# 7. Love or Money | Lost Hills

An episode of [Examined: The Backfire Effect](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1549249596), 20 Dec 2021, 33 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/pdrl.fm/e27c90/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/31bb1c28-0fb5-4627-b8a7-ae32006cd7c1/e97a5fc0-bbfe-482c-b36f-ae32006e664b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=093755db-b947-43f4-a067-ae32006cd7cf

After Fred’s arrest, detectives start looking into his finances. How does a civilian employee of the Navy afford a beachfront home, on a gated road in Malibu, and a brand-new $150K sailboat? Also, they learn that the Roehlers owned large insurance policies. Could that be the motive the cops are looking for? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. A week after his arrest, in early April 1981,
[0:36] Speaker 1: Fred took a polygraph exam. Surprisingly, it wasn't ordered by
[0:40] Speaker 1: law enforcement. It was ordered by Fred's defense team. Polygraph
[0:44] Speaker 1: tests are notoriously unreliable. But Fred's lawyers were hoping that
[0:49] Speaker 1: a successful polygraph would help prove his innocence. There was
[0:54] Speaker 1: a lot to go over. Fred had entered a plea
[0:56] Speaker 1: of not guilty. But the second autopsy showed trauma to
[1:00] Speaker 1: Verna and Doug. Bruises and marks that seemed to bolster
[1:04] Speaker 1: the cops' working theory. That Fred had killed them.
[1:08] Speaker 2: Violently.
[1:10] Speaker 1: The polygraph was meant to bring clarity. It was a
[1:13] Speaker 1: pass-fail test. Fred was either a liar, or he wasn't.
[1:20] Speaker 2: If you didn't have any connection with their death, other
[1:25] Speaker 2: than accidental, then believe me, you'll pass upon death.
[1:29] Speaker 1: This is the polygraph examiner explaining the process to Fred.
[1:33] Speaker 3: I have no idea if you're going to be lying
[1:35] Speaker 3: to me.
[1:36] Speaker 2: Or telling me the truth.
[1:37] Speaker 4: But after we get into this for a couple hours,
[1:39] Speaker 4: you're going to.
[1:39] Speaker 5: Find out I can tell when you lied.
[1:49] Speaker 1: After the examiner had established Fred's baseline, how he reacted
[1:53] Speaker 1: to questions of various kinds, he started asking him about Verna, Doug,
[1:58] Speaker 1: and what happened on January 2, 1981, the day they drowned.
[2:04] Speaker 5: Did Verna have on one jacket?
[2:06] Speaker 2: Did you have on one?
[2:07] Speaker 6: No.
[2:08] Speaker 7: Because I understand she's a pretty good swimmer, huh?
[2:10] Speaker 5: No, that's a bunch of bullshit. That's a bunch of bullshit?
[2:12] Speaker 8: How about Doug?
[2:13] Speaker 2: The only time.
[2:14] Speaker 5: That Vern has been swimming since we bought the boat
[2:17] Speaker 5: and bought our house in Malibu, I think when we
[2:20] Speaker 5: went to my parents' house, she went in the pool,
[2:23] Speaker 5: but she was really not a good swimmer.
[2:25] Speaker 2: How'd you get along with her?
[2:29] Speaker 9: Was everything okay in the bedroom?
[2:32] Speaker 8: Was everything okay socially?
[2:34] Speaker 5: Actually, everything was terrific in the bedroom.
[2:37] Speaker 2: Okay.
[2:38] Speaker 5: How about between the three of you, Doug.
[2:41] Speaker 10: Yourself, and Verna?
[2:43] Speaker 5: What was your relationship like? Good, bad, or indifferent? I
[2:50] Speaker 5: would say it would be good with a qualification.
[2:53] Speaker 1: The qualification was that they disagreed about how to handle Doug.
[2:57] Speaker 10: If there were going to.
[2:58] Speaker 5: Be points of concern between Verna and I about the children,
[3:02] Speaker 5: that's where.
[3:03] Speaker 2: It normally came from.
[3:05] Speaker 1: The examiner flipped the tape over to the other side,
[3:08] Speaker 1: then continued asking Fred about the day of the drownings.
[3:11] Speaker 9: Fred had started getting emotional. Did you think if you
[3:42] Speaker 9: stopped you would have died?
[3:42] Speaker 2: I just knew that I was wearing down.
[3:51] Speaker 11: I've been a diver for a long time.
[3:55] Speaker 2: I know when I'm tired underwater.
[3:57] Speaker 9: I know when my breathing is screwed up and I
[3:59] Speaker 9: can't get my breath. And all those things were going on.
[4:02] Speaker 9: I was taking on water. It just was all turned
[4:06] Speaker 9: to shit.
[4:10] Speaker 1: The exam lasted over an hour. Near the end, Fred
[4:14] Speaker 1: told the examiner he wasn't feeling so good.
[4:16] Speaker 9: Awful, Fred said. A few minutes.
[4:23] Speaker 1: Later, The tape ends. When I asked Fred the result
[4:44] Speaker 1: of the polygraph, he told me it was inconclusive. He
[4:48] Speaker 1: didn't pass or fail, he said, and the polygraph was
[4:52] Speaker 1: never a factor in the trial. But there was one
[4:56] Speaker 1: question the examiner asked that seemed to come almost out
[4:58] Speaker 1: of the blue. It was abstract and vague, and yet
[5:04] Speaker 1: it drove right to the heart of the investigation. right
[5:07] Speaker 1: to the heart of Fred's motivations in life.
[5:11] Speaker 5: Which do you love the most, love or money?
[5:16] Speaker 1: That one, Fred didn't answer right away. And when he did,
[5:20] Speaker 1: his voice had the controlled, deliberate quality of a valedictorian
[5:25] Speaker 1: on graduation day.
[5:26] Speaker 2: I think love is the most.
[5:32] Speaker 8: Important thing for me.
[5:33] Speaker 1: But the question of money... and how badly Fred needed it.
[5:38] Speaker 1: That was exactly what law enforcement had been trying to
[5:41] Speaker 1: figure out. I'm Dana Goodyear, and this is Lost Hills.
[5:50] Speaker 12: Lost Hills.
[6:15] Speaker 1: Episode 7, Love or Money. Fred and Verna were supposed
[6:23] Speaker 1: to be a love story. They'd both overcome the tragic,
[6:27] Speaker 1: untimely deaths of their first spouses to find love again.
[6:31] Speaker 1: But there were some irregularities in the origin story. One,
[6:37] Speaker 1: it seemed like maybe they'd gotten together before Jean died.
[6:44] Speaker 1: When the Santa Barbara detectives asked around about Fred and Verna,
[6:48] Speaker 1: they heard one thing, loud and clear. Whether you approved
[6:51] Speaker 1: or you didn't, it had been a whirlwind romance. In
[6:56] Speaker 1: handwritten notes Fred made around the time of his trial,
[6:59] Speaker 1: he laid out the way in which his relationship with
[7:01] Speaker 1: Verna changed. Babysitter, friend, lover, wife. At the line for lover,
[7:09] Speaker 1: he writes, D.A.
[7:10] Speaker 4: Date.
[7:11] Speaker 1: As if he's trying to get a handle on what
[7:13] Speaker 1: law enforcement knew. That's because the detectives had started to
[7:18] Speaker 1: suspect that Fred and Verna were having an affair before
[7:22] Speaker 1: Gene died. Verna's friend and confidant, Patty Lytel, had told
[7:27] Speaker 1: them as much. And when Fred's investigator went to talk
[7:30] Speaker 1: to her, she doubled down. Here she is, talking to
[7:34] Speaker 1: the investigator.
[7:35] Speaker 2: I didn't ask her if she was having an affair
[7:38] Speaker 2: with him. She told me she was. She told you?
[7:52] Speaker 1: That would be a problem were it ever to come
[7:54] Speaker 1: out in court. Questioned by the detectives, Fred's sailing buddy,
[7:59] Speaker 1: Dick Felthoen, admitted to his affair with Jean. But Fred
[8:03] Speaker 1: always denied knowing about it. Even to this day, he
[8:06] Speaker 1: denies it. And he denies he and Verna got together
[8:09] Speaker 1: before Jean's death. because if he knew Jean was cheating
[8:14] Speaker 1: and he wanted to be with Verna, those affairs would
[8:17] Speaker 1: establish a powerful motive, not just for him to kill Jean,
[8:21] Speaker 1: but who knows, maybe for him to kill Verna's first husband, too.
[8:28] Speaker 1: So they might have been together before they were together.
[8:32] Speaker 1: But then there was something else the detectives uncovered, even
[8:35] Speaker 1: more shocking to their church friends. When they got married,
[8:41] Speaker 1: They weren't really married.
[8:42] Speaker 12: Do you recall the marriage ceremony on the beach?
[8:50] Speaker 1: This is a private investigator hired by Fred's defense, talking
[8:53] Speaker 1: to Verna's good friend, Michelle Williams, and her husband, Dick.
[8:58] Speaker 12: Were you aware when that ceremony was held that they
[9:00] Speaker 12: were not legally married?
[9:03] Speaker 1: That moving ceremony, Christmas of 1977, when Fred and Verna
[9:08] Speaker 1: dressed the kids up in matching outfits and they all
[9:10] Speaker 1: exchanged rings, it wasn't actually a wedding.
[9:15] Speaker 12: John Hager, the minister from the Methodist Church.
[9:17] Speaker 2: Had performed the ceremony.
[9:36] Speaker 1: So the guests had assumed it was legit.
[9:39] Speaker 12: Well, John Hager was the guy that was there on
[9:42] Speaker 12: the beach that day, and he's the guy who married him,
[9:44] Speaker 12: so I don't know what the difference is. But apparently,
[9:47] Speaker 12: some of the people who have, you know, said some
[9:51] Speaker 12: bad things about Fred and Verna thought that that was
[9:54] Speaker 12: just awful, that they'd been deceived and so on and
[9:56] Speaker 12: so forth. So I don't... Well, had they not applied
[9:59] Speaker 12: for married licenses? I don't know what the circumstances were.
[10:03] Speaker 2: I'm just asking the questions... to try and find out.
[10:07] Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly what it means.
[10:09] Speaker 6: Either because he's an ordained minister and, you know, it
[10:12] Speaker 6: could have been financial. That's all I could think of.
[10:19] Speaker 1: That was exactly it. Fred later wrote that the reason
[10:23] Speaker 1: he and Verna hadn't married then was economic. Because if
[10:27] Speaker 1: she remarried, Verna would stop getting pension and social security
[10:31] Speaker 1: benefits from her deceased husband, Bill. Fred and Verna kept
[10:36] Speaker 1: it quiet, but in a handwritten will, Verna spelled it
[10:40] Speaker 1: all out. While I am not legally married to Frederick
[10:43] Speaker 1: George Raylor II because of financial and tax purposes, she wrote,
[10:48] Speaker 1: we are married in the eyes of God, and that
[10:50] Speaker 1: is what really counts. If she died, she continued, she
[10:57] Speaker 1: intended for Fred to raise her children, Kim and Doug, and, quote,
[11:04] Speaker 1: The wedding that wasn't raised a red flag for the
[11:14] Speaker 1: Santa Barbara detectives, and Verna's will was one of the
[11:17] Speaker 1: many items listed on the warrant they got in order
[11:20] Speaker 1: to search the house on C-Level Drive. But in that search,
[11:24] Speaker 1: they also found another suspicious document in a desk drawer,
[11:29] Speaker 1: a confidential record of another wedding, this one legal. Fred
[11:35] Speaker 1: and Verna had been married secretly by the same minister,
[11:40] Speaker 1: but it was more than two years after the wedding
[11:42] Speaker 1: on the beach. Their actual marriage date was July 12, 1980,
[11:46] Speaker 1: just five months before Verna's death. By the time Verna died,
[11:54] Speaker 1: the couple's assets had been transferred to a trust they'd
[11:57] Speaker 1: set up with help from Fred's old friend and lawyer,
[12:00] Speaker 1: Bill Fairfield. The purpose of the Johnson-Raylor Trust, Fred said,
[12:05] Speaker 1: was to prevent any gossip that might arise about financial
[12:08] Speaker 1: gain should he or Verna die. The detectives found the
[12:13] Speaker 1: flowchart for the trust in the silver case underneath a
[12:15] Speaker 1: desk in the living room, along with a guidebook for widows.
[12:20] Speaker 1: and what appeared to be Fred's diary of the day
[12:22] Speaker 1: that Verna and Doug drowned. The Santa Barbara detectives, Fred
[12:40] Speaker 1: Ray and Claude Tuller, were talking to everyone in Malibu
[12:43] Speaker 1: about every aspect of Fred's life with Verna. Verna's old friend,
[12:48] Speaker 1: Patty Lytel, told them that Back when Fred and Verna
[12:51] Speaker 1: first got together, Fred had pressured Verna to get married
[12:54] Speaker 1: right away. Patty said Fred was trying to marry Verna
[12:58] Speaker 1: just a couple months after Gene died. But Verna seemed
[13:01] Speaker 1: to worry what people would think. Patty had advised Verna
[13:05] Speaker 1: to take it slow, maybe live with Fred a while
[13:08] Speaker 1: before deciding. And she told Verna what she was really
[13:11] Speaker 1: worried about. She didn't think Fred loved her. She thought
[13:15] Speaker 1: he was after her property on Broad Beach. Even though
[13:19] Speaker 1: they hadn't gotten married right away, Fred did figure out
[13:23] Speaker 1: a financially beneficial solution. While he and Verna remained officially unmarried,
[13:28] Speaker 1: she could continue to collect her first husband's benefits. And
[13:32] Speaker 1: then once they did marry officially, their assets, including her house,
[13:37] Speaker 1: would go into the trust, of which Fred and Verna
[13:40] Speaker 1: were co-trustees, of which Fred became the sole trustee once
[13:45] Speaker 1: she died. When the detectives had interviewed Fred back in January,
[13:50] Speaker 1: they'd asked a lot of questions about his finances.
[13:54] Speaker 7: What would you say, before you and Verna got married,
[13:59] Speaker 7: that your individual.
[14:01] Speaker 2: Net worth was? Before we got married? Yeah. Probably in
[14:13] Speaker 2: the order of a half a million dollars apiece. How
[14:20] Speaker 2: is her, in what form was her money? Real estate.
[14:27] Speaker 2: What real estate was it? She has some houses. There's
[14:37] Speaker 2: a house in Broad Beach. Are there any other houses
[14:45] Speaker 2: that she owns? Not that she owns. I have two
[14:48] Speaker 2: other houses. I have a house on Calpine, and then
[14:54] Speaker 2: I have one on Oxford. Calpine is around here somewhere? Yeah,
[15:00] Speaker 2: off Pacific Coast, I would. Do you own any other houses?
[15:07] Speaker 2: Have you ever been in this one?
[15:12] Speaker 1: Fred's relationship with Verna, their merger, he sometimes called it,
[15:17] Speaker 1: began at a moment when they had each inherited a
[15:19] Speaker 1: modest fortune in real estate, insurance money, and other benefits
[15:23] Speaker 1: from their first spouses. When Jean died, Fred received about
[15:29] Speaker 1: $ 75, 000 in insurance money. That's about $ 360, 000 in today's dollars.
[15:36] Speaker 1: Her Social Security benefits threw off the equivalent of another
[15:39] Speaker 1: $ 38, 000 in today's money every year. When she was alive
[15:44] Speaker 1: and talking about divorce, Jean and Fred owned two properties,
[15:48] Speaker 1: a house in Oxnard and the Calpine House in Malibu.
[15:52] Speaker 1: But with Jean gone, Fred became the sole owner, at
[15:56] Speaker 1: a time when Malibu home values were spiking. The Oxnard
[16:00] Speaker 1: house was also on the coast, in an up-and-coming neighborhood
[16:03] Speaker 1: called the Silver Strand. He ended up turning both houses
[16:07] Speaker 1: into income properties. The insurance policy on Verna's first husband,
[16:12] Speaker 1: Bill Johnson, paid Verna a substantial sum, about $ 250, 000 in
[16:17] Speaker 1: today's money. She also got his generous pension and Social
[16:22] Speaker 1: Security benefits. And she became the sole owner of the
[16:26] Speaker 1: property on Broad Beach Road, a duplex with a garage
[16:29] Speaker 1: apartment right on the beach, in a neighborhood Allie McGraw
[16:33] Speaker 1: would soon be priced out of. Outside of the rental properties,
[16:37] Speaker 1: the family's income was a hodgepodge. Fred only earned about
[16:42] Speaker 1: $ 30, 000 a year from his job as an underwater engineer
[16:45] Speaker 1: at Point Mugu. That's just over $ 100, 000 in today's money.
[16:49] Speaker 1: And according to his colleague Dennis O'Gorman, Fred's ambition had
[16:53] Speaker 1: been in free fall ever since Gene died. Here's O'Gorman
[16:57] Speaker 1: talking to an investigator.
[16:59] Speaker 6: He seemed very despondent about things. He was philosophizing, for instance, about.
[17:06] Speaker 2: He started talking about how really it should be.
[17:11] Speaker 6: A socialistic society. Everybody ought to be allowed to do
[17:15] Speaker 6: whatever it is that they want to do. So if
[17:17] Speaker 6: you decide you want to be a beach bum, you
[17:19] Speaker 6: get the same number of bucks as some guy who
[17:21] Speaker 6: wants to sit in an office and do calculations all day.
[17:24] Speaker 6: No matter what you want to do, you ought to
[17:25] Speaker 6: be able to do it. It's your life, and it's
[17:27] Speaker 6: so short. Why not enjoy it to the utmost? The
[17:29] Speaker 6: perfect world, if you have it on Earth.
[17:32] Speaker 1: Fred basically stopped working.
[17:35] Speaker 6: And it seemed like the more he got away with,
[17:37] Speaker 6: the more he wanted to get away with. And every
[17:40] Speaker 6: job that Fred had was given to somebody else, which
[17:43] Speaker 6: really ticked us off. I mean, we liked the work,
[17:45] Speaker 6: but now we're carrying a hell of a workload, okay,
[17:48] Speaker 6: more than our share. And here's one man who's making
[17:50] Speaker 6: more money than any one of us because he's been
[17:53] Speaker 6: there longer and he's higher up on the scale. And
[17:55] Speaker 6: he's not doing anything. And not only is he not
[17:57] Speaker 6: doing anything, but he's tying up the phones on personal calls.
[18:01] Speaker 6: He's now dating Verna. And he's making personal calls to
[18:06] Speaker 6: his girlfriends, to his liars for property investments or whatever
[18:10] Speaker 6: the hell it is. You know, anyway, they're personal calls.
[18:14] Speaker 6: And he has a smirk on his face like he
[18:17] Speaker 6: knows that we know what's going on and there's nothing
[18:20] Speaker 6: anybody can do or wants to do about it. And
[18:23] Speaker 6: by God, it's just kiss my ass, you know, that
[18:25] Speaker 6: kind of attitude. Then, from 1978 to 1980, Fred really
[18:27] Speaker 6: stopped working.
[18:27] Speaker 1: He'd injured his back, or so he said. On the polygraph,
[18:36] Speaker 1: he admitted to fudging that a bit. Fred did have
[18:39] Speaker 1: a little side business, building redwood hot tubs. Here he
[18:42] Speaker 1: is talking to an investigator in 1981. There was Verna's.
[18:45] Speaker 2: Pay from her teaching job, which amounted to just a
[18:50] Speaker 2: couple grand a year.
[19:03] Speaker 1: They had the benefits from their first spouses and the
[19:06] Speaker 1: income from their various properties. Their houses might have been
[19:10] Speaker 1: worth a lot, but cash flow? How was this all working?
[19:16] Speaker 1: In the spring of 1980, about nine months before Verna
[19:20] Speaker 1: and Doug drowned, Fred and Verna bought Perseverance, their 50-foot sailboat.
[19:26] Speaker 1: The price tag? Around $ 150, 000, five times Fred's annual salary
[19:28] Speaker 1: at Point Magoo. back when he was working. Perseverance was fancy.
[19:38] Speaker 1: This is Dempsey Billy, an investigator for the Santa Barbara
[19:41] Speaker 1: DA's office. I talked to him recently. He remembered Perseverance
[19:46] Speaker 1: very well.
[19:47] Speaker 13: There was a sailboat that was there in Ventura Harbor,
[19:51] Speaker 13: and it was a really nice boat.
[19:53] Speaker 2: It had a fireplace in it. Not too many sailboats
[19:56] Speaker 2: that I've been around have a fireplace in them.
[19:59] Speaker 1: Fred's solvency was of great interest to the detectives. How
[20:03] Speaker 1: was this guy who made so little money leveling up
[20:07] Speaker 1: in Malibu? By the time they went back and questioned
[20:10] Speaker 1: Fred a second time, on January 20, 1981, they'd learned
[20:15] Speaker 1: a lot about his tumultuous relationship with Jean and and
[20:18] Speaker 1: that he'd improved his financial position, and certainly his real
[20:22] Speaker 1: estate holdings, upon her death. So, they had a few
[20:26] Speaker 1: more questions for Fred.
[20:29] Speaker 2: Did you and Bernie have any marital problems? No. How
[20:36] Speaker 2: would you describe your relationship, your marriage?
[20:39] Speaker 11: I would say we had good relationships. Overall, anybody I've known,
[20:52] Speaker 11: we share the same aspirations. We've gone through really a
[21:00] Speaker 11: learning process for deciding what we really want to do
[21:05] Speaker 11: with the children and buying the boat and all those things.
[21:15] Speaker 2: We've shared interests in the children. We shared.
[21:21] Speaker 11: Interests with each other, things that we liked to do, friends,
[21:25] Speaker 11: we wanted friends.
[21:26] Speaker 3: I don't really know.
[21:34] Speaker 2: What else.
[21:34] Speaker 7: Were you having any financial problems, or are you having
[21:37] Speaker 7: any financial problems?
[21:41] Speaker 1: Today, Fred says he wasn't underwater. Quite the contrary.
[21:45] Speaker 8: When they were saying that, oh, you know, I was broke,
[21:49] Speaker 8: I said, well, the thing you didn't search when you
[21:53] Speaker 8: tore up my house was you didn't go into the
[21:55] Speaker 8: deep freeze. I had a safe in there with 30
[21:59] Speaker 8: grand cash and about 5,000 in traveler's checks in it.
[22:04] Speaker 8: And they were sort of stunned.
[22:06] Speaker 10: And then they asked the detective if he had looked
[22:08] Speaker 10: in the deep freeze. And he said, of course, he hadn't.
[22:13] Speaker 1: What was that for and where did it come from?
[22:16] Speaker 3: Ever since I've been making payments on different things and
[22:19] Speaker 3: when I no longer made payments on them, I basically
[22:22] Speaker 3: put some money aside in a safe and I put
[22:27] Speaker 3: it in our chest deep freeze under a bunch of
[22:31] Speaker 3: frozen crates of orange juice. And that's where I kept
[22:37] Speaker 3: our passports and, you know, our papers and everything else
[22:40] Speaker 3: in there. It was in the garage, and the prosecution
[22:45] Speaker 3: went nuts when they found out that their super detectives
[22:51] Speaker 3: hadn't found it.
[22:54] Speaker 1: $ 35, 000 is a hefty chunk of change. It's equivalent to
[22:57] Speaker 1: about $ 110, 000 today. Fred basically had a year's salary in
[23:02] Speaker 1: his freezer underneath the orange juice. Why would anyone keep
[23:06] Speaker 1: that much cash just lying around his house? To own
[23:28] Speaker 1: a sailboat, one as stunning as Perseverance, it was Fred's
[23:33] Speaker 1: dream come true. She was brand new and sleek, toothpaste
[23:39] Speaker 1: white with teak decks and trim. Everything about her, down
[23:43] Speaker 1: to the name, was perfect.
[23:46] Speaker 10: Fred and I looked at each other.
[23:48] Speaker 4: And said, I don't think we could think of anything
[23:50] Speaker 4: more apropos than that for us. For all the stuff
[23:54] Speaker 4: we'd gone through, you know, both of our lives were
[23:58] Speaker 4: not smooth. They had bumps all over them.
[24:03] Speaker 10: So we both sort of felt that having persevered, we
[24:10] Speaker 10: were very fortunate to have found each other and, you know,
[24:15] Speaker 10: be doing well with our family.
[24:18] Speaker 1: No longer would Fred be cleaning the bottom of Dick
[24:21] Speaker 1: Valthoen's boat. He would take his boat and go anywhere
[24:25] Speaker 1: he pleased. In fact, when detectives Ray and Tuller first
[24:30] Speaker 1: came to see him, Fred dropped a big piece of
[24:32] Speaker 1: news on them. He and Verna and the kids had
[24:36] Speaker 1: been about to set sail on a long trip. They'd
[24:41] Speaker 1: planned to be gone for months, maybe a year.
[24:44] Speaker 2: We were delayed again this month. We had.
[24:51] Speaker 14: Been getting provisions and medical things, and just literally everything
[24:57] Speaker 14: to get.
[24:57] Speaker 2: Ready to go. Where were you going to go? We
[24:59] Speaker 2: were going to go to Mexico. And we were trying
[25:02] Speaker 2: to do.
[25:05] Speaker 9: A lot of documentation, and the children each had.
[25:07] Speaker 2: A logbook for.
[25:09] Speaker 14: Writing down all the things that they were feeling and
[25:12] Speaker 14: seeing and some things like that.
[25:16] Speaker 1: The kids were going to journal, and Fred would take
[25:18] Speaker 1: photos and film. They were thinking about writing a book
[25:22] Speaker 1: or making a movie about their adventure. The story of
[25:25] Speaker 1: their trip told through the children's eyes.
[25:29] Speaker 2: On your Mexico cruise, were you headed for any two-way points? No,
[25:36] Speaker 2: not really.
[25:36] Speaker 11: We have picked up a bunch of charts and talked
[25:39] Speaker 11: to a number of people. And our intentions were to
[25:42] Speaker 11: basically just hop all along the peninsula and then come
[25:46] Speaker 11: back up into the Gulf of California and spend some
[25:48] Speaker 11: time up there. I had read Steinbeck's book, The Sea
[25:52] Speaker 11: of Quartets, and I gave her a copy of that.
[25:54] Speaker 7: Did she have any particular fears or anything about going?
[26:00] Speaker 11: Yeah, she really didn't like the shipping lanes. And didn't
[26:04] Speaker 11: like fog very much. That was a big thing.
[26:10] Speaker 1: Later, Fred made some notes about how the Mexico Plan
[26:13] Speaker 1: had come to be. Quote, sitting in hot tub, September 1979,
[26:18] Speaker 1: Concerned about raising the children in Malibu. Dope.
[26:22] Speaker 2: Peer groups. Solution?
[26:25] Speaker 1: Pack up and go cruising? According to Fred, the trip
[26:29] Speaker 1: to Mexico had motivated him and Verna to get organized.
[26:33] Speaker 1: In the fall of 1980, right after he and Verna
[26:36] Speaker 1: were legally married, they began some vigorous estate planning. They
[26:43] Speaker 1: started buying insurance. Detective Ray asked Fred about this. when
[26:48] Speaker 1: questioning him about Verna and Doug.
[26:51] Speaker 2: Were they both insured? Yeah, our whole family was insured.
[26:56] Speaker 2: What company are they insured through? Travelers, I believe. Was
[27:04] Speaker 2: that in her name or your name? Well, we had
[27:09] Speaker 2: just set up a trust and gone through... A whole
[27:20] Speaker 2: estate planning thing. Do you have the policy around? I
[27:31] Speaker 2: think that's probably in the safety deposit box. I'm not sure. Okay.
[27:42] Speaker 2: How much was the policies for?
[27:47] Speaker 14: I think there's $ 400, 000 on myself and Verna and $ 60, 000
[27:54] Speaker 14: on each of the four children.
[27:58] Speaker 1: That was almost it. There were also accidental death riders
[28:04] Speaker 1: worth an additional $ 300, 000 for each of the adults and
[28:08] Speaker 1: an additional $ 60, 000 for each of the kids. Doug's policy
[28:12] Speaker 1: named his surviving siblings... Fred was the beneficiary of Verna's policy.
[28:18] Speaker 1: That meant the payout from her death was $ 700, 000 in
[28:22] Speaker 1: 1981 money, which is about $ 2. 25 million today. The detectives
[28:35] Speaker 1: wanted more details because they said the insurance company would
[28:38] Speaker 1: be calling them in the course of processing the claims.
[28:42] Speaker 2: They were pretty patient with a few months, but then
[28:45] Speaker 2: once you.
[28:47] Speaker 7: Got there, it started getting pressure from you to settle
[28:50] Speaker 7: and then, or your family or whoever, the beneficiary of
[28:55] Speaker 7: the trust, I think it would be you and the kids, right?
[28:59] Speaker 2: I don't think so.
[29:00] Speaker 14: I think somehow the trust is, but I don't recall
[29:04] Speaker 14: the mechanics of that.
[29:06] Speaker 2: You think the trust is, what do you understand it?
[29:10] Speaker 14: I think that the trust is a beneficiary, as opposed
[29:13] Speaker 14: to either of us.
[29:14] Speaker 2: Oh, in other words, if something happens, everything goes into
[29:17] Speaker 2: the trust.
[29:20] Speaker 1: Fred said he and the kids weren't the beneficiaries. The
[29:23] Speaker 1: Johnson-Raylor trust was. That was a little slippery. The funds
[29:29] Speaker 1: from the insurance would maybe end up in the trust,
[29:31] Speaker 1: like any other family asset. But Fred was named on
[29:35] Speaker 1: Verna's policy. The money would be his. Fred also didn't
[29:41] Speaker 1: say that he was the trustee. If the insurance money
[29:45] Speaker 1: flowed into the trust, he would control it. It was
[29:50] Speaker 1: right around then that Fred decided he had said enough.
[29:54] Speaker 1: He needed to talk to his friend Bill Fairfield, the
[29:57] Speaker 1: lawyer who'd advised him and Verna on the trust.
[29:59] Speaker 14: I guess I want everything to be set up. I
[30:05] Speaker 14: guess it's settled as much information as I can give you.
[30:09] Speaker 14: And at the same time, I know he's going to
[30:14] Speaker 14: break my arm if I just do everything. Without talking
[30:18] Speaker 14: to him, I have not spoken to him.
[30:23] Speaker 1: The detectives weren't buying the Mexico trip as a reason
[30:26] Speaker 1: for taking out huge insurance policies. It reeked of planning.
[30:31] Speaker 1: Like Fred was thinking about the murders and the ways
[30:33] Speaker 1: he'd cover them up. And the insurance. Well, that looked
[30:37] Speaker 1: like another pattern in his life. Because Fred, the detectives
[30:41] Speaker 1: were learning, knew a thing or two about insurance.
[30:46] Speaker 13: Lighting his car on fire to get the insurance settlement
[30:50] Speaker 13: to act as a down payment on a new car.
[30:52] Speaker 13: They're the parents, but they burned down a farmhouse to
[30:56] Speaker 13: collect the insurance, as I understand.
[30:58] Speaker 14: Fires, bike accidents, car accidents, tractor accidents, a houseboat on fire,
[31:04] Speaker 14: Papap's barn on fire.
[31:06] Speaker 13: If it's true, and I say if, it shows early
[31:10] Speaker 13: on the ability to conceive of insurance fraud.
[31:13] Speaker 9: Just all of the horrible accidents that can happen to
[31:16] Speaker 9: one family.
[31:19] Speaker 1: The detectives had found a motive to hand to the
[31:22] Speaker 1: district attorney. It was the Malibu lifestyle. Fred, they thought,
[31:29] Speaker 1: wanted to live a life of leisure. like so many
[31:32] Speaker 1: of the ritzy folks buying up all the beach houses
[31:35] Speaker 1: in Malibu. To accomplish this, the detectives surmised, Fred would
[31:41] Speaker 1: need a big windfall. Say, $ 700, 000 in insurance money from
[31:45] Speaker 1: an accident with no witnesses. Coming up on the next
[32:08] Speaker 1: episode of Lost Hills, what was Verna worth to Fred?
[32:13] Speaker 6: She was his life.
[32:15] Speaker 2: In fact, just showed him the way that life could be.
[32:18] Speaker 9: I'm saying Verna meant to him something that money couldn't buy.
[32:23] Speaker 1: That's next in Episode 8, Three Freds. Lost Hills is
[32:29] Speaker 1: written and reported by me, Dana Goodyear. It's created by
[32:33] Speaker 1: me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and
[32:36] Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear
[32:39] Speaker 1: the whole season ad-free and get early access to the
[32:42] Speaker 1: final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills
[32:46] Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm.

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