The Han Family Murders | Full Episode

The Han Family Murders | Full Episode

…

To Don, he was just Henry.

-I was approximately
ten years older than Henry, but he still called me
his younger brother.

You just don’t come across
a friend like Henry.

It’s once in a lifetime…friendship.

-When they met, Henry was
making a name for himself after emigrating from China, where he came from
a family of physicians.

He would soon take over
the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic.

-I had several patients who
had had medication side effects.

They would say,
“I went to see Doctor Han and it went away,” and it was like,
“I got to meet this guy.

” -Doctor Glenn Miller,
a psychiatrist, says he and Henry
developed a mutual respect and even partnered on a book about how Eastern and Western
medicine could work together to improve patients
quality of life.

-Henry’s practice was
flourishing as far as active patients he would see, like in a month,
it was hundreds.

But he also tried to balance it.

-In 2009, that balance he was
seeking became a reality when Henry met
and married Jennie Yu.

-He seemed incredibly happy.

It was good to see
Henry that happy.

-Jennie was absolutely
warm and lovely.

-When they had Emily,
the dream was complete.

-Henry was just on cloud nine.

He was very proud father.

-They were often
together at the clinic where Jennie had quickly
become Henry’s right hand, says her friend Isaiah Oregon.

-He really trusted her and
let her kind of take the reins.

-In the spring of 2016.

.

.

-It’s my turn.

-.

.

.

they were getting
ready to celebrate Emily’s sixth birthday.

-Where should I go? -Wherever.

-Go wherever? -We were making plans
for her birthday party.

And you know,
I had all her presents wrapped.

-But just three days shy
of her birthday, her loved ones were
stricken with grief.

-I don’t really have adequate
words to describe how I felt.

The sadness is too deep.

-As night fell on the Han estate
on Wednesday, March 23rd, Don tried to process
what he had just witnessed.

He had called 911 when he
couldn’t find the Hans anywhere, and he was with sheriff’s
deputies when they discovered the bodies in the garage
wrapped in plastic.

-None of it made
any sense at all.

-Prosecutor Ben Ladinig says
it was shortly before midnight when Santa Barbara sheriff’s
investigators obtained a search warrant
and began to piece together what had happened
inside the house.

It appeared the family
had been shot while they slept upstairs
on the second floor.

Henry in the couple’s bedroom,
and Jennie and Emily across the hall in Emily’s room.

-Emily’s room
was tough to see.

Mom probably read her stories
to have Emily go to sleep that night and was
sleeping with her.

-What did that tell you
about the depravity of the kind of person who
could do something like that? What were they after? -We didn’t know
what he was after.

But the depravity, I’ve never
seen anything like it.

-Detectives picked up
on the distinct smell of the murderer’s attempts
to cover his tracks.

-The smell of bleach was there.

We had bleach bottles found.

There were bleach stains
on the carpet and throughout other
items upstairs.

And then you see bloody things
in a washing machine.

-All the bedding which had
been stripped from the beds, was found piled in the
laundry room and in the machine.

-The washing machine —
the alarm had gone off because the load was unbalanced.

And within there are
a huge group of bloody sheets.

-Wedged in pillows
in the laundry, crime scene, investigators found a .

22 caliber bullet
and bullet fragments.

Three matching shell
casings were found within the wrapping
of Jennie’s body, and one was later found
lodged between the baseboard and box spring of Emily’s bed.

-We had one bullet that
was a through and through.

It was perfect for comparison
for the murder weapon.

As things are going,
we start to find clues as to who potentially
could be involved.

-Inside a paper bag
next to Henry’s bed, detectives found a document
signed the last day Henry was seen alive.

It provided a name.

-It’s basically a four page
business contract between two partners.

Partner one, Pierre Haobsh
and partner two, Doctor Han.

-Don Goldberg knew a Pierre that Doctor Han was
associated with, but Don thought he was harmless.

-I did not think that
Pierre was capable of murder.

I never really saw Pierre
become angry or agitated.

-But the Palumbos
had a bad feeling.

-You didn’t trust him?
-I did not.

-This community was left
with a scar.

-The indelible scar
left by the murders was the kind that not even
Doctor Han could have healed.

-Oh.

It was like a bomb exploded.

Nobody could move for weeks.

There was something very,
very, very dark going on.

-Kymberlee Ruff says
Doctor Han treated her family for two decades.

-He could do anything.

-Ever since she was
diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after giving
birth to her son, Kymberlee says Doctor Han’s holistic approach allowed
her to nurse her newborn while still treating her tumors.

-No matter how scared
you might be or frightened, you just love feeling like
it’s going to be okay.

Yeah, he was something.

-Instilling hope may have
been one of the secrets to why his patients say
Doctor Han could heal just about anything.

-Doctor Han,
like, saved my life.

-Sheri Buron was also
a young mother with cancer when she went to Doctor Han.

-My daughter Abby
was 15 months old.

I felt a lump under my armpit.

-Even though she had
the prescribed surgery and chemotherapy, she credits
Doctor Han with her survival.

-There were so many people
that passed away around me, he got me through it.

-What was the impact
for you of his loss? -It’s the fear of if
something comes back, and I’m trying every day
to be positive and try to stay with
his level of calm and how much confidence
he had that like everything’s taken care of.

-That conviction is what
had drawn the Palumbos, who worked in
the skincare industry into their partnership
with Doctor Han, hoping to treat
various skin maladies.

-Henry was very
interested in CBD.

-Having used CBD
in his practice to treat pain and inflammation, Henry wanted to harness
its full potential.

It was groundbreaking
science at the time, and he wanted 25-year-old Pierre Haobsh
to help develop it.

-Pierre,
from what we gathered, had a lot of experience, uh — in laboratories
in this case relating to CBD.

-Henry had taken
a liking to Pierre after meeting him
through another associate, but the Palumbos
were uncomfortable with Pierre from the start.

-You know how when
you meet somebody, you can’t put your finger on it, but something’s not right.

That was Pierre.

-There was always this kind
of little boiling simmer.

-When it came time
to do the lab work, the Palumbos say
the results were disturbing.

-What we came to find out was he
was using toxic materials.

When we called him on it,
he said, you know, “I’m just learning more
about the molecules.

” It was just weird.

-As it turned out, Pierre wasn’t
a formally trained scientist.

He didn’t even have
a college degree.

-The more you got
onto that surface, the more you realized
that he could talk a game and stay over the folks
heads a bit scientifically.

-Sounds like he was sort of a
snake oil salesman type, right? -He was.

-Sophisticated one.

Yes.

-Yeah, very sophisticated one.

-There was more
eyebrow-raising behavior — Pierre had also made
odd charges on Henry’s account.

-I was doing all
the finances and I’m like, this doesn’t look right.

-Not a business expense.

-Not at all.

-After Marla flagged
the charges to Henry, he discovered they were
for escort services.

-Henry was, “You won’t
believe this! Pierre’s out.

” -That was the final straw.

-That was Henry’s final straw.

-But then, a few weeks
before the murders, Mark and Marla say Henry brought
up Pierre out of the blue.

-Henry mentioned that he
had learned a lot more about Pierre’s upbringing, how much Pierre had to
overcome from his childhood.

Mark nor I really responded.

We didn’t want to have Pierre
back in our fold at all.

-The Palumbos were not alone
in being wary of Pierre.

Jennie’s friend Isaiah
says Jennie also had concerns and confided in him about them
four days before the murders.

-It was weighing
on her heavily.

Do we trust him?
Do we give him another chance? I was like, absolutely not.

If he stole from you before, he’s going to steal
from you again.

-But Pierre had already
ingratiated himself back into Henry’s goodwill.

-Henry had a very
trusting nature.

Henry had shared with me that
Pierre told him that he was ill, that it was late-stage cancer, and that he was going to do
what he could to help Pierre.

-Using Henry’s good nature
by lying to him.

By manipulating him.

-Authorities learned
that Pierre had been an overnight guest
at the Hans home before the murders, and had formed a new
partnership with the healer.

There was that contract found
in the master bedroom they had signed the last day
of Henry’s life.

But prosecutor Ben Ladinig says
it didn’t seem legitimate.

-It was like a college
sophomore drafted it.

It was not notarized,
not witnessed.

-Detectives had found
something else of interest.

-A brilliant detective found packaging to
the plastic wrapping that all three of
the Han family were wrapped in.

In a trash can
in the kitchen area next to packaging
of 3M duct tape, similar to the duct tape that was used to wrap
all three of the bodies.

-He recognized the plastic
wrap was a Home Depot brand and reached out to the company’s
security department.

-And Home Depot was, within hours of us
gaining entry into the house, able to run those two
items together to see if they had been purchased in
the Southern California region within the last
several days or weeks.

-A Home Depot in Oceanside,
California, had security footage of a man who matched the DMV photo
of Pierre Haobsh who also happened to have
an Oceanside address.

-And that was, bam —
We knew.

He’s walking out with
three huge plastic rolls and sure enough, duct tape.

-So within hours of the
crime scene being discovered, Pierre Haobsh became
person of interest.

-Yes.

-But where was Pierre now? Detectives had a hunch.

Data from the Hans cell phones,
which were missing, showed they were
traveling south, further and further
from Santa Barbara.

-Then, inexplicably,
Henri’s phone goes dark.

But Jennie’s is still on,
and it keeps going south.

We’re getting basically
digital footprints leading down to the Oceanside area
from a dead woman’s phone.

-Anytime you’re trying
to stop somebody that is wanted for homicide,
the stakes are going to be high.

-The day after the Han
family was found murdered, a manhunt was underway
in Oceanside, California, nearly 200 miles from
the crime scene.

Sergeant Anthony Flores
and his partner were part of the local
Oceanside police team assisting the Santa Barbara
investigation.

-We had come in to work with
our Special Enforcement section, and we were going to be
the stop car for that day if given a window of opportunity
to take him into custody or potentially stop him.

-Meanwhile,
undercover detectives were conducting surveillance at the residence Pierre Haobsh
shared with his father and updating all units, including the homicide team that had driven down
from Santa Barbara with prosecutor Ben Ladinig.

-All of a sudden,
we get chatter on our intercoms.

“Dad’s on the move.

” -The surveillance team
followed Pierre’s father as he drove to
a Walmart parking lot, where security cameras
captured him meeting up with none
other than Pierre.

-That’s dad driving in sedan and then you see the Lexus
following shortly behind.

They appear to be
communicating briefly together.

You can just see
that trunk pop on dad’s car.

-After transferring two large
duffel bags to Pierre’s car, they both drove off.

-We gotta move quickly.

-It was a little after midnight, and we just got the update that
the suspect was on the move.

As we’re traveling,
we’re hearing that he’s pulling into the ARCO station.

He had a few miles
of a head start.

-The other units and Ladinig had
pulled over by the ARCO station waiting for
the arrest team to arrive.

-And all of a sudden,
you see an unmarked car drive right through the middle
of that intersection.

Sparks fly and it just
basically comes in and pulls in
and lays on the brakes.

Two huge dudes
get out of the car and pull a gun on him
and prone him out.

And our eyes are like saucers.

-We’re like, “whoa.

”
-Wow.

-It’s 200 miles away that
this investigation started and it culminated here.

Sergeant Flores
had handcuffed Pierre.

What do you remember
about that arrest? -I remember it
going down really fast.

All of our senses
were heightened.

-Within 48 hours
of the murders.

Investigators had
the Han family’s alleged killer in custody.

Pierre Haobsh waived
his Miranda rights and started talking
to detectives.

What he told them was
something out of a spy thriller.

He claimed that
his life was in danger.

He claimed he was
being targeted because of a scientific
marvel he had invented.

-Pierce said he had gone
to Doctor Han’s house earlier in the week
to install one of his perpetual energy devices, and that the plastic
wrap and duct tape he was seen purchasing
were for that purpose.

-Pierre said he had left
Santa Barbara around 2 pm on March 22nd,
the day before the murders after signing the contract, but detectives pushed back.

-Pierre was adamant he
would never hurt the family, and insisted the shadowy figures who had been after him
had killed the Hans and were trying to
frame him for murder.

-It was this massive
conspiracy to keep this next level energy system
from getting out to market.

“James Bond,”
“Mission Impossible,” this fantastical life.

-Pierre’s outlandish
story continued.

But then detectives received
an unexpected call from someone who claimed to have
information about the murders.

-I’m a pretty
rough-around-the-edges guy.

I have rough-around-
the-edges friends.

-TJ Direda was
a marijuana grower who said Doctor Han
had approached him about supplying
CBD-rich strains.

TJ had also met Pierre.

-Doctor Henry had
told me that he was like a prodigy street chemist.

He had done some stuff
that was ahead of his time.

-So a little bit of
a mad scientist, perhaps? -Yeah, I would say.

-According to TJ,
Pierre had a penchant for making up grandiose stories to seek attention, but he befriended him
nonetheless.

-He was that awkward kid
that wanted to fit in, and I was the guy in high school that stuck up
for kids like that.

So I took an interest
in him in that regard.

-Do you think
he trusted you then? -Oh, he absolutely trusted me.

-As TJ revealed to detectives, Pierre had reached out to him via text the morning
of the murders.

The message,
sent at 9:39 am, said, What was he asking for? -Uh, he needed my help
moving something.

-He says Pierre told him
he was in Santa Barbara and needed to talk face-to-face.

So TJ had him come to
his house in Thousand Oaks about an hour away.

-The first thing
out of his mouth.

“Just so you know,
I’m a monster.

” He had told me right then and there that he had
killed Doctor Henry, his wife, and his child
and needed help.

-Did he give you details
of what he did? -He did.

-TJ told detectives
Pierre said he had tried to put the bodies in his car, but they wouldn’t all fit
and Henry was too heavy, details Ladinig says only
the killer would know.

-How the killings were done,
how the bodies were wrapped up, how he had the doctor’s phone.

-TJ told detectives
Pierre had also revealed his motive — $20 million, that he planned to drain
from Henry’s accounts after killing the family.

TJ says he didn’t know
if what he was hearing was another one of Pierre’s
far-fetched stories, and until he knew for sure, he decided to play along.

-I just wanted to get him
out of the house and confirm whether what he
had just said was true or not.

I said, let me work on it
and I’ll call you later.

-Once Pierre was gone,
TJ tried to reach Doctor Han and anyone who might have
information, to no avail.

-I didn’t want to call
the police because I didn’t — I wasn’t sure yet.

It was chaotic.

It was —
it was scary and also confusing.

-Pierre kept messaging him.

Around 5 pm, when TJ still
hadn’t provided any assistance, Pierre texted him
with a proposition.

What did you think the reason for that all-of-a-sudden
trip to Vegas? -At that point, I wasn’t sure.

It didn’t sound right.

He was probably going to kill me and somehow make it look like
I had something to do with it.

-You were going to
be the fall guy.

-Right.

TJ made up an excuse
why he couldn’t go.

And Pierre would send him one
final text at 7:35 that night.

Ladinig says Pierre had
just returned to the crime scene with a big truck to
transport the bodies, but law enforcement had
beaten him to the scene.

-He knew his goose was cooked.

-Pierre Haobsh’s arrest
near Oceanside, California, had come at a critical juncture.

He was armed with a
nine millimeter handgun that was in plain view on
the driver’s side floorboard.

He also had his passport
and those duffel bags, which he had received from
his father minutes earlier.

-To-go bags.

Basically, whatever you need — clothes, everything for the
person to live for months.

-Haobsh’s father was also
detained and questioned, but he was released
later that morning.

-We could have charged him
as an accessory, but we didn’t have any
indication that dad was involved in any way, shape
or form in the killing.

-The next day,
during a closer examination of Haobsh’s car
at the crime lab.

-You name it,
we found it in that car.

-There was Henry’s wallet,
credit card, and social security number, along with an
expended shell casing.

There were also the victim’s
phones and tablet, all wrapped in aluminum foil, in an attempt to evade tracking.

-In the trunk, you lift up
where the spare tire would be.

The murder weapon, suppressor,
silencer, ammunition.

-A week after the murders, the autopsies revealed the
victims had been shot 14 times, three each into
Henry and Jennie.

And most disturbing,
eight in Emily.

-That ammunition is
the same stuff that we found at the crime scene
in the decedent’s bodies.

Match, match, match,
match, match — everything.

-Pierre Haobsh was charged with three counts of
first degree murder, making him eligible
for the death penalty.

-It was one of the
most challenging cases, if not the most challenging,
case I ever came upon.

-Defense attorney
Christine Voss, who was with the public
defender’s office at the time, represented Haobsh.

-He really wanted to
be vindicated.

To me, the goal was
for him to not get death.

-At the 11th hour,
the DA’s office agreed to waive the death penalty in exchange for a more
expedient bench trial, which meant a judge, not jury,
would render a verdict.

On October 25th, 2021, more than five and a half
years after the murders, the prosecution delivered
its opening statement and laid out its theory
of the case that Pierre Haobsh had plotted
the murder of the Han family for financial gain.

They painted him as a career con
man who, up until the murders, flaunted his intelligence
and supposed wealth.

-His entire life’s drive
was being rich.

-He sent screenshots
of his Chase account from anywhere from about
$3 million up to $940 million to various people,
attempting to dupe them that he is this jet-setting
billionaire.

-Haobsh claimed
he had received big offers for his energy technology.

-I’m not a scientist, but I don’t know
that there’s a such thing as a perpetual-energy machine.

-But several years
before the murders, Haobsh was actually being paid
to build one.

-It was gonna be
a new source of energy, as if he was, you know,
an Elon Musk.

-Samantha Spidell met
Pierre Haobsh circa 2012, when he moved into a penthouse
apartment in a luxury high-rise she managed in Tempe, Arizona.

-He pulled up
and had this bright-red Ferrari.

It was very flashy.

-Ladinig says had Haobsh duped a
group of high-rolling investors into financing his invention until they realized
it didn’t actually work.

-He had basically defrauded
all these people, and the money dried up.

When the murders were committed, I think he had less than $500
to his name.

-Hmm.

Prosecutors presented
a detailed timeline retracing Haobsh’s movements, including his digital footprint in the days before
and after the murders.

They say as early as March 17,
six days before the murders, he had looked into impersonating
the doctor at his bank.

-He’s searching for Asian
disguises and real flesh masks.

-Like a “Mission: Impossible”
face mask? -Right.

100%.

This is his fantastical world
that he lived in.

-There’s no evidence
he ever purchased a mask, but a timestamped receipt
and security video placed him
at an Arizona gun store four days before the murders, purchasing ammunition
and two firearms, including the alleged
murder weapon.

-.

22 pistol
with a threaded barrel for what is a silencer,
a suppressor.

-On March 20, he was back
in Oceanside, California, buying supplies before driving
up to the Hans’ house, under the guise of installing
the energy machine.

Instead, Ladinig says
Haobsh bugged Henry’s computer with a spyware app
called a keylogger.

-What keyloggers do is every stroke,
every click of the mouse, every navigation page you go, it documents all of it.

-To their surprise, investigators also found the
keylogger on Haobsh’s laptop.

On March 21, while Haobsh
was still at the Hans’ home, the keylogger had recorded chilling search terms
on his laptop.

-What part of the skull
is more penetrable? What ammunition would be better? -As a guest in Dr.

Han’s house?
-Yes.

-And staying there
for the two nights before, planning this execution-style
murder.

-Yes.

-Pierre Haobsh left
the Han residence on March 22, but prosecutors allege
he went back around 4:00 am
the next morning to carry out the murders.

They say later that day, he began frantically trying
to siphon money from Henry’s accounts.

-He’s using phones.

He’s using fake e-mail accounts.

He’s doing all these things from personal identifying
information of Dr.

Han’s that he stole earlier that week.

-A Chase fraud alert
had flagged an attempted payment
for $72,000.

Meanwhile, Haobsh
also rented that big truck he allegedly drove
to the crime scene, hoping to move the bodies.

-There are black-and-whites
all over that house.

The crime scene’s
being processed.

-The Palumbos say the meeting they were supposed to have
with Henry just hours after he was murdered had foiled
Pierre Haobsh’s plans.

-He thought that he had that
whole day to clean up his mess before Henry would be missed.

-He wasn’t fast enough.

-I think we screwed it up
for him.

Happily.

-That’s when prosecutors say
he fled, driving south toward Oceanside, Ladinig argues Haobsh’s
subsequent searches betray his guilty conscience.

Incredibly, he even consulted an
online psychic named Count Marco and asked him.

.

.

-And Count Marco replies, “Well,
what did you do, Pierre?” -Pierre Haobsh never gave
Count Marco an explanation.

But on the stand,
he couldn’t stop talking.

[ Soft music plays ] -This was a tough case.

But that didn’t change the fact that Pierre was entitled
to a vigorous defense.

-Defense attorney Christine Voss
was in an unusual position.

-This was a really
well-investigated case.

Because my client
wanted to have a trial and wanted me to turn
every stone, I did.

-Turn every stone and raise
any possible reasonable doubt.

You argued that there were
elements presented that were implausible,
unprovable, and simply impossible.

Those were your words.

-Yeah.

-Voss expressed concerns that the alleged murder weapon
and silencer found in Haobsh’s car
didn’t match up.

-It absolutely did not connect
to the firearm that they believed
was the murder weapon.

-She seized on discrepancies
in the location data from found in Haobsh’s car
and phone that the prosecution
had used in its timeline.

-He could not possibly have been in San Diego and Santa Barbara
simultaneously, or Thousand Oaks and
Santa Barbara Simultaneously.

But that’s what
the GPS data showed.

-And she attacked
the credibility of the prosecution’s
star witness, TJ Direda.

Voss questioned why Direda waited nearly two days
to contact authorities and argued in that time, he could have gotten details
about the crime scene that the prosecution
claimed only the killer knew.

-It was not
the best-kept crime scene.

He was making
various phone calls after he heard about
the death of Dr.

Han.

-But Voss concedes
much of Direda’s testimony was corroborated
by the evidence.

-This case was over
within the first 72 hours.

-In fact, the only witness
who provided testimony that someone other than
Pierre Haobsh was the killer was Pierre Haobsh.

During three days on the stand, he repeated
the action-packed account he had given detectives about having shootouts
with shadowy figures.

Now he said he was sure they were sent
by the Department of Energy.

It sounds like there’d be
a trail of bodies, but yet is there proof of this
trail of bodies anywhere, to your knowledge? -No.

Which further made him believe it was the Department of Energy.

-And what about all that
evidence investigators found? -The DoE planted them there.

It’s all a frame.

All that stuff is framed.

The banking stuff — frame job.

What’s in my car — frame job.

-It was difficult for me
to embrace Pierre’s testimony.

-Do you think he himself
believed some of the things he was saying were true?
-Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

-He was obsessed
with the government.

-Samantha Spidell attests there were some kernels
of truth in his stories.

-Pierre mentioned that his dad
had ties to the CIA, and I could tell that
he wanted his dad’s approval.

-When his father died in 2023, his obituary stated he was
a key player in clandestine Central Intelligence Agency
operations during the 1980s.

Haobsh also told Spidell that his sister was going
to star in a reality TV show.

-She got cast
on a newlyweds reality show, and Pierre was gonna be in it.

Come to find out that was true.

-In fact, both Haobsh and his
father made appearances on the second season
of the Bravo TV series “Newlyweds: The First Year.

” -Start by filling that up.

-Pierre was even shown giving his brother-in-law
a cooking lesson.

-More black pepper.

-But prosecutor Ben Ladinig
argued any grains of authenticity
in Haobsh’s life were far outweighed by deceit.

You called him a lying liar
who lies about lying.

-Right.

Lie, lie, lie, lie.

Hundreds of lies
we found on him.

His life was a con.

[ Dramatic music plays ] -On November 24, 2021, Judge Brian Hill
would get the case.

None of Pierre Haobsh’s family
members attended his trial.

The judge made his ruling — guilty on all counts.

The judge,
when he issued his ruling, said his decision was beyond
a shadow of a doubt.

Absolutely no doubt
of Pierre Haobsh’s guilt.

-Yeah.

Very satisfactory to hear that.

-I wasn’t surprised.

-And what was Pierre’s reaction
upon hearing that ruling? -Well,
he was visibly disappointed.

-On April 15, 2022, Pierre Haobsh was sentenced
to three life terms without the possibility
of parole.

It was little comfort
to those still mourning Henry, Jennie, and Emily.

-I don’t understand how
there really could be justice.

-He’s still alive,
and they’re not.

He took precious moments
that we’ll never get.

[ Soft music plays ] -I want him to feel every pain
possible for what he did.

-Not enough bad things
can happen for him.

-Nearly a decade
after the murders, the wounds are still raw.

-It’s hard to think of them.

-He was a really good man.

You don’t replace a Henry Han.

No.

-Pretty much every day, I think
of Henry and Jennie and Emily.

-I love you.

-There’s an old phrase that a good man and a good
family lives for a limited time, but a good name
shall live forever.

They lived too short, but their name lives on forever.

The document hit the floor before the echo of the door had died.

Clara Ashworth stood in the middle of Aldis Prior’s front office with ink still wet on her fingers and her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her back teeth.

She had read the numbers.

She had read every last one of them.

And every last one of them was a lie.

Sign it, Prior said.

No, sign it or I will have you removed from this property, this town, and this territory.

Clara looked at him.

She set the pen down on his desk.

Then remove me.

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The door of Aldis Prior’s office opened from the inside and Clara Ashworth came through it the hard way with Prior’s hired man’s hand around her arm and her traveling trunk scraping against the floorboards behind her.

They put her on the boardwalk outside with enough force that she had to grab the porch railing to keep from going down to her knees.

And then the door shut and the lock turned and that was the end of that.

She stood there for a moment.

The Nevada sun hit her face like a flat hand.

Red fork stretched out in front of her one long street of false fronted buildings and dusty horses and people who had stopped what they were doing to watch.

Clara straightened her spine.

She smoothed down the front of her dark brown dress with both hands.

She picked up her trunk by the rope handle and she walked.

She did not know where she was walking to.

She walked anyway.

The station master’s office was at the end of the main street, a low building with a green painted door that had seen better decades.

His name was posted above the window.

Esharp station master.

She pushed the door open.

The man behind the counter looked up.

He was old wire thin with spectacles perched on the end of a nose that had been broken at least once.

He took one look at Clara and her trunk and the expression on her face and set down his pencil.

Help you, miss.

I need to know if there is a boarding house in this town.

Widow Garrison takes borders.

Dollar a night meals included.

He paused.

You the woman prior sent east for I was.

Clara said I am not anymore.

Sharp’s mouth pressed flat.

He had the look of a man who had seen this particular kind of trouble before and did not enjoy seeing it again.

What happened if you don’t mind my asking? He asked me to sign documents that were not what he represented them to be.

Clara set her trunk down beside the door.

I read them first.

He did not expect that.

Sharp was quiet for a moment.

What kind of documents? property transfer records dressed up to look like household accounting ledgers.

She kept her voice level.

The signatures were forged.

The boundary descriptions did not match the original survey records I had reviewed on the train.

Two parcels of land that appear to belong to neighboring ranchers had been quietly folded into Prior’s holdings through a chain of amended filings that would take most people a year to untangle.

She paused.

It took me 40 minutes.

Sharp stared at her over the rim of his spectacles.

You read survey records for entertainment.

I read everything.

She held his gaze.

I was a legal accounting clerk in Cincinnati for 6 years.

I have read more fraudulent documents than honest ones.

Mr.

Prior’s work was not subtle.

Sharp was quiet again longer this time.

He picked up his pencil and set it down again.

He took off his spectacles and cleaned them with his shirt and put them back on.

Miss, he said slowly.

You understand that Aldis Prior is the business partner of Sterling Vance.

I gathered that from the letterhead.

And you understand that Sterling Vance is the deputy land commissioner for this county.

I gathered that as well.

And you still said no? I said no.

Clara agreed.

Sharp looked at her for a long moment.

Something moved behind his eyes.

Not pity, something else.

Something closer to respect the kind that comes with an edge of worry attached.

Dollar a night at widow garrisons, he said again quietly.

Third house passed the livery.

Blue door.

Thank you.

She reached for her trunk.

Miss.

She stopped.

Sharp had come around from behind the counter.

He stood in the center of the small room with his hands folded in front of him and the look on his face of a man about to say something he had been holding for a long time.

There’s a ranch about 3 mi east of town, Callaway Place.

Nate Callaway has been running that land since his daddy died near on 8 years.

Good man, honest man.

He paused.

Vance filed a boundary dispute against him 4 months back.

says the eastern 40 acres of the Callaway property overlap a parcel that belongs to the county land office.

Another pause.

Callaway’s been fighting it alone.

His hands quit when the legal trouble started.

Bank won’t extend his credit.

And the county assessor is Vance’s brother-in-law.

Clara stood very still.

Why are you telling me this? Because you just told me you can read survey records.

Sharp met her eyes.

And because Callaway is going to lose that land inside of 30 days if somebody doesn’t find the hole in Vance’s filing.

And I have been watching that man get taken apart piece by piece for 4 months and I am too old and too uneducated to stop it myself.

The room was quiet.

Outside a horse went past at a slow walk.

Hooves soft in the dust.

I have $2.

14.

Clara said the Callaway place isn’t hiring.

I don’t think he’s got anything left to pay with.

That is not what I asked.

Sharp looked at her.

No, he said.

I don’t suppose it was.

The walk east took the better part of an hour in the midday heat.

Clara carried her trunk as far as the edge of town, and then she left it with widow Garrison, who opened the blue door before Clara knocked, looked her over once, and said, “Dollar a night.

You look like you could use the meal that goes with it.

” “I may be back tonight,” Clara said.

I may not.

Widow Garrison looked at the direction Clara was facing.

Callaway Place.

Sharp told me about it.

The older woman was quiet for a moment.

She was broad-shouldered and darkeyed and had the kind of stillness that comes from having already survived the worst thing once.

“I knew his mother,” she said.

“Good woman raised that boy, right?” She paused.

Vance is going to take that land, miss.

Everybody in this town knows it.

Knowing it and stopping it are two different animals.

I know, Clara said.

I would like to see the documents before I make up my mind.

She walked east.

The Callaway Ranch came into view just as her feet were beginning to protest the distance.

She heard it before she saw it.

Not sounds of activity, but sounds of absence.

No cattle loing, no horses moving in a corral, no voices of hands working, just wind and the creek of a weather vein that needed oil.

The house itself was solid.

Whoever built it had known what they were doing.

The porch was straight, the roof intact, the windows unbroken, but the corral fence had a section down at the far end.

The garden beside the house was brown and unwatered, and the front door was standing open in the kind of careless way that meant the person inside had stopped noticing whether it was open or closed.

Clara walked up the porch steps and knocked on the open door.

Nothing.

She knocked again louder.

Go away.

The voice came from inside to the left.

Male flat with the particular texture of a man who had been saying those two words for long enough that they had worn smooth.

Mr.

Callaway.

Clara stayed in the doorway.

My name is Clara Ashworth.

I arrived in Red Fork this morning on the eastbound train.

I was supposed to be married to Aldis Prior.

I am not going to be married to Aldis Prior.

I have been told you have a land dispute with Sterling Vance and that the relevant documents are here on this property.

I would like to look at them.

A long silence.

Who told you that? The station master.

Another silence longer.

Then the sound of a chair scraping back.

Boots on floorboards.

A man filled the interior doorway and Clara took him in fast, the way she had learned to take in everything fast.

Because the first 30 seconds of looking at a thing told you more than the next 30 minutes of studying it.

He was tall, lean, in the way of a man who had been missing meals without mentioning it.

Dark hair pushed back from a face that had good bones under too much tension.

His eyes were brown and sharp and currently fixed on her with an expression that was equal parts suspicion and exhaustion.

He was wearing a shirt that had been white once and trousers that had been pressed once and boots that had been polished once, and all of those things had happened a while ago.

His right hand was wrapped in cloth from the knuckles to halfway up the forearm.

Bruised skin showed at the edges where the wrapping had shifted.

Not a working injury.

The placement was wrong.

The pattern of bruising was wrong.

Someone hit you, Clara said.

He looked at his hand, walked into a fence post.

You walked into someone’s fist.

His jaw tightened.

What do you want, miss? What did you say your name was? Ashworth.

Clara Ashworth.

She did not move from the doorway.

She had learned that standing in doorways gave you options.

I want to see the county’s boundary filing and your original deed and whatever correspondence you have had with Vance’s office in the last 4 months.

I can tell you within an hour whether the filing is fraudulent and what the specific mechanism of the fraud is.

He stared at her.

You can tell me that.

Yes, you are a woman who just got off a train.

I am a woman who spent six years as a legal accounting clerk reading documents exactly like the ones that are currently being used to take your land.

His expression did not change.

His eyes moved over to her face with the same careful assessment he probably gave horses he was considering buying.

Looking for something that would tell him whether the thing in front of him was what it claimed to be or something else entirely.

Prior sent for you.

He said he did.

And you didn’t sign whatever he put in front of you? No.

Why not? Because it was fraudulent.

She held his gaze.

And because my father lost everything he owned to a document just like it, and I have spent 10 years making sure I could read the kind of paper that destroyed him.

The silence stretched.

A fly buzzed somewhere inside the house.

The weather vein creaked.

Nate Callaway stepped back from the interior doorway.

Papers are on the table, he said.

The table in the main room had been cleared of everything except the legal documents which were spread across it in the pattern of a man who had been rearranging them for months, trying to find something he did not have the training to find.

Clara pulled the nearest chair out and sat down.

She did not take off her gloves yet.

She looked at the documents the way you look at a river before you step in, reading the surface for what the current was doing underneath.

How many parcels is Vance claiming overlap your land? She asked.

One, the eastern 40 acres, says the original survey from 1871 placed the county boundary line 200 ft west of where my deed says it is.

Does he have a copy of the 1871 survey? Filed it with the county assessor’s office.

Certified copy.

Did you request a copy of that filing? tried.

Assessor’s office said the document was under review and not available for public inspection.

Clara looked up from the papers.

They told you a certified public land record was not available for public inspection.

Nate’s mouth was flat.

Yep.

And your attorney couldn’t afford to keep one after the bank pulled my credit line in January.

She looked back at the papers.

Who is the assessor? Man named Doyle.

Walt Doyle married Vance’s sister 12 years back.

Of course he is.

She turned over the top page of correspondence.

Vance’s letter head was thick and expensive, the kind that was meant to communicate permanence and authority.

She read the first letter through once without stopping, then went back to the second paragraph and read it again slowly.

Mr.

Callaway.

Nate.

She looked up.

He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his wrapped hand tucked against his ribs and his eyes on her face.

Nate.

She turned the letter around and placed it in front of him.

Read me the second paragraph out loud.

He pushed off the wall, came to the table, bent over the letter.

His voice was careful.

The voice of a man who read but did not read often.

Pursuant to the boundary correction filing of March 14th, 1884, the original survey notation of record dated September 9th, 1871, and bearing assessor’s stamp number 4471 supersedes all subsequent deed recordings for the affected parcels, he straightened.

What does that mean? It means Vance is claiming the 1871 survey overrides your deed.

Clara reached into her traveling bag and removed a small notebook and the stub of a pencil.

What is the date on your deed? 1873.

My daddy bought the land in the spring of 1873.

From whom? Territory land office.

Direct purchase.

Do you have the original purchase receipt? He was already moving crossing the room to a wooden box on the shelf above the fireplace.

He pulled the box down and set it on the table beside the documents.

Clara watched his hands as he sorted through the papers inside.

His fingers knew where everything was.

He had been through this box many times.

Here.

He put a yellowed rectangle of paper in front of her.

She read it.

Then she turned back to Vance’s letter.

Then she opened her notebook and wrote a number down.

Then she wrote a second number beside it.

Nate.

She turned the notebook around.

He bent over it.

The number on the left is the assessor’s stamp number that Vance cites in his filing, 4471.

The number on the right is the stamp number on your original purchase receipt, which was issued by the same territory land office 2 years after that survey was allegedly conducted.

He looked at the numbers.

They’re the same number.

They are the same number, Clara said, which means either the territory land office assigned the same stamp number to two separate documents issued two years apart, which doesn’t happen.

Which does not happen.

She set her pencil down.

Or the 1871 survey that Vance filed with the county assessor’s office was created after 1873 using a stamp number copied from a legitimate document and backdated to 1871.

The room was very quiet.

Nate stood up straight.

He looked at the two numbers in her notebook and then he looked at her and his expression had changed.

The exhaustion was still there, but underneath it something else had woken up.

Something that had been asleep for long enough that it moved slowly, blinking, unsure of the light.

You got that from one receipt and one letter.

He said it is a starting point, not proof.

Proof requires the original filing from the county assessor’s office and ideally the stamp registry from the territory land office which will show when stamp number 4471 was actually issued and to what document.

She looked at him steadily but it is enough to know that the hole exists and if the hole exists it can be found.

He was quiet for a long moment.

his hand, the wrapped one, came up and pressed flat against the table beside the papers, and she noticed that his knuckles were white.

“Why?” he said.

“Why? What? Why are you doing this?” His voice was not suspicious anymore.

It was something else, something more careful.

You don’t know me.

You walked 3 miles from town to look at papers for a stranger.

You had a place to be this morning, a whole life you thought you were walking into, and instead you’re standing in my house reading county filings.

He paused.

Why? Clara looked at him.

She thought about her father’s face the morning the sheriff came.

She thought about the document he had signed because he trusted the man who handed it to him and did not know enough to read the fine print.

She thought about how he had looked at her afterward, not angry, just emptied out like the thing that had kept him upright had been quietly removed.

“Because I can read them,” she said.

“And you cannot, and there is a man in this county using that difference to take something that belongs to you.

” She picked up her pencil again.

My father could not read the document that destroyed him.

I made sure I would never be in that position and I made sure no one around me would be either if I could help it.

She turned back to the papers.

Now, do you have any correspondence from before January letters from Vance’s office before the formal boundary dispute was filed? He went back to the box.

They worked through the afternoon.

Nate pulled papers and Clara read them and she asked questions and he answered them.

And gradually the shape of what Vance had done began to emerge from the documents.

The way a body emerges from fog outline first, then detail, then the specific features that make it undeniable.

It was worse than she had thought.

The Callaway property was not the first.

She found references in the correspondence to two other ranches names, only no details, but enough to see the pattern.

Vance had been running the same mechanism for at least 3 years, filing fraudulent boundary corrections, using his brother-in-law’s office to make the filings unreachable, then leveraging his relationship with the bank to cut the affected landowners off from credit until they had no choice but to sell or lose.

The Callaway property was just the most recent and the most valuable.

The eastern 40 acres sat directly over a water source that three other properties depended on.

Whoever controlled that water controlled everything east of the ridge.

“He doesn’t want your land,” Clara said.

She had been quiet for a long time, and her voice came out rougher than she intended.

“He wants the water.

The land is just the vehicle.

” Nate was sitting across the table from her.

He had been sitting there for the last hour watching her work, not interrupting, bringing her a cup of water at some point that she had drunk without looking up.

He looked at her now.

I know, he said.

You knew.

I figured.

Couldn’t prove it.

Why didn’t you? She stopped, looked at the papers, looked at the single chair by the fireplace, the empty hooks on the wall where coats had hung the places on the kitchen shelf where things had been removed and not replaced.

How long have you been alone out here? It was not quite a question.

Nate’s jaw worked.

since February.

Last hand left in February.

And before that, little longer.

Clara looked at him.

He was looking at the table, not at her.

His wrapped hand lay flat on the wood, and his other hand was curled loosely around the water cup she had handed back to him without thinking about it.

And the light coming through the window had gone from afternoon gold to the early gray of evening.

“I need the stamp registry from the territory land office,” she said.

And I need the original boundary filing from the county assessor.

The real one, not a certified copy.

Doyle won’t give it to you.

No.

She looked at the documents spread across the table.

The shape of the fraud was clear to her now.

The specific bones of it, the places where it could be broken open.

She thought about Sharp’s face when he told her about this ranch.

She thought about Prior’s face when she set the pen down.

But there are other ways to get a look at a public record that an assessor is illegally withholding.

She paused.

Continue reading….
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