Transcript
A (0:00)
Hey, everyone, it's Adam Rittenberg and Kyle Bonagora, hosts of the Unforgotten Season three, Finding Dolores Wolf. And we're here to recap episode five, Catch and Release, which dropped on Monday. You know, Kyle, in this episode, we very much return to the case and focus on the year 1985, which was a really significant year, six years after the disappearance, or I guess five and a half years after the disappearance of Dolores Wolf from her home in Woodland, California. And, you know, the year begins with a major development in the case, which is the arrest of Carl Wolf following pressure from Dolores family, the Rochas. And the question then becomes, is he going to remain behind bars? And ultimately, is he going to be convicted? Because as we've sort of established in the podcast, there wasn't much doubt among the district attorney, obviously her family, the police, Ron Heileman, that Carl was responsible, but could they get a conviction? And this episode goes through all the different legal maneuverings and different hearings throughout the year 1985, ending with the decision at the end of that year that regardless of whether Karl Wolf was guilty or innocent, he was going to walk free because his right to a speedy trial had been denied. And that's really the conflict we get into in this episode. And we spoke to Rick Gilbert, the original district attorney, about this and his conflict over whether to arrest Carl earlier and would they have enough to convict him. And they only had one shot, and then ultimately that decision to wait so long ends up costing them. What were your biggest takeaways? Just from this episode and talking with Rick and some of the others who were involved in what was a pretty dramatic year in the courtroom. Yeah.
B (1:52)
So I think it was really informative that we discussed it with Rick because he was the DA when Dolores went missing and was the man who ultimately made the decision not to file charges initially or in the first couple years, with the benefit of hindsight, I think he told us that he would have filed charges. Right. Because it was dismissed only because of the delay and the idea that Carl Wolf's right to a speedy trial was violated. So it does make you wonder, okay, if this case had been brought forth earlier with a DA that was very firm in seeking a conviction, how would it have played out differently? Obviously, there wouldn't have been a body, and you still have those challenges that you would have had to overcome, but you'll never know. And I think there's some regret there for Gilbert. There's certainly a lot of anger still towards him from the family because he didn't move forward. But I also think about just the job that Van Court did in those preliminary hearings, the job he did trying to argue the case on behalf of the state, on behalf of Doris family. And it never really felt like there was the type of dedication you needed to winning a case like this. It was going to be a tough case. We all outlined all of that and the fact that he admitted as much that he was complimenting the defense attorney, that he didn't want to strain his credibility. He was going talking about in the press that it was going to be a tough case to win. Like all of those things show a man that was not ready for a fight. And if you don't have a DA who's ready for a fight, it's a hard time. You're going to have a hard time getting a win. And so I know that that's something that's sits with the family is very disappointing and something that's almost hard to believe that you didn't have the support for someone whose job it was to prosecute the case.