The Cove

Episode 1: A Macabre Discovery

Jack Moorask, surveyor: I’ll never forget the day I found the toe. It was real clear and brisk, a perfect winter’s day in LA. My partner Rodrigo and I got going early to our job site in the Palisades. We were hired to mark the boundary between two neighboring properties. We were up on the slope in the wooded area at the back of the houses, the area that borders Sunset Boulevard. I was setting up my tripod when I saw the sun flash on something blue on the ground. I thought it must be a dead bird, but the color looked too bright, so I walked over to check it out. It was a human toe, a big toe, with sparkly nail polish. 

Chloe Quinn: Welcome to Between the Lies. I’m your host, reporter Chloe Quinn. In this podcast, we’ll examine a crime that sent waves of shock and terror through an affluent community and a decade later remains unsolved—the killing of a seventeen-year-old senior at Malibu High School, in Malibu, California, just north of Los Angeles. Demelza Intriago went missing on September 12th, 2013. After a drunken argument with her ex-boyfriend and a rival girl on Zuma Beach, she stormed off—and vanished. Five months later, surveyors conducting a topographical study found her bones, twenty-one miles from where she was last seen in Malibu. Here’s Jack Moorask, the surveyor you heard at the top of the episode, with the rest of his story. 

Jack Moorask: The toe looked like it was gnawed off by an animal. I called Rodrigo over. He took a look and wondered if more body parts could be around. Both of us looked up the slope at the same time and saw a clump of old tree trunks. We glanced at each other and without saying a word, we walked up to it. I don’t know what it was that told me to check it out, my spidey senses, I guess. I got on my hands and knees and used a stick to dig deeper until I could look under the logs with my flashlight. I saw what looked like human bones and remnants of clothing. Rodrigo took a look and agreed. We called 911.  

Chloe: Demelza’s death hit everyone at Malibu High hard. As you might imagine, murders are rare in a community where Hollywood royalty like Mel Gibson, Martin Sheen, Pierce Brosnan and many others live in beachfront mansions or atop cliffs with expansive views of the Pacific Ocean. Malibu’s spectacular coastal scenery has appeared in countless movies and TV shows. 

But for all its fame and wealth, Malibu still has a somewhat small-town vibe to it. The city has fireworks on the Fourth of July. At Christmas, kids have breakfast with Santa at city hall. But it’s a rarefied small town all the same. McDonalds sits across from Nobu, the famed sushi restaurant owned by Robert DeNiro. You can buy a $600 minidress in the same shopping center as a bunch of bananas or a bottle of aspirin.

The scenic Pacific Coast Highway runs along Malibu’s twenty-seven-mile-long strip of coastline, separating the sea from the Santa Monica Mountains.  But there’s another divide that runs through the city, a divide of class and privilege. Because for all its well-heeled residents there are also the countless invisible legions who work for them. The maids, gardeners and nannies who take the bus that runs along PCH. There are also the teachers, small businessowners, clergy. Every so often, something happens to cause the sides to clash, and the breach lies exposed like a raw wound. It’s like when an earthquake occurs, and Los Angelenos wring their hands about living on top of tectonic plates. Until they forget again. That’s what happened in Demelza Intriago’s killing.

The prime suspect in her murder was her former boyfriend, Lars Magnusson, the son of Oscar-winning movie director Anders Magnusson. Demelza and her family are at the opposite end of the social spectrum. They were immigrants from Venezuela and employed by the likes of the Magnussons. Demelza’s parents were, and still are, the caretakers of a Malibu mansion owned by Australian actor Bazza Molloy, who lives in Sydney most of the time. Her mom also cleaned houses and her dad worked as a handyman to supplement their income. 

Some people called Demelza and Lars “the odd couple” and said their three-year relationship, which ended three months before Demelza went missing, was really about external needs for each of them: for Demelza, climbing the social ladder and for Lars, rebelling against his parents. Others praised the fact that they got together despite the different worlds they came from. 

Demelza’s death raised painful questions about social class: whether lives are valued based on how much money they represent, about the lack of accountability that money can buy, the friends and favors that fame draws, and the loneliness and vulnerability of being a foreigner, of being different.  

We’re going to explore those questions later in the podcast, but to start off, let’s delve into the facts of the case. This is what we know about the events that led up to Demelza’s disappearance: Soon after leaving her job at a restaurant, she was last seen on Zuma Beach in Malibu around 11 p.m. on a breezy Saturday night. 

Lars Magnusson, Demelza’s former boyfriend, and some friends were partying at a hidden cove on the beach when Demelza arrived unexpectedly. She was drunk. Very drunk. She and Lars argued, then she left by herself and vanished. Her body was found by the surveyors five months later. 

My first stop was Detective Desdemona Nimmo with the Los Angeles Police Department. She was assigned the case because Demelza’s remains were found in L.A. not in Malibu, which is policed by the county sheriff’s department. 

Detective Nimmo has been a detective in West L.A. investigating homicides and other major crimes for over a decade. She has a brisk, no-nonsense air of efficiency and a deep voice. She’s a little intimidating, in fact. But after talking to her throughout my investigation, I came to see she has a softer, compassionate side. She sees herself as an advocate for victims who cannot speak for themselves, the ones who’ve had their lives unfairly snatched from them. 

Detective Nimmo: Every victim deserves justice, and every perpetrator should be held accountable. It’s really that simple. 

Chloe: I’m driving with Detective Nimmo along Sunset Boulevard. She’s going to show me the spot where Demelza was found. Sunset runs from the Pacific Ocean to downtown LA through some of LA’s most storied communities like Bel Air and Beverly Hills. My favorite stretch of Sunset runs through an upscale area called Pacific Palisades. The road curves and winds through an area studded with eucalyptus trees. Then it passes through a shopping area before descending a steep hill to end at the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean. We’re not going that far though.

Detective Nimmo: We did not have a lot of evidence or witnesses in Demelza’s case, but it is still an active investigation. The truth is we don’t know if the killer targeted Demelza or if she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don’t know if the perpetrator killed her intentionally or accidentally, if they killed before or killed since. 

Chloe: Detective Nimmo pulls over on the side of the road. On one side of Sunset is the ranch where Will Rogers once lived. In the 1930s, Rogers was one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors famed for his cowboy tricks. His property is now a state park. But we’re headed to the other side of the road, down the side of a steep, rugged ravine. 

Nimmo: When Demelza was found, hundreds of people left flowers and stuffed animals all along here. It created a real traffic hazard. 

Chloe: Today there’s no sign that this was the final resting place of murdered teenager. We clamber over a guardrail and make our way down the slope. Detective Nimmo warned me to wear sturdy shoes and I’m glad I took her advice. I lurch from tree to tree, so I don’t fall headlong down the incline. Detective Nimmo is descending sideways. She’s obviously done this before. I decide to do the same. 

Nimmo: This is it. Between these two trees.

Chloe: We’ve come to a patch of earth between two eucalyptuses. The tatters of yellow crime scene tape flutter around their white trunks. They almost look like ghostly sentries guarding the spot.

Nimmo: I come here every so often, mainly to check if anyone has been here. Killers sometimes go back to the scene of the crime. They might leave a clue. 

Chloe: In silence, we stare at the soil as if waiting for it to reveal the secrets that it holds. The hum of traffic up on Sunset is faint. A car horn breaks our reverie.

Nimmo: The call came in midmorning. Remains of a body found. I investigate all suspicious deaths in West L.A., so I caught the case. Judging from the location down the embankment, I thought it could be someone who’d fallen and died of their injuries, but as soon as I saw the shallow grave under some logs, I knew we were looking at foul play. Someone had put her there.  We found fabric from a pink T-shirt, denim shorts and a white canvas sneaker, as well as a pendant and an earring of a giraffe belonging to a matching set. Those items immediately rang a bell. When I got back to the bureau, I checked our missing persons reports. The description of the clothing and jewellery Demelza was last seen wearing matched what we found. Dental records later proved it was Demelza.

Chloe: The autopsy found the cause of death was strangulation. With the body so decomposed, it couldn’t be determined if she’d been sexually assaulted, but it looked like she died around the time she went missing. 

Nimmo: My theory is that she was killed the night she disappeared and was already dead when her body was brought here. The killer was looking for a place to dispose of the body and chose a spot that’s difficult to access on purpose. There was no sign of a struggle or anything else that would have shown she was killed at the site, but we had heavy rain that winter so any evidence would have washed down the slope. The remains had been disturbed by animals, but we could see that she had been placed in a fetal position, with her hands crossed on her chest, her head bowed. Probably so the killer didn’t have to dig a big hole. Burying bodies is a lot of work.

Chloe: Not much in the way of evidence was found. Too much time had lapsed.

Nimmo: We found some DNA under her fingernails, but it was in such a degraded state that it didn’t tell us anything other than she tried to fend off the assailant. She put up a good fight. 

Chloe: You know how on TV shows the detective has one particular case that haunts them? Demelza Intriago is that case for Desi Nimmo. She has a photo of Demelza pinned to her cubicle wall. It’s Demelza’s senior class portrait taken the week before she went missing. In the months that followed her disappearance, it became instead the picture used on missing persons posters and in the media.

Nimmo: We’ve received many leads over the years. I check out each and every one. By no means, have we forgotten Demelza.

Chloe: Lars Magnusson, Demelza’s former boyfriend, remains a person of interest in the case, but he fled the country.

Nimmo: Lars is a Swedish citizen, and we believe he’s in Sweden. His family moved there right after Lars graduated high school. But even before then, he lawyered up and refused to cooperate with law enforcement. We have a border alert on him if he returns to the country, but to our knowledge he has not re-entered the United States although his father travels back and forth.

Chloe: Sunrays beam down through the trees onto Demelza’s resting place giving it a celestial glow. It seems appropriate, as if nature is marking the innocent life that was stolen well before its time. There’s not much else to see. We head back to the car. 

Using social media, I tracked down one of Demelza’s friends from high school, Tessa Kesselman, who’s now studying for a PhD in anthropology at Boston University. I caught up with her on a visit home to Malibu and we went to Zuma Beach where Demelza was last seen. 

Zuma is an iconic California beach. It’s almost two miles of golden sand with crystal clear water and lots of white-capped waves that make it a popular destination for surfers. Like many things in Malibu, it’s had numerous moments of fame. It was the location of the final scene in the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes. It’s also mentioned in the lyrics to the U2 song “California.” Gwen Stefani named her second child Zuma. To local kids, though, it’s simply a place to kick it. Here’s Tessa.

Tessa Kesselman: It’s like a lot of childhood things. You grow up with them, so you take them for granted. You don’t realize how other people see them. Whenever I tell people I’m from Malibu, they’re, like, ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’ But Malibu is not paradise. Nowhere is. (Sniffs) Sorry. I get emotional when I remember Demelza.

Chloe: The day we go to Zuma, it’s cold and grey. The beach is deserted. We get out of my car and walk across the sand. The ocean wind lashes us like a whip. 

Tessa: A group of kids found this small beach between two, like, headlands. It’s tricky to get to. You have to walk on the rocks then go around the headland on a narrow ledge with the waves crashing behind you, but it was worth it. The cove faces the ocean so it’s totally private. We built fires, drank, smoked weed. The usual teenage stuff. I went there a couple times, but I wasn’t a regular. You still up for checking it out?

Chloe: Tessa points to a big crag of rock jutting into the sea. Waves crash on a rock bed leading up to its foot. 

Wait, you mean we’re going around that cliff on that ledge?

Tessa: Yep.

Chloe: Shit. Alright, then. 

The things reporters do to get the story. The ledge is only about a foot wide. We shuffle around facing the rock wall, waves and rocks at our back. Then we arrive at the cove, a tiny half-moon of sand bordered on both sides by tall rocks, the cliff face at the rear and the ocean in front. Getting here was more than a little nerve-wracking. 

This is definitely something that only teenagers would do.

Tessa: Right? I didn’t like coming here. I did it, because I didn’t want to be a wuss, but it was scary. There’s an overhang somewhere, here it is. If it was cold or raining, we’d huddle under here. This is sure bringing back some memories. (She chokes back a sob.)

Chloe: We sit on the sand.

Tessa: Demelza was never a party girl. She’d go along with drinking and smoking weed, but she never initiated it. She was a serious student, a striver. She wanted to do well and please her parents. Her family had gone through so much to get to this country. They’d lost everything in Venezuela. She didn’t talk about it much, but she told me once, right here, in fact. I was struck by how much she’d gone through compared to us, how spoiled we must seem to her. 

Lars was just the opposite. He had everything. Actor good looks, blond, blue eyes. He lived in a big house. His parents had money, fame. But like a lot of kids in Malibu, there was pain behind the façade. His mom drank. She’d been an actor back in Sweden but could never get her career going here. His dad was a director, but he was hardly ever home. He was always showing up in the tabloids with some starlet on his arm. Lars acted out. In ninth grade he started using drugs, like heavy shit. Crack, meth, you name it. He was suspended for fighting, got detentions for talking back to teachers. I think Demelza was the stability he was missing in his life. He knew she wasn’t with him because of his dad’s fame. She’d never even heard of his father.  

Chloe: The summer before Demelza went missing, she and Lars broke up. Everyone was surprised.  

Tessa: I don’t know what really led up to it. We hadn’t been that close until she called me right before school let out for the summer and told me they were over. She just said he was immature. I figured she finally saw him for the loser that he was. Honestly, I thought it was good she got away from him. 

She got a job bussing tables at Poseidon’s, the biker bar up near the county line on PCH. That Saturday, I stopped in there to say hi to her and see what time she got off work. She hadn’t returned my calls for a few days. She seemed tired, kinda distracted. She apologized for not getting back to me, said she’d been working a lot of overtime. The place was packed so we didn’t have time to chat. She said she was working until closing and told me she’d call me the next day to make plans to get together. Then out of the blue, she asked me if I knew Thirza Povich. I said I didn’t and asked who she was. Demelza never got a chance to answer. Her boss called her to a dirty table. He seemed mad she was talking to me, so I left. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. 

Chloe: After she went missing, it came out who Thirza Povich was, Lars’s new girlfriend. She and Lars were at the cove when Demelza showed up that Saturday night. Tessa thought it was an odd coincidence, or maybe it wasn’t.

Tessa: Demelza had never mentioned Thirza before, then the same night she shows up where Thirza and Lars are hanging out? I can’t help but feel those two things are related.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard at school on Monday that she was missing. I just couldn’t get my head around it. I’ve always wondered what I could’ve done that afternoon at Poseidon’s. Could I have prevented her death in some way, waited around to ask about Thirza Povich, called her later that night? I mean, if just one person had made a different choice, including myself, maybe she’d still be alive. 

Chloe: I named this podcast Between the Lies because my aim is to dig up the truth that has fallen between all the rumors and outright lies in this case—the whole truth, not the half-truths, not the omissions of truth. Anyone who knows anything about this case at all, drop me a line on the website. Working together, maybe we can solve this murder. 

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Episode 2: The Cove

Chloe: The events at the Zuma Beach cove that Saturday night are key to what happened to Demelza. From what she told her friend Tessa Kesselman that same afternoon, she seemed to have Lars’s new girlfriend on her mind, Thirza Povich. Thirza was a sophomore at Malibu High School, two grades behind Lars and Demelza’s class, which explains why Tessa didn’t know her. The big question is why Demelza went to the cove that night. Did she know that Lars would be there? That he’d be there with Thirza? At that point, Demelza and Lars had been apart for almost four months so why seek him out all of a sudden? 

Jordan Bradshaw, a good friend of Lars’s, was at the cove that night when Demelza arrived. He now lives in San Francisco where he works in the tech industry. I caught up with him on Zoom. We talked for two and a half hours about Lars, Demelza and Malibu. That is to say, mostly Jordan talked. It seemed like he’d been waiting for a chance to unload. 

Jordan: We came across the cover while goofin’ around on the rocks that previous spring. We wanted to keep it just for us: Lars, Kyle, who was another friend of ours, and me, so we kept it a secret. Whoever we brought there had to swear not to tell anyone. We kept a few supplies in a lil cave in the cliff face. A couple of tiki torches and beach chairs. We’d bring snacks and beers or a bottle, smoke a joint or two or three. It was dope. It really was.

Chloe: Until it wasn’t.

Jordan: That night me and Kyle were there. Lars brought Thirza, who he was seein’ at the time, and a friend of hers, Scarlett. Real pretty. I liked her. Everything was goin’ great until Demelza, like, literally crashed the party. She tripped and fell to the ground. Kyle said, ‘Nice of you to drop in.’ Bein’ all pretty ripped at the time, we thought it was a riot, except Lars. He wasn’t laughin’. It was like he knew right off that Demelza bein’ there was bad news. I don’t know what time that was. Later, when we got back to the car, I saw on my phone it was just before midnight. So maybe it was like 11?

Kyle gave Demelza a beer. She pounded it, in between givin’ Thirza and Lars dirty looks and runnin’ her mouth about how Thirza was always after Lars, that she knew something was up a long time ago. She called Lars a scumbag. I realized she was shitfaced. The atmosphere turned tense. We didn’t know what to do, what to say then Lars finally said, ‘Go home, Demelza. You’re wasted.’ She said, ‘Yeah, looking to get me out of the way so you can be with little blondie.’ 

Chloe: Demelza had crow black hair. Thirza was dirty blond. 

Jordan: Then Thirza leaned over to Scarlett and whispered something. That set Demelza off like a stick of dynamite. She said, ‘You have something to say about me? Say it to my face. Oh, I forgot, you like to fuck other girls’ boyfriends because you can’t get your own.’ Thirza made a face and said, ‘Oh, Saint Demelza.’ Demelza said, ‘You’ve been after him for years.’ Lars told her to go home again. She snapped back, ‘Seriously? That’s all you have to say?’ At that point, Thirza took a long pull of Southern Comfort. Demelza whipped out her phone and took a photo of her.

Thirza lunged at Demelza to grab the phone. Demelza fell back onto the ground. Then Thirza was on top of her to get the phone. Demelza was holdin’ it above her head out of Thirza’s reach. Scarlett was tryna to pry the phone out of Demelza’s hand. Demelza grabbed Thirza’s throat with her free hand, chokin’ her. Lars jumped in and pulled Thirza away. Me and Kyle got Scarlett off Demelza. It was scary there for a minute. I mean, shit. Demelza, like, she really wanted to do some damage.

Chloe: Thirza had scratches on her face. One of them was bleeding. 

Jordan: She was cryin’ and callin’ Demelza a fucking bitch. Demelza was cryin’ and tellin’ Thirza that she was the bitch. It was a major shitshow. Then Demelza left, didn’t say anything, just got up and went. We were shocked. I mean, none of us thought Demelza had that in her. We hung for a while, but the night was over. Then Kyle told Lars that maybe he should check on Demelza. Lars left. 

When he didn’t return after a while, Thirza got pissed. She and Scarlett left. Kyle and I stowed all our shit in the cave and went home and watched Saturday Night Live. The next morning, it really hit me what had happened. If we hadn’t stepped in, I think Demelza might have strangled Thirza to death. She wasn’t lettin’ up and she was real strong for a girl. It was the worst night of my life. No joke. I never went back to the cove again, and I don’t think any of the others did either.

Chloe: Something clearly triggered Demelza that night, something with Thirza and Lars. I asked Tessa Kesselman and Jordan Bradshaw if Demelza was in the habit of getting drunk, and when she did drink, if she got violent or hysterical. Neither of them recalled seeing her that drunk before. Jordan said she’d typically nurse one or two beers the entire evening. Tessa said the same thing.

Tessa: Demelza was always very … guarded, I guess you could say, aware of things around her. I don’t think she liked the out-of-control feeling of alcohol. I mean, hearing how drunk she was that night, it seems out of character. Something had to have happened to make her drunk like that.

Chloe: I visited Demelza’s parents, Reinaldo and Elmira Intriago, to find out more about their daughter. They still work as the caretakers of Bazza Molloy’s mansion, which is located at the end of a long driveway behind an eight-foot-high wall. 

The house is in an industrial, modern style, like a pile of cement boxes intersecting at various angles. It sits on top of an oceanside cliff. The front and sides are walled with glass to take advantage of the postcard view. When the sun shines, the sea is the color of sapphire, and the rippling waves sparkle like diamonds. There’s also a cool infinity pool. It looks like the water is flowing over the cliffside. The Intriagos live in a private wing that connects to the kitchen of the main house.

We sit around the Intriagos’ kitchen table and Elmira serves tiny cups of espresso coffee. A photo album is on the table. Venezuelan knick-knacks decorate the windowsill and countertops. Elmira and Reinaldo both have an air of sadness about them. Elmira’s shoulders are stooped, as if burdened by her daughter’s violent death. Reinaldo’s weathered face bears deep creases. Demelza was their only child.

Elmira: At first, our friends and relatives in Venezuela have envy of us at first, now they only feel pity.

Chloe: The Intriagos were forced to leave Venezuela when Reinaldo was fired from his longtime job at an oil refinery for speaking out against the government. For a while, they eked out a living from a small cattle farm Elmira inherited from her parents, until the government seized the land. 

An Australian executive, who Reinaldo had known at the refinery, said he would help them if they could make it to Los Angeles where he now lived. That was enough reason for them to join the exodus of millions of Venezuelans from their country. 

Reinaldo: We have nothing to lose. We decide to go.

Chloe: Travelling by bus and on foot, the family crossed Colombia then headed north through Panama’s Darien Gap, a lawless and violent stretch of jungle. Every so often, they had to pay bribes to gangs who would block their path. Demelza was eight years old at the time. 

Elmira: She is a very brave little girl. When we lose hope, she tells us to keep going.

Chloe: The Australian executive, who did not wish to be named or appear on the podcast, employed Elmira as a housekeeper while Reinaldo worked odd jobs. When the executive heard his friend Bazza Molloy was seeking a couple to take care of the Malibu home he’d just bought, the executive recommended the Intriagos. Molloy mostly rents out the house for movie shoots or party venues. The Intriagos take care of all the arrangements for the rentals and maintain the building and grounds and security. The actor took the couple under his wing, even helping them legalize their immigration status.

Reinaldo Intriago: Mr. Bazza, he is very good to us.

Chloe: Reinaldo and Elmira describe Demelza as a normal teenager. She got As and Bs in school. She loved gymnastics. She was planning to go to college in Washington D.C. to study international relations and already had a pile of scholarship applications on her desk. When she met Lars, her parents were happy, initially.

Elmira: At first, we like Lars. Like Demelza, he comes to this country when he is a young child.  

Reinaldo: Then we know more about him. Lars comes from a good family with money, but he gets into trouble at school, with police. He was into marijuana and drinking. We think, it must be over quickly.

Chloe: But it wasn’t. 

Elmira: I know Demelza wants to help him. I tell her people must help themselves but she wants to, how you say it?, she wants to show we are wrong. We are very happy when the relationship ends. 

Chloe: She never told her parents why they’d broken up. Instead, she threw herself into working at Poseidon’s to earn money for college. But her parents noticed that she seemed withdrawn and depressed. She’d didn’t talk much and would go straight to her room and stay there all night.

Elmira: She never want to eat dinner with us. She always say she eat at the restaurant. I think it is the breakup. I tell her it gets better with time, but she yell at me. She say, ‘No, it not get better. It never get better.’ It is not like her. She is always positive, optimista. 

Reinaldo: We think it is American teenage culture. In Venezuela, teenagers respect the parents. They do not talk back. We ask some Venezuelan friends, and they say they experience the same thing. Too much freedom is given to adolescents here. They say she will mature.

Chloe: Demelza normally caught the bus to and from her job at Poseidon’s, but if she was working late,  her parents would come and pick her up. The night she went missing, she texted her mom to tell her a co-worker would give her a ride home. The Intriagos went to bed.

The next morning, Elmira realized she never heard Demelza come in that night. She usually woke up. She checked her room. Demelza wasn’t there, nor did it seem like she ever came home. Lars was the first person they thought of. They drove straight to his house. 

Reinaldo: He is asleep when we arrive. We demand his mother wake him up. He say he never see Demelza. I know it is a lie. 

Chloe: They called the sheriff’s department. The deputy told them most missing teenagers come home in a matter of hours but took Demelza’s description and said he would issue an alert to patrols.  

Elmira: We want the police to track her cell phone, but he say it is too soon.

Chloe: The Intriagos started their own search, driving first to Poseidon’s, which was closed. They returned later and spoke to Demelza’s boss, Mikhail Gudonov, who told them she left work after her shift. We’ll have more from Gudonov in a later episode.

Chloe: At a nearby supermarket, they ran into one of the local residents that Elmira and Reinaldo do work for, Jan Beauregard. Here’s Jan:

Jan: When they told me that Demelza never came home, I was immediately worried. I knew Demelza and this didn’t sound like her at all. I brought Reinaldo and Elmira back to my house, made them coffee and called the local hospitals. Nothing. Then I reached out to a friend of mine who’s the editor of the Malibu News. She agreed to put an item on their website with a photo of Demelza. 

Chloe: For the rest of Sunday, the Intriagos kept driving around and waiting for the police to call. Then Monday morning, a lead surfaced thanks to the news story. 

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Episode 3: The Search and a Hasty Conclusion

Chloe: Late Sunday night, twenty-four hours after Demelza was left the cove, a local resident named Murray Ferguson was scrolling through the Malibu News classifieds looking for an apartment. He noticed the story about the missing teenager and recalled an odd scene he and his girlfriend witnessed Saturday night. They were sitting in Murray’s car in the Zuma Beach parking lot when a guy ran across the lot, got into a car and hightailed it out of there. It was just before midnight.

Murray Ferguson: It was weird. He suddenly emerged from the darkness of the beach. He was running like his life depended on it, but no one was chasing him. At least that we could see. On Sunday, I saw the story about the missing girl and thought of what we’d seen. I woke up the next morning with the running guy nagging my brain. It was so out of place. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the missing girl, but I called the reporter anyway just to get it out of my head.

Chloe: It wasn’t nothing. As the light-colored car shot out of the Zuma parking lot, it passed under a lamp post. Murray noticed something.

Murray: Its right side was banged in, like it had been in an accident. 

Chloe: The Malibu News reporter called Reinaldo Intriago to see if the story jibed with anything. It did. Reinaldo had just seen a silver Honda with a dented and scratched front fender parked in Lars Magnusson’s driveway. He called the sheriff’s station. That, plus the fact that Demelza still had not turned up, was enough to get an investigation in motion. A detective was assigned to the case, Rosalba Betancourt. Betancourt didn’t waste any time. She went straight to Malibu High School and pulled Lars Magnusson out of English class. Lars’s friend, Jordan Bradshaw, was there.

Jordan: By that time, the Malibu News story about Demelza missing was all over school. So, when Lars was called out, everyone knew why. Then I got called out. And Kyle and Thirza and Scarlett. We were all taken to the sheriff’s station and put in separate interview rooms. That’s when we learned that we were the last known people to see Demelza alive.

Chloe: The teenagers’ stories about Demelza showing up alone and drunk at the cove meshed. I caught up with Detective Betancourt at a coffee shop in Malibu one afternoon.

Betancourt: What got me mad was that they let Demelza leave the cove alone. She was obviously in a highly agitated state, inebriated and it was a pitch-black night. Even in daylight, it’s a dangerous path to that beach. Zuma is a beautiful place, but it can also be treacherous. It’s prone to riptides. 

Chloe: Riptides form when waves build up at the shoreline. The outgoing water seeks a channel to relieve the pressure, such as a break in a sand bar or a deep dip in the ground. The force of the built-up water whooshes through that channel creating a strong current that pulls everything in its grasp out to sea. That day at Zuma, the sea was choppy, and lifeguards observed riptides. 

Betancourt: If she had fallen onto the rocks, she would have easily been pulled out to open sea. Sometimes bodies wash up further up or down the coast, but many times they’re never found. My theory was that she left Poseidon’s on foot, or maybe someone gave her a ride. Zuma is about two miles south of Poseidon’s. She was drinking. We did find an empty bottle of vodka discarded along the roadside. DNA testing proved that Demelza drank from that bottle. There were no traces of other DNA. We also confirmed with the owner of Poseidon’s that the brand of vodka was one he served at the restaurant.

Chloe: Demelza’s phone was never recovered but cell phone signal was traced. The last pings recorded were in the northern Malibu area around 11:30 p.m.

Betancourt: I questioned Lars Magnusson extensively. He admitted he lied to the Intriagos about seeing Demelza the previous night out of fear of getting in trouble, but he said never saw Demelza after she left the cove. He said he ran to his car because he wanted to get away from the drama as soon as possible and went right home. His mother, Annika Magnusson, confirmed that she heard him come in shortly after midnight. There was no evidence that Lars or anyone else had anything to do with Demelza’s disappearance. The most likely scenario was, at that time, that she fell and was swept out to sea. 

Chloe: Students at Malibu High held a memorial for Demelza on Zuma Beach two months later. Here’s Demelza’s friend, Tessa Kesselman.

Tessa Kesselman: Everyone in the senior class went, and a lot of underclassmen as well. We threw flowers into the ocean and set lit candles floating on the waves. We watched until the last candle was extinguished.  

Chloe: The following February, the theory that Demelza drowned at sea was upended with the discovery of her body. It touched off a firestorm of criticism that the Sheriff’s Department had not investigated the case thoroughly because Demelza was a poor immigrant and that they’d let Lars Magnusson off the hook because of his famous father. Here’s Manuel Bustillo, head of the organization, Immigrant Advocates. 

Manual Bustillo: The case of Demelza Intriago was typical. A brown girl goes missing and first police wait to investigate it, losing valuable time, then they seize upon the easy answer. She fell into the sea and drowned. It’s all her fault, in other words. The cops never really doubted Lars Magnusson’s alibi because he was connected to Hollywood. They allowed him to flee the country because who cares? The victim was a working-class immigrant. It’s just wrong. We picketed the sheriff’s station about this for several weeks and got the media involved to bring some pressure on the cops. We at least raised some awareness of the case, but in a decade, there’s been no progress. It’s frustrating.  
Chloe: We’ll be taking a closer look at Lars’s alibi later, but first I wanted to get Detective Betancourt’s response to Manuel Bustillo’s accusations.

Detective Betancourt: I’m Latina myself, the daughter of Mexican immigrants so the theory that I was biased or dismissive is ridiculous. My conclusion was based on the evidence that I had at the time.

Chloe: Students at Malibu High also protested. They staged a walkout one afternoon to protest what they saw as a faulty investigation and the school held a special assembly to discuss the case. It ended up lasting two hours when student after student got up to the microphone to speak. Lars Magnusson’s friend Jordan Bradshaw says it was a tough time.

Jordan: When Demelza was found, it was devastatin’. I felt, like, so guilty at lettin’ her go off by herself. Why did we ever think that was a good idea? 

Chloe: It didn’t end when the protests faded. Dark rumors started circulating, and Jordan and the group that were at the cove that night were targeted. One of the rumors said that Demelza was pregnant, and Lars and his friends killed her because she refused to have an abortion. 

Jordan: The things people were sayin’ got way out of hand. I mean … how could people say that shit? Honestly, I was glad when senior year ended. 

Chloe: While the drowned-at-sea theory was logical, there were a couple of things that raised questions among Demelza’s classmates. One was Lars’s alibi offered by his mother. Here’s Demelza’s friend, Tessa Kesselman.

Tessa Kesselman: Annika Magnusson was an alcoholic who would drink to the point of passing out. Lars would have friends over to party with his mom passed out in the bedroom. She’d never wake up. He said she was out cold by nine or ten every night. I always wondered if she really heard him come in at midnight or at all.

Chloe: Jordan Bradshaw also said Annika had a history of lying to the cops for her son.

Jordan: She got him out of trouble a couple of times by lying for him. I know that for a fact because Lars told me. One time, he broke into a neighbor’s house to steal booze. The neighbor knew it was Lars, but Annika told the sheriff’s deputies he was home watchin’ TV all night with her. Lookin’ back on it, I think she did it out of guilt. She knew she was a negligent parent, so she tried to make it up to him by protectin’ him. It probably wasn’t the wisest parental choice. 

Chloe: I haven’t been able to reach the Magnussons, so I decided to go out to their old street and see if I could find neighbors who knew the family. It’s been ten years, so I had low expectations, but a surprising number of the same people still live there. Most of them said they didn’t know the Magnussons well. Some remembered loud parties. Then I came across a neighbor who lives in the house directly opposite the Magnussons. She had a lot to say.

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Episode 4: Lars Lied

Chloe: Many thanks to everyone for calling and emailing tips. I’m looking into everything, I assure you, but two calls caught my attention. One was from a potential witness who believes she saw Demelza the night she disappeared. The other was a very irate Thirza Povich, the girl Lars Magnusson was seeing after he and Demelza broke up. Here’s what Thirza had to say: 

Thirza Povich: This is a police investigation. You should leave it to the cops. You’re stirring up a whole lot of shit and egging people on to spread lies and slander about other people.

Chloe: We’ll get to both those accounts later in the episode. But first, here’s the neighbor who says Lars lied about his alibi the night Demelza disappeared. Monica Bergman lived across from the Magnussons in Malibu. After I knocked on her door, she invited me in, and we sat on her back deck that has a view of the Santa Monica mountains as her three dogs ran around her yard. Monica remembers the Magnussons as not very friendly. 

Monica Bergman: I would see the wife every now and then. We’d say hello. One morning, it was like nine o’clock, she already reeked of booze. The husband travelled a lot. I always saw town cars coming to pick him up, him coming out with suitcases. And the kid. The cops were there more than once. The neighbors all gossiped about it. 

Chloe: In the wee hours of the night when Demelza went missing, Monica was up with jet lag. She’d just returned from a business trip to China. She worked for a film distribution company.

Monica: I was wide awake, so I got up and started doing laundry. I heard a crash from the street. I ran to the front window and saw the Magnusson boy at the entrance of the driveway. He’d knocked down a garbage can and was putting it back. The garbage, by the way, was picked up on Friday. The Magnussons often left out the bins for a couple days. He left the bin at the curb and drove up to the house. It was just before three. It was definitely the night when his girlfriend went missing because I read about it in the following days in the local paper and it mentioned that Lars Magnusson went out with the girl. But I didn’t know that he said he was home by midnight. That didn’t come out until after her body was found. I remembered what I saw and called the police. I left a message on the tip line, but no one ever called me about it.

Chloe: Monica was unsure which police agency she called: the LAPD or the county sheriff. I checked with detectives from both departments. Neither of them said they had a record of such a call and would’ve definitely checked it out if they had. An important lead slipped through the cracks. So where was Lars from midnight to 3 a.m. if he didn’t go straight home? 

Now to the second tip I received. Like everyone else, I assumed that the last people to see Demelza Intriago alive were the four teenagers at the cove at Zuma Beach. But that may not be the case. I got a call from a woman named Jaclyn, who says she saw Demelza that night. If she’s correct about the place and timing, the sighting would have been after Demelza left Zuma. Jaclyn requested that her last name be withheld for reasons that will become apparent.  

Jaclyn: It was around midnight. I was driving up PCH looking for a street, so I was going pretty slow. Then my headlights caught this girl walking straight towards me along the side of the road. I had to swerve not to hit her. She didn’t even look up, like she was drugged or something. I remember thinking, ‘That girl is really blasted. She’s going to be lucky she doesn’t get sideswiped.’ 

Chloe: Just after Jaclyn passed the girl, a car came in the opposite direction and slowed down. Out of concern for the girl, Jaclyn checked her rearview mirror.

Jaclyn: The car pulled over. The girl kept walking, then the car inched forward, like the driver was talking to her. I figured it was probably a boyfriend-girlfriend drama. She stormed off, he went to look for her. Then I saw the street I was looking for and turned off. 

Some days later, I saw on the news that a girl had gone missing in Malibu. I recognized the long, dark hair of the girl in the picture. It was the girl I saw on PCH. I didn’t call the police. At the time, I was delivering party drugs. I was making a dropoff when I saw her, so I wasn’t exactly going to report myself to the cops. I also didn’t see anything other than taillights. There are no streetlights in that area so I couldn’t describe the car or its driver. I didn’t even see whether she got into it or not. It didn’t seem worth calling about at the time.

Chloe: The place and time fit. Jaclyn saw the girl about half a mile south of Zuma Beach and around midnight. If Demelza got into that car, this would explain why no one saw her after she left the cove. Murray Ferguson saw Lars running around half an hour later. Could it have been Lars who picked her up if a witness is slightly off with the time? Or someone else she knew? Or a complete stranger? If Demelza had got into a car heading south, that would also explain how she ended up in Pacific Palisades twenty miles away. 

Now for the call from Thirza Povich. She was angry that her name had been mentioned on the podcast without her permission. I phoned her back and left a voicemail with an invitation to come on the show and tell her side of the story. She called the next day and we met at Malibu Bluffs Park, which overlooks the ocean across from Pepperdine University. We talked for two hours. Thirza is tall with a slim, athletic build. She wore her hair in a big top knot, which made her seem even taller. She works at a dog day-care and kennel.

Thirza Povich: I’m really sick of being painted as the villain in all this. It started when Demelza cheated on Lars. She wasn’t the saint everyone makes her out to be. Lars and I hooked up at the start of the summer. He told me it was over between him and Demelza. I’d had a crush on Lars since ninth grade. We made out once under the bleachers at the powder-puff football game that fall. He was already seeing Demelza, but I thought I had a chance. He brushed me off. So a couple years later, it was easy to fool myself into thinking he actually liked me. He didn’t though. He used me as revenge booty. But I didn’t know that at the time.

Chloe: Thirza confirmed Jordan Bradshaw’s account of what happened that night at the cove. She also added an important detail. 

Thirza: After Demelza left, Scarlett found her phone on the beach. We never told the guys or the cops. When we left a while later, Scarlett threw it into the sea. I now regret that. It could’ve helped with the investigation. But at the time, I knew Demelza was going to plaster that picture she took of me drinking all over social media. That could have affected my college applications. 

After she went missing and I was questioned by the police, my dad told me to stay away from Lars and the cove. He didn’t need to tell me that. I was already scared shitless. I was also the subject of all these rumors at school, which made my life hell. People said I stole Lars from Demelza, that I belonged to a witches’ coven, that I had mysteriously predicted her death in tarot cards. I did play around with tarot cards back then. It was just fun, teenage shit.

I didn’t speak to Lars again until a couple weeks after he graduated when I ran into him in the CVS. He was standing staring at the chips. I walked by the end of the aisle, then I went back. I figured it was stupid to bear a grudge. (Pause) Sorry. Remembering all this …

Chloe: Thirza takes a moment, then she resumes her story.  

Thirza: He’d lost a lot of weight. He looked terrible. We said ‘hey,’ then he said he owed me an apology. I said, ‘For what?’ He said, ‘For everything. I was a real asshole.’ He confessed that he used me to get back at Demelza for breaking up with him. That knocked the wind out of me. He said he was moving to Sweden. I wished him well and moved on with my life. I never heard anything more about him until this podcast.

Chloe: Remember how I said the Magnussons refused to respond to my interview requests? After weeks and weeks of bugging, I finally got a reply. 

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Episode 7: The Boyfriend

Chloe: We’re starting to dig deep into the Demelza Intriago murder, and this episode is going to reveal a lot more unknown information. I emailed Lars three times requesting an interview. After the third time, he finally responded. He told me that he did not want to revisit the most painful incident in his life and not to contact him again. That was totally understandable. But after the recent episodes, where his name came up quite a bit, he contacted me saying he wanted to clear his name. He had one ground rule. He wouldn’t reveal anything about his current whereabouts. I agreed since it has little relevance to Demelza’s murder.

We talked via WhatsApp about his relationship with Demelza, what happened in the cove and what transpired after Demelza went missing. He said it was the first time he’d told his whole story. I got the feeling that he felt it was a relief to unburden himself. I asked him to start at the beginning.

Lars: I met Demelza in homeroom the first day of freshman year. The sun was shining through the window behind her, like backlighting her. She looked like an angel with a halo. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She turned and smiled at me, but it wasn’t at me, it was into me, like she saw my true self and liked what she saw. Sounds crazy, but that’s how it felt. 

The next morning, we talked, and I walked her to her first period class, science, I think it was. We did that every day and then that Friday, I asked her out. She wanted to go bowling. I’m a really shitty bowler, but I had to go along with it. I kept throwing gutter balls, which was totally embarrassing but she laughed and said it was cute. I don’t think anyone had ever called me cute. WE kept seeing each other. After someone told Demelza that they saw me making out with Thirza under the bleachers, Demelza said that if we were going to date, we had to be exclusive. I agreed.

Demelza was an only child like me. She had friends but she felt pretty lonely at her core, like she didn’t fit in with all the rich, white kids. I was a rich white kid, but I didn’t really fit in either. We moved back and forth between the U.S. and Sweden, so I was always too Swedish for American kids, too American for Swedish kids. Kids always wanted to be friends with me for my dad, not for me. They thought my dad was this great director. In reality, he was a piece of shit who didn’t care about me or my mom. That pissed me off.

I have ADHD, but I didn’t know it at the time. It made school hard for me. Demelza always told me I was smarter than I gave myself credit for and more than others gave me credit for. She was right. But back then, everyone just saw me as dumb and lazy, so that’s how I saw myself. I cut class, smoked a lot of weed, got into trouble.

It was like I lived two separate lives. When I was with her, I was clean and sane and normal. When I was by myself, it was all bad, petty crime and drugs and shit. I asked her one time why she stuck with me. It was after I dropped out in tenth grade. She said, and I’ll never forget this, that I was trying to push her away because the people who’d loved me the most had deserted me, so I wanted to protect myself by abandoning her before she abandoned me. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You’ll see,’ she said. ‘The Lars I see is good and kind. You’ll see it one day too.’ I cried when she told me that. Fuck, I’m tearing up just remembering that. Where did she get that from? She was like fifteen going on fifty. She was incredible, man, just amazing. I miss her so much. That’s what made me go back to school, not my stupid-ass guidance counselor telling me I was throwing away my future, that I’d be stuck in crap jobs the rest of my life. It was Demelza.

Chloe: Then Demelza got the job at Poseidon, and something changed in her.

Lars: She became distant, withdrawn. I kept asking her what was going on, what was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me. I was convinced that she was cheating on me with someone at that biker place. She denied it, but I didn’t believe her. She was working a lot, after school, on weekends from morning til night. It seemed like she was trying to avoid me. She said she needed to earn money for college, but there was something else going on. I could tell. Then I said either you tell me the truth, or we break up. She started to cry. She said she couldn’t tell me and ran off. That’s how we broke up, and I started seeing Thirza after a while. I didn’t see Demelza all that summer until school started again. It killed me, but I was angry. Anyway, when I did see her she looked bad, I mean, terrible. She had big circles under her eyes. Her jeans were held up with a safety pin at the waist. We didn’t even say hi, just looked at each other. I wish … I just wish I’d done things differently, but I was just a kid, and a pretty messed up one.

I want to get a couple of things straight about that night at the cove. I didn’t invite her. I was shocked as anyone when she showed up. After Demelza left, I went after her to see if she was okay. I knew that would upset Thirza, but I was worried about Demelza. I’d never seen her in such a state. I was shocked. I thought maybe she was on something.

Chloe: I asked Lars about the time he got home from the cove. 

Lars: I never saw Demelza after she left the cove. That’s the god’s honest truth. But I did lie about going straight home. I went to Demelza’s house. Something was really wrong for her to get so blotto and hysterical like that. I parked at the bottom of the driveway, out of sight of the security camera, and climbed up a tree and over the wall. I’d done it a million times before. Her parents always went to sleep early so I’d come over and we’d sneak into the main house, pretend we lived there. I checked her bedroom window. She wasn’t there. I went back to my car to wait for her and fell asleep. I woke up just before three and went home.

Chloe: Lars said he lied because he didn’t have any witnesses, and he was scared. He told his mom. She told him what to say to the cops and that she’d back him up. 

Lars: I knew how it would look. Like I was stalking Demelza. And honestly, since I never saw her, what did it really matter? When the cops told me she never came home, I thought she must be sleeping it off at a friend’s house. Maybe even in the woods somewhere. I figured she’d come back soon enough. But she didn’t. Her dad came to my house one night. He started yelling at me to tell him where Demelza was and shoved me up against the wall. We almost had a fistfight until my mom came out and told him to leave or she’d call the cops. 

Chloe: When Demelza’s case was upgraded from missing person to homicide victim five months later, the investigation again focused on Lars. 

Lars: It was the worst day of my life when those cops told me that she’d been killed. I didn’t really believe it. How could she be dead? Murdered? I froze out of shock and later the cops used it against me, saying I didn’t appear upset. I completely broke down when I got home. The cops questioned me for hours and hours. Finally, they had to release me because they had nothing on me. They tracked my cell phone. It never showed me near the Palisades that night.

Chloe: I checked with Detective Nimmo. She confirmed that Lars’s cell phone was in Malibu the whole night.

Nimmo: Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean he never left Malibu. 

Chloe: They also searched his car and found nothing. Still, everyone assumed Lars did it.

Lars: So much for being innocent until proven guilty. It sounds good, but it doesn’t work like that.  My friends avoided me or dropped me. Teachers were real cold to me. Someone poured paint over my car in the school parking lot. A rock was thrown through my living room window. I reported this stuff to the cops, but they didn’t give a shit. They acted like I deserved it.

I couldn’t hack going to school. I started cutting class. I thought about stealing my neighbor’s rifle, sticking it in my mouth and pulling the trigger. I came really close to doing that. Then my guidance counselor showed up at my house one day. He said I only had a couple more months to graduate. He told me, ‘At this point, you have all your credits, all you basically have to do is show up.’ I told him I didn’t care. I’d lost everything anyway. Then he asked me, ‘What would Demelza have wanted?’ I said, ‘To graduate.’ He just nodded. I knew then that I had to stay in school. Demelza got me through, like always. 

I didn’t want to go to graduation, but my parents made me. It was awful. When my name was called, the whole place fell dead silent. I could feel hundreds of eyes like knives stabbing me. It took all my self-control to walk across that stage, but then I felt Demelza next to me, telling me to put one foot in front of the other. I shook Principal Singh’s hand, then I punched my fist in the air and yelled, ‘Demelza, I love you!’ I didn’t plan that. I surprised myself. Then once I got down the stairs, I ran out of the auditorium, and my parents took me home.

Chloe: The Magnusson family moved to Sweden a week later.

Lars: I loved Demelza. She was everything to me, more than my parents, more than anyone. I could never have hurt her. Part of me died when I lost her. 

Chloe: Is Lars telling the truth? I’m inclined to think so. He teared up several times during the interview. Yeah, he’s from a family of actors, he lied, his mom lied, and he fled the country, but he seemed genuine to me. Also, Lars’s story about a change in Demelza after she started working at Poseidon’s meshed with what her parents said. Tracking down someone who knew her at that restaurant is now a priority, but I’m not sure how I’m going to find them. Get in touch if you have any ideas.

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Episode 8: Poseidon’s Trident

Chloe:  Apologies to everyone for the late posting of this episode. I had a bit of a crisis about whether to keep going with this investigation after this incident happened. I came out of my house one day last week and found three dead crows lined up on the windshield of my car. I freaked out, ran back inside, locked the door and called Detective Nimmo. Someone clearly doesn’t like what’s being revealed on the podcast.

It also revealed what I’m up against. Someone that would kill birds, and possibly people, has to be a sociopath of some kind, or desperate, or probably the worst case scenario, both. Was it worth pursuing this? It also hit me that crows are a symbol of death, and a group of crows are called a murder. I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence. 

I was paralyzed for a week. I was scared to go out of my house, had trouble sleeping. My mom, my girlfriends told me to quit while I was ahead, ie. still alive. Then I woke up in the middle of the night for reasons unknown. I went into my living where I have a big corkboard with notes and picture about the case. Yes, just like on TV, but I will admit, it helps marshal thoughts and threads. I stared at Demelza’s senior year portrait and realized that a threat means I’m getting closer to the truth. I’d got this far, I couldn’t abandon Demelza or her parents. They had no one else. So I’m more resolved than ever to continue with this investigation wherever it leads. And that cleared my head. I remembered something that Thirza Povich told me and that was my path ahead. 

Female voice: The owner of Poseidon’s was a total lech.

Chloe: That’s Abigail Rigatoni, a friend of Thirza’s. Thirza mentioned during our long chat that Abigail had briefly worked at Poseidon’s, the biker bar and restaurant where Demelza bussed tables the summer before her death. Both Demelza’s parents and Lars told me that Demelza changed after she started working at that place. The timing seemed more than coincidental. Something was going on at the restaurant. So when Thirza mentioned that Abigail quit the job after just two months and why, I needed to talk to her. I tracked her down through social media and we chatted over Zoom. She now lives in Seattle.  

Abigail Rigatoni: Sure, I remember Poseidon’s. I was a cashier there the summer before twelfth grade, two years after the Demelza tragedy. The owner, Mike, was a Russian guy, in his fifties or sixties, with a huge pot belly and a bad temper. He was a major perv who liked young women. He never tried anything on me, but I saw him hit on this girl who worked as a dishwasher. She was from Honduras, if I recall. Petite, shy. Didn’t speak much English. Mike spoke basic Spanish. He’d always be staring at her, coming up behind her and massaging her neck. He told her to wear short shorts and skirts. I’d had some high school Spanish, so I’d talk to her. She said he made her feel really uncomfortable and afraid. She was looking for another job but couldn’t find anything. Then one day she up and quit. She said he came up behind her and rubbed his erection against her. That was the last straw.

Chloe: Could that be what was going on with Demelza? Was she being sexually harassed? 

Abigail: It seemed to me that he preyed on immigrant women who would be less likely to report him to the police. 

Chloe: I called Demelza’s friend Tessa Kesselman and asked her what she thought.

Tessa: Demelza was pretty Americanized. She didn’t have an accent or anything. I can’t see her tolerating that kind of behavior. 

Chloe: Still, it was worth checking out. I looked up state business records and found the owner’s full name: Mikhail Gudonov. He still owns Poseidon’s, so I took a ride up there to talk to him. I chose mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, a time when there would likely be few customers. I soon spotted him, thanks to Abigail’s description. I went up to him, introduced myself and handed him my business card.

Mikhail Gudonov: Sure, I remember Demelza. Nice girl, very nice girl. What happen was tragedy.

Chloe: Gudonov’s accent can be a little hard to understand so I’ll paraphrase. He said the night that Demelza went missing was busy and he hadn’t seen her much. He assumed she left at the end of her shift as normal. I asked him if he’d seen her talking to a friend, Tessa Kesselman, and told her to get back to work. He said he didn’t recall that. He said he didn’t know anything more about Demelza until a detective came on Monday and told him she was missing. I asked him about harassing young female employees, immigrants and said I had a witness. He dismissed it all.

Gudonov: These girls, they say things to make me give them money. Make up stories. All lies. They want money.

Chloe: Then he said he had work to do and ended the interview. That seemed to be that, but something bothered me about Gudonov. He seemed too glib. Two days later, I got a break. I received a phone call from a Venezuelan guy named Alberto who worked at Poseidon’s and knew Demelza. In fact, he’d been good friends with her. It turned out that another Venezuelan worker working currently at Poseidon’s named Daniel had overheard me talking to Mike Gudonov and grabbed my business card out of the garbage where Gudonov had thrown it after I left. (Thanks, Mike!) Daniel called Alberto, who hadn’t heard about the podcast. He caught up in a hurry.

The next day, I met Alberto at a small Venezuelan restaurant in Pasadena. Over glasses of chicha, a traditional sweet rice drink—super yummy by the way, he told me that for the past ten years, Mikhail Gudonov had been lying about the night Demelza went missing. 

Alberto: I worked in the kitchen at Poseidon’s when Demelza worked there. We connected because we’re both Venezuelans. Everyone else there was from Mexico or Central America. She was a beautiful girl, inside and out. El ruso …

Chloe: That’s the Russian, Mikhail Gudonov.

Alberto: … he was always touching her, staring at her, telling her to wear very low blouses. At first, Demelza laughed. She pretended it was a big joke. But it got worse, then el ruso got her in his office one day. He forced himself on her and threatened to report her and her family to ICE if she didn’t have sex with him. 

Chloe: Hold on. Demelza was undocumented at the time? The Intriagos had told me that Bazza Molloy had helped them with their visas. I called Reinaldo. He confirmed that at the time of Demelza’s death, they were undocumented. It was after her death that Molloy got them visas.

Alberto: Demelza told me that she never told anyone she was undocumented. If they asked, she said she had a green card. She had a social security card, but she bought it online. It was a number that belonged to a dead child, but el ruso, he was an immigrant himself. He knew all the tricks. He would call her into his office or send one of the other employees to fetch her. We knew what was going on, but we were all undocumented. We didn’t even have fake social security cards. We were afraid. I told her to quit and find another job, but she said it was always a risk with her fake social security card. She was only going to work there for the summer anyway.

She felt very ashamed and how do you say? Trapped. She couldn’t tell anyone. She was too ashamed to tell her parents. She couldn’t tell her boyfriend because she didn’t want him to know she was undocumented. He had said things like undocumented immigrants should be deported so she thought he would break up with her if he found out, or maybe even report her. 

Chloe: Demelza must’ve felt completely alone and overwhelmed. No wonder that she looked stressed out. I reached back out to Lars Magnusson, her former boyfriend, and her friend Tessa Kesselman. They were stunned to find out the truth.

Lars: What? Holy shit! She told me she had a green card, although come to think of it, I never saw it. I can’t believe she was afraid of telling me.

Tessa: Jesus. I had no idea. But I guess it makes sense. Demelza was one of few Latino kids in our school. I know she worked hard to get rid of her accent. She desperately wanted to fit in and be like everybody else. Ohmygod, I wish she’d said something. She had to have been so afraid.

Chloe: Back to Poseidon. Demelza’s situation became complicated. Another guy was crushing on her, a customer, a biker who belonged to Los Federales Motorcycle Club that hangs out a lot at Poseidon. 

Alberto: This guy was always talking to her, flirting, you know. He was older, in his twenties, maybe. His name was Silas, I remember because it was unusual. El ruso noticed. He got jealous. Whenever he saw Silas talking to Demelza, el ruso would call her over. Silas started getting angry. He wanted Demelza to meet him outside Poseidon. She always said no, that her boss would get mad, that she needed the job. Then Silas got mad at her.

Chloe: On the fateful Saturday night, things came to an ugly head, Alberto said. Silas showed up and was drinking heavily. He started flirting with Demelza and wouldn’t let up. Gudonov told him to leave. Silas refused. Gudonov told him to go, or he would call the cops.  

Alberto: Silas followed el ruso to the back of the restaurant and hit him. El ruso didn’t stand much of a chance. He was older, not in good shape. He fell to the ground. Then the biker hit him until some of the other bikers pulled him off. When el ruso got back up, he was bleeding from the nose and the mouth. He told Demelza it was her fault. He called her bad names and told her to get out and never come back. She was very upset, crying. I told her to go home and get some rest. El ruso told us to get back to work. Everyone was angry about how he treated her. It was not fair. 

Chloe: This all went down about 10:30 p.m. Alberto said that Demelza left to catch the bus. About an hour later, Alberto was taking trash to the dumpster in the parking lot when he saw a group of bikers huddled around a car. Silas was among them. He wondered if they were waiting for Gudonov, but by the time the restaurant closed, they’d gone. 

Alberto: When a detective came to ask about Demelza, el ruso warned all the workers not to say anything about the fight or they would be fired. No one said anything. I am guilty by my silence. Now I have my visa, I am no longer scared to tell the truth.

Chloe: I couldn’t stop thinking about what Alberto told me. It explains why Demelza changed and why she broke up with Lars. It also explains why she was upset that night, upset enough to get drunk and go looking for Lars. Maybe she wanted to tell him the truth about herself and her job, or maybe she missed him in a time of deep need. 

She went to the place that she thought he’d be on a Saturday night, the Zuma Beach cove. Maybe she didn’t even plan on going to the cove, but if she were walking home, she would have passed Zuma on the way. Maybe she saw Lars’s car in the parking lot and decided to check the cove on the spur of the moment.  The other thing this story reveals: Gudonov has a motive for silencing Demelza. 

_____________________

Episode 9: The Killer

Chloe: After Alberto’s revelations, I had to go back to Mike Gudonov and get his response. He was not as friendly as our first encounter. I told him what Alberto said, and although Gudonov denied the sexual harassment and the fight with Demelza’s admirer, he did change his story. 

Gudonov: This is ridiculous. More lies. I know what you try to do. You want to make name for yourself by playing detective and making up stories.

Chloe: Where were you that night after Demelza left?

Gudonov: I stayed until after closing. Saturday night, I never leave early. You ask employees. Demelza went home early. She stole a bottle of vodka from me, so I fire her. 

Chloe: Gudonov said he forgot that minor detail when we first spoke, then he ordered me to leave, or he would call the cops. I left and phoned Alberto. 

Alberto: I don’t remember when he left that night. But it’s true. He always stayed until after closing, especially busy nights, Fridays and Saturdays. Demelza did take the vodka from the storeroom. I saw her, but it was after she was fired. She wanted to get back at el ruso. It was stupid.

Chloe: Even if Gudonov left after the bar closed at midnight, he could’ve come across Demelza walking along PCH. Then there’s the aggressive biker, Silas, who played a key role in that night’s events. Without a last name, I ran into a brick wall at how to locate him. But I tried social media and lo and behold, Los Federales Motorcycle Club has an Instagram account. Some of the posts showed members. I asked Alberto if he recognized Silas. Admittedly, it was a long shot, and it failed. Then this happened. 

If you remember, three dead crows were placed on the windshield of my car a few weeks ago in a blatant attempt to intimidate me from pursuing the investigation. After that, I bought a dash cam and put it on the rearview mirror of my car facing outward. I set it to operate overnight and to send an alert to my phone if it detected any motion.

Three days ago, I got pinged awake at 3:14 a.m. I grabbed my phone and saw a person wearing a black hoodie and a black leather jacket emptying a bag onto the hood of my car parked in front of my West L.A. apartment building. The torsos of four dead crows and their severed heads spilled out. I ran downstairs. When I got to the lobby of my building, I saw exactly one vehicle driving down my street, an old minivan. I jumped into my Toyota, but as I reversed out of the driveway, it turned the corner. By the time I reached the intersection, it had vanished. The dead birds had also fallen off the hood. I reckoned he’d be headed to a major street to go back to wherever he came from so I went in the direction of Olympic Boulevard, a major thoroughfare through Los Angeles. As I hesitated at the intersection wondering whether to head west or east on Olympic, I spotted a minivan at a gas station down the block. I pulled in at the curb and waited.

A guy in a leather jacket, hoodie over the collar, came out of the convenience store opening a soda. It was the crow guy! He got in the minivan and headed east then turned north. Keeping a distance, I tailed him onto the 101 Freeway. About twenty minutes later, he got off in the San Fernando Valley. I followed him to a small house with a chain link fence and a “Beware of dog” sign on the gate. I stopped and watched him enter the house. There wasn’t much more to do than take down the address and the minivan’s license plate and return home. Besides, I was still in my PJs.

Later in the day, I went back to the house. It was a little nerve-wracking, I admit, but I wanted to confront this guy, find out who he was. The minivan was still in the driveway. By daylight, it looked really dilapidated. Its paint was peeling, hubcaps missing. A motorcycle was parked at the side of the house. A black feather lay in the driveway. 

As I walked by the minivan, I peered inside hoping to spot more evidence of dead crows. A bunch of tchotchkes hung from the rearview mirror. Yellow feathered roach clips, a white skull, a purple rabbit’s foot, a miniature Harley Davidson. The glint of something metallic caught my eye. Just as I was trying to think where I’d seen it before, a pain shot through my ankle. I looked down. A pitbull had my leg in its jaws. I screamed. A man with shoulder-length dark hair came up behind the dog. It was the guy from last night. He had pockmarks on his cheeks and front teeth that overlapped. Out of force of habit, I managed to press record on my phone. 

Man: What the fuck are you doing on my property? 

Chloe: Get your dog off me.

Man: Not until you tell me who you are. 

Chloe: You put dead crows on my car. I followed you here last night. 

Man: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out. Brutus, down. 

Chloe: Don’t worry. I’m leaving. 

Shaking, I drove a couple blocks then pulled over to take deep breaths and calm myself down. I checked my ankle. The dog’s teeth had punctured my jeans and marked the skin but there was no blood. I sat there for a minute or two then I remembered what I saw right before the dog attacked me. 

A giraffe, maybe two inches long. Silver-colored. I recognized that giraffe. Demelza had earrings just like it, although they were gold-colored. She was wearing them in her senior-class photo and on the night she went missing. Only one had been found with her remains. Over ten years, the gold coating could’ve worn off. Coincidence? I called Detective Nimmo, who told me I was foolish for confronting a possibly dangerous suspect alone. 

Nimmo: You’re damn lucky, Chloe. 

Chloe: Detective Nimmo told me to stand down and she’d look into this guy.  I’m trying to track down other leads, but it’s hard to focus. I’m waiting by the phone to see what comes of this, if anything. 

_____________________

Episode 10: The Killer

Chloe: This is a special episode because I have some amazing news. Earlier today, Silas Grimmer, a forty-two-year-old motorcycle mechanic, was arrested for the murder of Demelza Intriago. According to court records, he previously served time for armed robbery and aggravated assault. Because this podcast broke the case, Detective Nimmo gave me the exclusive on the arrest.  

Nimmo: DNA on the giraffe earring that was in Grimmer’s car proved a match for Demelza Intriago. We couldn’t have made the arrest if it weren’t for the podcast and the witnesses who came forward. If they had come forward years ago, we could have solved this case a lot sooner.  

Chloe: This is what I believe happened that night. After the fistfight at Poseidon’s between her boss Gudonov and Grimmer, Demelza left with the bottle of vodka she stole. She probably walked south along the beach drinking it. By the time she came to Zuma, she was pretty drunk. She either planned to check the cove for her ex-boyfriend Lars Magnusson or decided on the spur of the moment.

 When she saw him at the cove with his new girlfriend Thirza Povich, she got angry, hysterical even. Everyone had gone against her. She wanted to seize a teeny bit of power in a night that had underscored how powerless she was over her own life. She took a photo of Thirza drinking and after fighting with her rival, she left, continuing her trek home. 

Silas Grimmer was driving down PCH after leaving Poseidon’s. He saw her, stopped to offer her a ride and she accepted, probably out of exhaustion. She had several miles to go to get home. I doubt he was looking for her. I think he simply ran across her. In the car, he came on to her. She rebuffed him, and he became angry. He probably sexually assaulted her. Perhaps he got angrier because she struggled or screamed. He strangled her to death and hid her body on the slope of Sunset Boulevard. When he found her giraffe earring in the car, he added it to his collection of doohickeys on his rearview mirror, confident he’d never be linked to her or maybe he didn’t even realize whose it was. Conveniently for us, he forgot it was there. 

In another postscript to the case, Poseidon’s is up for sale and its owner Mikhail Gudonov is under investigation. Here’s Detective Nimmo:

Nimmo: People get complacent or overconfident. We see this all the time with criminals. They don’t think they can be caught. After a decade, Silas Grimmer thought he had got away with murder. He also thought he could intimidate you as he’s probably intimidated many other people. But he didn’t know Chloe Quinn! 

Chloe: I visited Elmira and Reinaldo Intriago after Detective Nimmo told them the news. They seemed shell-shocked, which is understandable. 

Elmira: At least we know what happen to our daughter now, but of course it does not bring her back. This is an evil man. 

Reinaldo: After so long, it seems impossible. Like a dream, you know. But we are glad. There is justicia. 

Chloe: It took a decade but yes, there is finally justice for Demelza Intriago. I left the Intriagos to process their grief and went up to Zuma. I sat on the beach, mesmerized by the breathing ocean, the ebb and flow of the tide that continued no matter what.

The unfairness of it all struck me. Demelza was a victim of circumstance, above all. Her murder was the result of a domino chain of cause and effect that started and ended with her status as a refugee. Despite what the detectives said, her status probably also affected the cops’  view of the case, as well. 

I was sitting there when the phone rang. It was Lars, returning my call. He had broken down, unable to speak when I told him the news. He was now more composed and had some news of his own.

Lars: My family is going to set up the Demelza Intriago Scholarship to fund a college education for immigrants. I’ll keep you posted on the details, but you can go ahead and announce it.

Chloe: It was one way to find some good in tragedy.

Lars: And, Chloe, thanks. 

Chloe: That got me choked up and now it was my turn to end the call in a hurry. Eventually, I went home and took down my murder board except for the one photo of Demelza. I hope she is now resting in peace.