys always called it grass or dope. Grass or dope. Or happy plants. I can't know. We call them magic plants. Magic plants. Well, we just call it magic plants for you guys, you little guys, you know. In any event, coming forward to the cops suddenly felt like a bigger deal. I'd already scheduled to sit down with Sheriff Maldonado, the lead investigator from Anna's case. I was set to meet him at his house. Would you be willing to sit down with me? Sure, I can come to you. It's just a couple microphones and a recorder, you know. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I'll try to find what notes I might have. Chris and I took the time to walk the woods behind my parents house. Where we were the night that Anna disappeared. Yeah. Finding out we had different versions of that night, it seemed important to retrace our steps. All right, so the rat hole used to be. Yeah, there it is. You see the bones of it? Yeah. The rat hole was a fort my brother and I made. Well, really, my dad made it and we helped. I probably nailed a couple of boards, but it was every kid's dream come true. Which was a two story building that had no windows or doors, but the only way you could get in was through a trap door underneath. Took me a long time to knock it down too. When did your dad take it down? I actually don't know. I mean, it was after we moved out, probably 10, 15 years ago. I don't remember just. In fact, the parts are still there. I never took them away. I didn't want to do it because when they had the septic redone, they just took all the old septic concrete, threw it down there too. It was this crumbling, moldy mess. But when we were kids, it was the best. We put A carpet inside. We spray painted the walls and it was where we set the stage for our night. Didn't consult us, just took it down. And then, like, what was our plan? It was Halloween, 1995. I was with Chris, our friends Connor, Orion and Willow. We were 15. We didn't have cars, didn't have good flashlights, we didn't have a clue. But we had the rat hole, some rope, a fake dead body, and maybe the worst idea in the world at the time. We thought we were doing the right thing, something noble. We were trying to save Anna's reputation. And the interesting thing about that is I didn't even really know Anna that well. I mean, I was intimidated by Anna. She was older, man, she was the coolest Shiloh knew her a little bit better. I think she just was kind of lost at that time. And I regret looking back on it, my lack of understanding what she was going through and you were in love with her. We all had a massive crush on her. I was not alone, dude. I barely even talked to her. But whatever. I was in love with anything with a pulse and boobs. Okay, off. I wasn't in teen magazines and on television at fall. Anna was going through a rough time. She and Willow grew up in the Tender Hearts, the collective through the woods for me. So they were homeschooled up until high school. And then she wanted to go to the same high school as everyone in Sevastopol, the public school. Annalee at the time. She went from being a commune kid out in the sticks to suddenly having this much more regular all American high school experience. And by all accounts, it didn't go well. You know, I think she, at that time, was going through a lot of stuff that I don't think we could really relate to or understand. You know, my brother tried to go to Annalee his freshman year. He only lasted two weeks after coming off of being homeschooled. Yeah. Walking into that was. Yeah. Awful. Yeah. God, I don't know. I still have nightmares about it. This was a girl who'd never set foot in the classroom. She'd never done a book report, let alone dealt with the kind of social pressure of a typical American high school. You have to remember, this was the 1990s. No one wanted to actually be weird, to actually be different. If you didn't shop at Hot Topic, listen to Tupac and Nirvana, you probably weren't going to be popular. And I know there are a lot of hippie kids everywhere, but that usually meant kids who smoked pot and listened to The Grateful Dead. It did not mean kids who would say, find roadkill, skin it and eat it. Orion remembers that. I remember her actually bringing that to school and it being cooked and, like, people trying it. I think I might have tried a little bit of it, actually. Yeah, I definitely tried something, but I thought it was either possum or squirrel. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But Anna wanted a more normal life. She wanted to be in town. So even though it was rough, she stuck it out. And things did get better for a time. She made friends, for better or worse. She discovered drinking and drugs. And by her junior year, she had a boyfriend, Mick Bowden. He was the ultimate town kid. He got good grades, had money. He had his own car, an Acura Integra. Look, my understanding was that Anna and Mick were a little star crossed. This is Monica Tremblain. She's the local reporter who covered the case originally and was helping me connect the dots. Definitely. It was surprising that they dated it in the first place. I fucking hated that guy, man. Me too. Ooh, Hate it. Mick and Anna were together for a year or so. And after they broke up, Anna got a reputation. She was. Well, now you say sex positive, but that wasn't really a thing. Yeah, there was some. She gave head to some guy in the dark room or a couple guys in the dark room or something. And the fact that she had done that was enough of a story to tell to everybody, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, she had a reputation, being very sexually open, which I remember was unjustified. Well, I mean, it just always annoyed me because it was only because she was a woman. And that whole idea, that concept of somebody being a slut only applies to a woman. And eventually there was a tape. Shiloh had actually seen it. Was it a vhs? No, I think it was on. It was like one of those little tiny DV MiniDV things. This is the infamous yurt party tape. And if you don't know what a yurt is, you've clearly never been on a Ayahuasca retreat or been a teenager in Northern California. They're semi permanent tense. It starts out and everybody's dancing. There's, like, music playing. She was there with a couple guys and it started getting, you know, more like sexy dancing. And I remember, like, she had this, like. Like one piece on. And I remember what I can see in the video that, you know, he's trying to, like, take her shirt off. Like, they started kissing and making out and grinding and. Yeah, and they were all making out in the bed together. It was like yeah, the two guys and her. As you can imagine, like most small towns, if something scandalous went down at a party, everyone knew about it. And somehow, apparently, Mick got a hold of this tape. What's he going to do? Because there was no online he couldn't download. Is he going to make copies of the tape? I guess. Or just show people, hand them out, have a screening? I don't know. Today this would be called revenge porn. But back then it didn't have a name. It was just ruining Anna's life. And Willow wanted us to protect her sister. She wanted us to help. So we got our little troupe together. Okay, but this is where I remember ducking down from the headlights, right? And I had the Louisville Slugger. I had the baseball bat. Wait, we had a bat? Yeah, for pure defense. I know we had fireworks, but not a bat. Definitely. You were on the path. No, no, because I remember me and Connor, we were ducking down. Do you remember there used to be like a huge fern right here. We were behind that. No, no, you were definitely on the path. How much you want to bet? I don't need to. I remember. Call Connor. Connor will back me up on this. No, I'm not going to bet. Because you're scared you're gonna lose the bet. No, let's just bet on him. Okay, fine. Connor lives in England now. He's a professor of sociology. No, Chris is right. Really? Yeah. You were dealing with rigging up the dummy. Bucky. Bucky, yes, that's right. Yeah. Our idea was to get Mick out to the woods and distract him long enough to grab the yurt tape from his car. But in order to do that, and here's where 15 year old logic takes over, we decided to not only lure him out, but also to scared the crap out of him. Because it was Halloween. My family was really big into Halloween. So we threw parties with haunted walks through the woods. And we were the family that did the haunted house at our grade school. We used to make our own masks and creatures and we had a lot of props, including a fake dead body we called Bucky. Yeah, but then we had it on a noose, I think. And then it was like, you know, you could swing it down. Swing. When people walked by, we would drop it in front of them. Right. And that would scare people. Is that. Is that body still up in the pony house? Might be. I think I might have thrown away recently because I just came across some games. So we made our plan to get the yurt tape exactly the way you would plan a Haunted maze. Mick ideally pulls up, gets out of the car, sees the light on in the rat hole. Oh, what's that? I must go over towards it, walk down this path. How did we get even get him out here in the first place? Willow set it up. Yeah, she told Mick to meet him there. Well, do you remember what she told him? No, but I know we put hay bales up. That was to divert Mick from the Tender Hearts driveway. We knew he'd dead end by the rat hole where Willow was waiting. So she gets him in the rat hole and she lights off. The M80s, M60s, M60s were loud, completely illegal fireworks someone had procured from Chinatown. So we would go into Chinatown and we would stock up on firecrackers of different sizes and power. There was the M60s and the M80s, and these were like the big daddies, right? These are the ones that would make a really big boom. Basically, cherry bombs. Pop, pop. Douchebag. Mick pees his pants. Okay, hopefully comes back down this path where you and Orion have Bucky. Once Mick came back out of the rat hole, Orion and I would drop Bucky, scaring the crap out of him and buying more time for Connor and Chris to rifle through his car and hopefully find the tape. The tape? The yurt tape. That was the plan. That's not what happened. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. To keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage. But it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. You're a predator, Michael Levengood. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions. To be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, Body Bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network. I Heart. Open your free iHeart app and search Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. It's an all out manhunt for John Ajay. Every search and rescue team in LA county has been called in to help. Within days, tips started flooding into the sheriff's department. The rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of. Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department? A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance? I wouldn't do it alone. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As much as our friend Connor helped us remember some things, I wish we hadn't called him because after we talked, Chris refused to meet Sheriff Maldonado with me. Do you know the actual, like legal technicalities? Well, I've looked up as much as I can. I asked ChatGPT, but you know, look, we. We didn't start the fire. Wait, so you're planning to sit down with a sheriff? He's a retired sheriff. Okay, whatever. An. An officer of the law. Yeah, and tell him that you lied to him 30 years ago. Yeah, I mean, I. I don't think we even committed a crime. I'm still gonna talk to him. There's zero chance that this Isn't beyond the statute of limit. Great. But I'm out. I'm not gonna. Come on, man. Just come with me. We just tell him the truth. We've already made progress. Oh my gosh. The. The moldy old pager the dog dug up and your parents kept in a garage. It's something. It is something. But I'm not going. Chris was talking about a pager we had found. After we walked the property, Chris and I went through some of the stuff in my parents garage. I swear my parents haven't thrown anything away for 50 years. What is this creepy box of dirty children's shoes? This is Cookie's collection. We had a golden retriever named Cookie. She's somewhat of a legend. According to family lore, the only thing that Cookie ever did wrong was she would steal kids shoes and bury them. You guys would take your shoes off to get on the trampoline. And after having a lot of fun coming back and you don't have your shoes or you're missing one. And many a kid went home without a shoe. I don't know how many years later you finally followed her. It was while they were still. Yeah, follows. Here she's going. She walked all the way down. She went all the way down to the meadow and had dug. Had she dug up. Buried them? Old Jordan or a British. Nothing that good. La gear. Wait, is this a pager? It was green. Of course it didn't turn on. Look. Oh, look at that. Is that yours? No. I never had a colored one. A pager of color. Not a colored pager, Karen. So. I mean, that could be anybody's. I know it's kind of crazy just finding a pager when we know Anna had one out here. I was so excited by the prospect of finding a clue that I was making this random object fit the story. But regardless, it was a cool relic of the time. It's bigger than I remember them being. Wow, look at that. I hadn't seen a pager in 30 years, let alone held one. I told Chris he didn't have to come with me and that I wouldn't say his name. Hi. Sheriff Maldonado. Hey. Yeah, come on in. Hi. He lives in Katati, about 35 minutes away. Is it. Is it Sheriff Still? I don't know if it's one of those. Those titles like president or. Yeah, it's Sheriff's. Maldonado is in his 70s, but he looks younger. We took a seat at his dining room table while his two cats, both of them long haired and silver, roamed around us. I felt like I had a lot to fill him in on. Who I was, what I was doing, why. But then I also had some more basic questions. Do you remember me at all? Kind of just remember you kids in general. You know, we knew one of you was an actor. You were part of the younger crowd, I think the sister. Right. Yeah. Willow. And there was something. Because it was Halloween. It was a scarecrow. Yeah. We had this dead. Yes. It's a whole. Yeah, exactly. That was us. I actually can't remember what I told the Sheriff's department back in 1995. And I wasn't sure what Mick told him at the time. With you younger guys, all that seemed like what Hightower. My old partner, Fred Hightower, liked to call Tom Shanagans. What's that? Like shenanigans? Yeah, but Fred, he wasn't. He was. It's not a stutterer. It's what he. He would mix the words up. He'd blend them together, you know, like pursuitable. He said suspectful was a classic. Fred was trying for tomfoolery and shenanigans, but, you know, just never came out right. A lot of our job, in a situation like this with juveniles, a lot of the job is pulling out the kids stuff. It didn't feel like that to us at the time. It felt like life or death. I remember hearing screams from the car. We never considered that Mick might have a friend with him. So when his Acura pulled in, Travis Washman was with him. And while Mick did get out and walked to the rat hole, Travis waited in the car. Then Chris ran at him. He was trying to get him out. Oh, the dude kicked me. Mick kicked me hard. I remember actually being really scared, thinking these older guys were gonna beat us up or kill us if they got us. Pure chaos and mayhem. I was with Orion. And who was. Someone was dressed as a mime. Orion and me, we were both mimes. Part of the confusion was the costume factor. Before we enacted this whole plan, we'd gotten dressed up in costume and walked around downtown Sevastopol. Connor's costume was an easy joke. He said he was gonna be the scariest thing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was it? A lawyer? That's right. So he just wore, like, a suit and tie. Right, right, right. Ryan and I cobbled together some makeup and hair gel that my parents had. We had white faces and Mohawks. We called ourselves psycho mimes. And you were like, what, the Phantom of the Opera thing? Phantom of the coffee Choppera. I had A. I had a Starbucks barista. That green apron. And then I had a phantom mask. I feel you're judging eyes. Yeah, I'm not quite getting. Starbucks was a new, exciting thing. It was the go go 90s. We. We all had more hair, and it was fun. Willow wore the same thing she always did. A pair of fairy wings. Right, because she was a nymph. No, a dryad. Is there a difference? Yeah, dryads are tree spirits or river spirits. That is next level D and D. Whatever she had make. Regardless, Willow was a flying pixie thing with wings. And yes, I'm aware that the one girl in our group of friends, the muse of this podcast with a fantasy sounding name, was quite literally dressed as a manic pixie dream girl. But it's the truth. She wore wings even later in life. It was like her go to. So in costume, in the dark, we were scattered, separated in the woods. No light. Travis and Mick looking for us. Willow and I ended up in that barn at the Tender Hearts property. When I talked to Maldonado, I relayed Chris's story as if it was my own. There was weed in the barn. I mean, this wasn't just a shed, my friend. This was a barn filled with weed. And it was hanging. Yeah, they were drying it out. Oh, Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So Willow, like, gets to her feet and she's, like, freaking out, but she's not crying. She's hyperventilating. She's breathing in and out, trying to. To almost catch her breath, like she was having a panic attack or something. Probably was. And she started gathering hay into a pile. And I'm like, willa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Willow. Willow. Willow, what are you doing? Stop. Calm down. Calm down. Let's get out of here. And she pulls out her lighter that we had for the fireworks. Whoosh. Immediately, the thing goes up. And then seconds later, all of the weeds is up in flames, and we get the get the hell out of there. Because we're lucky to not burn to death. But we never told you, any of you, any of that. We. At the time, we just said that we were at my friend's house and we watched the shining and we went to bed. So I'm hoping that some of this. Any of this might be helpful, you know, at least if I'm coming forward, at least then you'll know you'll have part of the truth. Are you expecting applause? No. I mean, I'm. I'm just trying to. Because I'm. I'm not sure what you. I'm not sure. What you want to do here? If this is about you getting something off your chest or, I don't know, honoring your dead girlfriend, she wasn't my goal. If you really want to get into this. If you want to really get into this thing, then you got to do it right. Gotta call Laughlin. Grace Loughlin is the current Sonoma County Sheriff. You get her on board, you get her to sign off, then we're really talking here. Admitting I lied to the current sheriff. Felt like a bigger risk. I spent over a year on Anna Trainor. Interviews, photos. We had clothing. Her mom had letters, books. You're gonna want to see all that. All of it. If you want to move past, you want to get beyond the Tom Shanagans, then let's go. But you gotta talk to Lachlan. Yeah, well, I guess I'm. I guess my question is, could I be charged with a crime? You gotta talk to Lachlan. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage. But it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. You're a predator. Michael Levengood. Listen to Betrayal, Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're gonna become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions. To be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Nlp, AKA Neuro Linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind Game of all NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. It's an all out manhunt for John Awjay. Every search and rescue team in LA county has been called in to help. Within days, tips started flooding into the sheriff's department. The rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of. Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover up in Inside the nation's largest sheriff's department? A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance? I wouldn't do it alone. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, did you even know about the yurt tape? After I talked to Maldonado, I called Monica to catch up. No. I mean, I knew there were rumors about Anna. I knew about a mixtape. A mixtape? A haunted tape. This was over at Annalee and there was this mixtape with songs. But then the story was it was a ghost tape and her voice beyond the grave. I never heard about that. All right, but let's just for a sec. If. If Mick did have video, if he was trying to blackmail Anna, or wait, writer, do you want it to be him? No. Okay. They looked at Mick. He had somebody with him every step of the way. The party, driving Travis home. He was looking for Anna. But he dropped Travis off at his house. He got the Patrona. He drove, tried to pick her up from Juniper street payphone, and she never showed. And the fire started. Do you. Do you think, like really, really think that Mick could have killed her? It's a stretch, I guess, but like, isn't it a stretch to think anyone could kill anyone? Monica asked me if I wanted it to be Mick. And I realized I kind of do. Oh, me too. Even if Mick managed to meet up with Anna, then murder her in 20 minutes, could he have gotten rid of the body and driven her car all the way to sfo? Not without help. Right. Not without help. And we know he was with for the rest of the night. Out of respect for privacy and legal reasons, we've had to edit one of the names that came up in some interviews. Really? Look, the only time that it didn't make sense was the time that he was with us. So if anything, you just helped to clear his name. I never heard Mick drive away, so I stayed alone in the woods for a while. I mean, maybe an hour. It felt like forever. And finally I heard Orion calling out and we found each other. And then we found Willow on the road. How did you get to condemn Drake's? We walked. That's like four. Yeah, four miles. Maybe. Maybe even five. Yeah. And Chris and I were on the road too. Oh, really? You guys? I thought you guys were still in the woods. No, we met back up with you guys, walked back and we watched sunrise at Connors. We did? Yeah. We heard sirens and we hid in the bushes whenever a car went by. We knew there might still be a fire going, but we had no idea how big it was. I do remember that. That's where we stopped. Stopped and watched the sunrise come up. And we were just. I just. The. The. We were so emotionally charged. It was like we were doing amphetamines. We basically had that level of sort of insane energy. And then there was just this pause on the side of the road after an intense night like that. It's just kind of like, you know, I'll sing this song and it kind of like lightens the mood a little bit, you know? Totally. Yeah. A cool part about being friends with Orion is that whenever we hike and we've gone on backpacking trips together since we were 10 years old. He SINGS yeah. Shallow Days was a rare counting crow song off of a demo tape. I think it also, like, because it was like this deep cut, you know, it was like it wasn't officially released, so it felt like sort of a secret that only we knew, you know, like, it was like. It was kind of like it was our song. And then it's also, I guess, about a small town in the vein of, like, Round Here. And a lot of this where is about, like a girl in a small town. And it feels like it could be about Sebastopol. It does, right? Yeah, totally. All right. Could you sing It. The whole thing? Yeah, for the party podcast. Yeah. Like you're gonna put this on. Iheartradio. Oh, my God. It's gonna be good. It just has to be you. Mary Jane says it's all right she's just around the corner from the main line and any day now it's all right she's standing on the precipice of big time Willow didn't talk almost the whole time until she stopped and made us all promise to stick to the same story. It was cold. I remember shivering. And the sun took forever to come up, but it was beautiful. For all the insanity of that night, it's. It's weirdly a positive memory. Oh. Falling Falling down Foreign. This is Lachlan. Yeah, hi, Sheriff Laughlin. This is Ryder Strong. I got in touch with Grace Laughlin. You know, since my goal is to, like, document this entire process from start to finish, I. I'm actually recording this call right now, which I hope is okay, and I'm happy to stop if you. No, no, no, no. You know what? I want you. I want you to record it. I want. Actually, I want you to be sure to include this in your podcast. Okay? Yeah. Okay. The Trainer case was well before my time, but, you know, I looked into it, spoke with Sheriff Maldonado, and he let me know that you had information. Right, right, right, right. And now you're coming into this with microphones and a whole new story, like some night on a horse. Oh, no, I don't. I don't think I'm gonna. Actually. I'm just trying to. But the thing is, you are on record. You made false statements. That's documented in 1995. That's obstruction of justice. That can warrant charges. Lucky for you. Frankly, lucky for me, because I don't want the hassle. It's well past the statute of limitations. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean. Okay. And most. Most importantly, this is. There's what we call good faith mitigation. So you come clean now. You come forward. No bullshit, no lying. And you want to help. That goes a long way. So if you. If you want, I can. I'll. I'll take a look, see what I can pull from this file. Is there something you want in particular? All of it. Of course. That was my real answer. I wanted to see all the evidence, but I knew I should be specific, precise. If I was ever going to get the sheriff's department on my side, I had to start slow. Maldonado and Monica had changed my perspective. Weed isn't news. Even with a Fire that big, we could. We could smell it. But knowing it was a sister. When I hear that now, all I can think about is that she was protecting her. Maybe she was protecting her parents, or whatever you want to call them when she keeps that a secret. She's protecting her mom and Elric. No, I think. I mean, I think she was protecting us. Or protecting herself. What, for lining a bunch of weed on fire? What's worse, you're. Your sister has gone missing and you're a 15 year old kid who lit a barn on fire. You worried about that? No. You're worried about your mom, who's been out here in the woods worshiping trees, singing the demons and dancing in circles. Well, I don't think that's what they were doing. You know what I mean? Look, we knew they weren't all kumbaya butterflies out there. How? It went back for years. But they had an alibi. I mean, they were for that night. They were at the seance. That's what we thought too, at first. Yeah. I mean, God, I'd love to. Maldonado said that there were. There were that there are transcripts in the file of his interviews with Elric Light and Mick Bowden. Y. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I'll take a look, see if this is easy. Thank you. Thank you so much. I. I really do. Nostalgia is such a trap. It's so powerful. It can make your eyes well up just from holding a pager. It can make songs from your teens sound better. The more nostalgia draws you in, the more it just warps your perception of reality. Can replace reality. Hey, how's it going? That night I called my wife Alex back in la. Well, I'm definitely not very good at this. Kind of annoying everybody, like, you know, I'm just. I'm so attached to this thing. This night. Were you? When I went into this, I knew I needed to stop thinking like a 15 year old. But I also need to stop thinking like a 45 year old high on nostalgia, as my wife put it. Right, so you don't want your midlife crisis to be a podcast? No, exactly. Exactly. Not every little thing from back then has big important meaning. Even if I have big important feelings, sometimes kid stuff is just kid stuff. I needed to come at this as objectively as possible. I needed to cut off nostalgia, let go of expectations, my ego, and try and learn as much as I could. And for now, that meant ignoring my personal feelings for someone like Mick, even Willow. And just listening to someone like Maldonado. Yeah, it was only A few days before their tender hearts alibi fell apart. Came crashing all the way down. What are you saying, that they weren't at the sounds? No, not all of them. We gotta get you up to speed, man. We gotta get you up to speed. If some or all of the tender hearts had lied, if their alibi had come crashing down, this was actually exactly what I wanted to hear. Because it meant that staying with this project, staying with Anna's case, was finally going to move beyond me, my Tom Shanagans and my nostalgia. It meant it was time to confront one of the most intriguing and mysterious aspects of Anna and Willow's life. It was time for me to look into the tender hearts. The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by Ryder Strong. Sound engineering, engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkus. Produced by Tess Bartholomew. Executive producers at iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick Associate Bo Milkus. Original score by Kyle Morton. If you're enjoying the show, please remember to leave a review and rating. Thanks for listening. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no fluff. We do a deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they gonna do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadow, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, Roald Dahl, he thought of Willy Wonka and the bfg. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, the Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What you probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Listen to the Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.