Pushkin. At 12:25 AM on September 17, 2009, 24-year-old Maitrise Richardson was released from the Malibu, Los Hills Sheriff Station. She had no money, no phone, and no died. She walked out of the station and into the night, and she never made it home. A beauty contestant, an honor student, and now a missing person. We were told she's just another black girl missing out of Malibu. Knew that we were wasting our time. Nearly a year later, Mitrice's naked, skeletonized remains were discovered in a remote canyon, 6 miles from the station. Her death is Malibu's greatest unsolved mystery. I'm Dana Goodier. Five years ago, I started reporting on the Mitrice-Richardson case. Everyone knows something horrible happened to Mitrice. Nothing about her case makes sense. And for 15 years, the Sheriff's Department has failed to solve it. I got a text message. Hey, there was a partially mummified, skeletal remains naked found in Montanito. They discovered a skull, they discovered a pelvis, and they discovered a leg, just bones. So it was a cover up from the time Matrice was released all the way up to now, to this day, is still a cover up. Homicide will continue their investigation.

If there was foul play involved, someone could confess. It's likely that we can never find out exactly how she got there, but they're going to do their very best to figure that out. Matrice was young and black and beautiful, a professional dancer who was applying to graduate school in psychology. She was also in the midst of what law enforcement now acknowledges was a severe mental health episode. The cops say this might explain her death. Maybe she wandered into that canyon and died. Maybe she was bitten by a rattlesnake or a poisonous spider. What they don't say is that her mental state would have made her an easy victim for a human predator. Malibu is a place of secrets, but no secret can stay buried forever. I mean, that's what I told the cops. If anybody was a good suspect, it'd probably be him. Do you know anything about that girl? And he's like, What girl? What girl? She's like, The girl, the girl. The girl, the girl that's dead. The girl that they found. He knew exactly where she was, which gives me chills. In Malibu, every seductive surface has a dark side. The beauty is the danger.

The unspoiled wilderness hides unspeakable crimes. And a place like that, a place like that, breeds monsters. Coming June 10th, Lost Hills, Dark Canyon. Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the whole season early and ad-free. Find Pushkin+ on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin. Fm/plus.