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

foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] garage wherever you are whatever you are
doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and The Man Behind the glass is the
captain and we would like to point out that your fantasy football team is not as good as you think well guess what my
team's name is I beefed one I know it's eat my ass it's good to be seen and it's
good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling your cousin [Music] foreign
honey rye by the hard-working crew at Silverback Distillery this is rye whiskey infused with real honey liqueur
poured over some ice and it's smooth sipping here today in the garage my friend's garage grade four and a five
bottle caps and this week's drinking was brought to us by these good friends right here first up we have a big cheers
mates to David K in Elizabethtown he says he left his other True Crime podcast for the garage and has not
looked back on the big we like Egypt to Julian and Sulfur Louisiana next we have
a friend and long time listener Alex in the land of the Midnight Sun in Fairbanks Alaska cheers to you out and a
big shout out to Elizabeth in Wichita Kansas and we have Jennifer and Calgary Alberta Canada and also in big beautiful
Canada we have sherry Mcgill and the whole family listening in Newcastle Ontario Canada guess what Canada the
garage loves you so much we are doing a Canadian garage tour in 2020 so thank you to everyone who helped with this
week's beer fund and if you would like to help us raise enough money to actually follow through on that Canadian
tour go to truecrimegarage.com and click on the Donate button I am very excited to announce that we have some new
merchandise in the store we have a beer glass set we have a hat we have bottle openers we have Koozies we have
everything for your fall tailgating needs check out true crime garage.com and also download the Stitcher app for
all of our old episodes and check out our bonus episode out weekly on Stitcher premium called off the Record all right
Captain that's enough of the business everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
foreign [Music] we discussed three murders yesterday and unfortunately there will be more today
we start off with neural 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
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 18 year old John Oren Biggs who answered an ad placed by
Renfro for a live-in caretaker for his house this was a house in 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 Biggs
Biggs said he let it go but when it happened again a few minutes later Biggs grabbed a fire poker and bludgeoned
Renfro 40 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 Blankenship
the two returned to the house and stole a safe but were later very disappointed when they found the safe contained
nothing of value Biggs was arrested and charged with renfroe's murder his defense was a
variation of the quote gay Panic defense they allege that Renfro was a pervert and Biggs attack on him was prompted by
renfro's advances it turns out and it appears that neural 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 he used in his car but
inside his house a Renfro the Pierce 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 till when he was about 11 years old he didn't get a
double charge for manslaughter plus you know robbery my notes only state that he was
convicted of voluntary manslaughter it might not have pressed charges if they stole the 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 gay 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 tayak 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 it's hate crime yeah yeah so this has a similar outcome tayak 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 end 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 there were a lot they were for a long time in history 60s 70s 80s 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 and Order approach Kern County prided itself on while some well-connected powerful gay men escaped
scrutiny or got off easy to 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 camp
he established a commission on racial ethnic religious and minority violence Los Angeles attorney Thomas Coleman
headed up the investigation of the Biggs and the tayak 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 end 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 going to heat up too because one of the activists and one of the people leading this
charge for stiffer penalties uh 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 baker's field Greyhound bus
station apparently this was a popular meeting spot for men and where Ed buck had also been known to frequent
Bakersfield Police knew about Jacobson 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 backin
who was 19 years old and this man went on to live with him for eight months Jacobson provided food lodging and a job
including tuition for school but required sex in return yeah he's 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 then he went inside the unlocked sliding doors
once inside he stabbed Jacobson in the stomach 10 or 11 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 in 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 going to 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 patterns
surrounding possible members of the Lords of Bakersfield as you said Captain 1998 we have Sid
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 or not but it's often brought up during
those discussions yeah it's a similar situation we have a tough time figuring out what
cases to include and what not to include and again who 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 to fall apart okay we have 57 year old Bakersfield assistant district attorney Stephen tauser
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 Lance Hillis who knew
Stephen since Lance was five years old his father Chris worked for Stephen tauser as a district attorney
investigator after he spent several years in the Bakersfield Police Department tauser 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
talzer 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 talzer took advantage of this situation and offered Lance a safe haven a place
where he could stay at first Lance stayed at tosler's 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 tallser's home this
mostly when money ran out for the drugs that he was yeah it seemed like as one of his
only options once in a while when he left he would take one of tulsar's cars to which
Stephen talzer would call the police but would never end up pressing charges for
a stolen vehicle the police knew that talzer was spending a lot of time with this young man when
Lance finally got his own apartment tallser 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 to come up with
an idea so speculation of course was talzer was paying and he was a regular visitor to
Lance's home talser continued to supply Lance with food credit cards lodging a car and a
friendship such as it was yeah he was providing him with a little FNS 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 taller used his assistant district attorney influence to get Lance off
anytime he was charged with stuff [Music] 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 their form but you're basically creating the situation
now that you have an addict that they're dependent on you for drugs are dependent
on you for financial situations and then you're they're you're using them for sex
I mean that's sex trafficking well it's also believed that Not only was Lance being sent to rehab because of
talzer 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 Lance's family
whenever Lance was in rehab talzer was a regular visitor even when Lance assaulted a worker at one of the rehab
facilities tulsar had the incident buried Chris Hillis new tosser 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 Stephen tallser'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 talzer's 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 tallser had preyed upon their teenage son's desperation for drugs and abused him Chris Hillis confronted
talzer 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 talzer and then calling the sheriff's department
when the responding officers arrive he's telling them that tallser 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 tosser's intervention to
be sent to rehab instead of jail right 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 it yeah well he corrupted their son and now he's corrupt in 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 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 Don Hillis he recommended to Lance's 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 tallser 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 7 2002. this ripped up his family overcome with
grief and rage Chris Hillis Lance's father murdered Stephen talzer on September 13th
talzer 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 Tozer then their son Lance would still be alive yeah initially the father denied being
involved he eventually pleads guilty to the crime and he is hit with 10 years for involuntary manslaughter right for
voluntary mans for voluntary manslaughter and which is going to be a little bit different because the other
charges those guys were getting about three years he's going to get 10. yeah Chris Hillis got out of prison in 2013
he runs a drug rehabilitation facility in Bakersfield called Lance's Haven now the tulsar 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 talser 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 impositions 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 those old Legends were rooted and true [Music] [Music] all right cheers everybody and make sure
you you don't be a douche canoe go to the store Page and except pick up a koozie or something
the hat is awesome there's there's actually several hats there's several awesome things pick up the hats I'm
sorry I'm just lost in this whole story I mean I'm 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
and then but but does that mean because of all these um basically you have the murder victim
was actually victimizing somebody beforehand or accused of doing so right and all those murder victims are
um of gay orientation or is it files 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 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 do that all right
let's get into uh one time Bakersfield district attorney Ed jagels Chris Willis says that he begged those
are his words I begged jagel's in multiple phone calls to and letters to take steps to reign in
his second in command which was Stephen talzer what you're talking about Willis and get him away from his son Lance
Hillis jagel's response was that Lance is an adult and in interviews when asked about
the Scandal that culminated in tulsar's Murder jagels insisted that talzer 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 [ __ ] bag 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 is saying to him
hey you did wrong here right and he's saying no 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 a district attorney is a little bit of a [ __ ] bag
it goes back to back to all the different angles that you could look at this from to where you
you could also make the argument that what Ed jaggles 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
D.A Ed jagel's 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 Beggars field in many cases seem to be allowed to do their thing with virtually
no legal consequences and this did occur too under his watch right several of them should have been prosecuted for
rape statutory rape and crimes against children district attorney Ed jagels was in office since the early 80s and it's
the opinion of many that jagels was complicit in helping brush the Lords of Bakersfield Scandal completely under the
rug 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 jaggles 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 instead of investigating this they're going to go after
the middle class well lower middle class citizens okay for so-called Satanic ritual child sex
abuse and molestation that this is so bizarre was not actually happening so jagel's 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 jaegel's 26 convictions were secured on what is arguably zero to little evidence
of these 26 convictions 25 were actually eventually overturned Kern County has paid out over 9 million dollars in
wrongful conviction settlements a 2008 documentary called Witch Hunt narrated by Sean Penn details this story I
actually believe uh 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 a lot of these
situations were happening was they're rounding up these kids and basically getting them to just confess to anything
but not ever coming up with the story themselves so they coerced all these uh stories and all these allegations
basically out of 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 power and a betrayal of Innocence exposes jagel's tactics including presumption of guilt
manufacturing or embellishing evidence persuasive interrogations prosecutorial misconduct
despite all of this Diego's continued to be re-elected and Bakersfield embraced its role as the poster City for the
quote tough on crime movement its Mock's slogan was come for vacation and leave on probation lost better than their last
slogan um come on vacation but only if you have some money and you're 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
lock Em Up D.A 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 Glenn 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 jagel's 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 jaegels told the magazine Rolling Stone magazine that the 1980s molestation
trials were simply jagel's allies among the Lords of Bakersfield covering their tracks by going after other people
now we should mention here that Robert mistrell the the man that we've mentioned a lot throughout this
case yeah he actually named jagels as one of the men who sexually abused him I'm going to step in for a little bit
and throw my own two cents in here on this this my my humble opinion if you will
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 mistrell 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 it at some point you really got to
question these allegations now Ed jaegel's 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 to me and to others I I got to say man it
doesn't seem that there is real tangible punishable uh ring of abusive 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 [Music] um you know the average Predator I don't
know the exact number but I know it's the high 200s of roughs rough estimated victims a predator would have
so if you have 150 possible predators in that area would probably see then 20 000 victims and why aren't we having
more of these victims come forward uh and and present this so I think but then it's it's a sticky
situation no pun intended with the Lords of bakerfields because you wonder a couple things one
is it these people in 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 who can to be able to
control them or blackmail them or is it just they're protecting these Predators because of wealth
or or their or their position of power so it becomes and I would lean to the latter two then
that it's some giant group with some giant conspiracy if that makes any sense at all well no 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 yeah 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 I think that I think I've walked down that path enough where I I think I gotta try to to
give this some kind of conclusion it's gonna say we're good we'll just stop here okay
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
I see a name that is repeated throughout this story and a general theme that seems to follow him this is Robert
mistrell 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 right 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 he is
a child and not of legal age but to me it somewhat appears that Robert was able to end this sex for
higher 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 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 not certain as for Glenn 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 Coral 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 fits not died
be it suicide or be it murder who's to say that they wouldn't have drug him into court at some point for Dana's
murder eventually I also went to state that the double homicide committed by William tayak 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 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 person 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 are 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 yeah and if we believe Mr Robert Mistral
well then they've 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 I I 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 mistrell 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 while I just want to be clear in
these cases that these older gentlemen are using drugs alcohol money all these briberies just because the
child agreed to it agreed to their Arrangement 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 Baker's field 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
[Music] foreign 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 keys 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 truecrime garage.com again thank you guys so much for listening
thanks for joining us in the garage every week your garage buddies and until next week be good be kind and don't
litter foreign [Music]

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

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

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Brief Summary

The episode discusses multiple murders of gay men in Bakersfield, highlighting systemic failures in justice and societal attitudes towards LGBTQ+ victims.

Key points

The Murder of Neural Renfro. Neural Renfro, a millionaire, was murdered by his caretaker after unwanted advances.
Stephen Talzer's Manipulation. Assistant DA Stephen Talzer exploited a young man, Lance, leading to tragic consequences.
Chris Hillis's Revenge. Chris Hillis murdered Stephen Talzer after his son's tragic death, believing Talzer was to blame.
The Complicated Legacy of Ed Jagels. Ed Jagels, a controversial district attorney, faced criticism for his handling of child abuse cases.
The Lords of Bakersfield Legend. The narrative explores the alleged connections between powerful figures and a network of abuse.
Robert Mistrell's Troubling Past. Robert Mistrell's history reveals a complex interplay of victimhood and agency.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's good to be seen and it's good to see you.

1:01WatchNov 21, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Garage TV

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.