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The Bakersfield Three is proudly part of the ACAST creator network. I once spoke with a mother whose four year old daughter was kidnapped from her front yard, picked up over their fence, as the child's older siblings had their backs turned for maybe 30 seconds. Eleven days later, her body was found in a cotton field. Her name was Jessica Martinez. She was the most beautiful little girl. The only daughter in a family of boys, she was their princess, a real life doll. Her murder was never solved. It'd been nearly 30 years since her kidnapping, when her mother told me that trying to explain the pain of losing a child is like trying to explain what a rainbow is like to someone who can't see color. I think that's the most simple way to put it. You can try to explain the pain, and the person hearing about it can try to imagine it, telling themselves it would be a nightmare, pain they can't imagine. But that's just it. They can't imagine it. They can't understand. I think that's why Cheryl, Di, and Jane latched on to each other and became so close so quickly after that first meeting.

Back then, they could say, We're all in the same boat, especially Jane and Cheryl. But now Cheryl was in a boat all alone, floating endlessly through a new grief she didn't think was possible. I can think of maybe.

A few, very, very few people who are in this horrible club that can say, Not only did.

They kill.

Your son, but they probably hurt him really badly before he was killed. Then they decided that they just chop.

Him up and throw him away like garbage in a bag in the river. Who can say that? Nobody can say that. We have no peers.

To talk to.

All of a sudden, Diane.

Doesn't understand that side of the story. I mean, her son was.

Gunned down the middle of the street, right?

All of a sudden.

Jane, these women that I've been relying on and talking to, all of a sudden, Jane doesn't know this part. Who do I talk to about this?

You.

Can't just walk in to go have coffee with someone.

Talk about your son being cut up. I'm Olivia LaVoise, and this is The Bakersfield Three. And so it becomes.

Very, very lonely.

Very almost….

I.

Don't even know how to express it, really.

You had this loneliness.

Before and this.

Self-imposed isolation because you just don't feel like being around people and you're crying all the time.

Then all of a.

Sudden, that circle gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

At the same time, Jane was also going through a new pain that neither die or Cheryl could relate to. A lot of people assumed that the news that neither body part belonged to Bailey would be incredible for her mother and her entire family, which Jane understands, as she even says herself.

What mom hopes the body parts their daughter.

It's a deeply complicated mindset. Of course, Jane wants Bailey to be found alive, but at this point, it had been eight months with no signs of life and countless people telling her that they had heard that Bailey was dead. She'd been hearing lots of horrific stories of the various possibilities of what happened to her daughter, but none was worse than hearing she might never find her. If the leg had matched to Bailey, as dreadful as the thought was that her body was just stuck out there in the lake. As Jane puts it, at least she would have found her.

I know it sounds weird, and I just want to find her or appease her. I need to bring my daughter home. I don't know where to look for her. Somebody needs to just give me GPS points or send me a picture from the map where she is, and I'll go out and get her.

Though Di's son, James, was never missing, Di understood a little bit of what Jane was going through. Before Di was born, she had an aunt go missing.

She was in all the detective books, whatever happened to Jeannie-Long. They never found her.

The prime suspect was always her aunt's estrangement husband, who was a police officer.

They investigated, but they could never find anything. He had taken a shovel from my grandmother's house that night, asked for a shovel. The two little boys weren't old enough. They just remember waking up in the dark, and he said, Your mom isn't here. When they were asking, Where's mommy?

While Di never knew her, Aunt Jeannie, she grew up seeing the life altering effects her disappearance had.

My grandmother, having a child that was missing and not knowing what happened to her was very difficult for her. And so I can relate to Jane and not wanting to be that person, wanting to find Bailey now.

Even though the lake was really no longer a place where Jane could go look for Bailey, she still kept going.

I would always go out to the lake. I'd become attached to the lake, and I've said that before because I thought it was Bailey, but it wasn't Bailey, so it was somebody else's daughter out there and they didn't know she was there. Us moms would do little memorials for her.

After the female leg didn't match to Bailey, it solidified her identity as a Jane Doe. But the moms didn't think that was fitting.

We always called her Lady in the Lake, and I forget which one of us said, Oh, Lill. It might have been Di or Cheryl, but like, Okay, Lill. We'll call her Lil for Lady in the Lake.

The moms vowed to continue their mission to raise money for the specialized sonar equipment to search the lake for the rest of Lil's body.

If it wasn't my daughter, it was somebody's daughter out there.

True to their word, they formed a nonprofit called the Bakersfield Three and got to work planning a fundraiser to bring in the 20 grand or so for the equipment. In some ways, I think advocating for Liler, short for Lady in the Lake, was almost a bit of a distraction for the moms as they were still processing the gravity of the arm and the river matching to Micah. This meant the rest of Micah was likely in the river, and the river is far more difficult and dangerous to search. Then there was the horrifying story his remains told. Unlike the leg found in the lake that was believed to have detached naturally, Micah's arm was clearly severed by a saw and placed into a bag, weighted down with rocks. Great effort was put into trying to ensure he'd never be found. There was also a zip tie around Micah's wrist. Here's Sergeant Garrett. How unusual is it to have a case with dismemberment?

It's highly unusual.

Have you ever had a case before? No.

That is a whole other degree of craziness in this case. It goes to the character of the person. If you're willing to do that, that's not very common.

You might remember, Sergeant Garrett at the time was a homicide detective, so he was only officially assigned to work, James's case. But after the confirmation that Mike's arm was found, the top law enforcement officials agreed it was best Sergeant Garrett officially be the lead detective on all three cases. Bailey's case up until this point, was being handled by a different agency, the sheriff's office. We had never seen the sheriff hand over one of their cases to the police department. To us in the 17 newsroom, this felt significant. Here's 17 news anchor and reporter, Alex Fisher.

Once we heard law enforcement say that, we knew, okay, there's something big about what's going on.

There's something.

Crazy about this case.

Paired with the gruesome revelation of Micah's dismemberment, it fueled a lot of suspicion that myself and others had already been hearing. Here's 17 news reporter, Jason Katowski.

There were all sorts of rumors about who might be involved in this.

The two big ones were the cartel and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Some people swore it were true. Others were skeptical. Here's me talking to a friend of Micah, James and Bailey, Jeremy Bell. What's up with all the Hells Angels talk about this case?

I mean, it's just talk. Hells Angels would not get involved with this shit. They have no reason to. They're probably trying to keep their name as far away from this as possible.

I didn't even know there were Hells Angels in Bakersfield.

To be honest with you, any true Patch in members, you won't know who they are.

They're not like wearing their-.

Absolutely not. They're just no. A true Patch in Hell's Angel member is you wouldn't be able to tell him from any other regular Joe. They come off as very polite and well-mannered guys. They do the toys for tots and that image shit. But if you're not a pastime member, they'll cut your throat before you can even blink an eye. How are you doing there? This is David and John from the David McWilliams Podcast. Pwc has just published its Net Zero Economy Index report, which aims to help clients embed decarbonisation in their corporate and business strategies. This year's report highlights the shift in pace and the scale of action required, with the average global reduction in carbon intensity in 2022 being just 2.5%. We've always supported the idea that economic growth shouldn't have to come at the cost of the planet. So if you'd like to explore the findings and learn about the implications for your organization, visit pwc. Ie for net zero to find out more.

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During their own investigation, the three moms were warned to stay away from anyone in an outlaw motorcycle gang. But Jane, of course, couldn't help herself. If there was a chance a biker had information, Jane was going to talk to them.

I would even go up to motorcycle groups when I would see on my how they would have gatherings at places like the motorcycle clubs. I didn't really know who was who at the time, and I'd hand out my flyers.

One time, Jane walked up to a group of bikers at a diner and handed them Bailey's flyer. When one of the members said to her.

Why would you give us a flyer? Do you think we know where she's at? I go, No, I just know that you guys know a lot of people. If you could help spread the word to find my daughter, I believe something happened to her and give the quick spill about Bailey and the three. They're like, Oh, okay.

Unlike other gangs, biker gangs and Bakersfield seemed to fly under the radar when it came to being connected to any crimes. It was very rare we in news would ever hear them come up, maybe once every few years of that. I can only think of two cases in Bakersfield they were linked to. One was a suspicious death and the other a suspicious disappearance. Charges have never been filed in either. More recently, the President of the Fresno chapter of Hells Angels, a city two hours north of Bakersfield, was convicted of murder charges along with two other chapter presidents for reportedly killing a fellow HA member and somehow illegally cremating his body at a local funeral home. All this to say, when the Hills angels' name was brought up in the Bakersfield Three case, people thought, Yeah, that's a group who could make people disappear. It goes without saying the Mexican drug cartel had no shortage of horror stories of making people go missing, torture, and dismemberment. Around this time, I got an email from Matt Queen. Throughout the last nine months or so covering the three cases, I had periodically tried to get him to do an interview with me.

The email said, first and foremost, before he'd ever consider sitting down with me, I would need to issue a public apology for trying to crucify him by giving Jane Bailey's mom a platform. Part of the email read, This story is too big for you, Olivia. I need a real reporter. I applaud your efforts, but I question your motives. The email continues, In regards to Bailey and Micah, they were both very careful not to say too much about, quote, the family, whoever they are. They were very dangerous people, according to Micah. On two occasions, Micah handed me a folded up piece of paper and instructed me only to open it if he didn't contact me in one hour. That it would probably mean he's dead. I laughed at him. I used to think he was schizo. The things Bailey told me, I dare not repeat. I just want to keep my family safe. There isn't much more I can say or do to help. It seemed like many other people I'd spoken with regarding the Bakersfield Three case, Queen was also scared of whatever, whomever Bailey and Micah were wrapped up with. Then two months after we'd filmed it, the Dr.

Phil episode aired. The Bakers Field Three. Two missing.

And one killed. Is it three mysteries or one?

Which started its own shitstorm of rumors and chatter about the case.

I thought that Dr. Phil's show, to be honest, was a big mistake, huge mistake. As a detective, that would have really hindered my investigation.

This is retired Bakersfield police detective Bill Darby. Bill is someone who lives and breathes the police department. As he'd say it, he was born into it. Bill's father, Bill Darby, senior, was a detective at the same department. Bill remembers being a teenager in the 90s, piling into his dad's yellow pickup truck and seeing a photo of a little girl tucked into the visor. The little girl in the photo is the same little girl I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Jessica Martinez, who was abducted and murdered at age four. Bill Darby, senior, was assigned to the case before her little body was found in a cotton field. Driving along one day, Bill, Junior, asked his dad, Why do you keep that photo in your personal car? Why not your police car? Bill, senior, told him, Every minute I'm in my police car, I will always be working her case. She knows that, and so does her mother. But that little girl needs to know I'm thinking of her every day, every second of my life. This last June on his 77th birthday, Bill Senior suffered a massive stroke. As he struggled on life support, his wife told him, You will see Jessica in heaven.

Within minutes after that, he passed peacefully. After his death, Bill Junior found that same picture of Jessica still tucked into his dad's sun visor. Not every detective has that same passion and dedication, but Bill Senior did, and it's the same passion I see in his son. Bill Junior worked for the police department for 20 years before breaking his back on the job, and he was not ready to retire. Not even close.

There's just a couple of passion cases that I wanted to close out before I left, so don't stick with anybody forever.

One of Bill's passion cases became one of mine. Even though I was at the time a young, fairly inexperienced reporter, Bill became almost an informal investigative partner of mine.

Then you got involved with the Bakersfield Three case, which I avoided the plague because of the media attention, and I just thought something, I don't want to get into it because I know I get sucked in and you suck me in.

Bill is a burly guy who could certainly come off intimidating, but he's really a big teddy bear. He's compassionate and truly wants to help victims' families. I knew he'd be perfect to speak with the moms.

When you're talking to the victim's family, you treat it as the most important thing going on because it is. That's something, and I'm not casting any stones, I know historically, not specifically this case, that an overwhelmed detective can sometimes lack that empathy. I certainly lack the empathy at times, but I can certainly fake it. I have my own stressors. At the time, I had three young kids and a baby and stressful work. But damn it, if one of my kids wasn't here at dinner, if there were only three and not four, I would want to detect to have given me all their attention. When you're in front of them, when you're talking to them, you give them that respect.

Bill agreed to meet with the moms and let me pick his brain about the case not long after the Dr. Phil Special aired, which he calls a huge mistake. His reasoning is he says a dramatized and already dramatic case, which in turn, spurred tons of rumors, talk, and outlandish tips investigators had to track down. Sergeant Garrett will tell you they weren't all bad. Some turned out to be good. But for a minute there, it certainly seemed to cause a bit of a headache for the department. For the moms, there seemed to be an uptick in horror stories they were hearing about their kids. Jane was consumed with thoughts about Bailey being tortured and dismembered like Micah. She couldn't sleep at night. She was struggling to function.

I saw she's just going crazy. Not literally, just she's losing her mind over her kid, as we all would.

Part of the struggle was the mom's feeling like the police department wouldn't share anything with them. To the police department's credit, that's pretty typical for them with any families. But having a case that involved three families, three families who were going on national TV together, made them, I think, even a little more reserved than usual, which, to be frank, drove the mom's little crazy at times. Bill thought he could help with that.

Originally, I wanted to not really help in the investigation, but to walk the victims through the investigation to give them comfort and let them know, Hey, this is what's happening here. This is why they're doing this. There's a method to the madness. In my mind, I honestly thought I was helping the police department by answering their questions so that they weren't bugging them, to be honest.

I introduced Bill to the moms in a conference room at the news station, where the three of them had a massive table, nearly completely covered in their notes and charts and documents they'd created.

Almost immediately I saw that they were 24-7 talking to each other and talking to people that were involved in getting a lot of information. I'm thinking as the detective, Man, this would be information overload.

I'll admit this is around the same time I myself started to get slightly overwhelmed with the amount of different players, different crimes, different connections that were being thrown out there. I remember one night I was home alone, unable to sleep, and I found myself messaging with a self-proclaimed drug dealer who knew the circle and who told me that Micah was wrapped up with the cartel and his body was dumped in a mines shaft in the desert. Then at some point, the conversation shifted to talk that a white supremacist, neo-Nazi gang member ordered a hit on Micah from prison. It became increasingly harder to know what was a red herring and what was the lead worth chasing.

For a while there, you remember it was the talk of the town, and everybody has their opinions, and everybody solved the crime within a week.

Another problem was a lot of people who wanted to give their two cents on the case had no actual involvement. It was all pure hearsay, happening at dive bars and hair salons, making its way back to us.

Look how many people are suspects in this. In different genres of people, you had bikers, you had Mexican mafia, you had cartels, all sorts of stuff. It's just I saw it the snowball going downhill.

Bill wanted to try to boil it down, go back to the basics, if you will. Focus on the most logical explanation for things, which is what Sergeant Garrett was also doing.

The simple answer is usually the correct answer to things, and people tend to make things more complex.

At a certain point, part of what made the case start to feel complex, to me at least, was trying to find a direct link between James' murder and Micah and Bailey's disappearances.

As I looked into it early on without having a lot of evidence in front of me. One thing was becoming glaringly obvious is that Bailey and Micah were most likely related for sure. James, I still think, was a coincidence. Nefarious as it was, I don't think James's murder was directly related to those other two.

To be clear, the three moms never thought there was one singular killer responsible for all three cases. But for a while at least, it seemed like there had to be something between the one month time frame and the overlap of friends. Here's Jeremy Bell again.

I'm almost like 100 % positive that Micah and Bailey's... Micah and Bailey had nothing to do with James. They might have known each other. They might have hung out. But those were two separate entities.

And Bailey and James's friend, Jessica. I think this is something.

Totally different that.

His brother.

Probably knows more about.

This brings us to a part of James's case that is difficult, to say the least, for his brother, Ryan.

Google my name. Just Google my name and see what comes up. You know, and that's what I have to deal with now.

After the Doctor Phil special aired in early 2019, it became apparent that a lot of people thought Ryan had information about his brother's murder he wasn't sharing, including Dr. Phil, apparently. Here's a clip of the episode. You know who shot your brother.

Why haven't you told the police? If I knew, I would have told him. Give me a polygraph, please. Please. You don't know who shot your brother? No, and if I did, I don't even.

Think I'd let the cops.

Have their chance.

Bill, when looking at the case, took the Dr. Phil approach.

Ryan's the key. I could be wrong. My earliest instinct is Ryan knows every freaking thing about that. He's lying up his ass. Sorry, I'm very passionate about that because I think he's a punk. He's hiding behind his addiction and his crap. He's a damn brother. He either saw it, knew it was going to happen, or knows afterwards. He knows the whole story.

People's main reason for thinking Ryan could know more is simply that Ryan was at the chiropractor's house that night. When the chiropractor allegedly said he was going to, quote, call his boys who'd be strapped if James came by. James did come by, and as Ryan was apparently driving out of the chiropractor's neighborhood, James was shot. To be clear, Ryan isn't the only person who's told me the chiropractor made a threatening comment towards James. Someone else told me that about a week before James' murder, he heard the chiropractor say something similar to what Ryan's shared. Here's James's friend, Jeremy, again.

They knew who shot him. Who? It's just all of us did. Ryan had to have known. Ryan had to have known. Jesus Christ. James's car, James was found literally within 100 yards from that dude's house. He wasn't in a bad neighborhood. He wasn't in gang territory. It was a nice, brand new neighborhood. There's no crime over there. There's no drive-by shootings, none of that shit. There's no other possible person that could have done other than that chiropractic.

The overall consensus was the chiropractor would be pretty unlucky if he really had nothing to do with it. To have allegedly made the comments he did, and afterwards, James is coincidentally killed outside his house. People also zeroed in on Ryan essentially being an eyewitness to all of it. But the information he'd shared with police wasn't resulting in an arrest, which people thought was strange. Even Matt Queen had something to say about it.

Matt pulled Cheryl and I aside in court one day in the hall. He looked at Cheryl and he goes, I don't know what to tell you. I have no idea where Mike is. He told me I needed to talk to Ryan. He goes, Your son knows what happened.

I asked Di how she felt seeing one of her sons be scrutinized so much over her other son's murder.

I feel like he's been put through the wringer. Do I still believe he knows more than he knows? I do. Only in that I know he was on drugs. And I know that that night, I know he had been taking drugs. And I sometimes think when you go through a traumatic experience, your brain protects yourself. Do I think Ryan shot his brother? Absolutely not. Do I think Ryan was involved in having his brother shot? Absolutely not. But do I think there's little nuances? I do.

Nuances. I mean, when you're saying that, are you.

Saying- Well, like, for instance-.

-that he can't remember?

That he can't remember. Like, for instance, Ryan went in and out of that neighborhood twice and that silver Sedan was sitting there. Ryan knows cars like the back of his hand. He can look at a mirror, a grill, but yet he doesn't remember the make of the car. For the life of me, trying to fucking remember what car was that? What car was that? Silver car. It was a silver four-door car, full size. But what kind? God damn it, Ryan. Fucking think. I mean, people have said he's purposely doing that because he's afraid for his life.

Di doesn't think his lack of memory is intentional, but others do and believe that he's afraid for his life because one theory of James' murder is that it was supposed to be Ryan who was killed. Even Di has considered it.

Two weeks prior to James being killed, I had a really bad dream that Ryan was killed, and I was just hysterically shaken. James said, Mom, you don't understand. He goes, Ryan's dealing with some really bad people. I wonder if it was meant for Ryan and not James, if possibly Ryan was involved with something or someone and James was trying to help him.

Here's Ryan's take on that theory.

I thought about it for a minute and considered it, but anybody around us knows what I look like and they know what he looks like. They know what car I drive and what car.

James.

Drove.

A quick editor's note here. The interview you just heard with Ryan and Di were recorded when Ryan was still using drugs. He's been cleaned now for over a year and a half, but dye says his recollection of the night of the murder is still the same. Whatever the twist in James' case may be, many assume there must be one if there's been no arrest. Though shortly after James' murder, the chiropractor did spend a little time behind bars after making a plea deal in a narcotics case. However, after meeting the requirements for his probation, that charge was expunged from his record. Technically, reasonably. He's not considered a convicted felon. He's also no longer considered a chiropractor. Four months after James' murder, he was ordered to surrender his medical license. The board of chiropractic examiners cited his drug conviction as unprofessional conduct. At last check, he has not tried to get his license reinstated. No one I spoke with could tell me what he's been up to in recent years. It seems he's kept a low profile, and my attempts to speak with him have been unsuccessful. As of this recording, the chiropractor has never been charged with the mail theft and check fraud you've heard a couple of people implicate him in.

When it comes to James' murder, he's never been publicly named a suspect by law enforcement. How has there not been an arrest in the case?

There's a lot of cases that, as a homicide investigator, works that you know what happened, but you can't always prove for court purposes what happened.

To Sergeant Garrett, I'm sure the talk about how James's case seems solvable from people outside of the investigation can be frankly annoying. We're essentially like football fans screaming at the TV about the quarterback's performance from the comfort of our couch. I can imagine unsolicited advice and criticism is particularly irritating, seeing as….

In homicide cases, you have to keep everything close to the chest.

Sergeant Garrett isn't really able to defend his investigation. His responses have to be vague at best. Here's what he could say.

On any homicide case, you can't approach it with a narrow scope of view. You want to be able to look at everything. You just never know what evidence you'll have that leads you in a certain direction on any investigation.

James's case is more complex than it appears.

I was being pulled in a lot of directions by people related to the case.

A few months into 2019, the one year anniversaries passed for the three cases. As spring crept into summer, we got an unexpected announcement from the police department. They sent out a press release confirming that Micah and Bailey's cases were believed to be connected to each other, but they said they could find no direct link to James' murder and the two disappearances. It wasn't that the news itself was groundbreaking, as most people, including the moms, had essentially already come to that conclusion, but it still felt significant and odd. Did this mean the Bakersfield Three was really the Bakersfield Two? And if all three victims knew each other and all died or disappeared within a month, what made and Micah's cases connected, but not James? Did Micah and Bailey disappear for the same reason? Was the same person or persons responsible?

It doesn't matter if you're Olivia LaVoise, five-foot nothing and 100 nothing, or big fat Bill Darby with a gun on his hip. If he wants to kill you, he's going to kill you.

That's next time on The Bakersfield Three.

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