— A DUCKS TRANSCRIPTION —

TRANSCRIPT: To Live and Die in LA, Season 2, Episode 7: Cadaver Dogs

JAYDEN: You’re not gonna believe this, but, ah, I just got off the phone with Susan. Ah, she told me that she is planning to, and is going to, rent Elaine’s room out. She says that she needs the money, she’s gonna rent the room. From a logistics standpoint, I mean, you know, certainly putting somebody in that room starts to eliminate the possibility of recovering any evidence in the future, if anything actually did happen in that room.

02:15

Episode 7, Chapter 13: It was Always Fighting

MIKE: We’re gonna get Neil on the phone just for a second, cause he wanted to be part of the conversation as well.

NEIL/VO: On hearing the news that Elaine’s mother Susan was trying to rent her missing daughter’s room less than three months after her disappearance, the rest of the Malibu Team met at Mike’s house. Many parents leave a missing child’s room untouched for decades, so this seems odd on the surface, but also, every person has a different grieving process. We find the rental ad on a Korean language classified ads website. She’s renting both Elaine’s room and the room of Elaine’s older brother, Dustin who moved out several years earlier. We’re saddened to see a photo of Elaine’s bedroom at the top of the page with all her furniture, including a large metal E propped up above her desk. We then called Jayden, who is now in a very awkward position. What happens when you have to investigate your own client?

JAYDEN: She’s sending emails to, ah, to Tui Wright, who is the search rescue at Lost Hills, Krivak, and me talking about these hiking trails, asking why they haven’t been searched? Why haven’t— when are they gonna be searched? What is odd for me is that she’s sending all of these things about these hiking trails— I mean, she just sent two more yesterday.

NEIL/VO: We’ve also been receiving similar messages from Susan in a group thread that we have with her. Regular screenshots of comments on the Facebook page to follow up on, or theories to look into, and we usually respond immediately, or sometimes spend hours looking into these. At one point, she sent us a photograph of an item that was found in Malibu Canyon. It depicted a shirt covered with duct tape. The odd thing about this is that the photograph she sent is the exact one that Ingrid had sent to her a month earlier, back when Ingrid was hiking Malibu Canyon and sending photographs of items she found to the Help Find Elaine Park Facebook page.

MIKE: Please send those to us, because they might be around where we live, and we might, you know, go up there and look.

JAYDEN: Yeah. I know one was Jim Morrison Cave, which, ah-

INGRID: She kept pushing me-

JAYDEN: -let’s see-

INGRID: -before I met you guys, she kept pushing me to go there. She’s like, “Jim Morrison Cave, there’s a fall, there’s a fall.”

JAYDEN: Yeah, she’s mentioned that in this email.

NEIL/VO: Jim Morrison Cave is a graffiti covered cave in the hills above where Elaine’s car was found. From her car to the cave would be about a half-hour’s drive, or a walk of over two hours.

NEIL: Is it worth getting a cadaver dog for any of these-

[CROSSTALK]

NEIL: -or is it too much- too much acreage?

JAYDEN: If we can identify some locations, they’re the best, fastest method of searching, yes.

NEIL/VO: We decided that we needed to search both the locations that Susan was directing us to in Malibu as well as locations she’d been directing us away from in La Crescenta, where Elaine lives, just in case she’d come home, something happened there, and her car was dumped on PCH afterward. While waiting for Jayden to source the cadaver dogs, which are trained to smell human decomposition even years after a body has been moved, we began researching Elaine’s family life deeper. This was incredibly unsettling, because we’d started this investigation to help Susan, and I was starting to realize that in these cases, you’re not actually working for the family, you’re working for the victim. And if there’s even a small cloud of suspicion around someone, and often there is, that lead needs to be followed to the end, even if it is a family member. We began by reaching out to Elaine’s father and her brother.

RAY: Hello?

NEIL: Oh, hi, Ray, this is, ah, Neil Strauss. Do you have a couple minutes?

NEIL/VO: Here’s a reconstruction of the call with Elaine’s father Ray, voiced by an actor. You may recall that Elaine’s parents had divorced when Elaine was around 10.

NEIL: When you found out about what had happened, ah, you know, where were you and how did you find out?

RAY: The, ah, Glendale police officer just called me Monday afternoon and he asked me when was the last time you seen Elaine? So, I told the, ah, officer the Friday, 5:00 PM she came and picked up some money, the weekend money. That was the last time I saw her.

NEIL: Did she seem normal that day, or-or different?

RAY: Yeah, normal. Everything looked like normal.

NEIL: She didn’t seem worried about anything?

RAY: She didn’t say anything or seem worried or anything like that.

NEIL: What do you think could have happened to your daughter?

RAY: I don’t know. My opinion is sh- suicide or, ah, kidnapping. Or something happened in the ex-boyfriend’s area, maybe.

NEIL: What do you know about Elaine’s home life after you left?

RAY: I really don’t know that much. Elaine and Susan, ah, they’re not good friends. That’s what I know, because sometimes Elaine would call me, she wanted my help separating from Susan. Because, ah, sometimes they fight and, ah, have trouble.

NEIL: She came and she wanted help separating?

RAY: Yeah, she wanted me to co-sign on an apartment, and, ah, separate from Susan’s house.

NEIL: Oh, and when- when was that?

RAY: It’s, ah, a couple times.

NEIL: When was the last time?

RAY: It’s about, ah, two- three weeks before she went missing.

NEIL: Susan said they got in a lot of arguments, and people said they argued all— a lot. So you know about that, right?

RAY: Yeah.

NEIL: Ah, were they verbal, or were they ever physical?

RAY: I-I don’t know details. I think they’re kind of verbal, but, I’ve never seen it, so, I don’t know.

NEIL/VO: Elaine’s father goes on to tell me that she’d often complain about not seeing any of the child support money that he was giving to Susan. He added that he stopped paying Susan in December, a month before Elaine disappeared.

RAY: You know, Elaine complained to me about her mom not supporting her with any money, so I-I don’t know the details of Susan and how much she’s supporting Elaine. A-after we separated, she had some gambling problems.

NEIL/VO: Ray had given us a lot to think about. What bothered me the most about this interview is that Susan told us she knew Elaine was going to get money from her father the evening before she disappeared, so why wouldn’t she speak with the last person she knew at the time that Elaine had seen before contacting the police, and find out if Elaine had said anything about where she was going or her state of mind. Ray and others had brought up suicide and it’s a theory that we need to look deeper into as well, however unlikely it may be given the location and logistics of where Elaine’s car was found. After speaking with Ray we decided next to reach out to Dustin, Elaine’s older brother, and he agreed to meet with us in person. Dustin was living in Long Beach at the time. We met Dustin at Mike’s house in Malibu, we sat down and he began by telling us his reaction when his mom first called to let him know Elaine was missing. The date of that call was February 1st, four days after Elaine disappeared and two days after Susan filed a missing person’s report with the police.

12:01

DUSTIN: When it first all happened, um, I didn’t believe it for awhile, and like I kept just, like, trying to like call and contact my sister, and then once I realized she really wasn’t answering me back, I feel like I just kinda shut down. This was like the worst time, I feel like, to-to have her taken from, like, us, because we were finally making progress. We started getting really close and like she would tell me about her love life, and, um she started getting into the music I was into, finally-

NEIL: Right.

DUSTIN: -after years of me trying to show her. And like, that was one of the things that touched me, um, because I’m so into music that there was- it was within this last year where she like actually thanked me for showing her all of my music, because she-she’s like, “Oh yeah, all my friends think its really good-“

NEIL: Right.

DUSTIN: -“and I’m just like, yeah, it’s my big bro’s music” and that made me finally, like, finally you see how good this stuff is.

NEIL: Right, right.

DUSTIN: You know? Yeah, yeah.

NEIL/VO: We ask Dustin about his and Elaine’s home life.

DUSTIN: Our family wasn’t very close growing up. Th-that’s probably what hurts the most, is just because I feel like there’s no one else in the world that would understand, you know, like, everything that we’ve been through. Um. I’m tearing up now, but, ah. It— It’s tough, because, um, I feel like me and her, especially, we were finally getting close, and I’ve been wanting that for years. We were actually talking to each other about, like, “Oh, how did you feel when this happened with our family?” And we never got to talk about that growing up, and it was like, “Oh, do you remember when dad left?” and all that stuff, and then like, we were finally able to connect. Growing up I-I didn’t like my mom either. Me and my mom, we’ll get into fights, like ah, big yelling fights, you know, and um.

NEIL: What would you get into fights over?

DUSTIN: [sigh] I think what it was, was we were just always— We just never knew how to deal with conflict without going into the arguing fighting phase.

NEIL: Right.

DUSTIN: So it’d be a lot of, just like, cleaning rooms or, like, leaving stuff messy, or stuff like that and just, those would trigger it, and just, we’d just— just go into a spiral.

NEIL: How do you feel about your mom renting out your rooms?

DUSTIN: Oh, yeah, um. It is weird for me, too. Ah, so I don’t— I-I-I was a little conflicted about it at first, I was kinda like, why are you like— But she was talking about how, like, income-wise it wasn’t enough, and I was just like, well. Then I understand, go ahead and do it, cause I can survive, you know, I’ll be fine. I have my own place in Long Beach, you know, so.

NEIL: Right, right.

NEIL/VO: I ask Dustin about what Elaine’s friends had said, that Elaine believed her mom had taken money she’d earned doing extra work on films like Crazy Stupid Love and TV shows like E.R.

DUSTIN: Sh-She had control over my sister’s acting account and stuff until she was 18. And, then, ah, I know my sister was accusing her of, like, the reason why my mom’s not giving her access even after 18 is because my mom used it. You know, she did something with the money. So, um. Yeah, I think, just, yeah, so, ah. I feel like maybe there was something between my mom and my sister.

15:13

NEIL/VO: We called Jayden to report our findings and he said he’d found a dog team willing to go to Susan’s house. I also wanted to get further clarity on the use of the GoFundMe account since Jayden confirmed last episode he was working pro-bono. The GoFundMe account had raised, at this point, around $15,000 and Jayden was later able to clarify that in total Susan reimbursed him for around $3,300 in expenses. With the cadaver dog search coming up, time was running short, so I quickly contacted as many of Elaine’s friends as I could to get more information. This is what Elaine’s college friend Daisy had to say.

DAISY: We knew how her mom and her dad was. They just didn’t, I feel, like, care enough, which is sad. Her mom would kick her out a lot. Elaine didn’t have keys sometimes cause her mom would lock her out, literally change the locks. Her mom would blame her because her dad and her separated.

NEIL: Oh.

DAISY: She would blame Elaine for it. She always treated her brother better and Elaine would tell me, like, I think she treats him better because Dustin reminds her of the dad.

NEIL/VO: Here’s what Elaine’s high school friend Sadie had to say.

SADIE: Her and her mom never got along.

NEIL: Right.

SADIE: They were always fighting. Just, anytime they talked it wasn’t like they were getting along, it was always fighting. It got intense, like, it got pretty intense. She’s called the cops on Elaine a couple times, it’s over stupid stuff like not going to the dentist or not brushing her teeth, I remember was one of them that they got in an argument over.

NEIL/VO: I asked if the fights were verbal or physical.

SADIE: They were verbal but I know that sometimes that they would, like, physically fight, too. I don’t know if that was like a recent thing. but I know like in the past that, like, they have.

NEIL/VO: This is Elaine’s high school friend Kristin.

KRISTIN: She yelled a lot. Okay.

NEIL: And what would she yell about?

KRISTIN: It could be about anything. We could just be sitting in her room and then her mom would just start yelling about nothing.

NEIL: Let’s say if level 10 is like the most aggressive, craziest yelling you could imagine, level one is like—

KRISTIN: Probably like eight. Loud enough for— Like, Elaine would want us to put headphones on and be like, “I’m so sorry.”

NEIL: Like—

KRISTIN: Elaine would yell back at her, like, she wasn’t scared.

NEIL/VO: This is what Elaine’s high school friend Danielle had to say.

DANIELLE: Her mom, she used to like, you know, scream and yell and throw shit and— We were in high school or younger and I don’t know. Elaine used to— Elaine used to call my mom and say “Come pick me up, like, my moms hitting me, like, come get me, come get me.” And my mom would go save her, and go pick her up.

NEIL/VO: One thing that Danielle said bothered her was the $20 that Elaine’s mom loaned her daughter the night before she disappeared. $20 that Elaine did not pay back even after picking up money from her father.

DANIELLE: Her mom made a really— She made a point, and she even says on televis— television, she was like “I did make a big deal out of the $20” she even said it, she’s like “I made a huge deal out of it.” There’s just so many sketchy shit and like I have to think back to the basics, like. I-I have to think, like, someone in her realm of people that she knew and she was close with, that is what happened to her. Someone who was with her or she made contact with is who I think, like, something happened with that person.

18:54

Chapter 14: Red Flag

NEIL: -give you our ETA. One second.

JAYDEN: 12:30 PM?

NEIL: Looks like, ah, yup, 12:30 PM.

JAYDEN: Okay. So I’m here, I’m-

NEIL/VO: I’m driving to Susan’s house with Ingrid and we’re on the phone with Jayden Brant. He’s sourced cadaver dog handlers who work with several law enforcement agencies. He’s arranged to bring the dogs to Susan’s home to search Elaine’s bedroom, the rest of the house, and the backyard. He’s also brought a technician from a DNA lab to further examine Elaine’s room since this may be our last chance to do any forensics there before Susan rents it out.

JAYDEN: My dogs are gonna get here probably around 12:30 PM, or, you know, 12:45 PM somewhere around there. I’ll record when we initially go in.

NEIL/VO: When we all arrive at Susan’s house she comes to the door with her boyfriend Jeff, who most of us haven’t met yet.

[CROSSTALK GREETINGS]

NEIL/VO: He invites us in while we wait for the dog handlers to show up.

SUSAN: Did you guys want to sit down, or you need something?

JAYDEN: Well, no, so she’s gonna come in. So, basically, we— before we lose, you know, any more time-

SUSAN: Uh huh.

JAYDEN: -or access here-

SUSAN: Uh huh.

JAYDEN: -I-I’m gonna have— this is, she’s a forensics expert.

SUSAN: Okay.

JAYDEN: So I’m gonna have her come in-

SUSAN: Okay.

JAYDEN: -and look at some stuff-

SUSAN: Okay, well if you wan-

JAYDEN: -since you weren’t, you know, since you weren’t here-

SUSAN: Mm hm.

JAYDEN: -we don’t know, you know, somebody could have followed her back here-

SUSAN: Yeah. I have some information about that, too.

NEIL: Oh, great.

SUSAN: Him and I were trying to-

JAYDEN: So, so I’m gonna have her come in-

SUSAN: Okay.

JAYDEN: -and then we can talk.

SUSAN: Okay.

JAYDEN: -for— About the details.

SUSAN: I mean, that’s up to you guys, if you wanna wait-

JAYDEN: Okay.

SUSAN: -or not.

NEIL/VO: While waiting for the dog handlers to arrive, we sit down at Susan’s dining room table to talk. Earlier, when we’d asked Susan where she’d been the night Elaine disappeared, she said she couldn’t remember.

SUSAN: The Saturday at 10:41— she didn’t come home, the- I remember I stayed at home that night. She didn’t come home the next morning. Oh wait, was I home? I don’t remember.

NEIL/VO: This time, she has her phone bills spread out in front of her. She’s sitting with Jeff and struggling to figure out where she actually was that night.

SUSAN: So, I called Jeff on January 27 at 8:15 PM, Friday night. Then, he calls me back 8:26 PM which indicates I was home. But, at seven o’clock, if you remember Sadie came to my house to—

NEIL: To get the curler—

SUSAN: —get the curling iron. I asked Sadie if I was home, she said my car wasn’t home, so I must have been at his house, or somewhere. Then I came home, called him. Or I was home? I don’t know. So- so– In middle of the night— this is the 27th.

NEIL: Mm-hm.

SUSAN: Middle of the night I remember telling him, “You know what since Thursday vehicle incident?” Cause the Thursday, she called at 3:45 AM to rescue her, because her battery died. I mean the gas, there was no gas, so he got the emergency gas and we went— we went and met her on the 210 and 118.

NEIL: Right.

SUSAN: Because of that incident I remember getting up in middle of the night-

NEIL: Uh huh.

SUSAN: -and I said, “You know what? I’m worried about her, I’m gonna go home and sleep.”

NEIL: Oh.

SUSAN: So, I came home, she wasn’t home when I came home.

NEIL: You got up?

SUSAN: I came home middle of the night-

NEIL: Got it.

SUSAN: -so that would be Saturday morning. I was home.

NEIL: Mm hm.

SUSAN: -and then I— And then I think I said that I’m gonna be onli— See, that’s the thing, I need to see the texts, the contents of what happened.

JAYDEN: Do you have the texts?

JEFF: I’ve been trying to do it. Verizon tells me that-

SUSAN: Me too.

JAYDEN: But you don’t have it on your phone?

JEFF: Oh no.

SUSAN: We delete-

JEFF: No.

SUSAN: -as we do things, like if we’re done with it, we delete it. Him and I we have the same-

JEFF: Yeah. I d-d-di-

SUSAN: -OD— OCD or whatever you call that. Yeah. I tend to delete my texts and I accidentally deleted Elaine’s. More than likely I came home middle of the night. Because I was worried about her, her car being-

JEFF: -I be— I remember that, too.

NEIL/VO: We’re working hard to establish a clear alibi from Susan. It’s all just so strange. But what seems like happened is that she spent the night of January 25th at her boyfriend Jeff’s. Around 3:45 AM Elaine’s car ran out of gas, and Susan and Jeff went to help her. Apparently, Elaine’s battery also died, so Jeff jumped her car as well. The following nights, January 26th and 27th, Susan stayed at Jeff’s house again, yet in the middle of the night of January 27th, while Elaine was at Divine’s, Susan, who had no idea where Elaine was, or even if she was out, somehow became worried that she was having car problems again, so she evidently left Jeff’s house and came home. But what’s strange is she apparently didn’t even text or call Elaine to check on her. And why would she leave Jeff’s house when he’s the one who jumped Elaine’s car in the first place? Jayden continues trying to establish Susan’s whereabouts during the critical hours between 6:00 AM Saturday morning, on January 28th, when Elaine left Divine’s home, and 3:42 PM that afternoon, which is the timing of the final ping of Elaine’s phone hitting a cell tower in Malibu. That was the ping that the Lost Hills Sheriff’s department obtained several days later and allowed them to find the location of Elaine’s car.

SUSAN: When I-

JAYDEN: -the time of the texts?

SUSAN: This text I definitely was home cause I wouldn’t text him if I wasn’t home.

JAYDEN: At 12:04 PM?

SUSAN: Yeah, Saturday.

JAYDEN: That’s at— that’s at noon.

SUSAN: Yeah.

NEIL: What time-

JAYDEN: So you were home from 3:00 AM to noon?

SUSAN: Probably, I mean, from what I see here. Called him 10:50 AM, probably saying, “Uh, I’m home, she’s not home. We’re okay. You know, she’s— she still hasn’t come home, or she’s not home,” or something like that. Cause you were worried-

JEFF: Mm hmm. Remember we discussed that-

SUSAN: -cause of 3:30 in the morning.

JAYDEN: But what made you so worried about her that morning?

SUSAN: Because the 3:30, um-

JAYDEN: Because, like, we had— I mean, when we first talked, and all, like, you said she would go— she would disappear for a few days, and-

SUSAN: No, because-

JAYDEN: I mean, what— what stuck out in your mind?

SUSAN: Because that Thursday, that before, that Thursday, she cal— she had us call 3:30 in the morning that the gas ran out and then we wound up jumping her car at 118, so I’m worried that her car battery would have died again. I was worried about her car, her safety-

JAYDEN: Okay.

SUSAN: -what’s going on, you know. And on top of that, she— she’s pretty good about— She said give me until later tonight that she’s gonna QuickPay me $20, but she didn’t get back to me.

JAYDEN: Okay.

SUSAN: So I’m thinking, it’s two things, motherly things. Wah— she’s not keeping her word.

JEFF: I was just gonna say that. Her re—

SUSAN: She’s not keeping her word, you know, what’s going on, you know. I want her to be disciplined.

JAYDEN: No, and that’s just, I wanted to know, what was different-

SUSAN: Yeah.

JAYDEN: -about that time, versus.

SUSAN: That was one thing. The second thing is because, ah— First thing was because of the car incident, that we rescued her, 3:30 in the morning, and I said, “You know, I-I’m worried, I shouldn’t be here, I-I’m, I need to go home.”

JAYDEN: Okay.

SUSAN: I remember that happened several times after the incident.

NEIL/VO: I had hoped that Susan would be able to clear up any suspicions we had. I still want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but nothing logically makes sense here. The fact that she has no alibi and went home alone in the middle of the night, three hours before Elaine left Div’s house. The fact that both she and Jeff deleted their text messages and something is off about this battery story. According to Jayden, a diagnostic check of the car done after the police released it revealed no issues whatsoever with the battery. And let’s not forget the car was found with the keys in the ignition with the electrical switched on, a position that ultimately drained the battery. There’s so much here to unpack and look deeper into. As we’re speaking with Susan and Jeff the cadaver dogs finally arrive.

28:24

[DOG WHIMPERS]

NEIL/VO: Jayden walks out to explain the situation to them.

HANDLER: -and we’ll be bringing the other dog in here, too.

JAYDEN: Okay, cool, no problem.

NEIL/VO: I’ve looked into how cadaver dogs work and evidently they can smell human remains or human decay decades later. They typically give their handlers two types of signals. One is an alert, which means they’re indicating that they smell human decomposition. The other is interest, which means they’re smelling an odor that might be human decomposition. So, if something happened in Elaine’s room the dogs would either alert on decomposition or interest on possible decomposition.

NEIL: Yeah.

INGRID: They want everyone out.

NEIL: They— Okay, where do— where do they want us?

SUSAN: My room? Can they all go to my room?

INGRID: No, they want— Cause the dogs need to concentrate.

JAYDEN: Yeah, cau— Susan, ah, so these are like, highly specialized dogs, so, um-

SUSAN: What do I need to do?

NEIL: Should we si— We could go in my car, or something.

JAYDEN: -everybody to go outside.

SUSAN: Out of the house?

JAYDEN: One of the dogs is not friendly.

SUSAN: Okay, okay.

JAYDEN: -it can’t search, while it’s occupied-

SUSAN: Okay, okay.

NEIL: So, do you want us to go to my car?

JAYDEN: Yeah, if you guys want to go in your car, you guys can talk.

INGRID: [unintelligible] We need to get the cats, can we put them in your room?

SUSAN: Cats?

INGRID: In your bedroom?

SUSAN: I-I gave it to adoption agency with him.

INGRID: Oh, you should have-

SUSAN: He was having allergic action and I’ve been wanting to get rid of the-

INGRID: Oh, I-I been wanting a cat. Ah, is the cat still there?

SUSAN: Yeah, he’s still, in Pasadena-

JEFF: No, you don’t want these cats.

SUSAN: -they’re 12 years old, I just figured it out.

JEFF: They’re old and cranky.

NEIL: We would have adopted them.

INGRID: I adopt— I adopt old dogs. That’s my thing.

NEIL: We would have adopted them.

SUSAN: Oh yeah?

INGRID: Yeah. I like seniors. Are they still there?

SUSAN: Yeah.

JEFF: They’re in Pasadena.

SUSAN: Yeah, Pasadena Humane Association— Society.

INGRID: Oh, can- can- Well, before-

SUSAN: I’ll get information-

INGRID: -before I go? Yeah.

SUSAN: -I’ll text you.

NEIL/VO: I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Susan renting out Elaine’s room and taking her cats to a shelter so quickly after her disappearance, but I keep my mouth shut. And while Jayden and Ingrid bring the dogs inside and record the results, I take Susan and Jeff outside. We sit in my car and talk while the search takes place. I want to get to know Jeff better and hear his perspective on Elaine’s disappearance. Meanwhile, the search begins.

HANDLER: So, if you want to check this.

[DOG NOISES AND HANDLER CROSSTALK]

NEIL: So, there’s a-a couple points I want to go over that we— I guess, there was the night she ran out of gas, out of the car-

JEFF: Mm hmm.

NEIL: -well, batteries or gas, whichever it was.

JEFF: In the morning.

SUSAN: Well, first it was gas and then when we got there we learned that it was battery-

JEFF: And gas.

SUSAN: -and jumped the car.

NEIL: So— So, you were both at your house?

SUSAN: His house.

JEFF: We were at my house, she woke us up. I got my gas can and hopped in the car and we went to get her. We found her— Ugh, not in a good position on that freeway overpass, ah. Got the gas in it. And we try to start it, well its dead. So now I’ve got to get my car even closer to it and get my jumper cables able to reach, we get her jumped, and then boom. Off we go and uh, we were had all heading here. So we got her here. Ahh, just a little bit of time here and then me and Susan went back to my home and went back to bed. And then the next morning we came here, it was about 10 something in the morning, and as we pulled up where my truck is, um, I could see Elaine jumping out of the couch in the living room, and [NOISE] going back to her room. That was the last I saw of her, that morning. And then we were— we were here for awhile, and I think she left while we were here, or something?

SUSAN: Yeah, when we- When I came back she was gone already. Cause we were doing stuff-

JEFF: We were doing stuff in the back-

SUSAN: -construction, something-

JEFF: -in the garage.

[DOG NOISES AND HANDLER]

HANDLER: Where is it? Where is it?

SUSAN: I know I wasn’t home at seven when Sadie came.

NEIL: Right.

SUSAN: Um. It’s more than likely— See, the thing is, why would I— Why would I call you at 8:30 PM from my house? The only time I would call you is if I’m home.

JEFF: Well, you’ve called me from your car and different places.

SUSAN: I might have been with you and then came home?

[DOG AND HANDLER NOISES]

HANDLER: What is it? Where is it? Show me.

JEFF: Ah, that’s hard to remember, it really is, I cannot remember that day. I just remember the Saturday when we started thinking, ah, um. How do I sa- Why haven’t I heard from her? I haven’t heard from her, I’ve been texting her about money-

SUSAN: Yeah.

JEFF: -and I said, well, you know what? Why don’t you— Well, no. We let— kind of roll over and then— I think it was Monday when she was really getting worried about it-

[DOG AND HANDLER NOISES]

HANDLER: Check. Show me. Show me.

NEIL: So, the question for you is, when she called, were you, ah, concerned also, or were you like, “That’s Elaine, don’t worry about it.” What was your response?

JEFF: Um. I wasn’t super concerned, because she has taken off for a few days, and I know the way she treats her, and she’ll just leave without telling her what she’s doing, so, I— You know. I-It wasn’t really a thought to me, that’s why when Mon-Monday came and there’s— she still hadn’t heard from her, then I said, “You know what? You need to talk to her friends and see what they’ve hear— if they know where she is.” And, is, so she did that and nobody had known where she is and I said, well, that’s a red flag, it’s been four— three or four days, then her friends have no idea-

SUSAN: Mm hm.

JEFF: -and now we need to do something.

SUSAN: That’s when I started Facebook.

NEIL: Right.

JEFF: And we got, ah-

SUSAN: To get her phone— Sadie’s phone number

JEFF: -and we got a Glendale guy to come up and take the report.

NEIL: So, none of her friends had heard where she was, and then, so you said— and then you started Facebook to reach out to Sadie—

SUSAN: Mm hm.

NEIL: Sadie-

SUSAN: Gross.

NEIL: Yeah, Sadie didn’t know where she was, either.

SUSAN: No.

NEIL: Or did Sadie know where she was?

JEFF: No.

SUSAN: Didn’t know where she was, hadn’t heard from her

JEFF: I remember hear-hearing that conversation. She had no idea, so that’s when I was saying, ah, okay, red flag.

SUSAN: But I-

NEIL: Did— Did you reach out to Daisy, or?

SUSAN: Not at that time.

NEIL: Yeah.

JEFF: It was Sadie and— There was another one, that you talked to.

SUSAN: Emily?

JEFF: Possibly. I- I—

NEIL/VO: I explained to Susan that I wanted to put together a timeline and I ask for a copy of her phone bill, Elaine’s phone bill, and access to any account of Elaine’s that I don’t currently have, and Susan says she’ll get it together for me.

FORENSICS PERSON: -the samples from down here and up here, and um, down there.

HANDLER: And- and the dogs didn’t hit on that but they were interested in-

[CROSSTALK & DOG NOISES]

NEIL/VO: As I sit in the car watching Susan trying to remember her whereabouts on the night her own daughter disappear, Ingrid remains in the house with Jayden. Jayden signals to her and whispers in her ear.

JAYDEN: The interest is highly significant. Definite interest in the room. In her-

INGRID: In her bedroom?

JAYDEN: -in her bedroom, yeah.

INGRID: Fuck.

JAYDEN: Yeah.

NEIL/VO: The dogs got a hit.

JAYDEN: Ah, end of the bed, ah, so the wooden end of the bed frame and the closet.

INGRID: Both dogs?

JAYDEN: Yeah. And the— and the wall where the sample was collected. Definite. That was 100% positive.

NEIL/VO: Thank you for listening to this episode. This is still an active investigation and please keep in mind the police have not named any suspects and everyone mentioned should be presumed innocent. We’re sharing this information with you in hopes that this podcast leads to justice for Elaine Park, so if you have any information regarding Elaine Park, her disappearance, or any of the parties that have been mentioned over the course of this series, please email us at LiveDieLA@tenderfoot.tv, or you can call us anonymously at 213-204-2073. When possible, I’ve posted images and videos that may help give you a visual picture of some of the information collected in each episode. You can find these on our social media accounts: @LiveDieLApod.

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