12-26-75

This is a Wonderful podcast! Detailed in every aspect, even down to the readings, verbatim, of court transcripts by the producer’s family members (I think)! All of these have a purpose, which becomes clear when they are analyzed by the attorney/author Reid. It becomes painfully obvious that an innocent man was railroaded from the start, which is bad enough. What’s worse is that a killer was allowed to escape justice. If you don’t have the patience to listen to the entire podcast the Book by the same name and author is great too, and a compelling read.

There are times sound quality could be better, but the thoroughness of the reporting is unparalleled.

I’ve listened to most episodes in their entirety, and at least parts of all. The amount of investigative work done here is incredible, and they deserve a lot of credit for that. But it’s sort of like a long research paper without a good introduction or conclusion. The information comes in droves, and is often placed randomly throughout the episodes, so much that it’s hard to piece it all together. The podcast switches back and forth between Clifton, Deangelo, the Zodiac, and introduces tons of names for the listener to keep up with. To me, they should have done this podcast simply for the Clifton case, and then done others for the other topics they broach. Or at least done a better job with the episode naming, creation, and organization. They have convinced me that Clifton didn’t kill Donna Jo Richmond, but I’m not convinced DeAngelo did it either. The podcast is decent, but it’s often information overkill without enough analysis and hard to stay engaged as a listener. The hosts should still be proud either way, they’ve done a lot of homework and it shows. It just needs to be better polished and presented.

As a person who lived through the East Area Rapist era in Sacramento I've long been fascinated by the case, and related cases, such as that of the Visalia Ransacker, which is what brought me here. At first I was impressed that the podcasters had done extensive research and had access to police files ... HOWEVER, as the series went on, it became clear that they were presenting no new evidence, and based their argument that Clifton was innocent on an unsupported hypothesis that Donna's family and the police had colluded to 'frame' Clifton. The podcasters present no evidence that any conspiracy like this ever happened. Their whole 'case' for Clifton's innocence is built on questioning minor details, without ever demonstrating that the basic crux of the case (evidence found at the scene of the crime that directly linked Clifton) was incorrect. Any reasonable reading of the facts in the case points directly to Clifton. In fact, Donna's family are (understandably) angry at the podcast for the implication that they were involved in this cover up, since they were the ones who were first in the scene and would have had to have planted the evidence, or lied about it being there when police arrived. Clearly, the podcasters hoped to tie this killing to Joseph DeAngelo, the Visalia Ransacker/East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, but there was never any evidence connecting him to this crime, and it doesn't match the MO for any of his other murders or rapes. DNA tests performed after his capture eliminated him as a suspect in the case. Clifton was a convicted sex offender who exposed himself to a woman a half hour before Donna's kidnapping, one mile away from the scene. one of his notebooks was found at the scene of the kidnapping, and his DNA was consistent with that of the killer. The podcasters present a tremendous amount of detail, but this is a real case of not seeing the forest because the trees are in the way. My biggest takeaway from this podcast was the pain it must have caused Donna's family, for no reason whatsoever. Really felt expoitive.