The Mystery of Mitrice Richardson
A secretive and sketchy police investigation leaves a family searching for answers.
Theories in this perplexing death case range from oak tree poisoning to police officers raping and murdering the 24-year-old victim. What happened to Mitrice Richardson?
Mitrice Richardson, a beautiful 24-year-old psychology major, disappeared on September 17th in 2009, after being released from custody at the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department while experiencing a serious psychotic episode likely stemming from bipolar disorder. Latice Sutton, Mitrice’s mother, was never contacted when the police opted to release Mitrice at 12:28am instead of 5am the following morning like they had promised Latice minutes before they would.
Mitrice was released without a phone, ID or money, alone at night in an area she didn’t know with her car at a towing station eleven miles away.
Nearly 11 months later, her naked, half-mummified remains were found by rangers scouring Dark Canyon for growing farms. Mitrice’s skull was found separated from her body, and placed upside down — Still, it was ruled an accidental death by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
The Discovery
It was a hot August day when Mitrice’s half-mummified, half-skeletal remains were discovered in the wilderness of Dark Canyon. She was found in a creek located deep in the canyon and difficult to find, surrounded by rocky boulders and overgrown forrest. Her head separated from her body and her clothing removed.
The first deputy who arrived at the scene spent 90 minutes there before he notified the coroner’s office. Two helicopters were dispatched, one for the police officers and one for the coroner’s team. While the police officers were airlifted to the scene quickly, the coroner’s team would wait for hours to no avail. The police excused this by stating no other helicopters were available, though there has been no known shortage of helicopters within the LASD, and the L.A. County fire departments were available to send off choppers from nearby sites (like they do from time to time).
After spending 6 and a half hours alone at the scene, the police unconventionally packed up her remains and transported them back to the station, leaving behind several of Mitrice’s bones and defying the instructions of the coroner to protect the scene until professionals could investigate. State penal code in California makes it a violation of rules to wait 90 minutes before reporting human remains and to move a body from place of death without permission of the coroner or the coroner’s appointed deputy.
The incident rightfully sent shock-waves through crime-investigation services, and an LAPD officer with 40-years on the force said of the incident: “Law enforcement’s job is to protect the crime scene, you never move a body without permission.” The events of August 9, he says, sound “ass backwards.”
In all, sheriff’s personell acted in a manner that is unheard of when handling Mitrice’s remains. Having exclusive access to a crime scene for nearly 7 hours, and then obstructing the area before medical examiners can investigate, interferes with any chance of establishing a fair report. Determining what happened to Mitrice without observing how she was found in relation to her environment was difficult, and taking samples and fingerprints of her remains was infeasible as they had been contaminated by the officers.
Regarding her severed skull, Lieutenant Rosson and Captain Smith of the LASD said the deputies on scene had pulled Mitrice’s fully intact corpse out of the ground by her head, which resulted in her skull detaching from the body in the act. This was debunked by a picture one of the rangers had taken of the crime scene before the deputies arrived and ultimately shown the coroner, where Mitrice’s skull is seen resting upside down without it’s mandible on the upper torso.
Furthermore, it is not only improbable a half-skeletal corpse can be pulled out of the ground by it’s skull the way Rosson and Smith described and still remain intact, it’s impossible. Because of this apparent lie and numerous breaches of protocol unexplainably performed by police that day, it was difficult to navigate through what was a true indication of the crime scene and what was not — and the official coroner’s report ruled her cause of death as undetermined. Mitrice’s clothing was never tested for DNA.
The LASD has since refused to disclose whether Rosson or Smith were part of the crew members who were airlifted to the crime scene that day.
Regarding Mitrice’s garments, Lieutenant Rosson declared that animals had removed them. The animals would have had to unbuckled her belt, tugged off her tight jeans, removed her socks, sneakers and two t-shirts, unclipped her two-hook bra and gotten off both her bra and underwear from underneath her — all without inflicting damage to her body or clothing. The animals would have had to carry her jeans and bra 600 and 700 feet down the canyon and dropped them in the creek, then dragged her belt another 100 feet to hang it on the mess of vines it was found on.
“It’s absurd to suggest this was the work of animals, besides some rust on the zipper and buckle, the jeans and belt showed no significant damage, whether by animals or nature. The clothing could have been worn after a washing.” — Clea Koff, forensic anthropologist who assisted on the case.
In other words, her clothing did not show signs of being exposed to the elements for 11 months. When confronted with this professional opinion, Lieutenant Rosson offered the explanation that the river was responsible for removing her clothing. The river would have had to rise 60 feet above the creek bed, pulled her body upstream, and again; unbuckled her belt, untied her sneakers, unclipped her bra, removed all remaining articles of clothing and somehow hung her belt on top of the mess of vines nearby.
Mitrice was found half-mummified. A state of de-composition in which the body exhibits a leather-like texture, almost as if it’s been frozen in time, occurs when a body has been exposed to subfreezing temperature or an extremely dry environment — like an attic or a closet — for an extended period of time after death. While mummification can happen naturally, it’s extremely rare and most finds of mummified corpses are in deserts or frozen in glaciers. Law enforcement’s conclusion that Mitrice wandered off into Dark Canyon and died by herself is questionable, as the environment of the canyon fundamentally does not support mummification.
As of cause of death, the Sheriff’s Department suggested oak tree poisoning, a condition so rare no reliable statistics exist. If this was not the case, Mitrice was surely one of the two people in California each year to die from rattlesnake bites. Mitrice, according to the Sheriff’s Department, hiked two hours uphill from the station into the Santa Monica Mountains. Subsequently, she climbed and crawled through the wilderness of Dark Canyon, a place her family and investigators used climbing gear to access, and promptly laid down and died.
Night of The Disappearance
Cruising through Malibu in her ’98 Civic on the evening of September 16th, 2009, Mitrice was drawn towards the glowing signs of the highly rated Geoffrey’s. A restaurant known for its delicate menu and beautiful view of the Pacific, once attracting stars like Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy.
The valet at Geoffrey’s recalled Mitrice as unstable and “speaking nonsense”, at one point he even found her rummaging through the cd’s in his own personal car. When confronted by the valet, Mitrice uttered a string of words that did not make sense. The valet warned the restaurant staff of Mitrice’s behavior, but ultimately decided she was harmless. Once inside the restaurant, Mitrice ordered a Kobe steak and an Ocean Breeze Cocktail — totaling at $89.
After hearing the lively chatter of a nearby table, Mitrice couldn’t resist grabbing a chair and joining the group. This proved to be an important event, as they could corroborate how Mitrice was speaking and acting the hours leading up to her disappearance. Matching the description the valet and restaurant manager gave the police, the group recounted Mitrice’s erratic behaviour and strange remarks. At one point telling them she was going to Hawaii and would contact them upon her arrival.
When Mitrice failed to pay her bill the restaurant called the police, who upon their arrival found a joint in her possession. She was arrested on the charges “defrauding an innkeeper” and “possession of less than an ounce of marijuana”. Her car was towed to a location eleven miles from the Sheriff’s station Mitrice was later released from.
While law enforcement officers are allowed to detain a person who appears to be mentally unstable on a possible 5150, code for a person who might be a danger to themselves or others (the arrestee will be put on “watch commander hold”), or choose to send the person to a facility for a 72-hour psych-evaluation Mitrice was brought to the station instead — despite her exhibiting numerous symptoms of psychosis.
During her call with the police, Latice Sutton expressed concerns that if they were to release her daughter in the middle of the night she might get hurt, considering it wasn’t an area she knew well and the fact that she was clearly unwell. The officer assured her they would keep Mitrice until 5 am the next morning. Latice laughed and said she felt at ease knowing her daughter would sleep at the station, and joked that she wouldn’t want to wake up to a morning report of her daughter “lost somewhere with her head chopped off.”
However, the Sheriff’s department went onto release Mitrice minutes later, concluding that since she had a clean record keeping her could violate official rules. They never notified Latice Sutton, who went to sleep thinking her daughter was safe.
6 hours later, at approximately 6:30 am, a phone call to the LASD came in from Bill Smith in Monte Nido, a residential area located in the Santa Monica Mountains. ‘A young black woman’ was sitting in his backyard, “resting” she said, when questioned by the confused resident. This turned out to be Mitrice Richardson. Smith reported that Mitrice was acting bizarrely, and perhaps in need of help. Despite earlier that night releasing a woman matching Smith’s description, whom several people reported as unfit to care for herself, it is unclear whether the LASD actually sent any of the 20 deputies on shift at the time to the scene. In the case any deputies were dispatched, the Sheriff’s Department will not reveal who they were, when they arrived or whether they actually got out of their car to look for Mitrice.
Later that morning, neighbors of Bill Smith reported hearing screams coming from a nearby vacant house. The LASD has not disclosed if this was further investigated.
A Scrappy Investigation
From withholding information and denying the existence of crucial videotapes to contaminating the crime scene, the LASD’s investigation following Mitrice’s death is littered with unexplainable breaks of protocol.
While releasing a young woman in a psychotic episode alone and without any means of finding her way home or contacting anyone in the middle of the night is unethical, it was deemed by the police department as fully legal. Partly because in the official police report Mitrice was portrayed as “completely normal”, a viewpoint that is contradicted by everyone who met Mitrice that night and the police themselves in an email sent from Lieutenant Scott Chew to Captain Thomas Martin regarding her release.
Lieutenant Chew said in the email he felt uneasy about letting Mitrice go, as he experienced her as unfit to care for herself. Chew spoke of the arresting deputy Loureiro’s “instinct” that something might happen to Mitrice if they released her, and how his instinct was only validated when she did end up missing. Chew later came out with a statement saying he didn’t remember sending the email or ever speaking to Loureiro.
With her daughter officially missing, mother Latice Sutton justly asked to see the surveillance tapes from the station the night Mitrice was released. The response from the station was that no surveillance camera actually records, they’re sole purpose is monitoring. This turned out to be a lie, and the surveillance video of Mitrice spent 3 months in Captain Thomas Martin’s desk drawer while he denied its existence. When Mitrice’s parents were finally allowed to view the tape, it was edited.
The night of Mitrice’s disappearance, a deputy present at the station denied ever being there, despite being seen on the surveillance video leaving the building two minutes after Mitrice. He later said in a phone call with journalist Mike Kessler, “the night this nonsense happened, I was one of the guys that kept away from this, minding my own business.” The deputy was transferred less than 6 months before Mitrice’s parents viewed the security tapes and his name has been kept from the public. Though the Sheriff’s Department stated he could not have harmed Mitrice as he was on official business with his partner and Mitrice was later spotted in Monte Nido, they did not acknowledge that the errand would only have taken a few minutes of the deputies’ time and that their whereabouts the day Mitrice disappeared were not accounted for.
Sheriff Lee Baca
Former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca was, on all accounts, a “bad cop”. From lying to the FBI about inmate abuse to corruption and celebrity favoritism, he oversaw the department when Mitrice went missing and after she was found dead. It was Lee Baca who concluded that “all applicable laws, policies, and procedures were followed” regarding Mitrice’s release. Baca is now a prison inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution La Tuna, where he will be serving an unrelated 3-year sentence for obstructing a federal investigation into his department’s violent, scandal-plagued jail system.
Aftermath
To Mitrice’s family, her case remains unsolved. Though both parents received $450,000 each in restitution in 2019, money is the last thing they’re interested in. “It was never about the money,” Mitrice’s father, Michael Richardson says, “We want a trial.”
In February 2016, he wrote a heartfelt letter to then California General Attorney Kamala Harris, pleading her to investigate Mitrice's death. When Harris agreed to open an investigation into the death case, it was a beacon of hope.
This would soon turn into bitter disappointment, as Harris shut down the investigation after a year — concluding there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the LASD. Michael accused Harris of only taking interest in his daughter’s case to gain publicity during her race for the US Senate (to which she was elected in November, 2016). “Kamala Harris is a phony,” he said. “We don’t need people like that leading us.”
Another glimmer of hope would appear when the newly appointed L.A. County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, announced he wanted to assess the whole case from the beginning. Only a few weeks would go by before he announced there would be no new investigation after all, as he determined;
“…no reason to rehash a case already subjected to investigations by the state attorney general’s office, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s department’s internal review.”
Villanueva based his decision on the case report by the same sheriff’s department who grossly mishandled Mitrice’s case and outright lied on several occasions. The same sheriff’s department who was under the management of Lee Baca, the infamously corrupt and morally skewed bad-guy. The family was, once again, left feeling hopeless and wronged.
Nevertheless, Villanueva made some positive changes after looking at Mitrice’s case. Missing persons’ reports for adults can now be filed right away, dismissing the previous 24-hour wait. Deputies will also ensure that arrestees have their cellphones and other personal belongings before being released from jail. Most importantly, persons exhibiting mental health issues will be evaluated before being released.
As for everyday life for Mitrice’s parents, it hasn’t been the same for 11 years. Latice now suffers from debilitating anxiety and depression. She carries with her an unbearable guilt for not rushing to the police station as soon as she heard of her daughter’s arrest. She described slowly driving behind her youngest daughter on her way to school, too afraid to let her walk alone. Michael continues to search for new ways to get his daughter’s case re-investigated.
Although many things lie in uncertainty, one thing doesn't; Latice Sutton and Michael Richardson will never give up the fight for their daughter to one day receive justice.
