The Bakersfield 3 /// Part 1 /// 562 | Forensic Files

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talk some true crime [Music] you go you [Music] go the karna river is a wild and Scenic
River in the great state State of California that spans approximately 165 mi it drains an area of the Southern
Siera Nevada mountains Northeast of Bakersfield fed by snow melt near Mount Whitney the river passes through Scenic
canyons in the mountains and is a popular destination for whitewater rafting and
kaying it is a southernmost major river system in the Sierra Nevada despite its remote source
nearly all of the river is publicly accessible in the summer of 2018 some recreational teenage swimmers
in the karna river near Hart Park were met with a rather unpleasant surprise they found a duffel bag in the
river the bag was zipped shut and had some heft to it the weight of the bag had some of the
teenagers thinking that it could contain something valuable able inside possibly
even money the teens eagerly opened the bag to investigate its contents to their disappointment the
first item they found in the bag was a sweatshirt well that makes sense a sweatshirt inside a duffel bag thoughts
of possibly recovering jewelry or someone's lost stash of cash were fading as now it's beginning to look like they
simply found some 's lost gym bag but further investigation yielded a rather strange
find looking into the bag they could see what appeared to be raw meat not a dead
animal but it looked almost like something one might buy from the butcher shop perhaps a raw
chicken but wrong again nope boys that's not a chicken and of course here is the unpleasant surp surprise
reveal that you have been waiting for the strange item in the duffel bag was actually a human
limb it was a badly decomposed severed arm it was not possible to determine whether the arm was cut off pre or
postmortem the arm had a black zip tie still on the wrist and marks indicating that the arm was removed with the use of
a saw this horrific Discovery will not be the start of our story but rather one confirmation of earlier
suspicions three adults who traveled in similar circles in the same town in the span of just one month were murdered or
vanished in feared dead those three were dubbed The Bakers field 3 from a Reddit Comet by Amador 9 a
seemingly local individual summs up Bakersfield and parts of kar County California as they see it and the
comment reads Bakersfield is the antithesis of everybody's popular image of California unlike the coastal regions
Bakersfield is flat Dusty and a long way from the ocean it is conservative poor and not the least bit
fashionable Bakersfield was once a country music hotspot but not anymore and drugs criminal activity and
murder are nothing new to the region exactly who was responsible for the murdered vanished and feared
dead what exactly happened to them this is true crime garage and this is the case of the Bakersfield
[Music] 3 [Music] at 34 years of age Micah holsen bake had lived a fairly normal and stable life he
was raised in rosale an upper middle class neighborhood of Northwest Bakersfield by parents Lance and Cheryl
with whom he was very close he was a normal even smarter than average kid spouting football stats and arguing on
the debate team a good student he graduated from high school and attended college for a year before deciding it
was not for him he joined the Navy but was discharged after he continued to suffer from growths in the back of his
throat which required surgeries he took a job as a bank teller and obtained his license to become a financial adviser
and was successful able to provide for his family a wife and a son Micah was outgoing a bit of a jokester and
generally happy but a rocky marriage and a subsequent divorce contributed to a downhill spiral Micah had several throat
surgeries and each time after was prescribed pain pills after several Cycles through this surgery equals pain
pills routine he became addicted and in 2016 his life really started started to change Micah's family noted a shift in
his demeanor and attitude he lost not only custody of his son but visitation rights as well which reporting
devastated him he started to get into bar fights acting belligerent and unstable he took a leave from his job
citing a struggle with depression that was debilitating but eventually his employer became fed up with his absence
and fired him through all of this it didn't really seem seemed to be depression that Micah may have been
suffering from Micah told his mom Cheryl that he was afraid he was in danger he said his mom wasn't sure of the exact
cause and he seemed to be suffering from paranoia but she was getting the sense that her son had been threatened by
someone he started to behave erratically and became unreliable and unpredictable
and then one day he was gone he was reported missing in March of 2018 yes on the 15th of that month
Captain Cheryl his mother dropped Micah and another unnamed person off in Bakersfield in a neighborhood that was
less than desirable in fact it was crime and Drug ridden she says that she never
saw him again after that now on the 17th Micah called his mom and asked or demanded for some money to help pay for
a motel room for him and a friend Cheryl says that she refused that they argued over the phone and eventually she just
hung up on him hotel motel Micah was seen on the 23rd by an extended family member AC crossing the street at Mount
Vernon Avenue and Flower Street this is near karna Medical Center but then after
that we don't have any more sightings of Micah he seemed to have vanished from that point on
friends started calling looking for him and Cheryl and Lance's mother and father
could not reach him at any attempt they went to his apartment and got the landlord to let them in they say that
everything was in order when they went to his apartment now after about two weeks of not being able to reach him and
finding that he had not been in contact with anyone his parents filed a missing person's report and then unfortunately
just kind of had to wait and find out if the police could determine anything and
they said quote we didn't hear back from anybody at the police department uh this
is what Micah's mom told bakersfield.com it seems police wrote Micah's disappearance off to him
skipping town to either avoid legal hot water or some other situation and after coming up with that hypothesis didn't
really investigate his disappearance the First Media report came out about Micah missing on April 13th 2018 so we
already see a bit of a delay there as well the family was obviously frustrated with the whole situation that they could
not find their loved one and the lack of action by the media by law enforcement but really this frustration Captain is
just going to be the beginning of the situation for Micah's family well it seems when we have somebody with some
kind of mental illness or drug addiction that the the media and the public they don't seem as concerned with these
individuals as as maybe uh just a normal person that went missing well or even let's take that a step further you say
normal person being missing I think we have to factor in here too this man is in his
mid-30s right and that probably has a lot to do with law enforcement they're thinking look if he did skip town he
skipped town and there's probably a good reason for it so that's always a possibility here they may not have known
the full extent of the situation either sometimes when people are reported missing the people that report them
missing and I'm not I don't know the situation here Captain so I don't want to put any blame on the family but if
you are expecting action make sure that you are very clear about what you believe is going on with that individual
at the time of their disappearance and here in this situation we have the mother who's later telling us the public
that look while he took a leave of absence from work citing depression maybe he was depressed maybe
he wasn't but he loses his job and Mom is saying I actually think that what is going on at this point is that he is
paranoid and we don't know if the paranoia is coming from the drugs or from him being threatened as she was
suspecting yeah or or a combination of both yeah or combination of mental illness with drug use now we need to
introduce another individual this is 38-year-old James colad James was a successful entrepreneur he opened up his
own skate shop and got a patent for his torch trucks now for those of you that don't know a whole lot about skateboards
I know very little bit but I know that the trucks are on the bottom portion of the skateboard and from what I
understand here Captain this is pretty cool stuff torch trucks this patent that he he got was a skateboard parts
basically that enhance sparking when they're used on Rails so very cool kind of stuff there kind of video game type
stuff if you ask me makes me think of Tony Hawk also he was a Bakersfield native James really only worked his day
job in order to afford his favorite hobby which was surfing now he also loved to gamble in fact he was known to
his friends as Joe Vegas yeah this year at crime conon they're going to call me Captain Vegas in the inflatable dates
there you go Captain Vegas James has two young daughters one of them Cameron was
raised by her grandparents after her mom's death and a car crash when she was just 16 months old but she and James
were close and had sleepovers they watched movies and made cookies together they drove around blasting music so even
though she's being raised by grandparents it seems like the two were close and very good friends but James
like Micah had a problem he had broken his wrist in an accident and since 2016 was addicted to prescription
opioids he was given after surgery on his arm like many he quickly found that he could not live without the drugs and
his need for them escalated he turned to Fentanyl patches and then to heroin his
daughter Cameron recognized her dad's struggle with illicit substances after she saw crushed up pills next to a
rolled up dollar bill he started to disappear for days at a time finally James did go to rehab but it didn't
fully take and he continued to struggle and this has been such a common sad reality for so many people and how
quickly pain pill addiction can turn into heroin addiction or meth addiction and this really to me is at kind of the
height of all of that where you have these these pain pills and many different forms and unfortunately all of
them are highly addictive it's very easy and very quick to get addicted to these
types of drugs and then they become expensive or they're no longer available to you so you start seeking out other
ways to get that same feeling or to manage your addiction right and today thankfully I'm of the belief that we're
much more aware of this situation maybe the medical professionals should have been aware of it before you think but at
least today I feel like pain management is structured differently than it would have been 10 years ago 15 years ago or
as we're seeing here even just five or six years ago now in james' situation one night that we need to talk
about here Captain is the night of April 7th this is when James left his mother's
house his mother's Diane Burns he leaves her house around 10:30 later that same night we're now talking 1:30 a.m. he was
in a car pulling out a driveway of a residence in South Bakersfield when James crashed into to a
parked trailer on Cobble Mountain Road near Sandstone Lane after the crash James somehow managed to stagger out of
the wrecked car now this is not going to be easy because he's in bad shape the car is in bad shape this is one of those
little Fiat cars and it's pretty smashed up too James is 6'5 in tall so big boy yeah so getting a large man getting out
of a small SM mashed up car is quite difficult from my understanding Captain I believe he had to crawl or kind of
squirm his way out of the passenger side door to make this all the more difficult
and all the more tragic the reason why he crashed his car is because he was shot well that's a
reasonable reason James eventually collapsed after getting out of the vehicle he collapsed to the ground and
his brother Ryan who was at the same house at the same location that James was at earlier that
he had left from he's leaving the area too same route discovers his brother's car and
his brother lying on the ground right and he finds his brother James basically at the scene of this crash am I crazy to
assume that he was shot while he was driving well there's a couple different stories of this and it's been reported a
little bit differently now it sounds to me I'm of that mindset that you are that
that he was shot while driving there are some versions of the same story that he
may have been parked temporarily now parked temporarily does that mean that he was parked on the side of the road or
at a stop sign or a stop light and somebody opens fire on him but this is very much like the way that I kind of
Envision Biggie Smalls or Tupac right where the the the car pulls up alongside of the other car and bullets are fired
into the vehicle right unfortunately James wouldn't make it he's not going to survive the situation in fact he bled
out sadly with his brother Ryan at his side who held him as he died this uh one bullet hole or multiple bullet holes I'm
assuming he was shot multiple times police later would call the incident a drive by shooting now whatever
vehicle that it was that fired the shots that vehicle was gone so who would want
to kill this mild-mannered easygoing Surfer guy Well normally the the vehicle that shoots the other person they don't
stick around to talk to police true that uh police did not know who'd want to kill him and unfortunately no one was
really talking but police did catch on to something early in their investigation and what they found only
raised more questions the driveby shooting victim James colad knew the missing man Micah
holsen bake they ran around in the same Social Circles and James even helped Micah move residences just a few weeks
before one disappeared and then the other was gun down so could The Disappearance of one young father and
the murder of another be connected or is it just some kind of tragic coincidence
well our listeners know that there are very few tragic coincidence inces in these true crime stories Michael went
missing and was last seen March 23rd 2018 James is murdered April 7th 2018 and now there's still another piece
of the puzzle that we have to introduce yeah that's correct and when we say you know there was no car the car that that
shot at James didn't stick around I think it's less that the car wasn't there when police showed up and more so
that when his brother arrives on the crash scene who's there within minutes of the
shooting right this car is still not there and the brother doesn't seem to know exactly what has happened to his
his older brother James and now we have the situation to Captain where police don't have any leads on on either
situation on The Disappearance of Micah or the murder of James but the one thing
that they can piece together and the problem with this is that these two are running around in the same circles and
these are not the the best of circles to be in these are the are bad circles to be in my friend so yeah these kids have
bad jibs a lot of the people that know these two individuals and again they're adults they're in their 30s so they're
out living their own lives they're not under underfoot of their parents and their other loved ones and they're both
kind of removed from their their families you know their their children or their um in one case an wife so we
don't have a lot of people to fill in those blanks other than possibly people that run in these two circles now what
we do figure out what investigators do figure out is the two know each other and that is of importance because you
have two situations missing murdered no one's really talking but aha at least we
know that they know a lot of the same people now in this third case this is going to bring us to our third person of
importance Bailey Des spot at just the age of 20 she's got her whole life ahead of her now Bailey grew up in the middle
class neighborhood of rosale we've heard that name before here's another connection her family says Bailey could
have done anything with her life she was beautiful smart and kind she was ambitious but also a free spirit when
she was young she was a member of the Future Farmers of America someone who loved animals in 2016
now this is just a year after high school she ran away to Vegas and married her boyfriend even though the
relationship was volatile and according to some reports abusive yeah so was a relation shits her parents obviously
were not pleased about this marriage which predictably ended quickly in 2017 Bailey however was
devastated by this and things didn't seem to get better for her she total her car and then was let go from her job and
it's believed that Bailey thought that she could find comfort in the arms of men and possibly drugs in early 2018 she
moved in with a man that she was having a relationship with a man more than twice her age he was 43 years old this
man's name is Matthew Queen Bailey's Mom Jane says she last saw her daughter when
she stopped at the house she shared with Matthew Queen to drop off some groceries this was on April
23rd but by Just 2 Days Later Bailey had dropped off of the face of the Earth no
calls no text nothing Jane filed a missing person's Report with the karn's county sheriff's
office but then she got a phone call it was Cheryl hsen bake Micah's mom and she
told her that her her son too was missing Jane knew exactly who Micah was you see Bailey and Micah knew each other
it's hard to say exactly what their relationship was remember Micah was 14 years older than Bailey but we know that
Bailey started spending time in the same circles as Micah so we know that Bailey
knows Micah and Micah knows James correct but do we have any connection from James to
Bailey well what we're going to see is as we are able to find more information and continue with all three of their
stories it's much like a Quinton Tarantino picture man they all start to intertwine a little more as we go along
well then I'll take a royal with cheese in July of 2017 we have Bailey who was actually
arrested outside of Micah's house so I mean just those documents that information alone proves that she knew
Micah Micah knew her she was charged with disorderly conduct in that situation apparently those misdemeanor
charges were dismissed and Micah helped Bailey file for a restraining order against an abusive new boyfriend this
was in August of 2017 which the restraining order was granted but these incidents were just
the beginning of a precipitous decline for Bailey a decline into drugs and unsavory company 3 weeks after getting
that restraining order she told her parents that she was drugged at a party she was drugged with a spiked drink and
then gang raped she started going off on multi-day Benders and resurfacing with stories of being kidnapped she would
call at all hours of the night pleading for help and asking to be picked up but sometimes she's calling asking to be
picked up and she doesn't know where she is sometimes she had no shoes or possessions when her family got to her
her sister recalled one night when two cars drove up and picked Bailey up her sister Caitlyn said that Bailey clearly
did not want to go with whoever was waiting for her in the driveway as soon after that this is when she ended up
with that Matthew Queen in December of 200 17 while out one night Matthew Queen and Bailey were pulled over by
police now cops found four loaded guns including an AR-15 in the car Matthew Queen was charged with six counts of
possession of a firearm by a felon possession of ammo by a felon and possession of an assault rifle Bailey
pled no contest to misdemeanor weapons charges of carrying a loaded gun and carrying concealed weapons
she received three years probation and then moved in with Matthew Queen and get this Captain this is where it gets I
mean it's weird story already but gets a little more bizarre she moves in with Matthew Queen and Matthew Queen's
estranged wife and Matthew's mother they're all in one house right not not weird at all e a new form of The Brady
Bunch Matthew Queen had quite a police record yeah you think including a stint in the early 2000s in federal prison on
gun charges now this is from an appeals court ruling quote between late December
2000 and July 2001 Queen purchased 39 firearms from federally licensed dealers in the state of Indiana the guns cost
more than $11,000 and at least 11 of them later were recovered at crime scenes in the
Detroit and Chicago area is gun sale records link the purchases back to Queen end quote so he's buying up guns in
different states and then he's selling them to terrible horrible people and these guns are finding their way to
crime scenes and then police are able later to track these guns back to him yeah follow the [ __ ] Crown so Bailey's
living with this guy who could not stay away from guns big illegal ones at that and after April 25th 2018 no one could
get a hold of Bailey and she was reportedly pregnant at the time oh man Bailey was last seen by her mom on the
25th at a house she and Matthew Queen shared this again when Jane dropped off those groceries that we already
mentioned right at that time she said Bailey opened the door and thanked her mother but then said that she had to go
Jane never talked to her again after a few days she went to the house and was told by a teenage boy who lived
there that he hadn't seen Bailey so she reported Bailey missing to the [Music] authorities
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to the walls cheers everybody cheers and if you're looking for something to do come hang out with me and Boba from
truth and Justice we're going to be doing a live event and meet and greet up in Grand Rapids Michigan April 16th you
can find out more information on my website Captain fat hands.com there you go and I want to give a cheers and a my
thoughts and hopes and heart and prayers are going out to the people in and around Ukraine I admire your courage
your bravery and your resolve may God be with you all please now back to our story here captain
the first story the first news story that came out about Bailey appeared on June 8th now this is after bayy was
missing for nearly 6 weeks we have kg which did Gang Busters reporting on this case in fact such Gang Busters
reporting that a reporter went on the Dr Phil show to talk about the Bakersfield
3 now reports that Matthew Queen told police he last Saw Bailey at a neighborhood
near Palm Avenue in Renfro Road and he says she was in the company of a Hispanic male he also made multiple
Facebook posts saying that Bailey ran away and accusing her mom of trying to pin it on him when Bailey just skipped
town he insinuated that perhaps she had harmed herself saying that Bailey was off her meds that she was depressed and
she wanted to die in one of his posts He also mentioned that he knew Micah with that Sherl holon
bake said it was very obvious this is Micah's mother it was very obvious that it was not a coincidence and people out
there know something definitely not a coincidence and again you run in circles with people abusing drugs and you're
running in circles with criminals it's it's a recipe for disaster yeah the the situation is exactly as you said very
Bleak two missing one dead and now of course with the three being kind of linked together you have the fear by
loved ones and and Friends searching for these other two that Unfortunately they
may have already succumbed to the same conclusion the same fate that we had in the driveby shooting case so one month
after Micah goes missing his mother Cheryl her phone rings it was Dianne Burns James's mom
she told Cheryl her own son had been killed in April and he seemed to know many of the same people as Micah who was
missing the two moms realized that their kids their grown children both ran in the same circles the moms formed a
united front and forc law enforcement to listen to their detailed connections between the children the adult children
Diane and Cheryl told law enforcement quote something's not right our sons knew the same people then when Bailey's
missing posters start going up they pulled Jane into their little ring after Lance recognized Bailey's name as rumors
connected to his son's disappearance well like you said I mean this is all happening within 30 days of each other
yes about 33 days to be exact when we from start starting point to the final person of the three being reported
missing so we have the family that's coming forward and they're saying look person a
knows person B person B knows person C that these three are all somewhat connected and somehow they're connected
we don't know how yet but they ran in the same same circles and they're now proving to police that person a does in
fact know person B and something terrible happened to both of them and person B knows person C and something
terrible has happened to both of them and so you can see how this is kind of filling in some of the blanks for law
enforcement also now we have people that are are going to be come into to more question here Captain right when you
start to see the same names in these victims lives over and over again well those people were moving up your
priority list of people to interview and possible suspects well and also they're
drug users so they're going to be coming in contact with more people so they're a
little more unpredictable as far as their routines go and they're going to probably come in contact with more
random people than the than the average citizen would right so we have a situ situation where Micah knows James Micah
knows Bailey and now we have the family saying that look all three of these people all three of these individuals
knew each other it was all one big interconnected circle of people yeah the mothers the three mothers named their
kids Collective case the Bakersfield 3 that's where that name comes from and the moniker took off in the media
normally once there's any reporting of the victims using drugs it it seems like the
public and the media kind of disappear from looking into those cases harder but but the three mothers in this case
they're not going to let this go They're not going to just let this die out of the Public's eyes no the the three moms
and their families made it their quest to find their children or their children's killers they did not believe
that their cases all following within one month and with all three knowing each other that they could be anything
other than connected Bailey's Family offered a $6,000 reward in Bailey's case and posters plastered all over the
neighborhood with photos of all three victims the Bakersfield 3 Seeking information and the moms started to
compare notes my M's mom said that before his disappearance her son had become paranoid well that's definitely a red
flag he said someone had threatened him and he feared for his safety now his mother did too this after she learned
that he was selling drugs she told bakersfield.com quote my mom instinct is that he found
himself in over his head she said she dropped Micah off in a sketchy part of town and he vanished Cheryl started to
believe he had been killed James's mom felt the same way Diane told kg that a lot of the people that were
hanging out with him were doing drugs and that he hung out in the same circles as Micah now she tells Dr Phil quote I
believe my son was set up to be murdered end quote well they're using dangerous drugs but they're also surrounding
themselves with dangerous people yeah Bailey's living with somebody that's has has all kinds of weapons charges against
him now I hope nobody in the Bakers field area needs a botomy because we're about to talk about one bad
chiropractor by September 2018 there was some news in the case the house in front of which James had been
shot belonged to a chiropractor his name is Dr sui bajwa and this guy wasn't exactly the
model of professionalism documents filed with the Chiropractic board reflected that the
doctor was in some legal trouble in fact he had to surrender his license to practice because on October 7th
2016 Bakersfield PD responded to a call about a vehicle smashing into some parked cars they saw Baja and a woman
walking quickly from the scene walking away from the scene in an alley when they stopped him
bajal denied being the driver or the owner of the car that was smashing into the park cars he said he was just a
passenger but the car was registered in his name and seat belt burns on his body
showed that he had in fact been in the driver's seat and cops noted that he exhibited signs of being under the
influence of a controlled substance this this included slurred speech bloodshot eyes droopy eyelids nodding and the
inability to stay alert the female passenger the unnamed female passenger did in fact tell police that bajua was
driving the vehicle and that he had even asked her to lie for him well Baja your
pants are on fire we're not just talking about a DUI here Captain because when cops searched the car they recovered two
firearms a Smith and Wesson M andp AR-15 and a Heckler and cotch MP 522 long range rifle with a faux
suppressor both rifles had high capacity magazines that contained live ammunition
right a records check revealed the Firearms were not registered and Dr Baja was arrested and then convicted of three
misdemeanor in connection with the DUI crash and guns Baja was sentenced to well 10 days in jail that's what you get
when you're real bad but he did get three years probation and he had over $2,000 in
fines then in May of 2017 Baja was arrested again this time police officers were dispatched to a suspicious activity
incident bajua was the front passenger in a vehicle and stated that he had a loaded capped syringe in the interior of
his left jacket pocket police recovered a syringe filled with a dark brown liquid substance believed to be liquid
heroin officers also found a bottle containing several Xanax pills in addition officers located two additional
yellow oval-shaped pills which later were identified as Hydrocodone after this arrest bajal pled
guilty to both selling drugs and carrying a loaded gun again another slap on the wrist 180 days in jail 3 years
probation and another F yeah it's a pretty pathetic sentencing so it was at this Shady guy's house the
chiropractor's house that James was cited at on the night that he was killed this was the home that he was in the
process of leaving when he's gunned down we know that because again remember his brother Ryan was at the same
location he's the one that tells that to the public and he told that to Dr Phil when
he was on his show now here's what he tells Dr Phil he says Ryan says that I was at Dr Baja's house that night
supposedly they were eating pizza and watching some movies with a group of people and Ryan said that bajwa owed
James money his brother James the doctor owes him money for what we don't really
know but it was was not a small amount of money oh probably hand jobs and cracker checks could be I don't know
that bajwa it sounds to me like he wasn't able to practice practice at this time he's already been arrested twice
and again at some point his license was revoked now what we do know though Captain is that Ryan tells us that his
brother James was coming to bwa's house to collect that large amount of money and bajwa tells Ryan
hey tell your brother he better not come here I'm going to have my boys over and
they're going to be strapped Ryan relayed the message to his brother and the two have an argument
Ryan then left to drive someone else home and then returns to Baja's house he says maybe approximately 90 minutes
later so James was in the driveway at this time when Ryan returns at this time James then pulled out and did a u-turn
and pulled in behind a parked car Ryan still driving toward the house hears shots hears gunshots he ran to his
brother but it was too late James was lying on the ground after crawling out of the vehicle bleeding Ryan maintains
that all he saw was a silver car he denied to Dr Phil that he knows who shot his brother he did say he suspected baj
of engineering the shooting obviously based off of the threats that bajwa told him to relay to his brother earlier that
night yeah a lot of bad people in this case and you can you can smell it yeah people who carried and used guns
possibly dealt guns manufactured guns and traded in guns and so the connection here is with James and the story of the
doctor owing him a large sum of money yeah one could easily draw a line from one dot to the other and say well maybe
that money was for drugs but I actually think that it was probably for guns and or maybe some
illegally and or maybe for some illegal gambling again we know he's Joe Vegas and then we have Micah's
involvement in guns and we know that they all know each other now Lance Micah's father said his son had told him
something before he vanished something Lance didn't believe at the time he said quote I'm putting together guns I'm
going here and putting together guns for people end quote Lance thought his son was exaggerating and was just paranoid
at that time later he's going to grow to believe that this means something that this is some indication of the truth and
some kind of peak into Micah's personal life Lance says that when Micah told him
this information again he thought he was exaggerating maybe even paranoid but he
also told him hey if if you're doing that kind of stuff it's easy you just stop you you can get out please stop and
get out and he also said if you're afraid of people then you need to stop and get away from them but Micah said to
his father I can't do that I'm afraid for my family Lance said to K G news quote Mah was mixed up for the first
time in his life in things that were illegal so it's logical for police to think he got out of town he's hiding out
end quote but he wasn't Lance's younger son started asking around and the name Bailey popped up yeah the holsen bakes
didn't recognize that name at first but then within a week or or so they started
to see missing person's Flyers with Bailey's name and photo they realized Bailey despot missing person was the
same woman who was now somehow linked to Micah Lance astutely said that he was pretty sure what had happened to Micah
the same thing happened to Bailey because she knew what happened to Micah all of the Bakerfield 3 were putting
themselves in a Harm's Way by one using dangerous drugs and then being around a dangerous group of people whether it's
within the drug Community or you know the drug Community is also connected to other criminal communities
and whatever happened to these three we're not saying they deserved any of this at all on any level at all what
we're simply saying here is that if you put yourself in a bad situation enough times it's it's only logical that
something bad may happen to you it's not victim blaming it's unfortunately the way that the world works and if you have
any other beliefs other than that well you're wrong all right let's Circle back to something that we talked about in the
trailer here Captain remember the teenage swimmers in the kar River they find that duffel bag floating in the
river or somehow find it in the river thinking that it may have contained money they open it they find the
sweatshirt inside and unfortunately find a badly decomposed severed arm well that
was the summer of 2018 and we need to fast forward to December of 2018 this is when testing testing
revealed that the arm belonged to Micah one of our victims that we're talking about he was officially classified as
deceased and officially classified as the victim of a homicide it was not possible to determine whether the arm
was cut off pre or postmortem said the pathologist but the arm had a black zip tie still on the wrist and marks that
indicated that the arm had been cut off using a saw searches of 5 miles around the spot
where the arm was found this is near Highway 178 Unfortunately they were fruitless
searches but police came out and said that the case bore marked similarities to Bailey's disappearance definitely
which is a little confusing to me but we're going to continue to dive into this right now per
bakersfield.com who we've continually cited here in this case they State quote those similarities included they State
quote those similarities include Witnesses locations and evidence end quote the Bakersfield PD took over
Bailey's case from the Kern County Sheriff's Office after the two agencies compared notes and discovered the
commonalities between the two cases by mid 29 police acknowledged that all three
cases making up the Bakersfield 3 were in fact [Music] connected join us back here in the
garage we have so much more to get to on episode 2 and if you haven't left a five-star review on iTunes for the
carinal and the captain then then you need to do so right now just stop the episode and go over that shame on you
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The Bakersfield 3 /// Part 1 /// 562

Part 1 of 2

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In the Summer of 2018 recreational swimmers found a duffel bag containing a severed arm in the Kern River near Bakersfield California. Around the same time three families had come together in an effort to locate their loved ones or find justice for them. The three were Micah Holsonbake, James Kulstad and Baylee Despot and were either missing, dead or missing and feared to be dead. These cases are all related. Please help. There is a reward set up for information.

Call Secret Witness @ 661-322-4040.

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Brief Summary

The episode examines the interconnected cases of the Bakersfield 3, focusing on their disappearances and the discovery of Micah's severed arm.

Key points

The Bakersfield 3. A shocking discovery in a duffel bag leads to a deeper investigation into three missing individuals.
Micah's Downward Spiral. Micah Holsenbake's life takes a tragic turn due to addiction and paranoia before he goes missing.
James Colad's Tragic End. James Colad is shot in a drive-by incident, raising questions about his connection to Micah.
Bailey's Troubled Journey. Bailey's life spirals after a volatile marriage, leading to drug use and dangerous relationships.
The Bakersfield 3 Connection. The mothers of three missing individuals unite to uncover the truth behind their children's disappearances.
The Threatening Message. Ryan relays a warning from Bajwa to his brother James, foreshadowing tragedy.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This horrific discovery will not be the start of our story.

Introduction to the case of the Bakersfield 3

6:32WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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