Detectives investigating UCLA student’s murder uncover stunning betrayal

John Doe #135 had a railway tunnel, a frightening graffiti and a dark mystical, where the children dare to walk at night. People lived near the Spahn Film Farm, called the Manson Tunnel-Cultic Leader and his students, and one had sacred terror on the entrance.

Until June 1990, the conflicting inspiration became a common theme in Los Angeles Mediasphere. The serial killer, known as Stalker at night, was sentenced to death a year ago, and the McMartin pre -school harassment case was still passing by the courts with allegations of ritual abuse of children.

When Venturesome local youth discovered the body of a young man in the pitch-black tunnel on Chatsworth Park, Lapd thought about the possibility of hidden motives. The sacrifice was soon described as Ronald Baker, a 21 -year -old UCLA student who specializes in the field of astrophysics. On June 21, a day, which was considered sacred by occultists, was killed in a place known to be gathered.

Ronald Baker is in an undated photo.

(With the permission of Patty Elliott)

Baker was skinny and physically ineffective with a mop with curly blond hair. He had previously been in the tunnel and was known to meditate in the region. He had 18 knife wounds and his throat was cut. Necklace: Pentagram necklace. In the bedroom of the Van Nuys apartment: witchcraft books, a Pentagram decorated candle and a brochure for Mystic’s Circle, a group dedicated to “shamanism” and “Magick”.

The title authors leaned over. Daily News, “the murdered student may have been sacrificed,” he said. “The murdered man often visited the area of ​​occultists, Times Times said.

The learned detectives Baker was a sweet -tempered practitioner of Wicca, a form of nature worship that escaped from violence. A friend said shy, introverted and “determinedly.” However, as a detective speculated journalists, we do not know if he graduated from the dark side of the light at some point. ”

Inspectors examine the scene where Ronald Baker’s body is located.

(Los Angeles Police Department)

People said he wasn’t enemies. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show loved Singalongs and worked in Renaissance Fairs. He wrote a birthday card in Elizabethan English for his sister.

He went to the hills to meditate, and had he stumbled with practitioners who applied more malignant magic? He was known as a slight drinking, but he showed that he was very drunk when the toxicology results were killed.

In this series, Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles and the old crimes beyond the celebrities, forgotten, uncertainty, dive into the archives, and the memories of those there again visit.

Did someone who trusted pull him into the tunnel? How was his death dependent on the immoral voice man who called for Baker’s father at that time and demanded a ransom of $ 100,000 in exchange for his son’s life?

Nathan BLALOCK’s photo of the US Army.

(US Army)

Baker’s roommates, Duncan Martinez and Nathan Blocck, both of them in the early 20s were military veterans, the last known people who saw him alive and served as each other’s alibi. They said they left him at a Van Nuys bus stop and plans to join mystic’s Circle friends for his solstice.

There was no sign of hostility among roommates, and Baker was considered a former sailor Martinez, one of his best friends. Years ago, they met working at Sears.

Martinez helped to carry Baker’s coffin and spoke at the commemoration ceremony at the Woodland Hills United Methodist Church. Martinez said, “Like many men I know, he was never physically strong, Mart Martinez said, but was“ the most friendly, the sweetest man ”.

His voice is full of emotions. Martinez, “he would talk to everyone and the fall of a penny would be there for everyone,” he continued. “And I hope this is something I can overcome, because I love him. It’s hard to think about a time without Ron.”

But something was forced to tell the story of roommates. When Baker’s father warned them about the ransom calls, he said that he was looking for his roommates at the Chatsworth Park, knowing that he was one of Baker’s favorite. Why were they assuming that a man was taking him there?

Duncan Martinez in a Lapd interview room.

(Los Angeles Police Department)

There was another disturbing detail: Martinez said that Baker gave him a check of $ 109, but a handwriting expert Baker’s signature was fake.

Martinez accepted a lie test, described his friend’s murder as a “very insensitive crime ve and insisted that he had nothing to do with it. Martinez said, Martinez, “I never knew that no one has been hatred or even liked it for more than a minute,” Martinez said.

The test showed deception and escaped from the state. He’s gone for about 18 months.

He came to Utah, whom he was arrested on a passport application. Lapd Det hoped to rediscover herself as an identity of “Jonathan Wayne Miller oluş, a identity of a child who started to died after accidentally dranching drano in 1974. Rick Jackson is now retired. Jackson said that Martinez sliced ​​the child’s death certificate from a Massachusetts state archive, hoping to conceal Martinez’s fraud.

In February 1992, after making sure that his statement could not be used against him, Martinez finally spoke. He said it was Blamock’s idea. They were watching an old “Dragnet” section. Martinez was an old sailor and Blamrock was the former army. With military information, they believed they could do a better job.

They pulled Baker to the park with a beer and the promise of acquaintance with the girls, and Blalock lend him to a marine paste Ka-bar knife Martinez. Baker begged Martinez to help and replied to his friend who used Martinez knife to finish the job.

Im I told him to be sure he was finished, because I didn’t want Ron to suffer, Mart Martinez said. “I believe Nathan cut his throat several times.” He admitted that Baker hidden his voice while calling for ransom to his father.

But the ransom never provided a place to deliver his money. The plan looked as doubtful as cruel, and Martinez offered very little to clarify. It sounded like Clueless as everyone else or acted like. “You know, he doesn’t completely clicked with me either,” he said.

“They ruined their lives and all their lives with the most stupid crime,” the victim’s sister Patty Baker Elliott said in a recent interview with Times.

Ronald and Patty Baker graduated from university in the 1980s.

(By the permission of Baker Family)

Finally, the hidden traps were a red ring fish aimed at throwing the police from the smell of real criminals and real motives.

“They prepared this thing for the summer solstice, because they knew you wanted to be outside, I hope they celebrated the solstice,” he said. “What is the chance of all days, that they choose to do this?”

Jackson, one of the two chief detectives of the case, describes the investigation in his book “Black Tunnel White Magic: Detection of a Detective and ‘Los Angeles of 90.

Blamock was accused of murder. Martinez remained free for the disappointment of the detectives who believed that he was equally guilty of him. The expressions given under an immune grant could not be used against him.

Det. Rick Jackson is in Lapd’s robbery murder department.

(Los Angeles Police Department)

“I am almost accusing Duncan, because as Ron’s best friend, stop this thing and say, ‘One minute, Nathan, what are we talking about here?’ “He didn’t and let him pass, and what happened.”

Martinez may have escaped justice, but it was swollen. He claimed that a man arrested for thitping a Utah sports equipment store threatening to reveal his role in the murder of California and forced him to steal a mountain bike.

As a pure Lake City detective recorded him, Martinez put him into the locality of his roommate’s death, screamed his guilt – made without the promise of immunity and therefore enough to blame him.

“We could legally put him in the tunnel for the first time,” Jackson said.

The jury members found both men guilty of first -degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional evacuation.

In June 2020, Baker’s sister, Gov. He was surprised to come across a news site that reported that Gavin Newsom intervened to hire Martinez’s punishment and made it suitable for conditional evacuation. Nobody told him. The governor said that Martinez decided to improve himself in prison in a quarter century.

The news was not less shock to Jackson, who thought that the commission language has minimized the role of Martinez’s role in fabricating the kidnapping plan that led to the murder. He said that he saw Martinez as a “pathological liar ve and was one of the most manipulative people he met in his long career.

Martinez could not only help Baker, at the same time called on Blalock to ıt finish him, and then posed as a friend who comforted the mourning family. He remembers how skillfully the victim’s sister Martinez is compassionate.

“He hugged everyone and spoke to everyone in the service,” he said. “He cried. During his eulogy, drowned and cried.”

A prosecutor aimed to oppose the release of Martinez at the conditional release hearing, but later he was newly elected. Atty. George Gascon launched a policy that prohibits his office from sending advocates. The victim’s sister talked about the loss of the sister. Jackson talked about Martinez’s cheating gift.

“It was like spitting into the wind, Jacks Jackson said.

The conditional evacuation board was with Martinez and left the prison in April 2021. He stayed behind the black bars.

Rick Jackson and Matthew McGOUH, “Black Tunnel White Magic” writers.

(Jj geiger)

For 35 years, the retired detective reflects the case and the essence of meaninglessness. Jackson came to think of this as the murder of “Folie à Deux”, referring to the guilty duo, which means “the madness of the two” and who would probably not be able to do their members alone. He saw this as “Blue Collar Leopold and Loeb Davam ve and compared it with the rich Chicago young people who killed a child in 1924 with the motive of committing an excellent crime.

An old police show about the kidnapping, two young veterinarians, until a plan was shaped to try to try, encouraged to start jumping. They were weighing possible goals. The student they shared an apartment, Wiccan Pacific without hostile seemed to be appropriate.

“You should understand your personalities, especially together,” Jackson said. “This is a little bit like ‘I will use you once and make it better’. One of them would say yes, instead we can do it. ‘