Lost Girls

by Caitlin Rother

  The King family was well-off and well connected in a community that already had established social networks—business groups, sports teams or dance troupes—it’s just that they’d never been called into action for this purpose. As parents and their kids e-mailed or texted news updates to each other, they were retexted, re-Tweeted and reposted, spreading the infectious inspiration to help.

  Take Mike Workman, a father of five, for instance. Workman’s twelve-year-old son was on an elite traveling baseball team with some boys who had played ball with Chelsea’s brother, Tyler, on a field in Poway. One of the team managers was a close friend of Brent’s, and he urged each of the boys’ parents to use their respective networks to further the search efforts.

  The day after Chelsea went missing, Workman and his boy were willingly recruited. The two of them showed up for search training at a business park in RB on that rainy Saturday, February 27, only to get turned away because searchers had to be eighteen years old. So they went to the parking lot across the street, where flyers were being distributed out of an RV. When Workman saw they were running low, he and his son had several hundred more made at a nearby print shop, which were then distributed to volunteers, who posted them in store windows at shopping malls throughout the county.

  “You thought, ‘This could be me. I’d want people to help me. What can I do to help?’” Workman recalled. “People really do want to help. I think they’re tired of conflict.”

  Chapter 4

  John was still in a manic mood when he got home around 5:30 P.M. on Friday, February 26. He insisted that Cathy give him a ride to meet his girlfriend, Jariah, at a Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meeting half an hour away in Escondido, because he had no car of his own. He said he wanted to ask the guys there about drug rehab places that might admit him.

  Before they left the condo, Cathy followed up on her promise at the salon. “Did you hear there was a girl that went missing out of the park yesterday?” she asked. “I was just wondering if you’d seen anything while you were walking around.”

  John shrugged off her question, later complaining that he thought Cathy was accusing him of something. “No,” he told his mother dismissively. “I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on.”

  Thinking the NA meeting would be good for John, even if it was a bit of a drive, Cathy gave him a ride over there. At least, she’d know where he was. After she went back to pick him up at nine-thirty, she told him they were going to visit his grandmother in the hospital up in Inglewood the next day.

  Still worried about her son’s erratic behavior, Cathy had decided to take that Monday off from work so she could take him back to the same psychiatric unit in Riverside County and demand this time that he be admitted on a 5150. But she didn’t tell John of her plans, in case he freaked out and ran off somewhere.

  As Cathy and John were driving through the neighborhood Saturday morning on their way to visit Linda, they saw a bunch of patrol cars at the park, where the sheriff’s department had set up a command center. Cathy briefly considered helping to search for Chelsea as she had for Amber Dubois, a fourteen-year-old freckled brunette with light blue eyes who had gone missing on her way to Escondido High School more than a year earlier. But dealing with a sick son and a sick mother had sapped any time and energy Cathy normally would have spent watching the news when she got home from work, let alone go out searching for another missing girl.

  Not this time, she told herself.

  Despite being separated, Amber’s parents, Carrie McGonigle and Maurice “Moe” Dubois, had spent the past year working ferociously together to keep up the search for their book- and animal-loving teenager. Carrie had even tattooed her daughter’s name on her wrist.

  But after two initial sightings in front of Amber’s school, downtown Escondido and in the hills near her house, authorities were no closer to finding her—even with the offer of $100,000 in reward money, the work of at least two private detectives and more than 1,200 leads from psychics and others who had called the Escondido Police Department (EPD) with tips. Although not to the same extent as Chelsea’s disappearance, Amber’s missing person’s case was also widely publicized, with her photo making the cover of People magazine in November 2009. But there was still no sign of her.

  Moe, an electronic telecommunications engineer, and Carrie, who worked for a printing business, were among the hundreds of volunteer searchers who came out to look for Chelsea and to give the Kings their support. Many of these volunteers were diverted by law enforcement and the yellow police tape from what was soon deemed a giant crime scene, so they headed off with handfuls of flyers they planned to post in their respective communities instead.

  Meanwhile, inside the yellow tape, about 160 trained searchers and law enforcement personnel from local, state and federal agencies searched the area that night. And in the coming days, lifeguards and water rescue dive teams from every surrounding county joined the search after a call for mutual aid went out at 3:00 A.M., Friday. They combed the land on foot with tracking dogs, on horseback, on quads and other all-terrain vehicles. They searched the water in boats and walking shoulder to shoulder in diving equipment. Hi-tech drone aircraft were flown by remote control, helicopters searched using infrared scopes and underwater robots took photos on the lake bottom.

  The response was overwhelming. Everyone, it seemed, was on the lookout for Chelsea King.

  “We’re literally moving heaven and earth to find this little girl,” said Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department.

  Standing at Linda Osborn’s bedside in the hospital, John Gardner gave what sounded like a good-bye to his maternal grandmother.

  “I know that you just want all of us to get along, and I want you to know that I’m not mad at Uncle Mike anymore,” he told her, referring to a screaming match they’d had a week earlier at Linda’s house. John had always been close with his grandmother, and it seemed to Cathy that he was scared Linda was about to die.

  Before Cathy and John got home from the hospital early Sunday, they made a plan to meet at the North County Fair shopping mall, now officially known as Westfield North County, for lunch around noon. Cathy figured she’d take him back to Lake Elsinore later that day, or first thing Monday.

  “I’ve got to make sure I don’t go past my five days,” John said, referring to the deadline after which he would need to reregister with a new residential address, or as a transient, under Megan’s Law, the national law governing sex offenders.

  Cathy wasn’t sure if the day in L.A. would count toward the five days, but after he’d been cited twice for possessing marijuana while on parole, she wanted to support any effort he made to follow the law.

  By the time Cathy got up later that morning, John had already left the condo.

  He left her a message at 10:00 A.M. that he was at the park. “I went walking and when I went across the bridge, the search team and the sheriff were there,” he said. “There’s yellow tape up, so I had to go the long way.”

  After hearing the park trails were blocked off, Cathy changed her usual Sunday-morning jogging route, heading toward Lake Poway on residential streets, instead. She only made it to a park on the way to her destination before turning back, though, because she was too physically and emotionally exhausted to go the distance.

  John left her a second message at eleven-thirty, advising her that he was going to be thirty minutes late for lunch. “I’m going to start heading my way back to the mall,” he said.

  Cathy noticed that he was talking a bit fast, as if he were trying to make it seem like nothing was wrong. He explained that she couldn’t call him because his battery was running low, and he was going to pull it out of his phone so it didn’t completely drain before he reached the mall and needed to call her. Knowing that Cathy had been acting highly codependent and worried about him lately—which is typical for any mother, sibling or spouse of any addict or alcoholic, especially when mental-health issues are involved—John added, “I didn’t want you
to start freaking out.”

  Cathy had informed him earlier that she’d gone through Verizon to put a global positioning system (GPS) tracking device on his phone, so if he was going someplace north of Escondido, near his druggie friends, she would know about it. However, this device was nothing like the GPS ankle bracelet he’d had to wear for his last year of parole. All he had to do to thwart her watchdog efforts was shut off the phone.

  As Cathy sat eating tortilla chips at the Mexican restaurant, where they’d agreed to meet, she worried that the police might try to question John about the missing girl, given that he was a registered sex offender. But knowing where he’d been on Friday and Saturday, she wasn’t worried that he was involved, not computing that Chelsea had actually gone missing on Thursday—the night he’d come home with the snake and that crazy expression.

  He’s going to be fine because we’ll be able to show where he was during that period of time.

  But as John grew later and later, she was once again left to wonder and worry where he was and what he was doing.

  Is he sneaking off to do drugs again?

  She called one of John’s close friends to see if he’d asked for a ride to the mall, but the friend said he hadn’t seen John.

  “I’m worried because he’s really kooky right now,” Cathy said.

  Cathy called John’s girlfriend, Jariah, who had been in rehab since November, but was supposed to come to the condo with her three-year-old son that afternoon for a visit.

  “Have you talked with John? Are you still going to be able to come over?” Cathy asked. “John was supposed to meet me for lunch and he’s not here. Did he say anything to you about going anywhere else?”

  “No,” Jariah said.

  Cathy had left about twenty-five messages for John that day, but hadn’t gotten a single response. “Where are you? I’m waiting for you,” she said, trying to sound more concerned than accusatory so as not to anger him. By that point, she was thinking she should take him back to the county mental hospital that night.

  Around 1:30 P.M., Cathy finally gave up and drove home. On her way, she heard the helicopters overhead, still searching for Chelsea, she presumed.

  By the time Jariah arrived at her condo around two-thirty, Cathy was beside herself.

  “Have you heard from John?”

  “No,” Jariah said.

  “This is weird,” they both said. “This is really weird.”

  Chapter 5

  Two men knocked on Cathy’s front door just after 3:00 P.M. Dressed in street clothes, they identified themselves as law enforcement. In fact, they were members of the Fugitive Task Force, which is made up of sheriff’s detectives and U.S. Marshals.

  “Does John Gardner live here?”

  “No,” Cathy said.

  “Is this where his mom lives?”

  “Yes,” she said, thinking they must have mistaken her for his sister.

  “Is he here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No,” she said. “What is this regarding?”

  The officers explained that they were there about the missing girl, and because John was a registered sex offender. “We need to talk to him. Can we come in?”

  Cathy thought they just wanted to question him, as she’d anticipated they would. After he’d first gotten out of prison, she’d warned him that he’d always be a suspect, so he needed to be sure he had witnesses to verify his alibi when a girl went missing or was assaulted. “They’ll always look at you,” she had told him.

  Informing her that they needed to secure the house, the officers gave Cathy the option to sit on the couch and not move, or to leave. But if she left, they would have to take her to the sheriff’s station for an interview. She chose to stay on the couch with Jariah and her son, Alan* (pseudonym*).

  “You can go and look,” Cathy said. “He’s not here.”

  They went room to room, finding no John and no Chelsea, until they came to a locked door. When Kevin wasn’t home, he left the door to his office locked because he kept expensive video equipment in there. The officers demanded that she open the door.

  “I don’t have a key,” she said.

  Cathy called Kevin, who said he could be home in fifteen or twenty minutes to open the door, but the detectives said they couldn’t wait that long, and broke it down.

  “Do you know where Chelsea is?” the detectives asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cathy replied.

  “Do you know where John might have put her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Around three forty-five, the detectives allowed Jariah to go outside to smoke a cigarette, while Cathy stayed inside with Alan. Cathy came outside to tell Jariah something, when they saw a guy walking down the street. Thinking it could be John, the cops took off running after him.

  Fearing it was John, Cathy was petrified that the police would fire their weapons at him. “My son is mentally ill,” she shouted. “Please don’t shoot him!”

  But it wasn’t him.

  The detectives persuaded Jariah to call John to see if he would tell her where he was, and he did: Hernandez’ Hideaway, a restaurant and bar on Lake Hodges. As soon as they got this information, two detectives jumped into their cars and sped off toward the restaurant, which was fifteen minutes away. Several other detectives kept searching the condo and watched over Cathy and Jariah.

  They’re going to kill him because he’s really out of his mind, Cathy thought. He’s going to run or he’ll mouth off and they’ll just shoot him, anyway.

  At one point, a tall detective came over and spoke to her in a tone she found quite threatening. “If you know something, you’d better tell us,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air at her.

  Cathy felt like her world was collapsing around her. She was not just tired of their questions, but she was also starting to become unglued. “I don’t know anything!” she screamed. “I’ve told you, I don’t know anything!”

  The detectives didn’t tell Cathy they had arrested John at 4:16 P.M. on suspicion of rape and murder. Cathy only found out because her oldest daughter, Shannon, called from Los Angeles after seeing it on the news.

  “Oh, my God, Mom, they’ve arrested John!” Shannon cried.

  But with the detectives sitting nearby, listening, Cathy didn’t want to say anything out loud. “I can’t talk,” she said, and hung up.

  Other family members called too, including John’s father’s family in Iowa, who had also seen the TV news stories. But Cathy didn’t pick up for the same reason. She was too upset to talk, anyway, so they left messages.

  “We are praying for you,” said Mona*, one of John’s four half sisters.

  Shannon sent her sister Sarina a text message, Call me ASAP.

  She never sent texts, so Sarina was concerned and called her right away, but she couldn’t get through. So she called Cathy, who was quiet on the phone when she answered.

  “Momma, is something wrong?”

  “Yes.” In shock, Cathy’s voice was clipped. “The police are at the house. John has been arrested for a suspected rape and murder.”

  “Did he do this?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Cathy said, then hung up.

  By six o’clock, the media had lined the street outside Cathy’s condo. Around nine o’clock, a new crew of investigators arrived, including a team of FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) agents attached to the sheriff’s homicide unit, swarming around her house with crime scene investigators (CSIs), going through her things and carrying out computers. As the detectives served search warrants for specific items in the condo, a female agent informed Cathy that they’d found a pair of women’s underwear with John’s DNA on them. There was no question about John’s guilt in the agent’s tone, which came as quite a shock to Cathy.

  Are they lying?

  They’d been telling her that they hoped Chelsea was still alive, being held hostage somewhere. Part of her wanted to believe that John
was innocent, but the female agent sounded so convincing, and DNA evidence sounded pretty tough to disprove.

  Was this here all along and I missed it? Could John really have done what they’re saying?

  Cathy kept hoping that they would find Chelsea, that she would end up being alive somewhere, or if something bad had happened to her, that John had had nothing to do with it.

  Did John get back with his drug friends, and did they all do this together? I know how sick he is, but I just can’t see him doing this, not in his right mind, anyway.

  But he isn’t in his right mind.

  After everything she’d been through—including her own molestation by a male family member when she was nine, and being raped by a stranger when she was twenty-four—she just couldn’t believe that her own son could do something like this to a teenage girl.

  How could he, with a close family of women who loved, supported and nurtured him, and for whom he seemed to care as well?

  Over the next two days, Cathy locked herself in the condo. The reporters finally stopped knocking on the door after the police advised her to post a handmade sign on the front gate that said: We have no statement at this time. Please stay off our property. But camera crews continued to shine lights into her windows to catch a glimpse of what she was doing inside—even in her bedroom.

  Even though a crisis counselor from the Scripps Health system, for which Cathy worked, told her by phone to shut off the TV, she couldn’t stop herself from watching the news.

  “I had to, because I was going crazy,” she recalled.

  Then, on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 2, Cathy saw that the searchers had found Chelsea’s body. The poor girl had been there all along, buried in a shallow grave on the south shore of Lake Hodges. Cathy broke down crying hysterically.