Lords of Bakersfield /// Part 2 /// 329 | Forensic Files

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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime we discussed three murders yesterday and unfortunately there will
be more today we start off with knurl Renfro who was a 50 year old millionaire his business Gold Coast Realty and
investment was booming Renfro was not out in fact none of his friends had any idea that he was gay mmm
he apparently liked to hang out in the company of young men entertaining them at his home or at his mountain cabin on
December 19 1982 Renfro was hosting eighteen-year-old John Oren Biggs who answered an ad place by Renfro for a
live-in caretaker for his house this was a house and a modest but nice neighborhood of Bakersfield but this
house was noted for its fortress-like bars on the windows and neighbors said that the shades were always drawn anyway
Renfro and Biggs were playing pool and Renfro made a pass at bigs Biggs said he let it go but when it happened again a
few minutes later Biggs grabbed a fire poker and bludgeoned Renfro forty times over the head Biggs was then rifling
through the house looking for cash and then he stole renfro's car and went and picked up a friend
this is 18 year old William Blake kinship the to return to the house and stole a safe but were later very
disappointed when they found the safe contained nothing of value the Biggs was arrested and charged with renfro's
murder his defense was a variation of the quote gay panic defense they alleged that Renfro was a pervert and Biggs
attack on him was prompted by renfro's advances it turns out and it appears that knurl Renfro had a history he on at
least three prior occasions lured young men to his house using the ad for employment made advances and then
actually raped one of these men his house was found to be missing interior door knobs the doors required a deadbolt
key to open them so one could not always leave of their own free will once inside it's kind of like the Bundy
method that they used in his car but inside his house Renfro appears may have been a violent sexual predator Biggs was
ultimately convicted for killing him but only for voluntary manslaughter and he served only three and a half years even
though he had a rap sheet going back eight years this is going back to when he was about 11 years old he didn't get
a double charged for manslaughter plus well robbery my notes only state that he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter
it might not have press charges if they stole a safe and there was nothing in it
though so that's a possibility well his rap sheet going back to when he was 11 this included things like assault
and battery shooting at police extortion robbery and burglary Wow so this is viewed as basically a slap on
the wrist and it did outrage many people at the time particularly gay rights activists who believed that Biggs got
off easy because simply because Renfro was okay then yeah but see here's here's the
issue again we have we have a case where somebody ends up murdered and then we have robbery and some other things that
went down during the commission of that murder we have allegations that are brought
forward against the man who is is now dead and unable to defend those allegations it's this is a whole big
messy story and around that same time we have William kayak he threatened shot and killed two gay neighbors after some
kind of confrontation and it appears he did so simply because they were gay right that's a crime yeah yeah so this
has a similar outcome tie AK was convicted of only involuntary manslaughter of one of the men despite
having threatened to kill them and then bragging about it afterwards one writer said of the result quote this case would
reinforce a national impression of Bakersfield in Kern County being a place where violence against gays is tolerated
and quote in the wake of these verdicts the state attorney general was convinced
to take a look at whether homosexual victims of violent crime were being shortchanged in Kern County well they
were alone they were for a long time in history 60 seventies eighties it seemed that there was a contradictory history
in the Kern County justice system some killers of gay men got light sentences despite the law & order' approached Kern
County prided itself on while some well-connected powerful gay men escaped scrutiny or got off easy despite having
sex with minors it's really a situation where you see all this going on and you have to I mean you can only throw your
hands up in the air and go what is going on here right what truly is going on here
then we have Attorney General John van de Kamp he established a commission on racial ethnic
religious and minority violence Los Angeles attorney Thomas Coleman headed up the investigation of the bigs in the
tie act trials in which the defendants received light sentences allegedly because of the homosexuality of the
victims Coleman said quote what you're talking about is corruption whether the victim is gay or not the presence of
sexual orientation as a factor has in the past at least given the appearance of unequal treatment and quote after
studying the situation he established a campaign against hate violence and encouraged stiffer penalties for cases
involving violence against certain groups including gays it was a start but it did not address the systemic problem
embodied by the Lords of Bakersfield yeah and this is gonna heat up too because one of that activists and one of
the people leading this charge for stuff stiffer penalties is actually going to be murdered Marshall Jacobson was a 48
year old millionaire real estate and criminal defense attorney in Bakersfield and he spoke in front of the Kern County
Crime Commission urging these harsher sentences for criminals who perpetrated violent crimes against homosexuals
Jacobson himself was gay and known to frequent the Bakersfield Greyhound bus station apparently this was a popular
meeting spot for men and where Eddie buck had also been known to frequent Bakersfield police knew about Jacobsen
and had looked into allegations of sexual misconduct made by an underage boy but charges were never filed then at
the bus station he met Randy Ray back in it was 19 years old and this man went on
to live with him for eight months Jacobsen provided food lodging and a job including tuition for school but
required sex in return man a sugar daddy beckon wasn't gay and he said later that he was disgusted
by the relationship but he needed a roof over his head he resented Jacobson and he broke the house rules
in fact he skipped school two days in a row when this happened Jacobson kicked him out and back and
left the house he returned a week later demanding entry into the home and even climbing over the back fence hmm then he
went inside the unlocked sliding doors once inside he stabbed Jacobson in the stomach ten or eleven times and then he
proceeded to rob the house he drove Jacobson's car full of stolen goods all the way to Los Angeles and he sold the
car then he tried to escape to Mexico but he was turned in by a friend of Jacobson's who he had called for help
here the lenient sentencing ran out back and got life without the possibility of
parole but again it was a case of an older man surrounding himself with young men and one who ended up killing him and
yeah this is gonna bring us to the year of 1998 so depending on who you talk to a number of years passed before any more
murders occurred this seemed to have anything to do with the pattern surrounding possible members of the
lords of Bakersfield as you said captain 1998 we have Syd Sheffield who was a prominent education and health activist
in town he was found stabbed to death in his mobile home the murder weapon was a
knife and he was robbed police discovered that he was leading a secret life one that did not go with his public
image at the time he was promiscuous very social and was said to have no enemies and possibly was last seen with
a young man in a cowboy hat at a local bar this case to this day remains unsolved and to be perfectly fair and
transparent no one is really sure whether it has a connection to the Lords of Bakersfield are not but
it's often brought up during those discussions yeah it's a similar situation this is again we have a tough
time figuring out what cases to include and what not to include and again depending on who you talk to that can
change drastically so let's go to 2002 because this is where things really really start to fall apart okay we have
57 year old Bakersfield Assistant District Attorney Stephen Towser he had a public image of
the caring do-gooder the public servant a Good Samaritan who took a drug addicted youth under his wing this kid
was a lance Hillis who knew Stephen since Lance was 5 years old his father Chris worked for Steven Towser as a
District Attorney investigator after he spent several years in the Bakersfield Police Department Towser was gay it was
considered an open secret and he seems to have fixated on this young man Lance who was under the age of 18 when tall's
er started grooming him got involved with meth at the age of 16 and was not welcome at his home at his parents home
because he was doing drugs Tawes er took advantage of this situation and offered Lance a safe haven
a place where he could stay at first Lance stayed at toddlers home for several months but he told a friend he wasn't
comfortable there and he was there just for the food and for the clothes and for
a place to sleep now he would leave but he would always end up going back to tall tzer's home this mostly when money
ran out for the drugs that he had it seemed like is one of his only options once in a while when he left he would
take one of tossers cars to which Stephen taller would call police but would never end up pressing
charges for a stolen vehicle the police knew that tall's er was spending a lot of time with this young man when Lance
finally got his own apartment tall's er co-signed the lease and it doesn't seem like anybody's really sure how Lance was
actually paying the monthly rent but you don't have to use much of an imagination
throughout to come up with an idea so speculation of course was tall's er was paying and he was a regular visitor
to Lance's home Tawes er continued to supply Lance with food credit cards lodging a car and a
friendship such as it was yeah he was providing them with a little F and s well Lance continued into a downward
drug spiral he was stealing he was crashing cars and he was injecting drugs into his veins
his family was extremely anxious among other feelings for him to kick this drug habit they actually wanted him sent to
jail they thought that this would be truly the only way to break the cycle of addiction that really had had a hold on
this guy right so tosser used his assistant district attorney influence to get Lance off any time he was charged
with stuff so Lance would just be facing rehab rather than facing jail time gone
this is I mean it's not that far of a stretch to look at this situation and go like but this is like sexual trafficking
in a sense you know by by enabling this person or possibly giving them the money
for drugs maybe you're not injecting it for them but you're basically creating the situation now that you have a addict
that they're dependent on you for drugs are dependent on you for financial situations and then you're there you're
using them for sex I mean that's well it's also believed that not only was Lance being sent to rehab because of
taller rather than Jail but it's also believed that like any time there was a chance that Lance was going to encounter
a tough judge in one of these charges that he would conveniently have the case moved to a different court so again he
could just get rehab so this happened repeatedly to the incredible frustration of lances family whenever Lance was in
rehab halls er was a regular visitor even when Lance assaulted a worker at one of the rehab facilities tall's er
had the incident buried Chris Hillis knew taller for years both in his role on the Bakersfield Police Department and
at the DA's office and because he had done extensive renovation work at Steven Tyler's home he was getting desperate to
save his son Lance he had Lance arrested in an attempt to save him from his meth
and heroin addictions already a man with a temper who had been written up for the
use of excessive force five times as a police officer he lost it when he was confronted with the reality that Stephen
tall's his relationship with his son was far from that of a mentor relationship but was really a sex for drugs and money
arrangement the Hillis family realized that tosser had preyed upon their teenage sons desperation for drugs and
abused him Chris Hillis confronted tall's er in August 2000 and demanded to know what the obsession was with his son
this ended in a violent confrontation which we have Chris who ends up hitting tosser and then calling the Sheriff's
Department when the responding officers arrived he's telling them that tosser was inappropriately involved with his
son Lance the Sheriff's Department refused to file a report rallying around the district attorney the assistant
district attorney tosser ended up with a black eye and nothing else when Lance continued to be
arrested for drugs and thanks to tossers intervention to be sent to rehab instead
of jail rain the Hillis family truly felt that their hands were tied and that this man corrupted their son and there
was little if anything that they could possibly do about no way he corrupted their son and now he's corrupting the
system which is consistently enabling their son yeah and because their son is an adult and when a lot of this is going
down it gets complicated for them to step in and try to get involved or you know take the reins and really steer
what's going on here now Lance's grandfather did just that he was a former bakersfield police officer his
name's dawn Hillis he recommended to lances probation officer in January of 2001 that Lance should do six to nine
months in jail just to get him cleaned up Lance's brother a probation officer for Kern County himself agreed to this
and multiple probation officers continually recommended jail for Lance but tall's er continued to intervene and
once again Lance avoided jail time in July of 2002 Lance was enrolled in progress house this is a rehab facility
in Sacramento this time Lance escaped from the rehab house he stole a car and he crashed into a truck unfortunately he
died instantly during this accident this was on August 7th 2002 this ripped up his family overcome with grief and rage
Chris Hillis Lance's father murdered Stephen tosser on September 13th Tawes er was found dead in his garage
with a knife sticking out of his head the Hillis family believed that if it were not for Stephen tosser then their
son Lance would still be alive yeah initially the father denied being involved eventually pleads guilty to the crime
and he is hit with ten years for involuntary manslaughter right for voluntary manslaughter
voluntary manslaughter and which is gonna be a little bit different because the other charges
those guys were getting about three years he's gonna get ten mm-hmm yeah Chris Hillis got out of prison in 2013
he runs a drug rehabilitation facility in Bakersfield called Lance's Haven now the tall's er Hillis case brought to the
forefront some of the old wounds dating back to the late 70s and early 80s to the time when multiple murders of male
predators occurred by the hands of younger victims but now it was 2002 a different time what was overlooked back
then was recognized in 2002 as pedophilia yeah illegal sex with minors and an old boy network of corruption and
cronyism that tall's er had continued to get away with using his considerable power and influence to control the life
of this young man to do him favors with big strings attached was shocking and disturbing and the fact that so many in
positions of public service and influence looked the other way was horrifying they didn't protect lance Hillis instead
they handed him back over and over again to a predator the case gave rise to the
expose in the californian that dredged up all the old Lords of Bakersfield tales and people realized that much of
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page and okay pick up a koozie or something Hat the Hat is awesome there's there's actually some hats
there's several awesome think of the Hat I'm sorry I'm just lost in this whole story I mean I'm like swimming through
the madness of what what this could be or what it completely is not you know what I mean yeah all right well here's
the difficult thing is what was happening wasn't recognized correctly on what was actually happening mm-hmm and
then but but does that mean because of all these basically you have murder victim was actually victimizing
somebody before him or accused of doing some right and all those murder victims are of gay orientation more is it
pedophiles and there's a big difference and then on top of that just because they're of power doesn't mean they're
necessarily connected mm-hmm and you know what we're going to get to some some bigger things regarding this story
here in just a second but really truly captain I feel like there's a hundred different angles that you could look at
this story from and I'm not certain that any of them are well the correct angle to approach it from there's a lot of
angles that you don't want to look at this that's true so but but the major point of the story is to buy the Hat Yes
No get the Hat did the Hat alright let's get into one time Bakersfield District Attorney Edie jiggles chris willis says
that he begged those are his words I begged jiggles and multiple phone calls to and letters to take steps to
rein in his second-in-command which was Stephen tosser was talking about Willis and get him away from his son Lance
Hillis Giles response was that Lance is an adult and in interviews when asked about the scandal that culminated in
tossers murder jegos insisted that tall's er was like a godfather to Lance who saw the young man as quote a project
and who only had Lance's best interest at heart the district attorney for Kern County is a powerful position right but
he this guy also seems a little bit like a [ __ ] so what he's stating he's the prosecutor right it's a district
attorney they technically both can be prosecutors okay so the district attorney his
second in control as saying to him hey you did wrong here right and he's saying now I did not do anything wrong
that's where in these situations it makes you wonder is it just because of the high power they're in or is it the
money right is he protecting the person because of the high power or the protecting the person from the money but
either way it seems like this district attorney is a little bit of a [ __ ] again it goes back to two all the
different angles that you could look at this from to where you could also make the argument that what EDD jangles is
saying is the truth that Lance was an adult and that I mean we don't know how much he may have known or what he did
know and was turning a blind eye to right the the the thing here is when this man retired after more than 25
years as a DA at jiggles famously boasted that during his tenure Kern County had the highest per capita prison
commitment rate of any major California County his mission was a law-and-order crime policy sort of ironic since the
Lords of Bakersfield in many cases seem to be allowed to do their thing with virtually no legal consequences and this
did occur to under his watch right several of them should have been prosecuted for rape statutory rape and
crimes against children district attorney Edie jiggles was in office since the early 80s and it's the opinion
of many that jiggles was complicit in helping brush the Lords of Bakersfield scandal completely under the rug mm-hmm
he may not have just been looking the other way he as you pointed out may have actually helped to protect some of those
people that should have been prosecuted jiggles is best known for his campaign that he initiated in the 80s to root out
child sex abuse right so with all these rumors going on about the lords of Baker
fields and - investigating this they're gonna go after the middle class well lower middle
class citizens okay for so-called satanic ritual child sex abuse in my last station that this is so bizarre was
not actually happening so jiggles put 26 people these were teachers and even parents in some situations behind bars
on felony child sexual abuse charges this all during the 1980s this was during the period of a national child
sex abuse panic where daycares and schools were accused of horrific abuses of kids this was sort of a satanic panic
involving children now under jiggles 26 convictions were secured on what is arguably 0-2 little evidence of these 26
convictions 25 were actually eventually overturned kern county has paid out over
nine million dollars in wrongful conviction settlements a 2008 documentary called witch-hunt narrated
by sean penn details this story actually believe a Sean Penn was one of the producers on this as well and to be
clear it wasn't that there was little to no evidence what a lot of in these lot of these situations were happening or is
that they're rounding up these kids and basically giving them to just confess to
anything but not ever coming up with the story themselves so they could cohost all these stories and all these
allegations basically at a thin air right they didn't bother to go find any evidence to back up these right
accusations or these stories by by children and so what this leads to is all of these well 25 of the 26
convictions being overturned and then in 1999 a Pulitzer Prize winning book entitled mean justice a true account of
a town's terror a prosecutor's POW and a betrayal of innocence exposes jiggles tactics including presumption of
guilt manufacturing or embellishing evidence persuasive interrogations prosecutorial misconduct despite all of
this jiggles continue to be reelected and Bakersfield embraced its role as the poster city for the quote tough-on-crime
movement its mock slogan was come for vacation and leave on probation laws better than their last slogan come on
vacation but only if you have some money and your of power so what does all of this have to do with the Lords of
Bakersfield legend well what's being pointed out here and has been pointed out by many is that the LA comeup da
seems to have overlooked the activities of various businessmen politicians and social elite that were going on right
under his nose many believe he was complicit in shoving the Dana Butler murder and the Glen Fitz situation his
likely involvement in that murder under the rug by refusing to prosecute and investigative reports by Rolling Stone
magazine stated that many Bakersfield residents concluded that jiggles child abuse campaign was possibly intended to
divert attention away from illicit sexual behavior of the city's ruling elite right a former investigator for
the DA's office under Jacobs told the magazine Rolling Stone magazine that the 1980s molestation trials were simply
jiggles allies among the Lords of Bakersfield covering their tracks by going after other people now we should
mention here that Robert Mistral the the man that we've mentioned a lot throughout this case yeah he actually
named Jay geils as one of the men who sexually abused him I'm going to step in for a little
and throw my own two cents in here on this this might my humble opinion if you will mmm-hmm it seems to me and I talked
to a friend about this who agreed we were discussing this case and it just it seems like Robert Mistral while I
believe him on some level it seems like he has just spewed out so many names over the course of all of this it just
doesn't seem plausible that they were all sexual abusers of children at some point at some point you really got to
question these allegations now ed jiggles retired from the DA's office in 2009 and he's never been prosecuted for
all of the wrongful convictions he inflicted upon innocent people right which is pathetic so the legend of
the Lords of Bakersfield truly it's it's just a vague specter of predatory alliances and abuses of power mm-hmm to
me and to others I got to say man it doesn't seem that there is real tangible punishable ring of abuse of men it seems
more like this might be a wink-wink Association and a look the other way type of Tolerance yeah it's a difficult
situation here because one you know he's naming what 150 possible predators you know the average predator I don't know
the Zach number but I know it's high 200s of roughs rough estimated victims a predator would have so if you have 150
possible predators in that area we'd probably see then 20 thousand victims and why aren't we having more of these
victims come forward and [Music] and present this so I think but then it's it's a sticky situation no pun
intended with the Lords of Baker fields because it you wonder a couple things one is it these people on power that are
using this sick fetish of pedophilia to control each other and have one have something on top of
each other right have something over the other person to can to be able to control them or blackmail them or is it
just there protecting these predators because of wealth or their their position of power so it becomes and I
would lean to the latter to then that it's some giant group with some giant conspiracy if that makes any sense at
all well I know I think it does and it's only because because I've been you know
waiting in these weird waters for for a while now and really trying to come up with an answer myself and thinking that
you know what the more I look at this case and the more that I dive into these different avenues that go off the main
road of this case here that I think that I'm going to find my answer unfortunately I didn't like I said
there's also other cases that that some consider to be connected to this and I may not have gone down the right road
off of off of the main road yet to find that but in the end my my general opinion is the look there was illegal
activity going on we can't deny that we also can't deny that there were plenty of murders going on as well down but
there's also a situation where some people may just not have known everything that was going on or known
what was at the root of a murder or at the root of of this whole mess and and therefore didn't take actions against
any of that you know there is a certain there's one thing to turn a blind eye to
something and there's another to just be blind to it and not know what is going on and I think in this
situation I was really going to try to avoid giving my my personal opinion but I think that I think I've walked down
that path enough where I think I got to try to to give this some kind of conclusion if I say we're good we'll
stop here okay exactly buy the Hat look it's it's very difficult with so many characters misdeeds and variables to
really figure out and state what was really going on in Bakersfield for all these years was there in fact an
underground network hiding in the shadows and pulling strings and were these murders many of them still
unsolved connected to the legend of the Lords of Bakersfield from where I sit after reviewing this whole mess mm-hmm I
see a name that is repeated throughout this story and a general theme that seems to follow him this is Robert
Mistral by his own admission and others he had a horrible childhood he was selling himself at a young age trading
sexual favors to men for money drugs and anything else to get him by and while of
course I find the actions and behaviors of the men who chose to employ him as illegal immoral and frankly disgusting
it's very tricky for me to go as far to call those specific situations abuse I understand he is a child and not of
legal age but to me it's somewhat appears that Robert was able to end this sex for hire
relationship at any time with these men and in fact did so when with the help of
another brutally murdered and robbed one of these men and could be suspected in another case as well mm-hmm so this
story obviously just I mean it's just full chock full of victims and a lot of predators Robert just might fit into
both of those categories I'm certain as for Glen Fitz the second murder that we discussed I have to
wonder if he is the outlier in this story was this like a budding Dean Corll situation or is it as simple as once his
wife passed and left him alone we have a sick man that turned his home into a playground for teenagers filled with
alcohol and they simply did not prosecute because they lacked the ability to do so right that there wasn't
something to cover this up they just didn't have the ability to prosecute him and therefore did not bring those
charges forward and had Fitz not died be it suicide or be it murder who's to say
that they wouldn't have drugged him in a court at some point for Dana's murder eventually I also went to state to the
double homicide committed by William tack who planned murdered and then bragged about doing so just because two
gay men were his neighbors that today likely would be prosecuted as a hate crime and it's very difficult to figure
out if those crimes had nothing to do with the quote Lords of Bakersfield or if the lack of proper punishment and
what should have been a death penalty case very likely does have something to do with it you know what I mean it's
it's it's tough to figure out if the Lords of Bakersfield are at work in some of these situations or if it's just
someone else interfering with justice for unknown reasons what I do think that we have is in fact a network of men who
frequented the same locations in search of similar entertainment they lived secret lives and desired the company of
young men and/or boys now keep in mind something very simple that we have to remind ourselves when we start to look
into conspiracies conspiracy theories and these pedophile rings and all these people possibly in cahoots with one
another anytime you have a per or persons committing illegal acts you will have those same people covering it
up whether it's they're covering it up for themselves or if they're helping someone
else and that's where it gets very difficult to truly discern what is going on in this situation and in other
situations that we look at is in fact there's no doubt that there's a cover-up it's just to what extent is that
cover-up how many people were involved is it just one person is it a whole army right of predators that are out there
it's there's no doubt to me that most of these men very likely knew each other again they frequented the same locations
they were in search of similar things you have to you just really have to look at this when when they all know that
their behavior in a lot of cases is wrong and illegal Jim and if we believe mr. Robert Mistral well then they very
likely formed a ring of corrupt abusers that protected one another and if they did that it's very hard to say what they
would not have been capable of doing yeah III agree that that's a possibility and you again you'd have to believe
Robert on some of this stuff but I think you'd have to back down the number of the accusations that he's probably
making Robert Mistral was released from prison earlier this year after serving 35 years he's now 52 years old he's
married and is hoping to start his life over again this after getting his GED while he was incarcerated although he
recognizes his complicity in the murder of Edwin buck he also recognizes that in
many ways he was not fully at fault for the circumstances that led him to the murder
well I just want to be clear in these cases that these older gentlemen are using drugs alcohol money all these
bribery's just because the child agreed to it agreed to their changement does not mean it's anything
less than child abuse and pedophilia agreed now as far as the legend of the lords of Bakersfield and the cases that
we have discussed today we have just simply an implication of a possible connection in my opinion and what we
have here is we have Robert price the journalist for the Californian who helped expose this sword underbelly of
Bakersfield he put it in a May 2019 article that the cases had the same ingredients quote a troubled and
compromised young man a persistent much older male sponsor and homicide try the Hat do we have any recommended reading
for this week we do this week we are recommending American predator by Maureen Callahan American predator the
hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century and some of you may have guessed it this book is
about Israel Keyes so you'll want to check that out and you don't have to write that title down now
you can just go to our website we have a recommended page there you'll find a lot
of other books and other recommendations for you on that page true-crime garage comm again thank you guys so much for
listening and thanks for joining us in the garage every week your garage buddies and until next week be good be
kind and don't let it [Music] [Applause] Oh [Music]

Source: https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-rvnpi-bc6774

Lords of Bakersfield /// Part 2 /// 329 Part 2 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com In a span of just over seven years there were five strange murders in Bakersfield, California. Could there be something even more sinister at the root of these crimes? This exploration is filled with drugs, illegal sex, corruption, abuse and murder. Step in the garage for the story of the Lords of Bakersfield. Blackback Honey Rye Whiskey - Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 bottle caps Save BIG when you visit our sponsor’s websites and use our codes! www.Madison-Reed.com - use code GARAGE to get 10% off plus FREE shipping on your first color kit www.Grove.co/Garage - visit for an exclusive offer for a FREE 5 piece cleaning set when you place an order of $20 or more The full archive of True Crime Garage is available on the Stitcher listening app - for FREE. Our show “Off the Record” is only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

Brief Summary

The episode discusses murders linked to the LGBTQ+ community in Bakersfield, highlighting systemic corruption and inadequate justice for victims.

Key points

The Murder of Knurl Renfro. Knurl Renfro, a millionaire, was murdered by his caretaker after unwanted advances.
Stephen Towser's Manipulation. District Attorney Stephen Towser exploited a young man's drug addiction for his own gain.
Chris Hillis's Revenge. Chris Hillis murdered Stephen Towser after his son's tragic death, leading to a guilty plea.
Madison Reed's Confidence Boost. Madison Reed helps women regain their confidence with beautiful hair color.
Grove Collaborative's Green Promise. Grove Collaborative delivers all-natural products to your door, making going green easy.
Robert Mistral's Troubling Past. Robert Mistral's history raises questions about the credibility of his allegations against powerful men.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is viewed as basically a slap on the wrist.

Discussion on lenient sentencing for Biggs.

6:57WatchAug 21, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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