Fan Favorite - "Head for the Hills"

0:00Today's episode is a fan favorite. The audio and the story has been remastered for today's episode. In January of 2012, a police truck parked on a trail in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. A member of the canine unit opened the door and a police dog named Indiana Bones jumped out. Indy quickly thought a scent and led his handler to a mound of dirt just off the path. Indy potted the dirt and suddenly revealed the top of a plastic bag. The dog's handler reached into the dirt and pulled out the bag, and when she looked inside, she saw two dismembered human feet and a hand. Indy's discovery would launch an investigation that would lead two LA detectives into the most insane case they'd ever worked, a case that would involve everything from Mexican drug cartels to a Canadian cannibal.

0:46But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button goes camping, wait for them to go to bed for the night, at which point light and then throw a Yon Shakaduma firework onto their tent. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:25On Christmas Day 2011, 67-year-old Hervey Medellin turned off the oven in his apartment in Hollywood, California, opened up the oven door, and pulled out a casserole dish covered with foil. Hervey looked up at the clock and smiled, because his friend, who was coming over for a holiday visit, would be there any minute, and the food he was making had finished cooking at exactly the right time. He turned down the radio playing Christmas music in the kitchen and called out to his roommate, Gabriel Martinez, and told him lunch was almost ready. Gabriel had his eyes glued to his laptop, totally engrossed in whatever it was he was doing, and so he just gave Hervey a sort of grunt of acknowledgement.

3:03Hervey responded with an irritated sigh. Gabriel, who was 30 years younger than Hervey, had been spending so much time online lately that he barely connected with the world around him. Hervey realized it was very likely a generational thing, but he didn't understand why anyone would want to spend so much time just staring at a computer screen. But Hervey refused to be bothered by Gabriel today. It was Christmas, and Christmas was a time for joy, friends, and good food. Hervey set down the hot casserole dish on the table in the small dining area, and he looked around with satisfaction at all the Christmas decorations he had spent hours hanging up.

3:40Hervey's entire one-bedroom apartment now looked like it had been decorated by a professional interior designer. But perhaps the most impressive part of the decorations was not actually the Christmas stuff. It was the paintings that were hanging on the walls. These were not paintings that would be found in most small one-bedroom apartments. These were original works by famous artists. Just then the doorbell rang, interrupting Hervey's thoughts, and Hervey removed his oven mitts and went to open the door. and when he did, he saw his friend Amelia standing there, holding several wrapped presents.

4:15Hervey grinned and said Merry Christmas and gave Amelia a big hug. Then he let her inside and told her to put the presents down because before they got to presents and to food, he had to show her something. Amelia put down the presents, said hello to Gabriel, and then Hervey took her hand and led her across the front room. Then Hervey pointed to a painting hanging on the wall, and he could hear Amelia gasp. She turned to Hervey almost in disbelief and asked if it was an original. Hervey smiled and nodded. He said the last time he'd gone down to Mexico, where he was originally from, he had acquired this painting, which was an original work of art by Diego Rivera, one of the most famous Mexican painters to have ever lived.

4:55After staring at this painting with his friend for several minutes, Hervey said it was time to go eat. He told Gabriel to put his computer away for a while and join them, and then the three of them headed to the table and dug into the casserole Hervey had prepared. While they ate, Hervey told Amelia more about his latest trip to Mexico and also about the travel plans he was making to destinations all over the world. Hervey said sometimes he still couldn't believe this was actually his real life. He'd worked so hard from the moment he came to the United States as a young man, with the hope that one day he'd be able to do whatever he wanted.

5:28And now he felt like he'd accomplish that. He was retired and filling his days with adventure and art. Hervey, Amelia, and Gabriel spent the day eating, talking, laughing, and exchanging gifts. For Hervey, who had spent most of his life far away from his family, this really felt like the perfect holiday. And other than maybe traveling, he couldn't imagine a better way to spend his time than eating delicious food and catching up with friends. By late afternoon, Amelia said unfortunately she had to go home, so Hervey walked her to the door. He gave her another big hug, wished her Merry Christmas again, and said he couldn't wait to get together with her in the new year.

6:12More than three weeks later, on the morning of Tuesday, January 17th, a dog walker named Lauren Kornberg left her house with her mother and nine dogs. They headed toward their usual hiking path, which cut through an area called Bronson Canyon. Bronson Canyon is located inside of Griffith Park, which is basically LA's equivalent to New York's Central Park, but it sits high above the city. It was the perfect winter morning in Los Angeles, which meant it was a crisp 50 degrees and the Hollywood Hills were bathed in soft orange sunlight. So Lauren and her mom took the dogs up a side path that branched out from the main hiking trail, and once they were far enough away from other hikers, they let the dogs off-leash.

6:54And as soon as that happened, the dogs instantly began playfully running around together, but one of them, a golden retriever, broke away from the pack and wandered over toward a bushy area next to a shallow ravine off the side of the path. And this golden retriever began digging in this one area of the brush. Lauren watched as the retriever pulled out a plastic bag from the brush and then began sniffing it. And as the dog began to sort of vigorously paw at this bag, a large round object suddenly rolled out of it and began tumbling down into the ravine. Two other dogs from the group, a husky and a small terrier, ran down the ravine after this big round object.

7:34And Lauren's mom asked what had just rolled out of the bag. Lauren said she didn't know, but it sort of looked like a movie prop, which wouldn't actually be an unusual thing to find lying around, because there were Hollywood special effects and prop houses not too far from here, and many movies and TV shows were filmed in this area. Lauren's mom walked over toward the ravine to try to get a better look at this movie prop, but as she got close to the edge, she looked down and saw that the dogs were no longer playing. In fact, the terrier was backing away from this object with its hair up like the dog was terrified.

8:07And so Lauren, she kind of leaned forward and looked as best as she could to see what this object was. And suddenly, when one of the dogs stepped out of the way, she had a clear line of sight onto this object. And when she saw what it was, she began backing away too. Because the object was no prop. It was a real severed human head.

8:37About an hour later, helicopters loudly hovered over the canyon and police blocked access to the entire area as more than a dozen LAPD cruisers, CSI units, and news vans parked along the nearby scenic overlook. Detective Chuck Knowles and his partner, Detective Lisa Sanchez, walked up the trail and met with the uniformed officers who had cordoned off the area with police tape. By this point, crime scene investigators had retrieved the severed head from the ravine and brought it onto the trail. When Detective Sanchez walked over to them and saw the severed head, her stomach churned. She had investigated her fair share of murder cases, but this was the first time she'd dealt with any kind of dismemberment.

9:17As Sanchez began to study the head, one of the uniformed officers walked up to her and told her that the two women who actually found the head at first thought it was fake. They thought it was a movie prop. Detective Sanchez could understand why. Because there was very little decomposition, and the head was so fresh and pristine that it looked like it had just been removed. From the looks of it, Sanchez believed the head belonged to a man who could be in his 60s, but that was about all she could guess about the victim at this point. So police began fanning out and searching the area, hoping to find some more clues.

9:50More helicopters and search units began to pour into the area, and the search expanded to a 7-acre radius. Searchers began entering backyards of the homes in the area, and some of these homes were really expensive houses that belonged to famous movie stars, so the police knew this case was going to draw even more media attention. Around 4.30 p.m., the sun began to set, and despite an exhaustive search of the area, no further human remains turned up. So the searchers left their equipment, kept the area cordoned off, and went home for the night.

10:25That evening, reports of the dismembered body found in Griffith Park were all over local news stations. And although violent crime in LA was far from rare, violent crime in this particular neighborhood in Bronson Canyon was almost unheard of. The people who lived in the neighborhood who were willing to talk on camera were shocked that something like this could happen just beyond their backyards. People who had been hiking and walking their dogs in Bronson Canyon for years told reporters they were now afraid to step foot on the hiking paths until the killer or killers were apprehended.

11:01The following day, LAPD returned to Bronson Canyon and performed a highly organized grid search, scouring the area where the head had turned up. The police were already feeling pressure from the media, city leaders, and local residents to find the people or person who had committed this horrific crime. But Detectives Knowles and Sanchez knew there was still so much physical area to cover and search, and they still had no idea who the victim even was. So this just didn't seem like a case they could just wrap up in a couple of days. And by late morning, the searchers had still found nothing new when a police truck pulled up and a dog handler stepped out with her cadaver dog, a German shepherd named Indiana Bones, who was famous for being the first four-legged detective on LA County Coroner's team.

11:49After getting out of the car, Indy's handler began leading the dog up a nearby hill. And almost immediately as they began to walk, Indy pulled the handler in the direction of this nearby dirt mound. The handler walked over to the mound and, with a gloved hand, began pushing the dirt aside, revealing what looked like a shallow grave. And in this shallow grave was a plastic bag. The handler reached her hands down and carefully cupped them beneath the bag and gently pulled it out of the ground. Then she took a pair of scissors out of her pocket, cut the bag open, and looked inside. And inside, she saw a pair of human feet and a hand.

12:30The next morning, Detective Knowles and Sanchez sat at their computers, sifting through recent missing person reports. The victim's torso, or any more of his body, still had not been found. But the detectives hoped that the feet and hand that were found also belonged to their victim, and that with these new body parts, they might be able to connect their victim to somebody who went missing in the area. Just then, the sound of a fax machine broke their focus. Knowles stood up, tore the paper off the machine, and saw that the medical examiner had completed his examination on the severed hand, feet, and head.

13:06Knowles scanned the whole report and then read aloud the important parts to Sanchez. The medical examiner had confirmed that all those body parts belonged to the same victim. Also, they said that after the victim was dead, his killer carefully cut apart the man's body, right at the joints, in a very precise manner. so whoever cut the body up seemed to really know what they were doing. But what was even more intriguing was that the body parts had been refrigerated before they were dumped, which explained why the head had looked so fresh when it was found. But this made it difficult for the medical examiner to pin down exactly when the victim was killed.

13:44However, because the parts were so fresh, the examiner was able to lift very clear fingerprints from the man's fingers. and when he ran those prints through a system, he got a hit. The dismembered man was Hervey Medellin.

14:05Knowles sat down at his computer and ran Hervey's name through every database he had access to. And he quickly learned that Hervey had been reported missing just a day before his head was found. The missing persons report had been filed by a man named Gabriel Martinez, who said he was Herbie's roommate. So, Detective Knowles and Sanchez got into their car and began driving towards Herbie's apartment, which happened to be just two blocks away from the Hollywood police station. While they were in the car, Knowles and Sanchez discussed their game plan for when they talked to this roommate. And their plan was simple, reveal nothing.

14:42Although news of the grisly discovery was already all over town, that victim's identity had not yet been released by the media. Only the police knew that information, and so they wanted to feel out what Herbie's roommate knew and didn't know. He was not a suspect yet, but he was definitely a person of interest. The detectives parked at the curb and walked up to Herbie's building. It was this elegantly plain, narrow building constructed in the 1920s that felt totally vintage and old Hollywood. The detectives walked up the stairs to the third floor, to apartment 319, and rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, the door opened and a dark-haired man in his 30s greeted the detectives.

15:24They introduced themselves and asked if he was Gabriel Martinez. Gabriel said yes and then asked immediately if they had news about Hervey. Had they found him? Was he okay? The detectives exchanged a quick glance and then Sanchez said they were still investigating Hervey's disappearance. And for now, they just needed to speak to Gabriel to try to help with that case. Gabriel suddenly went from being sort of hopeful to looking pretty concerned, but then told them he was glad to tell them anything they wanted, and he asked them to come inside. Once inside, they all sat down at the table in the small dining area.

15:58Detective Knowles asked Gabriel when he'd last seen Hervey, and Gabriel said, not since shortly after Christmas, on December 27th. That's when Hervey had gone to Mexico. It was where he grew up and where he still had friends and family. Gabriel said that Hervey traveled internationally a lot, and sometimes he would go on these open-ended trips, so Gabriel was not always exactly sure when Hervey was going to come home again. But Hervey had been calling pretty regularly just to check in, and then suddenly the call stopped, so Gabriel started to get really worried and then eventually filed the missing person report.

16:32Detective Sanchez asked Gabriel if he had called or texted Hervey after Hervey stopped calling, just to see if maybe he was staying in Mexico longer. Gabriel said he hadn't, but he explained that Hervey had actually left his cell phone behind at the apartment because he didn't get service in Mexico. Now, Gabriel knew there were ways around that, but he said discussing technology with Hervey was usually a losing cause. Hervey just preferred to use a landline and an international calling card whenever he was in Mexico. Sanchez asked if there was a record of these calls from Hervey, and Gabriel said yes, and he grabbed his phone and showed the detectives the calls he'd received from Herbie in January.

17:10The detectives saw that these calls were from an international calling card number, which meant they didn't actually know who placed those calls, but it did corroborate what Gabriel had told them. The detectives would talk to Gabriel for a bit longer, but the whole time they stuck to their original plan. They didn't reveal anything about Herbie's murder. Back at the station, Detective Knowles and Sanchez went over what they had so far, and they agreed it was not very much. And what little they did have didn't quite add up. And it really had to do with this trip to Mexico they had just learned about.

17:44Did Hervey really go to Mexico and then get murdered and dismembered there? And then, what, his body parts were shipped back to L.A. and dumped in L.A.? Or did Hervey come back from Mexico in one piece and then somehow get intercepted before he got home by somebody who then murdered, dismembered, and dumped him? Both these theories just seemed like they were missing something. Like, did Hervey really even go to Mexico? They didn't know. I mean, regardless of what Hervey's roommate Gabriel had told them, the detectives thought it actually made a whole lot more sense that somebody would have killed and dismembered Hervey right there in his own apartment and disposed of him in nearby Griffith Park, which certainly made Gabriel seem very suspicious.

18:27The following day, which is now three days after Herbie's head had been found, the detectives returned to Herbie's apartment, and this time they showed up with a search warrant, a team of police, and cadaver dogs. Once inside, they let the dogs loose, and the dogs began frantically sniffing around the floorboards, the furniture, and the corners of every room. Meanwhile, Gabriel sat at the table and watched in silence as the investigators practically tore up the tiny one-bedroom apartment. The search team rifled through drawers and closets, they confiscated computers and phones, and they photographed every item inside the apartment.

19:04But at the end of the search, they realized they had found absolutely nothing. There was no blood, no hidden torso, no bone saws or other dismemberment tools, and so this apartment just didn't appear to be the place where the murder or dismemberment or both took place. As the search team began to leave the apartment, Detectives Knowles and Sanchez sat down at the table with Gabriel. And Gabriel didn't look angry or raise his voice, but he wanted to know, like, what had changed since they spoke a day earlier that made the detectives feel like they could come into his and Hervey's home and tear it apart like this?

19:40Sanchez whispered something to Knowles, and then she finally broke the news to Gabriel. Those body parts that were found in the canyon that were all over the news belonged to Hervey. Hervey was deceased, and so now Hervey's death was being investigated as a homicide. Immediately, all the color drained from Gabriel's face. He said he couldn't believe it. This didn't seem real. Now, the detectives understood how upsetting this was for Gabriel, but they needed more information. So they pressed Gabriel for more details about Hervey's trip to Mexico. And so, for the next half hour, Gabriel, despite being in shock, was cooperative and answered every question and tried to give detectives any information at all that could be useful.

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24:25Now, this struck the detectives as being really odd. According to the information Gabriel had provided, and based on what the detectives had learned from their databases, Hervey was a retiree, living on a small pension in a small one-bedroom apartment. So how was he also a serious art collector, able to acquire paintings that were potentially worth a small fortune?