Strange Harvest

There's still so many things

we don't understand about this case,

and probably never will.

We just had bits and pieces

of some kind of strange puzzle.

And even if we could put them all together,

I don't know if I want to see whatever picture they make.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

My name is Joseph Kirby.

I'm a former lead detective sergeant

in San Bernardino County.

I was supervising the Major Crimes Unit

between 2007 and 2015.

San Bernardino County is about 60 miles east

of Los Angeles.

It is a part of California's

Inland Empire region.

We have a population of about two million.

We've seen our share of violent crimes,

gang-related homicides,

relatively large-scale drug busts,

what have you.

We probably run

upwards of 65 murders a year

in the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau,

which is higher than the national average.

But I had never seen anything like what happened

to the Sheridan family on Alton Avenue.

Nobody had.

911, what is your emergency?

My name...

My name is Kacie Porter,

and I was friends with Tiffany Sheridan.

Our kids went to the same elementary school.

When you have kids that age,

and you meet a lot of parents that you don't always care for,

but Tiff and I, we just hit it off.

We were supposed to meet at this restaurant for lunch,

but she never showed, and I just...

I figured she had forgotten, so I let it go.

But then Lauren came home, and she said

that Sam hadn't been to school in a few days.

And, um, I kept calling

and I kept texting, but I never got a reply back.

And I just knew, in the back of my head,

that something is wrong.

I'm Will Martinez.

I'm a deputy sheriff

with the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.

Me and my partner were the first officers

to arrive on scene.

We got a call regarding a welfare check

for a residence in the Shandin Hills.

Nice area.

It was a gated community, as I remember.

The whole thing felt weird.

Something about it was just off.

Police department!

Police department!

Anybody home?

We need to go around.

Police department! Anyone home?

My partner called out,

identified ourselves again,

but there was no movement.

Hello?

Anybody home?

Mother of God.

This was a crime scene.

Oh, what happened to them...

I think about it every day.

I have nightmares about it.

Why them?

That... was a bad day.

When I saw that, I was...

floored.

I looked at my partner and I said,

"Oh, my God, he's back."

Hi.

My name's Lexi Taylor.

I'm a senior homicide detective

for the San Bernardino P.D.

I worked as a patrol officer for about nine years

before being offered a job in the homicide bureau,

and that's when I started working with my partner,

Joe Kirby.

Growing up, my mom worked two jobs

to support me and my older brother.

There was a rotating door of less-than-great men,

you would say, come and go in our life.

I think that's when I first started

thinking that, maybe, I would like

to try to help people.

You know, maybe I could help someone

like my mom out of a tough situation.

I actually never intended to be a cop.

I had aspirations of being a drummer in a metal band.

But one of my friend's brothers

was in the Academy, and I thought it sounded cool.

I liked how you had to think on your feet,

use your brain as well as your body.

After a couple of days in training,

I was hooked, man.

That is how I have always approached

my career in law enforcement.

Try to be there for people when things are at their worst.

And, fuck, it was never worse than on this case.

Between 1993 and 1995, there were three murders

in Riverside and San Bernardino County

that we eventually realized were serial murders,

and which had some ritualistic aspects.

I think this is it.

Yeah.

Okay, she was covered with a blue tarp.

You could see it easily from the road.

This is a service road, not a lot of people

come down it.

It was just horrible. I mean, you never expect

to see something like that.

On August 8th, 1993,

the torso of 24-year-old Shifra Gutierrez

is discovered in San Bernardino

National Forest.

She had been dismembered.

Her genitals mutilated.

The uterus removed.

The coroner gave a best-guess estimate

she had been there two weeks,

but it's difficult to tell.

Shifra was my best friend

in high school.

She was a dope bitch.

She just had this joy for living,

and this lust for life, you know?

And she was funny as fuck.

She wasn't a bad person.

You know, she just...

I don't know, she just got into some bad shit,

like a lot of people out here do.

I was always telling her, I was like,

"This is dangerous, Shifra.

You know, you gotta stop doing this."

Oh, shit, I said I wasn't going to do this.

There's an area off the 91

in the Casablanca neighborhood,

and that's where Shifra was last seen.

We do know she went up to a room at a motel

called Dean's Corner that was frequented by sex workers.

And there was a man with her, but...

clerk couldn't remember what he looked like.

He could've killed her there.

Could've been strangulation, for example.

We'll probably never know.

What we do know for sure

is that she was somehow moved

from that room without anybody noticing.

Or somebody noticed and just didn't care.

But we got our first lead.

A name.

All guests had to fill out a ledger,

and the suspect had written down

the name Albert Shiny.

And the case went cold.

I don't need to tell you that, especially at that time,

sex workers and marginalized people

tended to get the short end of the stick

in the criminal justice system.

I'm not saying it was right.

I'm just saying it was,

and is the reality.

So, it was written off as an isolated incident.

But we were wrong.

A grisly crime scene has police on high alert

in Arlanza tonight,

not far from the Riverside Municipal Airport,

where the body of 82-year-old Ambrose Griffith

was discovered murdered

in his apartment earlier today.

Mr. Griffith was disabled and, apparently,

suffered from MDS, a blood condition

that required daily assistance from a caretaker.

Nine months after Shifra Gutierrez is killed,

Ambrose Griffith is found murdered

in his assisted living facility.

On the night of June 3rd, 1994,

someone scaled the back side of his building

and entered his unit through a sliding glass door

that was apparently left unlocked.

He was bludgeoned with an oxygen tank

that was in his room,

and then stabbed more than 30 times

with a box cutter.

That was brutal.

And you gotta understand, this guy was bedbound.

I mean, he could not walk,

or could barely walk, on his own.

So, he was totally defenseless to the attack,

which was obviously unprovoked.

No one else in the building heard so much as a peep