Lost Girls

by Caitlin Rother

  Gardner became defensive. “I am not talking to you about anything else but Chelsea’s case,” he said.

  “I thought I heard you say, ‘They are going to find the other body,’” Epley said.

  “I said they would find my DNA all over the body,” Gardner said, not the other body.

  “I don’t know if you were involved in this other one or not,” Popkins said, “but if you are, the best time to tell us would be now, because giving the authorities where the body is located may be our best chance in this case.”

  After a few minutes of reasoning with Gardner, who looked pained and uncomfortable, Gardner finally came out with it. “All right, I did it. I can’t tell you where she is, but I will show you.” Asked if the body was in San Diego County, Gardner said yes, in the northernmost part. But again, Gardner said smugly, he would have to show the authorities, because they would never find her on their own.

  As Popkins asked Gardner if he was lying, and Gardner assured them he was telling the truth, Epley felt sick to his stomach.

  “They told me to keep my mouth shut and not talk to anybody,” Gardner recalled later.

  Michael Popkins wasted no time in getting this news into the right hands. He immediately got in touch with his boss, Public Defender Henry Coker, who arranged a meeting with District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis for that afternoon.

  “I didn’t want to wait,” Popkins said. “I didn’t know where the body was.”

  He and Epley didn’t want to run into the same problem as the defense team that had represented David Westerfield. Those attorneys had been in the process of negotiating a deal—a guilty plea and the location of seven-year-old Danielle van Dam’s body in exchange for a sentence of life without parole—when a group of searchers found the girl’s remains on their own. Westerfield, the van Dams’ next-door neighbor, was convicted of killing Danielle after abducting her from her bedroom in Sabre Springs, a community near Poway.

  Within hours of their meeting with Gardner, Popkins and Epley were in Dumanis’s office with Coker and his chief deputy, Randy Mize, meeting with Dumanis and her second in charge, Assistant District Attorney Jesse Rodriguez.

  The DA’s office wasn’t told the specific purpose of the meeting, but Dumanis had an inkling. Sure enough, the public defender’s office offered to have Gardner show investigators where Amber’s body was buried in a “free trip” to the grave site. In exchange, they asked for transactional immunity for Gardner, meaning that the DA’s office could use any evidence found at the site in its case against him, but not the fact that he had revealed the location of Amber’s body. In other words, the DA had to find some other way to link him to the teenager’s murder.

  No plea deal was requested or offered, but Popkins made his desired outcome clear. “It will ultimately be our hope to settle the case for life without parole,” he told Dumanis. Everyone in the room agreed that they needed to keep the matter confidential.

  If it didn’t go as they hoped, Popkins and Epley would have to brace for the challenge of facing an unprecedented public backlash for defending an alleged rapist-killer of two beloved teenagers, a surely stressful endeavor in and of itself. Not to mention that the entire community—or the entire nation, if the trial were televised on cable—would be watching and second-guessing their every move.

  But Dumanis wasn’t even sure there was a body, and, honestly, neither was Popkins or Epley.

  Chapter 28

  Bonnie Dumanis called Sheriff Gore as soon as her meeting with the defense attorneys was over. “I need to see you right away,” she said.

  Driving from opposite directions, they met at The Gathering, a family restaurant in Gore’s neighborhood of Mission Hills, where the DA quietly recounted the details of the meeting. Gore was hopeful that Gardner’s claim was legit so they could close the case, but he was also surprised and somewhat skeptical. Was this just a wild-goose chase? Was Gardner just trying to weasel a trip to the outside so he could be a puppet master and feel like he was in control of the investigators?

  Gore and Dumanis discussed the complex security issues of sneaking such a high-profile prisoner out of the jail, which is down the block from City Hall and right next door to several courthouses, without the media finding out. He decided that he and his undersheriff would have to sit down with homicide lieutenant Brugos, and tell him to come up with a plan to deal with these concerns. It was crucial that only a very trusted few knew about this “free trip.”

  That night, the EPD got a call from a mother of two elementary school–age girls who thought they’d seen a dead body in the Kit Carson Park creek the previous May.

  On May 9, 2009, the girls were playing near the creek and thought they saw a black plastic bag partially covering a human forehead, with some dark hair poking out. They ran and told their mom, but she shrugged it off, thinking it was probably just a childhood fantasy or a game they were playing.

  Ten months later, the family was watching the news about Chelsea King, and the mother cautioned her daughters to be careful and not to talk to strangers, or something like this could happen to them.

  “Mommy, you mean just like the dead body we saw last year in the park?” the kids asked.

  “What dead body?” she replied.

  After the children reminded their mother of the body they thought they’d seen in the creek, she realized that perhaps there might be a connection between the Chelsea and Amber cases, and perhaps her daughters hadn’t been fantasizing at all.

  EPD lieutenant Bob Benton and his homicide team met the family at the park that evening so the mother could show them exactly where the kids had been playing. But by this point, the creek in that area had dried out and was overgrown with deep-rooted reeds that were at least ten feet tall.

  Benton called sheriff’s sergeant Don Parker to fill him in on the situation. “We’re going to probably need you at Kit Carson Park,” he said. But it was dark by then, so the EPD cordoned off the lawn area of the park to keep the looky-loos out overnight, and Benton met Parker there early the next morning. Parker said his searchers were still scouring the Lake Hodges area for evidence in the Chelsea King case, but he would return to Kit Carson with his team to set up a mobile command unit a few hours later, after they’d finished in RB.

  Parker was thinking that even if the girls had seen Amber’s body in the creek a year earlier, it would be difficult to find any remains now. The river had risen and swept through the area since then, churning things up and carrying them to who knows where. The EPD brought in city workers with hedge trimmers to trim down the reeds, as well as a couple of boats for the search in which the FBI’s Evidence Response Team and sheriff’s dive teams also assisted.

  “At this point, we weren’t looking for a body. We were looking for bones,” Parker said. “It was a big operation, and it wasn’t exactly warm water.”

  The effort was treacherous. “Searchers in wet suits or regular uniforms were in the water, digging,” he said. “They had a hell of a time searching through this area,” trudging through murky, muddy water filled with those annoying reeds.

  At noon on Friday, sheriff’s sergeant Dave Brown was sitting at his desk when the phone rang. It was Dennis Brugos, his lieutenant.

  “I want you to grab your team, come up here right now and don’t tell anyone what you’re doing,” Brugos said.

  Brown didn’t know exactly what to make of this secretive order, but it sounded big. He was excited, but at the same time, he felt a potential disappointment coming on. After working two weeks without a breather on the Gardner case, he’d been hoping for some semblance of a life because he was supposed to celebrate his daughter’s fourteenth birthday at a party after work that night. Work was often intense, but the drama in this case had been going for a solid week now.

  “Is this going to screw up my daughter’s birthday?” Brown asked.

  “Yup.”

  Brown grabbed his detectives and trooped upstairs to Undersheriff Jim Cook’s office, where Gore and
Cook proceeded to explain that Gardner’s attorney Michael Popkins was going to meet them in front of the jail, where they would covertly pick up John Gardner.

  “He’s going to take you to where he disposed of Amber’s body,” Gore said.

  Gore and Cook explained the rules: Popkins was coming along for the ride, during which the rules were “free talk,” meaning they couldn’t ask any questions about the case or the crime or record any of the conversation on tape or in writing, but they could certainly engage with Gardner if he chose to tell them details that might prove helpful.

  “Where are we going?” Brown asked.

  “You’ll find that out, once you meet him,” Gore said. Wherever they were going, Brown had to wonder if they would find more than just Amber’s remains as, once again, his well-oiled team went into action and crafted a plan. They didn’t know where Gardner would take them, whether he had concocted this offer as a ruse to spend some time out of jail, whether he might try to commit suicide by cop, or whether he might try to jump them to attempt an escape. Gardner was a big guy, and they were convinced he was a killer, which this announcement seemed to confirm. One of the first calls Brown made was to Sergeant Brad Butterfield, the sheriff’s SWAT team supervisor.

  The plan was to coordinate a crew with a half-dozen unmarked Expedition SUVs, carrying as many of the twenty SWAT guys who could make the trip, rifles ready and waiting at various off-ramps on freeways around the downtown jail. Once Gardner clued them into their destination, Detective Pat O’Brien would discreetly text Sergeant Roy Frank in the chase car—an unmarked SUV also carrying Lieutenant Brugos and Sergeant Dave Martinez as Brown’s relief. Frank would then call Butterfield, who would be traveling in a different car, and whose cell phone had an encrypted frequency. Butterfield would then communicate with his guys in the Expeditions so they could catch up to Brown’s vehicle.

  Until the SWAT cars could catch up, however, Brown would have to drive slowly in an unmarked Ford Taurus he chose for its tinted windows. He wasn’t taking any chances with Gardner—he wanted some backup protection. The chase car and SWAT caravan would follow Brown in the Taurus to the location of the body, in case Gardner had friends waiting to ambush them, slam into their car and T-bone them somewhere.

  They decided to put Popkins next to Brown in front, with Detectives O’Brien and Palmer in the back flanking Gardner, shoulders touching so they could anticipate any movement and make Gardner feel boxed in. With all of them past age forty, and not in the best physical shape of their lives, they wanted to be ready for anything.

  “If he head butts you, you shoot him, but in the belly, not in the back,” Brown directed Palmer. “If he gets out alive, you won’t be.”

  “If anything happens, I’ll act with extreme prejudice,” Mark Palmer joked, playing off a phrase from the movie Apocalypse Now.

  As planned, in front of the jail that afternoon, Dave Brown picked up Michael Popkins, who was dressed in his usual fashionable suit and tie. They drove through a locked gate into the booking area, where prisoners were normally dropped off, and they were now going to pick up John Gardner.

  Inside, the area was emptied of all employees while the jail captain and two deputies brought Gardner down in leg irons and waist chains from his single cell, making sure that no other prisoners or employees saw or heard him go.

  “We were trying to be as discreet as possible,” Mark Palmer said.

  After they put Gardner into the backseat, Brown stood outside with Popkins to explain the inherent dangers of taking the inmate on a field trip, letting Popkins know about the safety measures and seating arrangements. He hoped Popkins would let them do their job on the way up—if Gardner tried to escape or jump them—by getting down on the passenger-side floor and making himself as small as possible.

  “The guy was a great lawyer, good dude,” Brown said later, “but you could see this was not how he thought he was going to spend his day.”

  Even though the windows were tinted, Popkins was still concerned that a reporter would see them and expose their clandestine trip to the court of public opinion, jeopardizing any potential plea deal.

  “We’re not just going for a ride. Whereabouts are we going? Are we heading north?” Brown asked Gardner, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah,” Gardner said.

  Gardner was quite talkative, explaining to Palmer how to turn off the ringer on his cell phone while he was trying to read a text without Gardner noticing. But mostly, they chatted about things they were passing on the way, buddying up to Gardner so he wouldn’t change his mind.

  “John was one of those guys who knew a little about a lot, so he could get you caught up in a conversation,” Palmer said later. “You could see where he could easily charm or fool somebody.”

  In fact, he was so talkative that Popkins had to tell him to be quiet at one point. “One of the reasons he wanted to talk was because he didn’t want to be portrayed as a monster,” Palmer said.

  O’Brien was able to tell Brown in code that one SWAT car would be waiting on Interstate 15 near sheriff’s headquarters at the Balboa Avenue exit, so Brown headed that way, even though it wasn’t the shortest route. He didn’t know where the other SWAT cars were going to be, but he figured they were probably along Interstates 15 and 5, two freeways that run parallel north and south, inland and along the coast. Knowing it would take some time for the other SWAT vehicles to catch up to theirs, he drove slowly, heading east on Interstate 8 to the I-15 north.

  Gardner noticed something was up. “This isn’t the shortest way,” he remarked.

  Popkins, who wanted to stay alive as much as the detectives, tried to back them up. “John, just let them do what they’re doing,” he said.

  Palmer and O’Brien, who was a former SWAT deputy and not a very emotional guy, tried to dispel Gardner’s curiosity by joking around with him.

  “He always drives slow,” Palmer said. “He’s like an old man.”

  As they drove up the I-15 past Lake Hodges, where Chelsea’s body was found, Gardner started to cry. The detectives pretended to be sympathetic, doing whatever it took to keep him in a somewhat stable, noncombative mood.

  “It’s okay,” Palmer said.

  Continuing north, Gardner directed them to Exit 46 for Pala Road and State Route 76. From there, they headed east, past the stands of pepper, oak and sycamore trees that line the two-lane Pala Road, past the reservoir, the horse stables and the flower-growing operation. About five miles in, they entered Pala Indian tribal land and Gardner told them to turn left at the stoplight across from the Pala Casino at Pala Mission Road, making a left at Pala Temecula Road. They headed north, past the houses where only tribal members could live and collect earnings from the casino. This was familiar territory for the detectives, who had spent an entire month processing a crime scene there only six months earlier.

  As they approached the Riverside County line, Popkins worried the case might end up falling out of his jurisdiction, which would make forging his potential deal that much more complicated.

  Meanwhile, Brown was thinking that the drive was getting a little surreal. They were driving in the direction of his house and his own fourteen-year-old daughter. It was her fourteenth birthday, the same age that Amber was when she went missing, and there they were, presumably going to find her remains after a long year that her parents had been desperately searching for her.

  But Brown wasn’t worried he’d lose the case to Riverside County. This was his team’s case, and they’d been working it for more than a week. No other sheriff’s department was going to take it from him without a fight. Besides, Gardner told them as much. He said that as soon as he’d seen the sign WELCOME TO RIVERSIDE COUNTY, he’d made a U-turn and headed back the other way. If he had continued on, there were houses. People. And that was no good for burying a body.

  Looking for a familiar landmark, Gardner said, “I believe it was an access or utility road.”

  They drove a little farther, u
ntil they came to the right road, marked at the foot by an oak tree with a massive trunk. The dirt road went up a steep hill, which was cordoned off with a metal gate, but it turned out to be unlocked. Driving up the first part of the road was tough, but the rest of the way was so slippery that Brown had to stop at a turnout and drive the rest of the way in one of the SUVs that could make the grade. He drove up a short way to an even more remote area where it flattened out. To the left was a dirt berm, about three or four feet high, which Gardner said had been dumped since he’d been there last.

  They all got out of the car, climbed over the berm, and walked along a path that was lined with brush and strewn with debris. They continued a short way as the path curved around to the left, where they came across a rusty, abandoned car that Gardner recognized. From the debris lying around, the place looked as if people came there to use drugs, drink and have sex. They later learned that the property was owned by a water district that had piled the berm there to try to prevent people from driving their trucks up the path and dumping more big items.

  The view was spectacular—surrounded by mountains and only the faintest sound of cars in the distance. Gardner had told them during his post-arrest interview that after growing up in the mountains near Big Bear, he liked to come to places like this, with that open feeling of natural wilderness for miles around.

  He told the detectives that he hadn’t aimed to bring Amber here specifically. He’d just been driving along and said, “Oh, here’s a spot.”

  “There are no houses, no lights, no electricity, no cameras. Nobody walks there, nobody jogs there,” Brown said later. “It was the perfect place to bury a body.”

  Other serial killers apparently had thought so. Several others had buried their victims in this same valley over the years, including seven-year-old victim Leticia Hernandez, whose skull was found near there fifteen months after she’d gone missing in 1989. The bodies of four women were also discovered there during an investigation into forty-five murders, many of them prostitutes, during the 1980s.