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“Yeah, lucky all right,” Ballard said. “Thanks, Harry.”
He nodded and turned back toward the crime scene. Ballard walked away, keeping her head down as the news helicopter circled above.
SUNDAY, 1:00 P.M.
31
THE RIDE OUTto the desert took two hours. Masser did the driving while Ballard typed a case summary on her laptop. She was far behind on the digital paperwork on the Pillowcase Rapist investigation and knew if she got something filed by the end of the day, it would buy her time with Captain Gandle. Once she was finished, they stopped for a quick lunch at an In-N-Out in Cabazon—Ballard had gone back to eating meat after being vegetarian for some time. They sat in the car, and while Ballard ate her hamburger, she pulled up theL.A. Timeswebsite on her phone and checked the news stories on the shootout in Santa Monica the day before.
The violent takedown of two men, Thomas Dehaven and Frederic Standard, and the arrest of four of their coconspirators quickly became national news Saturday when the FBI announced that the group had been planning a mass shooting on Presidents’ Day at the Malibu pier. But so far Ballard had received no inquiries from the media, so Olmstead must have been keeping his promise. Ballard held an ace in that Olmstead knew that if he leaked any information and she was dragged into the media frenzy, she could reveal things that were not consistent with the narrative the feds were spinning publicly.
She looked at the top stories on the site and saw that there werealready two follow-up reports on the events of the day before. One was a profile of Thomas Dehaven, the ringleader of the group that had come to Los Angeles in a caravan of vans and RVs.
TERROR SUSPECT ROAMED COUNTRY FINDING RECRUITS
By Scott Anderson, Times Staff Writer
The wanted man shot dead Saturday by the FBI while allegedly buying machine guns for a terrorist act had roamed the country over the past two years, avoiding capture and recruiting fellow extremists to his cause, according to federal sources.
Thomas Dehaven, 46, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was being sought in the death of his ex-wife and on charges of sedition in regard to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. According to the FBI, Dehaven fled from Idaho in March of 2021 after allegedly shooting his ex-wife, Kimberly Boyle, when he learned from their son that she had helped the FBI identify him in videos taken during the violent siege at the Capitol.
Dehaven then began a monthslong odyssey that first took him through the South, where he met and recruited Frederic Standard, 31, in Mobile, Alabama, in a scheme to make a violent statement in California. FBI agents are piecing together the path he took and have been contacted by several individuals in Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona who said they heard Dehaven’s pitch but did not join the scheme.
“Most of these people didn’t take him seriously,” Agent Gordon Olmstead said in an interview. “They shined him on, thought he was a bit out there. But we know that othersbelieved in his plan and joined him or gave him money and equipment.”
One of those was Tracy Bell, 39, of Shreveport, Louisiana, who joined Dehaven and offered him her camper van, which he was using on Saturday when he and Standard met with an FBI informant to purchase four machine guns. The guns were allegedly going to be used by Dehaven and Standard to fire on people on the crowded Malibu pier during the national holiday on Monday.
Ballard stopped reading.
“Allegedly,” she said. “They always use the wordallegedly.”
“You talking about that thing in Santa Monica yesterday?” Masser said.
Ballard realized that she had almost revealed that she knew more about the incident than she should.
“Yes,” she said. “Seems from what I’ve read like there was nothingallegedabout their plan to shoot up the pier.”
“Yeah, true believers,” Masser said. “They’ll be martyrs for the cause now, like that woman who got shot at the Capitol.”
After finishing their food, they got out of the car and switched seats so Ballard could give Masser a break. They got back on the road into the Coachella Valley.
Smoke Tree Ranch was a small private enclave of mostly historic desert homes passed down from generation to generation by moneyed East Coast, Midwest, and Southern California families. Its best-known resident over the century of its existence was undoubtedly Walt Disney, who had had a home on the ranch until he sold it to raise money to build an amusement park that would be called Disneyland. After the success of the park, Disney came back to the ranch and built a new house. Following a long-held tradition, residents of the ranch referred to themselves as colonists.
Ballard had traced Robin Richardson through DMV records to a home on San Jacinto Trail on the back perimeter of the ranch. The street ran alongside the Palm Canyon Creek wash below the majestic San Jacinto mountain range. There was a guard gate at the ranch’s entrance and Ballard used her recovered badge to convince the uniformed security officer to let them through. Ballard didn’t mention Robin Richardson. There were guest cabins on the property and she told the guard that they had police business at the management office.
Once they were through the gate, however, they quickly discovered that the Richardson home was difficult to find because there were no street signs or house numbers on the ranch. The only markers were numbers painted on large white rocks at each corner. It was only with the help of a woman walking a dog that Ballard and Masser located the home:
“Robin’s house is on rock seventeen, fourth house on your right.”
With those directions they found the house and pulled into the gravel driveway. Like almost every home they had passed in the private enclave, it was a sprawling ranch house surrounded by desert landscape and cacti. Its wood siding had been burned gray over the years by the unrelenting sun.
The desert air was crisp and Ballard and Masser put on their jackets after getting out of the car. Ballard’s knock on the front door was answered by a diminutive woman in her mid-sixties. Her long gray hair was in a braid. She wore rimless glasses and had the deep tan of a full-time desert resident.
“Mrs. Richardson?” Ballard asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” she said. “How did you get into the ranch?”
Ballard once again showed her badge. “We’re police officers, ma’am,” she said. “From Los Angeles. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
