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Okay, well, when this all started with Kadeja with her boyfriend at that time, D. G. Fallas, his mother stayed in this house down here. So she eventually stayed down there with Niji.

Ronnie Hossler, Kadija Britain's grandfather, who you heard in the previous episode, offered to give us a tour of the Covalough House where Kadeja and Niji Fallas were staying. It's right down the street from Ronnie's house. You can see it from his driveway.

She stayed there a long time. He would leave because she had other girlfriends besides her. I don't know of him ever beaten her down here. If he did, I'm sure she would have told me.

She didn't. Kadeja moved in with Follis after high school. This house belonged to Niji's grandmother, who also lived with them. It's a long, trailer style home with blue sides fading to gray. And in a green yard adorned with stones on either side is a walkway leading to the front door. While Kadeja stayed there, it seems things were somewhat stable. There was some sense that even though Kadeia's family didn't improve her relationship, with her living so close by, they could at least keep watch over her.

But I haven't been in there since we lost Kadeja five years ago. That's when he drugged around the house, threatened to kill her right there.

But now to Ronnie, this house serves as a constant reminder of everything that's gone wrong.

When she came up missing, they had this all blocked off. So I come walking down here and the deputy stopped me right here. I said, What's going on here? Well, we heard that there's some blood and stuff in that house, so we're going to go in there. Well, they found out that when they went near that house, they bleached it and they painted that one room. Well, him and Kadees was in that room. How did.

They know that the wall had been painted, the room had been painted?

They could smell the new paint. There are some places where they could smell the bleach. Are you.

Thinking maybe they were painting and bleaching just to get rid of any evidence of domestic violence?

Well, that's what they claim.

The police?

Yeah, they said that everything was clean so there was nothing they could do. Kadeja always told me she was okay, but she didn't really tell me what was going on. I knew there was abuse. I knew that. And so.

You drive past this house every day, the.

Last.

Place you saw Kadeja. What's that like? It's a bad, bad.

Then I feel guilty. I feel like I should have done something. I should have put a stop to it. The only way I could help her, she wanted to help. I still felt guilty for not doing that. It felt like it was been my place to step in. Maybe that's why I'm doing what I'm doing now.

You've done so much for her.

I'm not done. I'm not done yet.

I'm Slesia Stanton, and this is The Vanishing Point. The Midasino.

County Sheriff's office and the detective.

Bureau has so far invested 3,400 to.

62 hours.

In this investigation. And we're not saying that by saying this is the biggest.

We've done, but I want people to understand that.

We're not taking this.

Investigation lightly.

This is a 2018 press conference update on Kadeja Britain's case.

The main investigative lead in this case, Niji.

Fallas, was arrested. While many of her loved ones hoped justice would be served, we now know the main suspect in her disappearance, Niji Fallas, the man who was said to have beaten her and threatened her into a car at gunpoint has alluded any legal ramifications from this case.

We want to solve this crime. As a.

Father myself, I certainly can understand the anxiety, the.

Nightmares, the fright that the.

Family has. We are continuing our.

Investigation of crime that we are not stalling.

We're continuing. Hopefully today, somebody out there that will understand that the right thing to do is get the.

Information to us. Honestly, whether she's dead or alive, we need to find her.

Niji Fallas, 37 of Covalo, only spent 15 months in prison after Kadezia's disappearance. And his sentencing wasn't for kidnapping, spousal abuse, or murder. Instead, he was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was arrested and released again a short time later, but ultimately, police haven't been able to charge Fallas in connection with Kadeia's disappearance because of what authorities say is a lack of evidence. They believe the only way that will change is if someone else comes forward.

It was my job to round those people up, the ones that were rumored to be involved in her disappearance.

Here again is former Covalo police officer, Trent James.

Every time I would have to use informants and my expertise to go track these people down and find them because they were all in hiding, of course, and some of them had warrants. So when I would find them, I would call the detectives down in UK and say, Hey, I got so and so. Do you want to come out here and interview them? No, bring them to us. So then driving an hour and a half each way to do a drop off. And I go back out to Covalo, do it again until I rounded up every fucking person. But that's when I finally got Sammy Leggett.

Sammy Leggett is one of two witnesses who was in the house the day Kadeja went missing. She tell law enforcement that she watched Niji Fallas threaten Kadeja and forced her into an SUV at gunpoint. Sammy Leggett has since passed, but her testimony to Trent James is the most information we have about what happened to Kadeja after she got in the car.

What happened was Niji went over there in a black SUV, and was him and the person driving the SUV, Sammy Legget. So, Sammy Legget, Niji and Kadezia leave that property and they drive down the road on Agency Road, probably like 100 feet, not very far and Kadeja and Niji are sitting in the back seat of the SUV, Sammy Legget's driving, and they're arguing non-stop back and forth. And at one point, Nege tells Sammy, Stop the fucking car. So she stops the car and then Nege gets out, pulls Kadeja out and tells Sammy to get the fuck out of there. So Sammy leaves the area. And this is late at night, right? There's no street lights, okay? There's no nothing. It's pitch black. And so you can't really see anything. Again, not highly populated either. So they get out and stay there. Sammy drives back to her house, which is probably half a mile away. And then about 30 minutes later, Sammy, and this is her statement, she said that Miji called her on her cell phone and he sounded upset. He was crying and he was like, I fucked up. I fucked up. I didn't mean to.

And she's like, What the fuck are you talking about? And he's like, Come back and pick me up. I'm back over here. And so she drives back over there immediately. And it was just Niji by himself, no Kadeja. And Sam, he's like, Where's Kadeja? And he wouldn't say shit according to her. And I can't remember she said he was crying, but definitely something happened. He was visibly distraught, agitated, freaking the fuck out a thing. And so they got in the car together. They drove back to her house. And he had been on the phone calling somebody else at that point. And then right when they got to their house, almost immediately, his other girlfriend at the time, her name was Antonia, she showed up in a black Mercedes, Sedan, picked him up. And then Antonia and Nege left Sammy's house, and we don't know what happened after that. And it took me forever to get that out of Sammy. I talked to her so many times and whether or not she knows more, obviously, we're not going to know because she's dead. But even on her deathbed in the hospital, the detectives were right there like, Are you sure you don't fucking know anything else?

And, Nope, that was it. Did you.

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Law enforcement has been gathering these statements for years now. So what progress has been made on Kadeja's case? Apparently, another witness statement was made to police very recently. At first, Ronnie thought this was going to be their big break.

I asked him, Are you guys going to press charges? He said, No. I said, Why not? He said, We need at least five witnesses. I said, Well, there's only four people involved. But he said, They're not going to do that unless you get five witnesses to it.

The one that happened recently, did that count? The one you just spoke about?

Evidently, he's not going to use him because he said it won't do no good to only use that one witness.

Despite the rumored number of witnesses that night, the statements in this case are a mess. Two of the main witnesses are now deceased. Some of the statements have since been recanted. According to Ronnie, local authorities have been told that they need at least five eyewitness statements, a number that feels arbitrary. It's now been five years since Kadezia was last seen. In that time, her family has pressed for more answers about what happened that night in the woods and what Niji Fallas might have done to her. And many rumors have circulated since.

After some time goes by, you start to hear all this crazy shit about what happened or where she could be. So it's like, she's at a house party in Lake County. No, she checked herself up into rehab up in SAC or Redding. Or no, she got chopped up and she's at this property buried. She got set on fire. She's at this property. She's tied to a tree way out in the national forest. She got put into a trunk and driven, or she got human trafficked by the cartel. Now she's down in Mexico. And the list went on and on and on and on and on and on with the rumors. If you have any basic law enforcement experience, especially out there on the reservation, you know that NUJ had something to do with this, 100 %. Like he just did, okay? There's no guessing about that fact. He fucking did, right? But it's like, what did he do with her body after that point? The rumor was that black Mercedes that picked him up, they went and fucking put her in the trunk and fucking took her somewhere and moved her a couple of different times.

So that Mercedes at a later day got set on fire, oddly enough, by some random person and doesn't take a detective to figure that one out.

Law enforcement conducted multiple searches in the area that Kadesia was said to be dropped off, but no body or clues of any nature have been found. Some folks speculate it's because her body has been moved to various locations. Trent James, as a man named Frank, not to be confused with the Frank we met in previous episodes, was helping Niji with this. Dead bodies.

I've moved a shitload of them, they're heavy as fuck. So hes he wasn't doing that shit by himself, and he certainly wasn't moving it with his girlfriend only. So he definitely had some help doing that. But Frank was one of the ones that was supposedly helping him move her body. Anyway, Frank was on parole, freshly released from prison, and he got pulled over and he had some ammunition. When you're a felon, you can't possess ammunition. Not even one bullet. One bullet is a felony. It could have sent him back to prison. And he had some meth and stuff on him too. So he had some decent charges while being on parole, freshly out of prison. So he was one that obviously never said anything. But Ronnie, I know, reached out to Matt Kindel, the sheriff and said, Hey, man, I heard you just got Big Frank and he's got all this shit going on. Can you say Frank, do you want to go back to fucking prison for this stupid shit? Or do you want to maybe help us out with the Kadesia situation? Like, give us something. Matt Kindel told Ronnie, Ronnie, I can't do that because if I did that, the public would be pissed if I'm out there trying to cut deals with Frank.

And Ronnie is like, What the fuck? I'm like, What the fuck? I was like, What are you talking about, man? What person is going to be angry that you let Frank off or with a lesser sentence for some bullets and some shitty personal use of meth if he would provide information for the location of Kadeja's body. No one's giving a fuck about that, man. They are going to be happy that there was some fucking resolution to this case. But that was the response from the actual sheriff that is still the actual sheriff there. And he won't even return Ronnie's phone calls anymore. He completely fucking ignores them. That's the ultimate guy in charge at that department. So that should tell you everything you need to know about why that case has been handled the way that it is.

We spoke to Ronnie about the status of the case and his feelings on Mendicino County Sheriff, Matt Kemdell.

Matt Kemdell keep telling me his famous lines was his perpetrator is going to do life by the installment plan. I know what the installment plan is. Then he kept telling me, It's going to take time. It's going to take time, but we're going to do this. I found out. I had to tell him, Matt, I said, I don't have time. I'm soon to be 80 years old, which I am now, but I don't have time. We want her. I'm not going to stop. I'm getting to where I don't really care anymore about who I step on.

We reached out to Sheriff Kemnitz, but he declined to comment. In an article published in The Red-Headed Black Belt, dated February second, 2022, Sheriff Kemnitz stated, In these areas where people don't talk to police, we have a hard time solving crimes. He continued by stating that he believes that some people in Round Valley know something, but to move forward with filing charges, he will need, quote, a body or confession or other hard evidence. Without the support of local authorities, Ronnie feels hopeless in his quest for justice, especially considering the insular nature of the community.

There's people out there that know what happened to her. They know. But here in the valley, we're all related. He's related to us. His whole family is related to me in one way or her in one way, my wife or Connie. If you say something about one family member, then you're going to get retaliated about another family member, and it's just going to go clear around. That's why there's nobody going to say anything. I mean, some of those people, they were just like sisters to me, but not no more. There's a lot of friends that we were just so close, and that's not no more. Okay.

Can you get Meredith and you and I can get... Can I get a picture of you? Can I take a picture of you three?

-sure. -right here? Yeah. Our guide for both Houpa and Kovlo, as we've introduced her many times before, is Ali Hostler. Her name might now sound familiar for other reasons. That's because Ronni and Connie Hostler are her aunt and uncle. Kadeja is her cousin. When our team left the Hostler home, Ali mentioned that she wanted to show us something special, a Kovlo landmark. Yeah, do.

You want to tell us about what we're seeing? So this is an old rundown concrete building that I'm not sure what used to be here, but it's provided an excellent canvas to commemorate Kadeja, a powerful space that's open yet enclosed and is very visible from Highway 162, which is the highway that runs straight through Covalough.

Our team is standing in the shell of an old dilapidated building. As Allie described, it's open yet enclosed, almost like a pavilion. On the inside, one of the walls contains a giant black and white painting of Kadesia. Though there's a chainlink fence and overgrown weeds, it's beautiful.

This is Kadesia Britain, a painted mural of Kadeia Britain. It's really nice to see her from the road. And when you come in, if you know to look, you peek over here and she's... I do. And I know that you do so much work to spread the word, but I know this is also a very personal case for you. Tell us about that. It's just hard when you know it could be prevented and to have it happen in all of our families seems like over and over, and we're so helpless. We did everything we could to help our loved ones, and they're still gone. And then to know that she had a restraining order, she had been to court, she had testified about the domestic violence, and her abuser took her, and there's still nothing we can do about it? I think the domestic violence issue is... I don't really know how to encapsulate how important that is, but it takes a lot to get to the point where you reach out for help and for her to reach out like that and actually follow through with the court process and follow through with restraining orders.

She must have truly been in fear for her life. And now look, the system failed to protect her. Even family couldn't protect her. And now it's as if the police don't… They're done. It feels the same in Emily's case. They're done investigating. I mean, what more can they investigate? We don't really know, but I feel like we find out more as journalists visiting places and talking to people than what is in a case file. My uncle, Ronnie, has gone above and beyond and done more investigating as a elder in a small community than the police have done. Before being 80, he goes all over to events and rallies and all these banners you see and posters you see all over town. He's out there putting them up and making sure they're kept up. He wants the people responsible for whatever happened to Kadizah to be reminded every day. He wants them to see her face and know that he's not giving up and they want justice. I don't know if they'll ever have closure. And it hurts me to see people I love in so much pain and know that they may never have closure.

I feel like that's happened with so many of our people. A three on level and go. Row number one.

-ready. -ready. -ready. Where do.

We run?

-joneson. -where do we run? -joneson. -where do we run? -coutain. -when do we run it?

-no. Where do we want it? -no.

This is a rally for the MMIP movement in Northern California. A crowd of people walked down the street dressed in red and black, the colors of the MMIP movement. They're calling for justice for the many folks in Humboldt County who are missing or murdered.

This is our Trail of tears, and we're out here trying to bring awareness.

Trying to.

Get them to come outside and talk to us and actually take this seriously.

Each protester holds a sign, some demanding action from law enforcement, others featuring the face of a lost loved one. And we're really scared at this time for our community that there's no justice going on. And so today-There's friends, family and spouses, employees and advocates from the MIP offices. There is no fair treatment, no fair investigation, no fair trial. And as they march, they call out the names of all those whose fate is still mystery. I, Holly, N, N. Some names we recognize. Rules. Andrea. Andrea. Sudey.

Sudey.

Hurtle. Hurtle. Others are new. Robert.

Robert.

Brent. Brent. Dominique. Dominique. Lopis. Lopis. Each with their own story of heartbreak, frustration, and turmoil. Renault. While we wish we had the ability to cover all these unsolved cases, the number of them for one small region in Northern California is almost too big to comprehend. Too many gone.

Too many.

Too many gone. We need help. Since our trip to the Pacific Northwest, there have been multiple violent deaths of young indigenous people. In fact, just weeks after our trip to Covalo, a 15 year old girl was beaten to death and a 20 year old man was shot and killed. Both crimes were closed by arrest. Last month, the shooting of a local indigenous man in HOOPA by the California Highway Patrol, reignited conversations about policing and jurisdiction on reservations. These communities are still struggling. The up and Vanish team left town with Kadeja's eyes watching, and they hope by sharing these stories, it opens the door for change and support that it causes a wider community to care about the big questions. How do we prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future? What can be done?

I think social media has helped movements build steam and grow support and also help alert people on other reservations that this is happening all over. Seeing these larger efforts to make this more visible is really, really encouraging. We're getting visibility and hopefully the end result is we save lives and we change policy and we start to pay attention. Let's talk prevention here. We can't just wait until they're missing and then address the problems with investigations. What are we doing to safeguard women who are mentally ill, who are prone to sex trafficking or they're in the foster care system or they're in the juvenile court system. All those young people, not just women, are at an extremely high risk of being missing or murdered. I feel like my job in it is to provide information and to get the word out.

We asked Allie what measures she's seen taken so far to create change.

There's a lot of recent effort within the last two years coming from the tribe. I know our tribal court system has been working on implementing a juvenile wellness court, which will help youth get back on track and work on finding ways to keep those youth on a positive track so they can make positive decisions into adulthood. There's a truancy prevention program. There's a suicide prevention program right now. There's becoming more access or easier access to mental health support services. I see these intervention type projects being implemented throughout the entire tribe and our neighboring tribes addressing the issue now, gosh, I feel like prevention is the best way to address it. Then looking at policy changes now, I know California just signed the Feathr alert. This new push through the state is really important. It's key.

Senator James Ramos, the first Native American and the California legislature, authored the Feather bill, which became law in 2023. This alert system is similar to Amber Alert and is activated by tribal police or law enforcement when a native person goes missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances. In October of 2023, Governor Newsom also signed Senate Bill 43 into law. This new mental health law expands the definition of gravely ill, covering individuals who are unable to care for their basic needs due to substance use or untreated mental illness. A law like this could have impacted Emily Wrestling's case. These new policies may create change, hopefully positive change. But the community feels that the urgency for new policies like the instatement of the Feathr Act is few and far between. There's still a lot of distrust between policymakers, law enforcement, and the indigenous community. We asked Chief O'Rourke his thoughts on how to improve the relationship between law enforcement and indigenous peoples.

Every single native person in the state has some story about some abuse or some police brutality, some police mistreatment, either real or perceived. So how it relates to MIP is when the investigating agency responds, the people in the family, they may not be willing to cooperate with the investigation. They may not give all the information that's pertinent to the investigation, and that hampers it.

Greg's officers are attempting to overcome that history of conflict with what they call a trauma-informed approach. It involves studying how trauma works and making sure officers can recognize the signs of a person who appears to be experiencing symptoms of trauma. Then officers can be better equipped to de-escalate situations and build trust.

Taking a trauma-informed approach is not a new concept, but it is with cops and it's certainly within the community. And so being open to this and finally being able to have an explanation why your son, your family member or even you yourself may feel that anger, may feel that frustration, why you act out the way you do, being able to identify it and label it then now gives a community a path to be able to address it. The two things that are coming out are cops need board training. Yes, we do. I'm not saying that we don't. Cops need to learn how to de-escalate. When it comes to those issues, I truly, truly believe that adopting a trauma-informed approach addresses those.

As we've heard multiple times in this podcast, people are often reluctant to speak to law enforcement, but there are other ways to submit tips. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a confidential tip line. If you have information about any of the cases that we covered or any other missing or murdered indigenous persons case, you can submit a tip by texting 847411, calling 1833-560-2065, or submitting a tip on their website at BIA. Gov. During this project, families opened their doors to us to tell us their most heartbreaking stories. We recognize the strength in that, and we hope that one day they'll find the answers that can bring them closure. Our guide, Allie Hostler, also hopes for better times ahead, and we want to acknowledge her commitment to advocacy and thank her for trusting us with these stories in the first place.

We're seeing the times change. I think we're in the generation of healers. We're in a new era where people are starting to feel empowered. They're starting to say, Enough is enough. I wish it would happen faster, but I see it happening more and more.

We'd also like to thank Laura Frater for her dedication to these cases. This all started because of a voicemail that Laura left us. I just.

Think being of service, whatever your skill set is, use it for other people. If all you can do is wash the dishes, wash the dishes. It may not be actual dishes, but writing letters or calling people up. Just whatever your skill set is, whatever your time allows, just do it. Even if it means listening to the podcast and telling someone about it, like that's washing the dishes, you're sharing the story. The more people know about these cases, I think that just puts pressure on people gently to folks who are responsible for solving it. Not only will they feel pressure, but I think maybe supported in some way, like we're behind you as well. We want this to be solved. I really think that we can do that with this podcast. Just wash the dishes if that's all you have to do. Just do that. We hope.

This series enlightened you. We hope it taught you something new, and we hope it reaches people that might have tips or resources that can help the families in search of their loved ones. For connections to law enforcement in north California, the Mendasino County Tip Line is 800-782-7463. You can remain anonymous. The Humboldt County Tip Line is 707-268-2539. If you're indigenous and need advocacy support or healing resources as a survivor of trauma, visit the SovereignBodies Institute at sovereign-bodies. Org. If you'd like to donate to any of the organizations that we've mentioned, please do so. Your donations make a difference. If you're looking to help in the simplest way possible, as Laura said, share these stories. With your help, Emily, Sumi, Andrea, Virgil, and Kadeia will never be forgotten. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Vanishing Point. This six-part series is released weekly, absolutely free. But if you want to binge the whole season right now, you can. Subscribe to Tenderfoot+ on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus. Com. The Vanishing Point is a production of Tenderfoot TV, an association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Silesia Stanton. The show is written by Meredith Studman, Alex Vestpestad, and Jamie Albright, with additional writing assistance by me.

Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Lead producer is Jamie Albright, along with producer Meredith Studman. Editing by Alex Vestpestad with additional editing by Sidney Evans. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional production by Laura Freiter and Ali Hossler. Research by Laura Freiter and Taylor Floyd. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup at Vanity Set. Mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to Gregor Borg, the KIDE 91.3 radio station in Hoopa, the Two Rivers Tribune, and all of the families and community members that spoke to us. For more podcasts like The Vanishing Point, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot. Tv. Thanks for listening.