# Disturbing Cases From California | 155

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 5 Jan 2026, 42 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4459053533.mp3

Don't forget to follow and turn on all notifications. Also don't forget to drop a rating as well. Join me for ep 155 of the pod. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories

## Transcript

[0:01] We interrupt this program to bring you an important Wayfair
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[0:23] This has been your Wayfair style tip to keep those interiors
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[0:28] Every style, every home. Hey friends, it's Jimmy here
[0:31] with my usual reminder to hit the like and subscribe buttons
[0:34] and the notification bell. And don't forget to leave a
[0:37] comment saying where you're listening from, especially if
[0:40] you're tuning in from California.
[0:44] It was October 12th, 1944 when West Hollywood's upscale El
[0:48] Palacio Apartments awoke to horror.
[0:51] A maid discovered 20 year old oil heiress Georgette Bauerdorf
[0:55] lifeless in her bathtub. The bathwater was tinted pink
[1:00] with blood and Georgette was half submerged and unresponsive.
[1:04] The cops arrived and quickly determined she was the victim of
[1:07] foul play. This shocking crime scene marked
[1:11] the beginning of a Hollywood mystery that remains unsolved to
[1:14] this day. Georgette was born into
[1:19] privilege but yearned to contribute on the home front as
[1:21] the world had become engulfed in conflict.
[1:24] After her family moved from New York to Los Angeles, she
[1:28] graduated from a prestigious girls school and embraced
[1:31] volunteer work. By 1944, the young heiress was
[1:36] serving as a junior Hostess at the Hollywood Canteen, a famous
[1:40] club where movie stars entertained American servicemen
[1:43] on leave. For Georgette, being a canteen
[1:46] Hostess was both an honor and a thrill.
[1:49] The nightclub was Co founded by Hollywood heavy hitter Bette
[1:53] Davis and offered GIS food and fun.
[1:57] Georgette's friendly charm and generosity made her a favorite
[2:01] among the troops. She was known to offer weary
[2:04] servicemen a place to sleep at her apartment, letting them
[2:08] crash on her downstairs sofa while she stayed upstairs.
[2:12] Her friends adored her spirit, though some worried she was too
[2:16] trusting with strangers during these tumultuous times.
[2:21] On the evening of October 11th, 1944, Georgette reported for her
[2:26] usual Wednesday night shift at the Hollywood Canteen, greeting
[2:30] and dancing with servicemen. As always that night, a
[2:33] particularly persistent soldier kept asking her to jitterbug, a
[2:38] dance she disliked, but she politely deflected his requests
[2:42] and continued her Hostess duties.
[2:46] Around 11:30 PM, Georgette left the canteen and drove home alone
[2:51] in her black coop. She had mentioned to at least
[2:54] one friend that she was expecting a late night phone
[2:56] call from her boyfriend, a soldier in Texas, and needed to
[3:00] be home for it. In fact, she had recently
[3:04] purchased a plane ticket and planned to fly to El Paso soon
[3:08] to visit this sweetheart, a trip she would never take.
[3:14] Investigators later deduced that Georgette arrived at her West
[3:17] Hollywood apartment around midnight.
[3:19] An open can of green string beans and melon rinds in her
[3:22] trash suggested she fixed a quick snack before bed.
[3:26] She then changed into pyjamas and perhaps began writing in her
[3:30] diary or reading in bed. A diary and newspaper were found
[3:34] open in her room, implying she was winding down for the night.
[3:39] At roughly 230 that morning, a neighbor was jolted awake by a
[3:43] chilling scream echoing through the building.
[3:46] He heard a woman crying out and pleading before the voice was
[3:49] suddenly silenced. Thinking it might have been a
[3:52] lover's quarrel that ended quickly, or perhaps even
[3:56] something highly spicy, the neighbor went back to sleep.
[4:02] When Georgette's maid, Lulu Atwood, arrived the next
[4:05] morning, she found the apartment door wide open and water
[4:08] running. In the bathroom.
[4:10] Georgette's body was face down in an overflowing tub, wearing
[4:14] only her pyjama top. Police at first considered the
[4:18] possibility of an accidental drowning, but the evidence
[4:21] quickly proved otherwise. The light bulb over the outside
[4:26] entrance had been carefully unscrewed just enough to disable
[4:29] it, plunging the doorway Into Darkness.
[4:33] This pointed to a calculated attack, and police suspected the
[4:37] perp may have entered earlier, using a key and laying in wait,
[4:41] ambushing her once she was home. Inside, Georgette's knuckles
[4:47] were bruised and there were deep marks on her head and abdomen,
[4:50] indicating she had put up a fierce fight.
[4:53] The coroner found that she had been brutally assaulted and
[4:56] strangled. A strip of cloth had been
[4:59] viciously shoved down her throat to asphyxiate her.
[5:03] Further testing revealed that it was an unusual type of medical
[5:07] bandage rarely seen in America, leading to speculation her
[5:11] attacker was a serviceman who had acquired it overseas.
[5:15] Notably, there was no water in her lungs, meaning Georgette was
[5:20] already dead before the tub was filled.
[5:24] Other clues perplexed investigators.
[5:27] Georgette's valuable jewelry and money were left largely
[5:30] untouched, ruling out robbery as a motive.
[5:33] Only about $100 was missing from her purse, even though far
[5:38] greater sums of cash and jewels were in Plainview.
[5:42] And I'm not talking about regular jewels here.
[5:45] This is oil Baroness stuff, after all.
[5:50] Her car was gone from the garage, and it was soon found
[5:53] abandoned miles away, out of gas and sporting a fresh dent on one
[5:57] Fender. Fingerprints were lifted from
[6:00] the vehicle and from inside, but they matched no one in law
[6:03] enforcement records. Investigators also found
[6:07] cigarette butts on the floor of Georgette's home, an eerie
[6:11] discovery given that she didn't smoke.
[6:14] This LED detectives to speculate that he may have stayed after
[6:18] smoking while taking in the deed he had just committed.
[6:23] News of the glamorous young woman slaying made headlines
[6:26] around the nation, and a task force of Los Angeles sheriff's
[6:30] detectives and military police sprang into action.
[6:34] Because of Georgette's role at the canteen, dozens of soldiers
[6:38] she had met were investigated. Police eliminated many potential
[6:42] suspects by checking military logs.
[6:45] Any enlisted man absent overnight without leave was
[6:48] scrutinized, and most were accounted for.
[6:53] Some of the men were targeted by investigators in a more direct
[6:56] way for their connection or perceived ties to Georgette.
[7:00] The pushy patron from the canteen was tracked down and
[7:03] quickly cleared. He had been signed into his
[7:06] barracks at the time the attack went down.
[7:10] Detectives also tracked a very tall soldier who Georgette had
[7:13] briefly dated, as well as the Army Sergeant to whom she'd
[7:17] given a ride that night. Both men were questioned, but
[7:21] neither was ever tied to the crime.
[7:24] Leads continued to surface from all corners.
[7:27] One disturbed man in San Francisco actually confessed,
[7:31] but his story turned out to be false and attention seeking.
[7:35] Another suspect picked up for an unrelated slaying in Glendale
[7:40] was briefly suspected but ultimately ruled out.
[7:44] Because Georgette often lost her keys and had multiple duplicates
[7:47] made, police considered whether someone had obtained a copy to
[7:51] access her apartment. As I mentioned, it's believed
[7:56] that someone had ambushed her in her apartment.
[7:59] Disturbingly, he likely stayed in hiding for a significant time
[8:03] while she was already home. Despite extensive interviews and
[8:08] the tantalizing evidence left behind, every promising lead LED
[8:12] nowhere. Georgette's father, with the
[8:16] help of family friend William Randolph Hearst, even pressed
[8:19] authorities to solve the case swiftly to avoid scandal and
[8:23] gossip. Months passed with no arrest,
[8:27] and the trail grew cold. In the years that followed, the
[8:32] tragic story of Georgette Bauerdorf gradually faded from
[8:36] the headlines. It remains unclear if any
[8:39] forensic evidence from the scene was stored, though I assume that
[8:43] since forensic genetic testing was basically 5 decades away, it
[8:47] wouldn't have been. However, on the off chance the
[8:50] evidence remains in an evidence locker somewhere, there's a
[8:53] faint hope that one day this California unsolved mystery may
[8:57] be resolved. A chilling scream rang out on a
[9:04] quiet West Hollywood St. in the early hours of February 12th,
[9:08] 1977. Moments later, aspiring actress
[9:12] Krista Helm lay dying in front of her agent's home, stabbed
[9:16] dozens of times in a savage attack.
[9:19] The perp left no witnesses and few clues behind.
[9:23] Decades later, the question of who killed her and why remains
[9:27] one of Hollywood's most baffling unsolved mysteries of that era.
[9:33] Born in Milwaukee, Krista moved to New York and then Los Angeles
[9:37] chasing stardom, leaving behind a young daughter from a brief
[9:41] teenage marriage. Disturbingly, both parents
[9:44] effectively abandoned their daughter, though Krista promised
[9:48] to return at some point in the future.
[9:51] Needless to say, fate intervened and this promise would never be
[9:54] fulfilled. She landed some modeling gigs
[9:58] and a starring film role, a low budget action movie called Let's
[10:02] Go For Broke in 1974, but the film flopped after a short run.
[10:08] Instead, Krista became better known as a quote UN quote
[10:11] socialite on the Hollywood party scene.
[10:15] She mingled with big names, reportedly dating NFL superstar
[10:20] Joe Namath, rock legend Mick Jagger, and even having some
[10:24] close encounters with the Shah of Iran.
[10:27] Ambitious and charismatic, Krista made friends in high
[10:31] places and enjoyed the trappings of wealth without any real known
[10:35] source of income. Privately, Krista also kept a
[10:40] secret diary where she documented her intimate
[10:43] encounters, complete with candid details and a rating system for
[10:48] her lovers. Allegations made in the years
[10:52] following her death even claimed that she was working as an
[10:56] escort to the rich and powerful. I do have to include a
[11:00] disclaimer here and mention that these are just allegations,
[11:04] though I'm sure my description of her lifestyle may have
[11:07] already have had some of you thinking this.
[11:10] By 1977, with her career stalled and money running low, she
[11:15] whispered about turning her diary into fat stacks with a
[11:18] tell all book. If the rumors are to be
[11:22] believed, she had some seriously compromising material about some
[11:25] sick puppies in high places, but I'll come back to that in a
[11:29] moment. Late on February 11th, 1977,
[11:35] Krista left a party in Los Angeles and drove to meet her
[11:37] agent at his West Hollywood home.
[11:40] She arrived around 1:30 AM, but before she could reach the door,
[11:45] an unknown assailant ambushed her on the quiet residential St.
[11:49] The attacker stabbed Krista repeatedly with a knife and also
[11:53] struck her with a blunt object, leaving her collapsed in a pool
[11:57] of blood next to the curb. A passerby soon discovered her
[12:01] body and rushed to get help. By the time police arrived,
[12:05] however, Krista had already succumbed to her injuries at
[12:09] just 27 years old. Some reports said she was still
[12:13] clutching her car keys, suggesting the attacker struck
[12:17] the instant she stepped out of her vehicle.
[12:20] Neighbors later recalled hearing a single terrifying scream
[12:23] during the night of the attack, but no one witnessed the
[12:26] attacker. When investigators surveyed the
[12:30] scene, they realized that Krista's purse was missing, and
[12:34] with it, her infamous diary. It's disappearance LED police to
[12:39] suspect that the attacker's primary motive was to take or
[12:43] destroy that tell All journal. If someone feared what Krista
[12:47] had written, stealing the diary would eliminate the threat.
[12:52] Detectives also learned that Krista had allegedly sometimes
[12:55] tape recorded her spicy encounters, but those audio
[12:59] tapes were nowhere to be found either.
[13:02] The vanishing of these personal items robbed investigators of
[13:05] crucial evidence and strongly suggested that someone wanted
[13:09] Krista's secrets to die with her.
[13:14] With Krista's tumultuous love life and high profile
[13:17] connections, the list of potential suspects was long.
[13:21] Investigators theorized that an ex lover might have had a
[13:24] personal motive to silence her, especially if they knew about
[13:28] her diary and feared exposure. Given that Krista was struggling
[13:32] financially, she had every incentive to monetize her
[13:36] secrets, which could have alarmed anyone with something to
[13:39] hide. Over time, more clues have added
[13:43] to the intrigue. Krista's friends later recalled
[13:46] that she seemed fearful in her final days.
[13:51] In fact, a few months before the slaying, she sent a postcard to
[13:55] a close friend saying she was in over her head and might need to
[13:58] disappear for a while. This alarming message suggests
[14:02] Christa sense danger looming. Notably, decades later it was
[14:07] claimed that she was part of an elite escort operation, which
[14:10] some have speculated had ties to intelligence.
[14:14] This raised the distinct possibility she was eliminated
[14:17] because she knew too much about powerful people, even if they
[14:20] didn't know about her secret diary.
[14:24] In 2005, her daughter persuaded the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
[14:28] Department to reopen the cold case for a fresh investigation.
[14:33] A team of detectives pored over the old evidence and tracked
[14:36] down witnesses who had never spoken.
[14:39] They uncovered a few new leads, including the discovery that
[14:42] Krista's close friend allegedly sent an acquaintance to clean
[14:46] out her apartment right after the attack.
[14:49] It's believed that the tapes, her illicit diary, and other
[14:53] personal items were removed during this process.
[14:56] When questioned by the authorities, the individual who
[14:59] allegedly orchestrated this claimed that he didn't really
[15:02] remember Krista and offered no information whatsoever.
[15:07] And for my Sopranos fans out there, according to a report by
[15:11] CBS News in 2008, the man who actually did the removal was
[15:16] allegedly Tony Cirico, who played Polly Walnuts.
[15:20] I always thought he was just a good actor, but after browsing
[15:24] his Wikipedia article, it seems like he may have been bringing
[15:27] some serious life experience to the role.
[15:31] I don't have any evidence to directly prove it, but I can
[15:35] virtually guarantee that Krista wasn't taken out at random.
[15:38] She talked about publishing a tell all book at a moment when
[15:41] her diary allegedly named celebrities, political figures
[15:45] and embattled foreign royalty. She was also making audio
[15:49] recordings of herself with influential and powerful men,
[15:54] for reasons which remain unclear.
[15:57] It's not hard to see how someone rich and powerful would have
[15:59] seen her as a liability who needed to be handled to back
[16:04] this up. Within hours of her slaying, the
[16:07] items that could damage reputations vanished into the
[16:11] ether, never to resurface. Her apparent fear in the months
[16:16] before her death, including the postcard hinting she might need
[16:20] to disappear, adds to the sense that pressure was building.
[16:25] I also find it weird how her so-called friend, someone who
[16:29] had apparent access to her house, claimed to barely
[16:32] remember her decades later. But hey, maybe it was all
[16:37] completely random. Stranger things have happened,
[16:40] after all. For four years, no one even
[16:46] realized that Heather Bloom was missing.
[16:48] From late 2005 until 2009, her disappearance went entirely
[16:53] unreported, a delay that hindered efforts to find her.
[16:58] Heather was a 28 year old woman with Down syndrome who depended
[17:01] on others for every aspect of her care.
[17:05] Yet she managed to vanish without a trace from Berkeley,
[17:07] CA in 2005 on a trip from New York where her mother dumped her
[17:12] off with her sister. Even more chilling, the only
[17:16] person who might know what happened refused to let anyone
[17:19] see Heather and then quietly left the country.
[17:22] In the years that followed, it seemed unthinkable that a
[17:26] vulnerable woman like Heather could vanish without anyone
[17:29] noticing, but it happened. Nearly two decades later, the
[17:35] question remains, what really happened to Heather Bloom?
[17:42] Heather had spent her entire life in New York, so a trip to
[17:46] California was a major change for her.
[17:49] Heather's story took a mysterious turn in the fall of
[17:52] 2005 when she and her mother stayed with Heather's sister,
[17:55] Sherri. This visit would be the last
[17:58] time Heather was seen by anyone outside her family.
[18:02] During the stay, police were called to Sherri's apartment to
[18:05] intervene in a loud argument between Phyllis, the mother, and
[18:09] Sherri. With Heather in the middle of
[18:11] the commotion, the officers diffused the situation, and once
[18:16] things calmed down, Phyllis returned home to New York,
[18:20] leaving Heather and Sherry's care at the Berkeley apartment.
[18:24] That unusual hand off of Heather to Sherry marked the beginning
[18:28] of Heather's unexplained absence.
[18:32] For a while, nothing apparently seemed to miss.
[18:35] And after Phyllis left California, she apparently lost
[18:39] contact with both of her daughters.
[18:41] She heard no updates from Sherri and had no direct communication
[18:46] with Heather. Heather, a vulnerable adult who
[18:50] couldn't speak for herself, simply vanished from public
[18:53] view. There were no familiar neighbors
[18:56] or friends in California to notice her absence, and Heather
[19:00] wasn't enrolled in any local care programs or services that
[19:04] might have raised an alarm. It wasn't until June 2009,
[19:09] nearly four years later, that Phyllis finally reported Heather
[19:13] missing. When Berkeley police opened a
[19:18] missing person investigation in 2009, they were already years
[19:22] behind. Detectives discovered that
[19:25] Sherri had moved out of her apartment back in 2007, leaving
[19:29] no sign of where Heather had gone.
[19:32] It took months to track Sherri down, and when they finally
[19:36] located her in March 2010, the mystery only deepened.
[19:41] Sherry refused to let officers inside her home, speaking to
[19:45] them only through a window. She insisted that Heather was
[19:49] fine, but would not allow anyone to see her, offering no evidence
[19:53] of her sister's well-being. This evasive behavior raised
[19:57] immediate red flags for the police, who feared for Heather's
[20:01] safety. However, it also put law
[20:04] enforcement in a bind. They were alarmed, but without
[20:08] clear evidence of wrongdoing or a court order, there was little
[20:11] they could do to force Sherry's compliance.
[20:16] Police soon uncovered more unsettling details.
[20:19] Sherry's landlord and neighbors reported that they had never
[20:22] seen Heather at the apartment, not even once.
[20:26] Shortly after that tense welfare check, Sherry abruptly packed up
[20:31] and moved again, disappearing before authorities could learn
[20:34] anything more about Heather's fate.
[20:37] She was evicted from the apartment for owing around
[20:39] $13,000 in back rent, suggesting A chaotic and unstable
[20:44] situation. Once Sherri left town this time,
[20:49] the trail to find Heather went cold again.
[20:53] Years passed with no sign of either sister.
[20:57] Finally, in 2016, a breakthrough investigators learned that
[21:01] Sherri had left the country and gone to Norway on a student
[21:05] visa. She had moved overseas for
[21:07] school, which explained why she had been so hard to find.
[21:12] Sherri's relocation abroad posed a major roadblock for the
[21:15] investigation. Berkeley police and local
[21:18] journalists tried to contact Sherri in Norway, but she never
[21:22] responded. Given Heather's disabilities, it
[21:25] seemed unlikely she could have travelled overseas under the
[21:28] radar. Most likely, if she was still
[21:31] alive, she remained somewhere in California.
[21:35] But with Sherry out of reach and refusing to cooperate,
[21:39] authorities had no leads on where to look next and no way to
[21:43] verify Heather's condition or whereabouts.
[21:48] Several theories have emerged to explain Heather Bloom's
[21:51] disappearance. The most direct suspicion falls
[21:55] on Sherri as the last person with Heather.
[21:59] Sherri's odd behavior has led many to believe she knows
[22:03] exactly what happened. Her refusal to produce Heather
[22:06] on demand and her pattern of abruptly moving away suggest she
[22:11] may have been hiding something all along.
[22:14] Neighbors didn't report seeing Heather around at any time.
[22:20] This fuels A grim theory that Heather may have perished under
[22:23] Sherry's care, whether due to untreated health issues, an
[22:27] accident, or even something more sinister.
[22:31] For the first two options, there's always the potential
[22:34] that Sherry panicked and covered it up instead of reporting it.
[22:39] However, authorities have found no evidence of foul play and
[22:43] have not charged Sherry with any crime.
[22:46] Officially, Heather remains a missing person, not a confirmed
[22:49] crime victim. Another possibility is that
[22:54] Heather is alive but was secretly placed in a care
[22:57] facility or with a caretaker, and even the police have
[23:00] entertained this hopeful scenario.
[23:03] Perhaps Sherri became overwhelmed by the
[23:05] responsibility and, without telling anyone, arranged for
[23:10] Heather to live in a private care home or with another
[23:13] caregiver. It's even possible that she took
[23:16] her out of state to dump her off somewhere else, perhaps simply
[23:20] leaving her abandoned in a hospital waiting room.
[23:23] If so, Sherri's secretiveness could have been her way of
[23:27] avoiding legal trouble for abandoning her dependent sister.
[23:31] This theory lines up with the optimism police expressed, the
[23:35] hope that somewhere Heather has been receiving the care she
[23:39] needs, even if her identity isn't known to authorities.
[23:43] However, so far, checks of hospitals and care homes haven't
[23:47] turned up any trace of Heather under another identity.
[23:51] But the possibility cannot be ruled out.
[23:55] Perhaps the most sinister allegation is that Heather's
[23:58] mother and sister colluded to make her quote UN quote
[24:01] disappear. Some have speculated that
[24:04] Phyllis might have willingly left Heather with Sherry as part
[24:07] of a plan. Moving Heather across the
[24:09] country would make her absence in New York much less noticeable
[24:13] and would provide an easy explanation for why Heather was
[24:16] no longer there. However, this allegation falls
[24:21] apart extremely quickly under scrutiny.
[24:24] It was Phyllis who eventually sounded the alarm in 2009, an
[24:29] unlikely move if she had intended for Heather's
[24:31] disappearance to go unnoticed as it had been.
[24:35] Authorities have never implicated Phyllis in any
[24:38] wrongdoing, and officially she was a distraught parent seeking
[24:42] help to find her missing child. Though of course it's
[24:47] inescapable that even in the official version of events told
[24:51] by Phyllis, it appears she dumped off her disabled daughter
[24:55] with her non disabled daughter. After that, Phyllis washed her
[24:59] hands clean of both of them for four years.
[25:02] Which brings me to my next point.
[25:06] One lingering question is why Phyllis waited so long to report
[25:09] Heather missing and what triggered her to eventually do
[25:12] so. It's an aspect of the case that
[25:15] continues to baffle observers. We may never know what was going
[25:19] through the mother's mind during those four years.
[25:23] What is certain is that the delay in reporting has made
[25:26] investigating Heather's disappearance that much more
[25:29] difficult. This lost time is one of the
[25:31] most frustrating facets of the case, leaving basically everyone
[25:36] to wonder if the outcome might have been different had the
[25:39] alarm been raised sooner. Another question that's been
[25:44] raised is who was cashing Heather's government checks
[25:46] intended for her care during those four years, if anyone?
[25:51] I suspect the authorities already know the answer to this
[25:54] question and simply haven't released this to the public.
[25:58] However, I do question whether a forensic accountant has looked
[26:01] over the accounts of both Sherry and Phyllis, though I suspect
[26:05] that isn't possible since neither have been implicated
[26:08] officially. Today, nearly 20 years after she
[26:13] vanished, there is still no answer to Heather Bloom's fate.
[26:17] Heather would be in her late 40s now, but no one knows whether
[26:21] she is alive or not. However, I'm hopeful that the
[26:24] simplest solution is the accurate one.
[26:26] In this case, Heather may have been abandoned as an unknown
[26:31] person somewhere safe, and she's now being cared for by the
[26:34] state. It's not ideal by any means, and
[26:37] it's both incredibly sad and infuriating, but the
[26:41] alternatives are so much more disturbing.
[26:46] Of course, the conduct of the sister and the mother is already
[26:49] disturbing. Regardless, Heather needed love
[26:52] and care, and it appears that at best, she got abandonment twice
[26:58] by two of the people who were supposed to love and care for
[27:00] her most. So yeah, this is one of those
[27:03] stories that really makes me question humanity, which is
[27:07] saying a lot considering that I constantly research and cover
[27:10] dark content. In the early 1980s, San Marino,
[27:16] CA was the picture of suburban tranquility.
[27:20] It was an affluent, insular community nestled near Los
[27:23] Angeles, a place of manicured lawns and quiet streets where
[27:28] serious crime felt like a distant abstraction.
[27:32] On one of these streets, Lorraine Rd. lived a young
[27:36] couple just starting their life together.
[27:38] John Sohus, 27, was a quiet computer programmer who worked
[27:44] for a division of NASA. His wife, Linda, 28, was a
[27:49] talented and striking artist, standing 6 feet tall with Auburn
[27:53] hair, who loved science fiction and worked at a local bookstore.
[27:58] They had married in 1983 and to get on their feet financially,
[28:03] moved into the main House of John's mother, Dee Dee.
[28:07] And just wait for it, because there was a guest house at play
[28:11] here, and it's going to factor into this story in a massive
[28:15] way. By all accounts, they were a
[28:19] happy, normal couple whose prospects were looking up.
[28:22] Linda had recently sold some major pieces at an art show, and
[28:26] they just bought a new pickup truck.
[28:29] Their domestic life, however, included an unusual element, a
[28:33] tenant living in Deedee's guest house.
[28:36] He called himself Christopher Chichester, a man who cultivated
[28:40] an air of eccentric importance. He was a master of social
[28:44] infiltration, understanding that in a community that valued
[28:49] pedigree, a fantastic story was often more compelling than a
[28:53] verifiable 1. He told people he was a film
[28:57] student at the prestigious University of Southern
[28:59] California and hinted at royal lineage.
[29:03] He even handed out business cards that identified him as the
[29:06] 13th baronet of an ancient house.
[29:09] And at other times he name dropped his Mountbatten cousins.
[29:14] For those of you who are unaware, Mountbatten is the
[29:17] official Anglicization of the German name Battenberg used by
[29:22] the House of Windsor, the British royal family.
[29:26] By dropping this slyly into conversations, he hinted to
[29:30] those in the know that he was from the high nobility.
[29:33] At minimum, by joining a local church and charming the wealthy
[29:39] older residents, they gave him the social cover he needed to
[29:42] operate. They believed they were
[29:45] interacting with someone who could potentially be a real
[29:48] British royal. In return, he was able to semi
[29:51] legitimately say he was friends with these wealthy and
[29:54] influential people. While many were intrigued, Linda
[29:58] wasn't and she found Chichester creepy and she and John made a
[30:02] point to avoid him. Then in February 1985, the quiet
[30:08] life on Lorraine Rd. fractured. John and Linda told friends and
[30:12] family they were leaving for a couple of weeks for a top secret
[30:16] government job interview for John in New York.
[30:19] After that, they simply vanished, leaving behind
[30:22] everything including Linda's 4 beloved cats.
[30:28] In the weeks following the couple's disappearance,
[30:31] Christopher Chichester became the sole narrator of their
[30:33] story. He skillfully wove a tale
[30:36] designed to deflect suspicion and delay investigation, telling
[30:40] concerned friends that John and Linda were on a secret
[30:43] government mission and couldn't be contacted.
[30:47] To Deedee, he positioned himself as her official go between the
[30:52] only person who knew the details of her son's clandestine work.
[30:56] Initially, Deedee clung to this story, even repeating it to
[31:01] police and telling them she couldn't say more for fear of
[31:04] endangering the couple. But as weeks turned into months,
[31:09] the narrative began to fray. Bill Collector started calling
[31:13] for John and Linda, and friends grew more anxious.
[31:17] Dee Dee's confidence in Chichester crumbled, replaced by
[31:21] a creeping dread. She descended into the bottle
[31:24] and became a recluse, haunted by the silence from her son, and
[31:29] she perished in 1988, never knowing the truth of what
[31:33] happened to her son. The cover up was a strange mix
[31:38] of elaborate cunning and breathtaking arrogance.
[31:42] To lend his story credibility, a series of postcards, seemingly
[31:46] written by Linda, were sent from Paris to her mother and friends.
[31:51] This was the cunning part, physical proof to sustain the
[31:55] lie long enough for him to make his escape.
[31:58] Yet the execution was deeply flawed, and Linda's family knew
[32:03] she didn't have a passport or the money for a European trip.
[32:07] This recklessness was a core part of the perpetrator's
[32:10] psychology. When a San Marino detective
[32:15] finally came to the guest house to question him about the
[32:18] missing couple, Chichester met him at the door completely
[32:21] unclothed. He claimed to be a nudist and
[32:24] refused to dress up at all, just letting it all hang out.
[32:28] For the detective. It was a bizarre act of
[32:31] dominance and deflection that ended the interview, and shortly
[32:34] after this encounter, Chichester also vanished.
[32:38] I really question how the detective managed to be taken
[32:40] seriously after letting a criminal escape in such a
[32:44] bizarre way. The case went cold until 1988,
[32:49] when the couple's pickup truck was discovered in Greenwich, CT.
[32:53] The man who had been driving it, now using the alias Christopher
[32:56] Crowe, disappeared before police could question him.
[33:02] The mystery lay dormant for years and Dee Dee Sohus's house
[33:06] on Lorraine Rd. was sold and the strange story of the vanished
[33:10] couple faded into local lore. Then, in May 1994, the new
[33:16] owners decided to install a swimming pool in the backyard.
[33:20] As excavators dug into the earth, they struck something
[33:23] solid. It was a fiberglass box
[33:26] containing plastic bags, and inside were the dismembered
[33:29] remains of a body. Forensic analysis revealed the
[33:34] remains belong to an adult white male who had been slain through
[33:38] savage violence. The victim's skull had been
[33:41] crushed by multiple blows from a blunt object and his body had
[33:45] been subject to further indignities.
[33:49] The brutality suggested a crime of intense personal rage, while
[33:54] the methodical dismemberment and burial pointed to a cold blooded
[33:58] attempt to conceal the evidence. Though police strongly suspected
[34:03] the victim was John Sohus, confirming it was a challenge.
[34:07] John had been adopted, so there were no known biological
[34:11] relatives against whom to compare DNA samples.
[34:14] It wasn't until 2011, with the advent of new forensic
[34:18] technology, that the bones were conclusively identified as those
[34:23] of John. While the Sohu's case
[34:27] languished, the man once known as Christopher Chichester was
[34:31] busy constructing a new life, or rather, a series of them.
[34:37] After fleeing California, the German immigrant Christian Karl
[34:41] Gerharts writer moved to Greenwich, CT and reinvented
[34:45] himself as Christopher Crowe, a supposed Hollywood producer.
[34:51] He was a charming man who spoke German fluently, and no one who
[34:54] speaks German could be a bad man, right?
[34:59] He talked his way into jobs at Wall Street brokerage firms, but
[35:03] his cons were clumsy. He was fired from one after it
[35:07] was discovered he was using the Social Security number of serial
[35:10] predator David Berkowitz. He then moved on to his most
[35:14] audacious and successful impersonation, relocating to New
[35:18] York and Boston. He became Clark Rockefeller, an
[35:22] eccentric and reclusive heir to the legendary American dynasty.
[35:28] As Rockefeller, Gerhart's writer achieved the status he had
[35:31] always craved. He joined exclusive clubs, wore
[35:35] ascots, and spun tales of his fabulous fictional life.
[35:39] His ultimate act of validation came when he met and married
[35:43] Sandra Boss. She was a highly successful
[35:46] Harvard Business School graduate and a partner at the consulting
[35:49] firm McKenzie. Her unimpeachable credentials
[35:53] gave his fraudulent identity a powerful veneer of legitimacy.
[35:58] Despite Boss being the sole breadwinner, earning over $1
[36:01] million a year, Gerhart's writer maintained absolute control over
[36:06] her finances and her life. The carefully constructed world
[36:12] he built began to collapse when Boss filed for divorce in 2007.
[36:18] She had begun to suspect that the entire identity he had
[36:20] constructed was indeed a complete lie.
[36:23] And while she wasn't able to figure who he was, she figured
[36:27] out he wasn't Clark Rockefeller. For a narcissist like Gerhart's
[36:32] rider, the loss of control was an intolerable injury.
[36:36] On July 27th, 2008, during a supervised visit in Boston, he
[36:42] executed a planned abduction of their seven-year old daughter.
[36:48] The kidnapping triggered a massive FBI manhunt that put the
[36:52] face of Clark Rockefeller on news broadcasts across the
[36:55] country and in Canada. The Rockefeller family quickly
[36:59] clarified that they had no idea who this guy was and that he had
[37:04] no connection whatsoever to the famous family.
[37:08] It was this crime, born of desperation and hubris, that
[37:12] would finally solve the slaying he had committed 23 years
[37:16] earlier. A week later he was arrested in
[37:19] Baltimore, where he had already set up a new life as Chip Smith,
[37:23] a yacht captain. The national publicity
[37:26] surrounding the case blew the lid off his 30 year con.
[37:30] Fingerprints taken after his arrest were matched to prints on
[37:33] an old immigration document. This definitively proved that
[37:37] Clark Rockefeller, Christopher Crowe, and Christopher
[37:41] Chichester we're all the same person, Christian Karl Gerhart's
[37:46] writer. It turned out that he had
[37:49] arrived in America in 1978 as a foreign exchange student and had
[37:54] charmed his way into a sham marriage for a green card.
[37:59] In 2011, while nearing the end of his Massachusetts prison
[38:03] sentence for kidnapping, Christian Gerhart's rider was
[38:06] charged with the slaying of John Sohus.
[38:09] The trial, which began in 2013, was a master class in
[38:14] prosecutorial storytelling. With no strong forensic evidence
[38:19] or witnesses to the crime, the case was built circumstantially.
[38:24] The prosecution wove together a damning narrative from the clues
[38:27] Gerhardt's writer had carelessly left behind.
[38:33] The most crucial pieces of evidence were two plastic bags
[38:36] found wrapped around John's skull.
[38:39] One was from the bookstore at the University of Southern
[38:41] California. The other was from the
[38:44] University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
[38:47] Gerhardt's rider had attended classes at both schools,
[38:51] effectively leaving his calling card in the grave.
[38:54] And honestly, it's things like this that make me wonder how
[38:57] this buffoon was able to pull off his cons for so long.
[39:03] Witnesses from San Marino, now elderly, testified about his
[39:08] strange behavior. A church acquaintance recalled
[39:11] Gerhardt's rider borrowing a chainsaw around the time the
[39:14] couple disappeared. Another remembered him trying to
[39:18] sell a fancy Turco Persian rug that appeared to have very
[39:21] unusual stains on it. The witness hadn't bought the
[39:25] rug, so it couldn't be tested to prove anything with certainty,
[39:29] but it was yet another piece of evidence against this predatory
[39:32] con man. The defense, acknowledging their
[39:37] client was a grifter, employed a strategy of misdirection that
[39:41] mirrored Gerhardt's writer's own methods.
[39:44] They pointed the finger at the one person who couldn't defend
[39:47] herself, the missing Linda Sohus.
[39:51] They argued that Linda, a tall, physically imposing woman, was
[39:55] more capable of the attack than Gerhardt's rider, which I have
[39:59] to say, is probably as audacious as it is disgusting.
[40:04] They entered into evidence the postcards from Paris, which they
[40:07] claimed proved she was alive after John was slain, But
[40:11] despite this, the jury wasn't convinced.
[40:15] I'm going to give you a second to guess how this defense worked
[40:18] out, and I mean a literal second here.
[40:22] In April 2013, after deliberating for less than a
[40:26] day, they found Christian Gerhart's writer guilty in the
[40:30] first degree. He was sentenced to 27 years to
[40:34] life in prison. The verdict finally brought
[40:38] answers to the family of John Sohus after nearly 3 decades of
[40:43] uncertainty. The perpetrator had been held
[40:46] accountable, but the conviction only solved half of the mystery
[40:50] that began on that quiet San Marino St. in 1985.
[40:54] And the question of what happened to Linda Sohus remains
[40:58] unanswered. Her body has never been found,
[41:03] and she is still officially classified as an endangered
[41:06] missing person. The prevailing theory held by
[41:10] prosecutors and investigators is that Gerhard's rider eliminated
[41:14] her as well, disposing of her body in a location that has
[41:19] never been discovered. The defense's theory that she
[41:22] was the perp who fled was a courtroom tactic unsupported by
[41:26] any evidence whatsoever aside from the likely fake postcard
[41:30] from Paris. Gerhardt's writer himself has
[41:35] claimed that Linda is still alive, even hinting at his
[41:38] sentencing that he had information about her
[41:41] whereabouts. This appears to have been one
[41:44] last attempt by the sick individual to try to assert
[41:47] power, though it appears no one was buying what he was selling.

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