The Unresolved Mystery of Teresa Bier: A Life Marred by Brutality, Bigfoot and Baffling Disappearance

How do a child's nightmare, a man's obsession with Bigfoot and the eerie legend of the Painted Rock intertwine? Uncover the chilling story of Teresa Bier, a girl who suffered unimaginable abuse from her own family, only to disappear under the darkest of circumstances. Dive into the grim reality of Teresa's life, her torment at the hands of her mother, stepmother, and uncle - a drug dealer named Blind Johnny and the shocking systemic failures that allowed him to become her guardian. 

 Teresa's mysterious disappearance ties back to a man named Skip, known for his dangerous persona and meth addiction. Skip's fixation with finding Bigfoot in the wilderness fuels the narrative. Hear about Michelle Ryan's bone-chilling account of their expedition to Ghost Canyon, and the peculiar legend of Painted Rock. 

In the final act, we delve deep into the investigation of Teresa's vanishing. Unearth the troubling discoveries at Skip's campsite, his bizarre behaviors, and his mysterious allusions to a devil's burial site and sacrificial rock formations. We confront the stark reality that Teresa might never get justice. Join us in this heartbreaking exploration of a case that still haunts the corridors of unsolved mysteries.

References:
 https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/theresa-ann-bier 
 
 https://oag.ca.gov/missing/person/theresa-ann-bier 
 
 https://youreverydaymysteries.com/theresa-ann-bier/ 
 
 Meth, murder, and bigfoot: a California crime saga by Jay O'Connell 

Transcript

tiffany: 0:13

Welcome to Rogue and Wicked. I am congested. I have a bronchitis. Apparently, my mother had it first and gave it to the whole household, so now I have it, her boyfriend has it, we all have it. Damn yeah, it sucks. I took a nap and some nightquill so I think I'm ready to go.

wendy: 0:33

Are you spinning a little bit? Nightquill makes me spin.

tiffany: 0:37

No, no, I haven't had any issues with that, I just been. Actually, it doesn't affect me really. When I was younger, it used to give me like hives on my palms, really, yeah, but no, I mean, aside from that, it doesn't really affect me unless I do too much of it.

wendy: 0:50

You know, nightquill is one of those things that I take to knock me out. When there's no, it's like a last resort type of thing. I'll take melatonin, but it really doesn't work because it takes a little while to acclimate and the medium between those two things is nightquill.

tiffany: 1:05

Yeah. So tonight we're going to be talking about a case that I found that hasn't been talked about a whole lot. You can't find much about this case. It's a missing persons case, which we don't do a lot of. No, we don't. I'm intrigued. Yeah, this is the case of Teresa Beer.

tiffany: 1:20

She was born April 16th 1971 to parents Shirley and David Beer. Shirley was unrelenting and violent to her children. At age three, teresa was hospitalized after her mother put her leg through the slats of her crib and twisted the baby until her leg snapped. Teresa had also suffered broken ribs from the ongoing abuse. Child protective services intervened after hospital staff reported the abuse, which resulted in all of Shirley's children being taken away and placed into foster care.

tiffany: 1:52

Teresa's toxic ass parents split up and went their separate ways, but Teresa and her sister were taken in by her grandmother. Problem was her grandmother was in her 70s and wasn't equipped to care for such a young girl. So soon after, sylvia Pierce, who was a friend of Teresa's grandmother, decided to take in Teresa and her sister Vicki. Sylvia provided a pretty stable home for a few years before David came crawling back into the picture. Shirley, teresa's abusive mother, relocated to Tucson, arizona, and was out of her life for good. And it was reported that Teresa's mother was also mentally ill, which kind of plays into why she was abused when she was little, but it doesn't excuse it.

wendy: 2:36

It's interesting because a lot of well, I believe that most people who are abusive are mentally ill, which is why they do it in the first place.

tiffany: 2:44

Oh, I agree totally.

wendy: 2:46

So how can you not be mentally ill and decide that that's something you want to do Exactly? I always thought that was kind of like an oxymoron, like are they mentally ill? It's yes, they are, because why else would they fucking be abusing?

tiffany: 3:00

children. Exactly Like. First of anybody's abusing, anybody's got some mental issues. Exactly yeah, just to say the least. When all was finally settling down, david decided to come waltzing back into her life with a new wife and a new life. He ended up marrying a woman named Margie Richmond, who used to be married to Shirley's half-brother. While the two of them weren't related, he was still keeping it in the family. David was already taking care of Margie's two other daughters and wanted to add his back into the mix. David presented his case at a custody hearing and was ultimately granted custody of his daughter, teresa. After all of the eyes were dotted and the T's were crossed, david moved his new family to Compton in Southern California To start a new job as a custodian. While his new life looked shiny and new on the surface, it didn't take long for Teresa to start noticing that her stepmother and her mother had a lot in common. Dude's got a type. Oh yeah, it seems like he does.

tiffany: 4:00

Margie started abusing her daughters and Teresa. It was claimed that she even locked the refrigerator and would eat in front of the kids while withholding food from them. After years of this abuse, teresa decided to go stay with her grandmother for a little while. When her grandmother had seen how malnourished she was, she told Teresa she could just stay with her. Teresa refused to go home with her father, but another predator in the family had a close eye on Teresa.

tiffany: 4:28

Teresa's uncle, 42-year-old John, aka Blind Johnny, decided to foster Teresa and was granted custody. He saw an opportunity being that her parents didn't want to care for her, and a check was sure to come his way as long as he housed little Teresa. So he was doing it for that cash. They called John Blind Johnny because he allegedly lost his eye in Russian roulette. John was a drug addict, drug dealer, who was also a fence. Uncle Johnny was Margie's ex-husband and had a new wife who was a sex worker, and had a 17-year-old girlfriend named Tamara Newman. She would sleep over on occasion. So it's safe to say that this dude is a total train wreck of a human being.

wendy: 5:11

Did they do any type of background check on this dude? He's a 42-year-old man with a prostitute and a 17-year-old girlfriend.

tiffany: 5:19

Yeah, no, I mean we're talking while she was born in the 70s and this happened in the 80s.

wendy: 5:23

So Right To the best of my recollection, most foster kids are given social workers and so the social workers are generally in charge of home placement and they'll do a background check and they'll go into the house and they'll assess it to make sure things okay. I know for sure that they did that in the 80s because I was part of that system. I'm surprised that they let this guy have her, especially because they were lucky to give a young girl to men in general.

tiffany: 5:53

Yeah, typically, but I think that the reason they did it is because he was related to her.

wendy: 5:58

Right, right, that might be true.

tiffany: 6:00

Yeah, because I know that when you are farmed out to other foster parents who are not related to you they do a more thorough background check. But BN's that he was already part of her family. I know they try to deter families from splitting apart so I think maybe they just kind of gave it over to him because she was his niece. Tammy described Teresa as a scared little girl and said she was pretty much a slave to her uncle. Johnny would force Teresa to watch his sons so often that she would miss school and was falling behind. Their apartment was filthy and Johnny's wife would take Teresa with her when she was turning tricks so she could babysit her sons. Tammy knew that John was raping his niece. Tammy also revealed later that John let his friends shoot up and take turns raping Teresa.

wendy: 6:50

Holy fuck, no way yeah and she said oh, my god, this poor child.

tiffany: 6:54

she's already bounced from home to home and now she yeah, she had a rough life and she said these guys, tammy said they were old-time convicts and ex-heroin addicts. All of this abuse was taking its toll on Teresa mentally. Others described her as slower than the other kids and quite immature. She was placed in special ed classes in school. Her upper front teeth were protruding and she was a tiny little thing at 110 pounds, at 5 foot 5 inches.

wendy: 7:25

I bet this had a lot less to do with her academic skills and more to do with her being completely distracted from the type of mental capacity she would need to proceed.

tiffany: 7:37

Oh yeah, I mean, I don't know how a person could mentally like handle going to school and learning when they're being like repeatedly gang raped at home.

wendy: 7:46

Some of the foster kids that I knew it wasn't until they were older that you actually saw some of their full potential, because how on earth could they be growing as well as going through as much as they were and try to do what normal? They are at a disadvantage and this poor girl is at an extreme disadvantage.

tiffany: 8:05

Yeah, it's wild. The school was unaware of what she was going through, but her sister knew. In fact her grandmother knew too, but because of her age, being that she was 70 years old, she couldn't really do anything to help her. And back in the 80s people were still kind of like how they were in like the 50s and 60s. They didn't want to report sexual abuse because they didn't want to bring shame on the family, like it was still a very taboo subject. Teresa became withdrawn from her peers and stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and I don't blame her. She was depressed, traumatized and forgotten by and betrayed by the adults in her life.

tiffany: 8:42

Teresa met blind Johnny's neighbor. He was a 43 year old man named Russell Shelton Welsh, or Skip as others knew him. He was a house painter who was obsessed with Bigfoot and claimed to have seen him quite a few times throughout his lifetime. He was widowed after his wife died of a drug overdose. Skip was a shady ass character who was addicted to methamphetamines and lived off of his disability checks. Many people said that once Skip's wife died that he fell into a deep depression that fueled his drug addiction. In fact, fresno, california in the 80s was a hub for methamphetamines. It was called the poor man's cocaine. Meth was considered to be about 50 times more stronger than cocaine. It was cheap to manufacture and pure meth was running the impoverished parts of the neighborhoods. Prolonged use of meth can cause schizophrenic type behavior with full blown delusions and psychosis. Skip was described as a wiry guy who was extremely talkative and persuasive. I'm assuming that meth had something to do with that, because police later said that most meth addicts are pretty chatty. In June of 1987, teresa told her two friends, peggy and Janice, that she was going on a trip with Skip to the mountains to look for Bigfoot. She told the two girls that she would be skipping school to go on this little excursion with this questionable older man.

tiffany: 10:08

In the early 1980s Skip was able to get a meeting with the chair of the anthropology department at Fresno State University to discuss his Bigfoot findings. He provided stacks of pictures to the chair in hopes of convincing him that he had proof that Bigfoot existed. The chair looked over these photos and they were all the same Shadowy things in the woods that Skip claimed were Bigfoot. The chair wasn't all that convinced and he kindly dismissed Skip's claims as subpar as far as proof was concerned. Later on, skip returned with a stack of bones that he gave to the chair's secretary in a last-ditch effort to convince the chair that these were Bigfoot's remains. The anthropologist analyzed the bones and determined that they were from a domesticated animal.

tiffany: 10:54

Skip wasn't the only one who was obsessed with the cryptid Bigfoot. His stories weren't all that outlandish, because a lot of people have claimed to see Bigfoot, including actress Allie Sheedy. The legend of Bigfoot goes back as far as the Native Americans. Prior to being called Bigfoot, he was called Sasquatch, which means wild man or hairy man. He went by other names too, like Cousy, coussno and Cacao.

wendy: 11:18

now, what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? I'm just asking. I don't mean to interject in the sidetrack as too much, but my mom and stepfather are huge into Bigfoot and I you know I'm on the fence about it honestly.

tiffany: 11:31

I'm on the fence about it too, but I think it's possible. Yeah, he's like the most probable cryptid, I think, out of all the cryptids.

wendy: 11:38

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I just think that sometimes it's a wild goose chase and that they're purposely staging things to get people to watch.

tiffany: 11:47

Oh yeah, I do too a lot of the times. I really do believe that it is possible that you know there could be a big ass, hairy man.

wendy: 11:56

Well, I think what they're doing is they're staging this online and media goose chase on something that has merit, but it's not what they're actually chasing Like. Yes, if there is one and it does exist I don't think it's the one that they're promoting on TV.

tiffany: 12:13

Yeah, or it did exist at one time and it doesn't anymore.

wendy: 12:16

Right, or like it's out there somewhere still, but it's not the fucking one they're chasing around, that's how I feel.

tiffany: 12:25

All right, sorry. So there's this place called Painted Rock, and it's a stone shelter that had depictions of these hairy men on the ceiling that date back about a thousand years. Local legend claimed that Bigfoot mated with the animals to create people. He lived in the mountains and roamed freely at night, stealing food from the people of the tribes. The myth at Painted Rock was that Bigfoot was sad because the people were afraid of him, so he is depicted with tears running down his face because he just wanted to make friends. Bigfoot's role was the caretaker of the dead, and it was said that his job was to carry the dead up to Mount Tillman, which was above painted raw.

tiffany: 13:09

On June 1st, a week later, skip had shown up ready to take Teresa on this trip. See, blind Johnny knew Skip, so it wasn't all that weird that this grown-ass man was taking his little niece to school. When he had shown up that morning, it was alleged that a possible drug deal was happening between the two men, because Johnny knew Skip had a meth habit. Knowing that, johnny lent Teresa out like she was a cup of sugar, it wasn't a big surprise that he let her go with him. A few hours after school started, blind Johnny had gotten a call from the Central High School staff, he was alerted that Teresa never made it into school that day. Weirdly enough, johnny lies to the school staff and tells him that Teresa was out sick for the day. He later explained that he would rather handle the situation on his own, especially when he knew who she had left with earlier that morning, probably because you didn't want to get busted for dealing, or maybe something even more sinister.

tiffany: 14:05

Johnny heads out in search for Teresa and speaks to many of her friends and acquaintances, but she's nowhere to be found. A few of her friends basically relayed to Johnny that Skip couldn't be trusted, but none of them had any idea where she was. Johnny waited around for hours before he called the Sheriff's Office to report that Teresa was missing. He made the phone call around 8.30pm to the Fresno County Police. Once the police were informed that Teresa left with Skip that morning, they were concerned. They questioned Skip's family and friends and what they found out was shocking. Michelle Ryan was interviewed after police told her that she was Skip's part-time girlfriend. Michelle claimed that she was just an acquaintance of his, but she did give police an earful, although she was quite reluctant at first.

tiffany: 14:54

16-year-old Michelle had been lured into going to the mountains with Skip that previous summer. Skip knew the mountainous region very well because he liked to mine in the Sierra National Forest for minerals and metals. The hiking trails led to steep cliffs, streams and small lakes. Near Yosemite there's this place called Ghost Canyon, and he believed that it was a Native American burial ground that was extremely haunted. It was also a place that he wanted to take Michelle to. Skip's explanation was that he wanted her to accompany him to look for Bigfoot, being that he was obsessed with the idea that there were big feet running around those woods. Michelle liked the idea, but something about Skip gave her the creeps. Michelle claims that Chandra, skip's daughter, tried to warn Michelle not to go with Skip because he had a tendency to use the trip as a way to drug and date rape underage girls. After that conversation, she decided to bring two young men with her on the trip, which put a monkey wrench in Skip's devious plans.

wendy: 15:59

That is the way to do it, buddy system.

tiffany: 16:02

Hell yeah, I would have brought some dudes. Well, actually, first off, I wouldn't even went with them. I would have said fuck that guy.

wendy: 16:08

Right, but when in doubt, always bring somebody with you. That is that's what I did, even as young as 15, when I had a fake ID and I went to Ebor City and I would go to sketchy places. I always made sure I had at least one or two friends, and if it was just one friend, they had to be as wild as I was.

tiffany: 16:26

Exactly, you need somebody who's gonna cut somebody if they get up.

wendy: 16:28

Exactly somebody if they didn't know how to fight. You need two of them If you got it. If they do, then you just need one, yeah yeah.

tiffany: 16:37

So the three went to Ghost Canyon to set up camp. It was out in the middle of nowhere off of an old logging road. The four of them partied and used some meth, but Michelle thinks that she was slipped some LSD because she had a really terrifying experience. Skip was tweaking out and he started telling the three that Bigfoot Cryptids worshipped women and how Ghost Canyon was a host for demons. Quirky, one of Michelle's escorts that night, thought he saw eyes glowing at him through the trees in the darkness. He was so terrified that he fired off a shot at the demon with his rifle. Michelle awoke in the middle of the night to a white, three foot tall devil standing near her. The sight of this creature terrified Michelle and she took off running and she was screaming he's gonna kill me. Through the darkness her legs were going like a gazelle and she headed right for a cliff that had a huge drop off. At the last second her friend Sam like, jumped in front of her and stopped her before she plummeted to her death.

tiffany: 17:40

When police spoke to Skip's daughter, chandra, she said she had met Teresa the day she went missing. Skip had actually shown up at her home before they made it to the mountains. He stopped because he was having car trouble and once he fixed the car, the two headed up to the Sierra Nevada mountain range near the shut-eye peak area. When police questioned Chandra, she told him that she asked Teresa if she did drugs. When police asked why she would ask such a question, she stated that he was known to take young girls to the mountains and do drugs with them so he could coax them into performing sex acts. So now this is the second time that his daughter has said this to other people, once to the police and once to Michelle. Terry, skip's son, said he had also seen Teresa with Skip that day because they had stopped at his home. He told police that he had minimal contact with his father because of his drug addiction. He said that Teresa seemed excited to be out of school and talked about going to the mountains, and Terry told police about his father's mining claims and that he found remains at a burial ground out there.

tiffany: 18:47

The police alerted the US Forest Service that they were looking for Skip's mining claims. They were located at Chiquita Lake and Quartz Mountain near Ghost Canyon. Trying to find the pair was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The area was in the wilderness. The national forest was vast and Skip had been reported missing before. He made frequent trips to the wilderness and didn't return back when expected.

tiffany: 19:14

Four days later, on June 5th 1987, a police officer spotted Skip's Monte Carlo parked outside of a trailer in the North Fork area. This town was located in the foothills of the mountains, not too far from where they were headed. Skip came down the mountain to visit Dorothy Davis, a friend who lived behind a trailer park. Dorothy told police that Skip came down the mountain alone. He told her that a satanic group had taken Teresa and she said that he appeared very upset. Also that he was visibly high on drugs and she thought he was having paranoid delusions. He kept talking about white satanic creatures coming out of the woods.

tiffany: 19:58

Blind Johnny received a weird phone call from a young woman who claimed that Skip had a message for him. She told Johnny that Skip was packing a pistol and that if you continue to make trouble for him you will have even more trouble from him. Even your kids can get hurt. Also that Skip had taken Teresa to school and that once he had dropped her off, an unknown blonde woman picked her up and drove off with her. Johnny reported the call and Terry Skip's son told authorities where he was hiding out. Eventually, they caught up to him about five days later at his mother's house in Sunnyside, fresno, when the police had gotten there. He acted like there was some misunderstanding because he dropped Teresa off at school and that's it. The police couldn't arrest him without proper evidence, so they arrested him on a drunk driving violation and took him down to the station.

wendy: 20:49

Oh shit, you know what? Normally I hate it when police officers find ways to pull you over or like arrest you for no fucking reason, like to search your car, just for the fuck of it, but in this case I'm glad that they found a way to do it.

tiffany: 21:04

Oh yeah, me too. I was like good job on you guys to find some other way to get them. You know.

wendy: 21:10

I know, but I've seen them do it to my friends for like legitimately no reason. Oh, I know, I know Like, oh, you have long hair and you look sketchy. Hey, your brake lights out. I've seen that shit happen and it usually noise the fuck out of me, but in this particular case I'm glad they played their cards like that.

tiffany: 21:27

Yeah, your ball hitch is covering your license plate. Yeah, bitch, it came with the car.

wendy: 21:35

But they'll do stuff like that too. I know Like I got pulled over for speeding once and you could tell they were flashed and they're lightened in my car because it was really late at night to see if I had any alcohol and I didn't drink at the time. So I got really shitty with them. I'm like, yeah, no, I don't drink, you ain't gonna find shit in my car, just give me my speeding ticket and let me go. Well, no, they let you go. No, they did. But Angie was a little terrified because I lost my temper. Oh, I bet.

tiffany: 22:01

Police instantly noticed that Skip was under the influence of a substance. He kept going on about the community of Big Feet that lived in the underground caves on the mountain. It was obvious they had vast knowledge of the cryptid and had his own theories as to why no one ever sees them. He said that he had established some sort of rapport with the Bigfoot community and that they made themselves available to only him. The answers Skip gave about what happened to Teresa were fucking mind-blowing.

tiffany: 22:30

First off, skip told the detectives to refer to Teresa as Sam because she reminded him of a girl that he saw in a movie called Sam. Then he claimed that he dropped her off at school after they drove around for a while and during this drive, supposedly allegedly, she confided all of her problems to him that she was having at home. When he had gotten to the school, he said, a blonde girl met her there. Teresa turned to Skip in that moment and told him that this blonde girl would be able to help her hide out from her uncle. Skip claimed that he stayed in Fresno until he got word that the fuzz was looking for him.

tiffany: 23:09

I had to bring that one back.

wendy: 23:11

Yeah, yeah, I could see the bell bottoms.

tiffany: 23:14

Then he decided to go into hiding, claiming that he would never take a young girl into the dangerous mountains because it was unsafe. Police told him that his car was spotted and norfolk, and then he changed the story. He then tells officers that he went up the trailhead alone and some rangers and trail crew workers could corroborate his story. Of course the police were like oh both your children saw you with Teresa, so that's not true. Again, skip backpedaled. Now the story goes that Teresa ran off with the blonde girl into the woods and Skip desperately tried to find them.

wendy: 23:47

He done fucked up by switching his stories. Oh man, he switched them like so many times. Yeah, yeah, I know when there's inconsistencies like that, you've already lost your validity.

tiffany: 23:59

Oh yeah, you're done, You're done. The detective challenged him by saying it was strange that a mountain man like himself could be evaded by little girls. It was this challenge to Skip's ego that Skip says something profound. He says okay, all the truth, bigger than life. Skip tells officers about his secret society of big feet. He claims that they're super intelligent beings residing in the mountains and that the big foot was like a bodyguard to these beings. He said this community enticed Teresa and she ran off with the beings. A blonde woman appeared from the wilderness that was the same age and height as Teresa. I don't know.

wendy: 24:40

it seems kind of believable to me. Oh yeah, there was a blonde the entire time.

tiffany: 24:45

Yeah, he keeps saying there's something about this blonde woman.

wendy: 24:48

Yeah, there's some continuity here.

tiffany: 24:50

Yeah, I don't know. I guess she's a blonde big foot.

wendy: 24:56

Oh no, that visual did not come over while at all.

tiffany: 24:59

Is he like Fabio Bigfoot, with like real long flowing?

wendy: 25:03

hair. No, like cotton, swab hair.

tiffany: 25:07

Make it stop. So, he said, a blonde woman appeared from the wilderness that was the same age and height as Teresa. These beings wouldn't hurt Teresa, but he knew that once she left with them he would never see her again. Mainly because Bigfoot lived in underground caverns, he believed she would be better off with the community, being that she was sexually abused and that they would take better care of her.

tiffany: 25:30

This entire time Skip is looking the officers dead in their eyes and to them they believed that Skip believed what he was saying. Maybe it was a drug-addled delusion or maybe it was really some unexplained phenomenon, but police didn't believe it. But Skip sure did. He even talked about Bigfoot mind control. They had him under their spell. He said he did search for Teresa all night, but then his car got stuck and he couldn't get the car out. But when he looked back into the darkness he saw a man that wasn't really a man. He claimed this devil was holding his car off of the ground with its superhuman strength. And when he was able to get his car free, he sped down the mountain, but he felt like something was riding in the car with him. He looked in the rear view mirror and he saw a strange man in the back seat, a devil being staring right into his eyes.

wendy: 26:28

Okay, so now he's going for insanity.

tiffany: 26:30

Yeah, he sounds a little crazy.

wendy: 26:34

All right, well, I mean, it could be a strategy. I don't know what this guy, I don't know.

tiffany: 26:39

So he turns around when he sees this thing looking at him and he punches the spirit several times, but his hand goes right through it and he waxes knuckles on a speaker in the back seat. I'm sorry, yeah, that's what he's called him, but this is the best part, wendy. He rebuked the spirit in the name of Jesus Christ. With Jesus' name, it dissipated. I'm so sorry, I find this shit so hysterical Because it's fucking unbelievable.

wendy: 27:12

That's why.

tiffany: 27:14

So, while his interrogation is slightly comical in the sense that no one knew if they were just delusions or if she had really run off into the woods alive, or if it was something more grim than what was what he was leading on, police quickly thought that they had a potential homicide on their hands. When Skip said unsolicited if you happen to find Teresa, there won't be any signs of sexual abuse. Ben claimed that Teresa wanted to have sex with him, but doing that kind of thing to with a young girl was not in his nature, even though two other people said that that was his thing. I don't think he's deflecting at all. No, not at all. Police were trying to put together the pieces of what happened that day because they were like what the fuck? So they skipped a show them where Teresa went missing. Skip agreed and took the police to the campsite where he claimed that they had camped. It was off of road 255.

tiffany: 28:07

About an hour down a dirt road past the Peck and Paul Meadows crossed Browns Creek, the police pulled over in a granite clearing which was about 100 by 50 yards wide. Skip was nonstop talking while the police were looking for the campsite. He pointed into the woods at one point and said that he saw Teresa running off with the blonde girl like in live time, in the present moment. Police looked but they didn't see nothing. They were like what the fuck? But they did eventually find the campsite. It was near a small grove of trees at the edge of the meadow.

tiffany: 28:41

Police noticed blankets that were placed around strategically in a formation. In the immediate area there was a camera, a purse, an off-white bra, a t-shirt, a bunch of landscape photos and a photo of Skip playing a guitar next to one of the blankets and a picture of Teresa. There was also a smoldering fire that had pine needles strewn about that were like damp to the touch. The area that was burned was about 3.5 feet wide by 8 foot long. Police noted that the photographs of Skip had a mountain in the background. The campsite had no mountains in the background. The police surmised that this campsite was staged to throw them off From the photos. They were able to use topography to find the real location of the photos, which was about 20 miles away, possibly in Ghost Canyon. Police deployed helicopters equipped with infrared technology to search the Meadow area and the Ghost Canyon area. One of the helicopters spotted a blue t-shirt and when investigators searched the pockets, they found meth in the pocket, like a little bag of meth.

wendy: 29:48

I believe that.

tiffany: 29:49

Yeah, I do too.

wendy: 29:51

That was my first suspect.

tiffany: 29:53

Yeah.

wendy: 29:55

Yeah, if meth and fenemy was right there on the top of my, he might be on that shit list.

tiffany: 29:59

Yeah, the story's really methed up, I do. Police used bloodhounds to try to pick up Teresa's scent. Blind Johnny provided detectives with a pair of Teresa's panties which had blood in the crotch. He told officers that she had started her period the day before, which struck the police as odd that her uncle knew about her menstrual cycle, like when she was actually having it. Regardless, the dogs picked up the scent for a little while but then lost it.

tiffany: 30:27

Skip was charged on June 11, 1987, with child endangerment and kidnapping, where what was called at the time child stealing. Skip was R-O-R'd and then re-arrested after the judge realized that another judge had raised the bail price to 30 Gs. Oops Police scoured the area a second time with police dogs and helicopters but again came up with nothing. Some of Skip's family members spoke with the police, saying that he was mentally unstable, a tweaker, and believed that Teresa was murdered and buried in the woods. Others stuck by Skip's side and couldn't believe that he would do such a thing. Skip's 19-year-old nephew came into the station to talk with police because he said that he was ready to explode with information that he had been keeping inside. He said he had an argument with his uncle and during this argument. Skip talked about the burial site of the devil. James said to Skip that there was only one true God, jesus Christ. Skip became agitated and said that the devil gods did exist up in Ghost Canyon On another occasion, said that Skip took him to a rock formation and said that that was a sacrificial design. Skip told James that it was there, that a woman's hands were to be tied by her side and she was to be thrown onto the rock and laid out as a sacrifice to the devil gods. James thought that this was a confession of some sort, as we discussed earlier. Skip said that Bigfoot worshiped women but, according to James, he said that Skip brought underage girls to the mountains to give to Bigfoot. Now James believed that it was the girls that were the sacrifice. Skip said to James that he thought that he would get off these charges with only one year's jail time, that he would walk and then get the publicity that he was looking for.

tiffany: 32:16

Without a body and proper evidence, the case went stagnant. There were no new leads and everyone had been interviewed. The case they had against Skip was circumstantial at best. They couldn't prove that Teresa was even murdered or even dead. Without any strong circumstantial evidence. The case was just dead in the water. Some people believe Skip had taken Teresa's body to the mining area in Ghost Canyon and dropped her body down an abandoned mineshaft knowing that she would never be found again, or that maybe he had buried it around his ex-wife Shannon's claim of land. The police searched these areas, but again nothing came of it.

wendy: 32:51

I think that this dude is very suspicious in that he, if she'd never turned back up, that he probably did something to her and disposed of her somewhere, which is horrible to say, because that's probably the most fatalistic version of what this story could have turned out to be. That said, it's heavily up to speculation because, like you said, his ex-wife had all of that land and this. He went to a place that was rural enough to hide a body. Very unfortunately, and because he is somebody who's obsessed with Bigfoot and one who likes to tell tall tales, there's just no knowing how far he was throwing them off of his tracks, outside of the fact he was inconsistent. When somebody is that inconsistent number one and number two they have a girl with them and that girl turns out not turning up. It's pretty suspicious, Like, I think, the guy in my heart. I think he did something and I think he. First of all, why the fuck was he hanging out with somebody that young in the first place, at his age?

tiffany: 33:56

Well, Storber Chandra sure had a lot to say about that. She seemed to be going around telling everybody that he was trying to date rape girls.

wendy: 34:03

Right, exactly, he has a reputation for that. And even if he didn't have a reputation for that, the mere fact that he would hang out with somebody that age in the first place is creepy as all fuck. And then the fact that his story with the police was all over the place, or I should say Storrie's plural were all over the place, and they definitely know, because he didn't avert saying that she was with him. He admitted that part, he definitely admitted. And well, she took off with a blonde girl in seven different directions, according to him, but he was still with her.

tiffany: 34:38

Yeah, she left with the Bigfoot community.

wendy: 34:41

Yeah, I don't believe that she left with the Bigfoot community at all and his words mean absolute shit. I don't trust methhead, but I mean outside of that, nobody who tells the truth has five different versions of the same story.

wendy: 34:58

It just doesn't, it doesn't fucking happen. And the girl has not turned back up. She's still missing. And the fact that she's still missing and the last time she was seen was with somebody who lied that much, who was too old to be hanging out with somebody that age and who was on really fucked up. Drugs does not add up to. He's not guilty in my book.

tiffany: 35:19

No, I think that he was either delusional and believes that she ran off with the Bigfoot community because all the meth he was doing that night, or he murdered her and he's lying about her running off with the Bigfoot community. Right, that's the only two things I could think of.

wendy: 35:35

I think the second one is more palpable. Maybe there's a third which kind of integrates those two things.

tiffany: 35:41

Maybe. Yeah Well, while Skip was awaiting trial, he wanted to talk. Oh shit.

wendy: 35:47

I go. I think the rabbit hole goes deeper.

tiffany: 35:50

Oh it does. So even though he had an attorney who advised against it, he desperately tried to keep the case open, to get the attention on himself. Police tape these admissions, but none of them ever produced any new leads as to where Teresa was. He was just reiterating his old stories but adding drips of new information, and most of those bits of information weren't even pertinent to the investigation. So after going to see Skip many times and wasting many police hours, the cops just stopped answering his phone calls. At the trial hearing, multiple people spoke on behalf of Skip. He pled not guilty and his daughter told the court that they didn't have any evidence. As far as Teresa went, no one spoke on her behalf because you know, although it was extremely heartbreaking, she was abused and nobody really gave a shit and it was awful.

wendy: 36:37

Yeah, she was tossed around and she wasn't surrounded by anybody loyal or protective of her.

tiffany: 36:42

No, not at all. Headlines in the newspapers didn't showcase the victim, but they sensationalized the preposterous claims that surrounded Skip's story. The judge offered Skip a plea bargain to plead guilty to the child's stealing charge in order to only receive one year. The stipulation was that Skip had to sign a waiver saying that was okay to charge Skip with double jeopardy in case they ever did find Teresa's body. However, skip's public defender advised against it, so he refused to sign the waiver. On October 3rd the court dismissed all charges because the prosecution didn't want Skip not to be held accountable for Teresa's murder if they ever did find her body. So because of double jeopardy, they set him free.

tiffany: 37:29

Skip's family said that in the years that followed Skip had been acting rather erratically. He would go on tangents talking about Teresa and take baths that would last three to four hours, that he would sit in the water and scrub his skin raw with lye soap, hoping to cleanse his soul, and lamented that God would never forgive him for the things he had done. In March of 1998, skip passed away at age 54 from coronary artery disease without getting any justice. Detective Stokes believed that Blind Johnny had something to do with Teresa's death, which was her caretaker, johnny, had made some oddball statements that it's possible that Teresa was sold into slavery. Detectives thought that the choice of words sold into slavery was really strange, because he allowed Skip to take her that morning. The detectives believed that maybe Johnny gave his niece to Skip to dispose of her to keep her quiet about the sexual abuse that he and his friends were committing on the sweet little girl.

wendy: 38:31

It's possible that he gave her to Skip so that Skip could give her to the sex trade, because that's a big thing.

tiffany: 38:39

Yeah, who knows?

wendy: 38:40

She's already been sexually abused and so maybe he made a few bucks by giving her to Skip, and that gets rid of his evidence as well. Then he passes her on and Skip, instead of giving her to Bigfoot, actually gave her to them instead.

tiffany: 38:59

Who knows Worry murderer, like the cop said.

wendy: 39:01

Right, it could have been either one. But now I'm thinking, you know, if this dude gave her to Skip to get rid of his own misdeeds, knowing that this guy was going to give her away from meth money to somebody who'll take her in sex traffic, that makes sense too.

tiffany: 39:18

Oh, I know it could be so many different things. Yeah, there are so many variables, it's endless really, Really it is, and it's sad because, like I don't think anybody will ever figure it out.

wendy: 39:28

I know, I believe that you're right. She didn't have enough loyal people around her that cared about her well-being. While they were in her care, no lesser disappearance.

tiffany: 39:37

Exactly, and nobody's going to get justice either, because around 2008, johnny dies of cancer.

tiffany: 39:44

Oh wow, yeah, so that theory died with him. Wow, this is so tragic, sad, yeah. So Teresa's sister, yolanda, was asked for a DNA sample because the detectives wanted to rule out a body they found in the woods shortly after Teresa's disappearance. When nothing ever came of it, everyone assumed it just wasn't a match, in that the body wasn't Teresa's. A list was compiled of potential victims of the speed freak killers, which was a couple of serial killers that were running around at the time, but Teresa's name was thrown on the list because she lived in the area Police. Don't really believe, though, that Teresa was one of their victims, but she was left on the list, just in case.

tiffany: 40:23

Most of Skip's family maintains his innocence to this day. So did Teresa go off to live with the Big Feet community? Did she run away with the blonde woman? Did speed freak satanist sacrifice her in the name of methamphetamines? Or was it a tweaked out alleged pedophile who murdered her in the wilderness? Or her uncle that sold her to an alleged pedophile who murdered her in the wilderness? I guess we'll never know, but if you do have any information about Teresa, please contact the Fresno Police Department at 559-621-2541.

wendy: 40:56

Well, thanks, tiff. This one was a rarity and I know it was not easy for you to procure such information. So good job on your part.

tiffany: 41:03

Oh yeah, this one was really tough to find information. I found one small book about this case and it was crazy doing the research for this because it was really hard to find any information because all they talked about was Big Foot and you couldn't really find a lot about the victim, which kind of made me sad, because it's Teresa that gets lost in the shuffle here because all these wild claims that go around her case. If you'd like to check us out on Facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube or TikTok, then you can find us under Rogue and Wicked Podcast. If you'd like to join our Patreon and become a subscriber, then you can find us at wwwpatreoncom. Our Tier 1 listeners get pictures, polls and exclusive content. Our Tier 2 listeners get all that plus a bonus episode monthly. Our Tier 3 listeners get two bonus episodes monthly and all tiers get a shout out on the pod.

tiffany: 42:00

Grab a copy of Wendy's book Sage. It's available at roguepoetnet. Any cool stories, questions or case suggestions should be sent to our email at rogueandwicked, at yahoocom, and don't forget to give us a five star review on Spotify, apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts. The more reviews that we get, the more pod episodes that we can bring to you. Thanks for listening and until next time.