Gone with the Winnebago PT 1
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This is exactly right.

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. How about you? I'm hanging in there. Maybe better than hanging in there.

Hey, that's an improvement. I feel like we pretty much stick with hanging in there. So that's good. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to ask you a question. So this case that we're getting ready to talk about, the case appears in a book written by the most prolific, I think, author, certainly true crime author of all time, Ann Rule. Oh. I know. And who wrote a book called Most Dangerous Killers. And this case pops up in that book.

So, number one, have you read any Anne Rule is one of my big questions. I think the one Anne Rule book I've read, I believe it was called Stranger Beside Me. It was about her relationship with Ted Bundy. But I am familiar with Anne Rule, you know, to a point, but I don't think I haven't extensively read her.

I actually haven't either, and I should, just because she's such an icon. So, you know, this case appears in the book, and it got me wondering, do you ever read any of the books about the cases that you've covered? Like, Paul, I kid you not, I can't even keep track of how many Golden State Killer, both before and after Joseph D'Angelo books there are. Did you even read I'll Be Gone in the Dark? No, but that's more complicated because of my close relationship with Michelle. Mm-hmm.

I just have not been able to bring myself to read it just because it would bring up memories. But when it comes to true crime, I used to voraciously read true crime early on in my career, and I considered it part of my studies.

And then as I got more and more invested in my own cases, you know, I just couldn't continue to consume other cases I had to focus in. And then when you think about something like Golden State Killer, when I really focused in on that case, that case with all the cases associated with that series, we had over 15,000 pages of case file.

Imagine reading a novel that's 15,000 pages long and any detail within those pages or something that could turn the case. So I couldn't be distracted by other people's stories, so to speak. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, you and I had been talking a while back about Zodiac and how you had worked the Zodiac case. And we will get into that at another time. But how you had worked the Zodiac case was.

And had actually read Robert Graysmith's book, who was the journalist who, well, I would say cartoonist, who arguably worked the case also. So you are reading those kinds of books. Yeah.

Yeah, that was during that era early on in my career. And of course, you know, being in the Bay Area was very familiar as Zodiac before I even started working the case. In fact, on my commute, sometimes I would have to take a side road, which was Lake Herman Road. And that was where his first attack occurred, you know. And then subsequently, once I got involved with the case, I was able to take a side road.

I did go to every crime scene of his and then actually did a TV show way back when, like 2010, called Mystery Quest, where myself, one of these online sleuths who I had never met prior to this, went to each of the crime scenes and at...

All but the Presidio shooting, we had original investigators from the agencies show up and walk us through. And there's a show that I'm in with Zodiac. Wow. And so you read that book.

Did you come away with any insights from that book that you had not known, digging into your own files and getting all of the information that you had gathered in the mid-'90s? Well, you know, the book itself I read before I really did any work on the Zodiac case. And so a lot of my original information on Zodiac came from Grace Smith's books.

As I got involved with the case and met with several of the agencies, as well as found files within my crime lab, because there had been evidence submitted from Zodiac back in the 70s to my lab. So I had access to forensics reports and stuff. You know, I started to get, you know, official information about Zodiac. And, you know, and that's where...

When you look at a true crime book, you always have to understand sort of maybe the journalistic integrity of the person that's writing the book and what they what materials are relying on, you know, to have, you know, is it factual? Is there a lot of supposition, you know, and then also you like with with Grace Smith's book, it's also, well, who is he and evaluating his investigative skills.

abilities. He may have had a decent aptitude, but what was his experience in taking a look at things and evaluating circumstantial evidence? Had he worked other cases? Had he run across similar types of suspects? Because he does focus in on a particular suspect in his books.

And that's where somebody like myself, as I'm reading and rereading his material, I end up recognizing, okay, he doesn't necessarily have full comprehension of how to build a case that is based on factual information and having a nexus to the actual crimes themselves. And I see this a lot with some of the online sleuths.

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So you are too busy now to read books, not even my books. You can't even take the time to read. Is that what's happening? You can't even read my books? You're giving me a guilt trip. What about the audio book, Paul? You know, I do read my own audio book, so if that's any incentive. I'm sorry. I have not. I haven't read. As if you don't listen to me enough. Yeah, I can understand taking a break.

Well, this is a case, as I said, from Ann Rule. And so we do quote her book, which is really insightful, I think, in some parts. So let's jump in. This is a very, very contemporary case, mid-1970s. I mean, 20th century, here we go. Yeah, well, this is, you know, the decade that I probably did the most work in. Okay, well, this will be interesting. So we're in Washington State, and let's set the scene.

So let's talk about the couple who will be our focus. It's a couple named Ruth and Tony Fernandez. And let's talk about how they met. So I'm not going to talk about who the victim is, if there is a victim in this case. Okay. I want to set the intention that we're going to get to know them as a couple and know what their background is like. And then kind of moving forward, we can put some pieces together.

So they met in 1971. She was 42, Ruth, and she was Ruth Logg, not Ruth Fernandez just yet.

She was widowed after the death of her husband in 1966. So she had been single for about five years. She had two adult children, and she wanted to downsize because they were out of the house. She was in Auburn, Washington. She put her house up for sale. And in 1971, this man who was good-looking and very charming pulls up in the Cadillac, knocks on the door. He says, "I'm sorry. I'm interested in buying your house." She said, "Okay, I'll give you a tour."

He introduces himself as Dr. Anthony Fernandez, but he says, you can call me Tony. He's 48, so just about six years older than she is. He is divorced, and he has a counseling clinic nearby. So he's a psychologist.

And he wants a house because he needs to commute pretty easily back and forth between his home and his work at this counseling center. So Ruth is charmed immediately. He is good looking. He seems very kind. And he says, let's go to dinner and talk about the house, which is an interesting ruse. And she says, okay.

And they have such a great time. They start dating and she pulls the house off the market and they shack up. He moves in. This is a very quick relationship. You know, she is taken by him. And for me, I mean, there's nothing wrong with jumping into relationships. I have done that myself and they have ended fine, but they have ended quickly.

But when we are talking about a true crime case, I think that alarm bells should go off, that you are jumping into a relationship with someone that you might not know very well, and that could make either one of them vulnerable, frankly. Well, you know, right off the bat, I'm kind of guessing where this is potentially going in terms of one way or the other. There appears, you know, this...

very short-term or short-dating relationship, and now you have Tony moving in, you know, in some ways, you start thinking about, my mind is going towards, okay, is he sort of a con man? Is he finding a vulnerable woman, you know, that appears to have some financial assets and

You know, is he going around and hitting open houses and meeting women and finding the one that's going to be the, you know, the one that he can exploit? But, you know, I'll see how this develops.

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That sounds like an interesting scheme. Hitting open houses and meeting women. Yeah, that would make sense.

Well, we don't know just yet, but when they get involved with each other, he has all sorts of assets that he has talked to her about. He has timber holdings. He's got this counseling practice. He has a nice car. She is worth several hundred thousand dollars, which, by the way, is a couple of million today. I'm in denial.

That money from the year I was born, 74, would be worth a couple hundred thousand dollars, would be worth almost $2 million today. But that's what the World Wide Web tells me. So she's worth quite a lot of money. And, you know, he is...

is seemingly smitten with her. They seem to have a good relationship. Her family does not like Tony, not one little bit. They do some surface-level digging, and they look in local newspaper archives. You know, this is the 70s. They work really hard. There's no internet. So they work really hard and start digging in, and they see that he's been involved in some fraud lawsuits. And

and he was in prison for fraud. And we could talk about a little bit more about that in a little bit. I'm trying to build a picture here of Tony. He seems successful right now, and they seem to be in a pretty good relationship. Her family goes to Ruth and says, listen, I don't know this guy. You know, I know that he has this counseling practice. I know he has this and that, but he's had these lawsuits. And she says, bug off. I already know. I don't care. It's fine.

And Anne Rule, the author, says her impression was that Ruth was somebody who believed in second chances. And she was not going to not be with this man who was treating her very well just because he had this sort of dubious past.

Just because he's been convicted of fraud doesn't mean he's violent. And so I don't want you to jump to conclusions just yet. But what do we think about the fraud charges and lawsuits and all of this? Well, I think, you know, of course, you have to consider, you know, what does this mean about who Tony really is? But at the same time, you know, this could be something where in, you know, select occupations, you

You can have people accuse you of certain types of crimes or civil actions, and now you're having to defend your name and you're completely innocent.

So at this point, you know, the fraud aspect, without knowing any more, I'm just going, okay, you know, he has had some legal stuff going on in the past. I mean, I believe you brought up that he had been in prison. And, of course, I'd like to know what he was in prison for. And I'm sure you'll tell me at some point. Yes, it involves fraud. So at least it's not.

violent, but it does put Toni in a pretty bad light here. A couple of things start to happen that make her family really nervous. First of all, of course, she marries him very quickly. So they had only been together for 10 months. They get married in January of 1972. And, you know, this for them is sort of head snapping too fast.

Her estate had been in her will left to her two daughters, Kathleen and Susan. She changes the will, and now everything goes to Tony. This is not a big surprise. You know, I mean, I know that happens when people get married. But the young women who are her daughters are incredibly alarmed by all sorts of things. And I think they just think he's a sleazy guy. But Ruth can't see it.

Now, I was actually just having a conversation with two of my closest friends about this a couple of weeks ago. When you have a friend who is involved with somebody, a man or a woman, who you just don't like...

And they break up. And then you say, oh, that guy was the worst or she was terrible to you. And then they get back together and then they create this distance. So I think that this is a fine line for Kathleen and Susan, her daughters, who are trying not to, you know, create this big problem between them and their mother. But at the same time, you know, what do you do if you're really scared that your mother is jumping into a relationship that's

that could potentially, I don't think they think this is going to end in death, but could potentially ruin her financially. I don't know what the answer is. And I don't know if you do either, but what do you do? It's a tough situation because you think about this phrase, blinded by love. The family members, they are possibly seeing very clearly the type of man Tony is, but Ruth is head over heels for Tony. And she's

liking the way he's treating her and would be in denial if any family members or friends come up to her and say, hey, I've got some concerns. And she basically would be in that, well, bug off. You know, I love him, you know, and you're misinterpreting who he is. And I think it's difficult because right now Tony hasn't done anything wrong.

that we know of. You know, of course, Ruth could be keeping secrets. They've been married for now, let's say about a year or so, and we can talk about Tony's background. We don't know a lot about his childhood, but he was born in Washington state in 1921. He seems legitimate from early on. So in the early 1950s, when he is in his mid to late 20s, he becomes active in Washington and Oregon's timber industry. So remember I said he had timber holdings.

He had a lot of success. By the time he was 31, he was running a company. He had a big house with a bunch of cars. And at this point, Tony is married with four children, and he's on his local city council. He's active, well-respected in his community. But before long, I think the outlook of the community on Tony's image is starting to go down because by the mid-1950s,

A 13-year-old girl accuses Tony of what they called indecent liberties. Of course, we are going to say molestation here. He is eventually acquitted of these alleged crimes by a judge. We don't have a lot of details about this, Paul. We just know he was accused.

And not convicted, not, you know, anything. But this is becoming more serious. And I don't think this is the stuff that her family was able to dig up because it sounds like it was dismissed. But now things are becoming a lot more, I think, in focus regarding Tony and kind of his criminal activity and certainly his morals. Yeah.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to know exactly how the accusation of these indecent liberties came to be. Did the parents of the 13-year-old girl report this, report Tony to the police? Did the 13-year-old girl give some statements? The fact that it's dismissed, you think about this era, 1950s. You know, they were so...

when it came to, you know, child molestation, crimes against children, crimes against women during this time, that if they did not have

you know, some overwhelming case that just appalled everybody, it likely is going to be either reduced charges or dismissed. So it's hard to evaluate this dismissal. Does that mean that he was falsely accused? I'm really needing to know more of the details about how that case progressed in order to say, oh, you know, yeah, this Tony, he obviously had an issue in the 50s with this kid.

So I wish we had a little bit more information on that. Also, I think that even the accusation itself...

seems to have put him in a pretty bad light. And then it gets worse in a different way. A couple of years later, he is accused of logging in areas that he has no authorization to be in. And then it sounds like he has swindled buyers of land by offering to sell logging sites that he doesn't actually own. So here comes the fraud. He's accused of taking advantage of landowners also by having them sign contracts that were blank and

And according to these folks, these accusers of his, the contracts would be fraudulently filled in as if the landowners had agreed to hand this over. Now, as an aside, I'm not sure why you would sign a blank contract, but it sounds like this was something he was doing. So he would rip off buyers and he would rip off sellers at the same time.

So this is where some of the fraud comes in. It just seems like Tony's character has really been in question for now it looks like about 20 years or so. Sure. You know, with the accusation of the sexual assault on the 13-year-old, I would say there's smoke, right? Yeah. Most certainly there's smoke there.

Now you have this fraud and being able to get the individuals, the buyers and sellers, to sign blank contracts. That's interesting. That sounds like Tony was able to get these individuals to trust him and say, hey, I can make this happen. I'll fill in the details later, right? And because of his personality, he ingratiated himself enough to where he

these financial partners had trust in him. He's also showing a level of greed by committing this crime. And so now kind of extrapolating up into Ruth, who's a wealthier single female who was trying to downsize from the house that she had. That tells me that her house is probably...

And he's recognizing that if he goes and sees this, he's going, wow, she has a really large house. She's single. He's probably very adept at reading the person and going, likely has some larger bank accounts. So I could see where now his personality, the charm can come out because he's now pursuing a greed aspect with Ruth.

That's how I'm starting to extrapolate from his criminal history. He definitely is motivated by money, it sounds like. And remember I said he had four kids. He had a very large house, flashy cars. I was driving around with one of my girls the other night, and we were seeing a driveway that was just full of really expensive cars. And of course, it's this massive house. And one of my kids said, well, this is somebody who obviously makes a lot of money. And I said, no.

I don't know, because, you know, we especially in our country, we know people can completely over leverage every part of their lives. And that's one of the things that I talk to my kids about a lot. Financial literacy, you know, don't spend more than you have. And so that reminded me of Tony as I was kind of reading up on this last night. Boy, appearances really do mask life.

who the person is. And, you know, this becomes a big problem for him. He finally gets caught. There's a four-year investigation in this, what Ann Rule calls a timber swindle. And he is indicted in '62 by a grand jury, federal grand jury. He is convicted on seven counts of interstate fraud and one count of conspiracy. He gets 12 years in prison.

But he's released on parole sometime around 1970. And then one year later, he shows up at this lovely woman's house with a for sale sign in the front yard and knocks on the door. But in the meantime, his wife dumped him and divorced him. This is kind of where we are. Ruth has met this man and she says she knows all about his history.

At least she thinks she knows all about his history. He's maybe telling her something that is minimizing what he was truly doing. You know, we see this a lot with registered sex offenders. You know, they go out and they want to get into relationships again. And of course,

it's public knowledge that there are sex offenders. And so their new partner, potential partner could easily find out. And oftentimes these guys who were convicted of, you know, horrific rapes or even worse, they say, oh, well, you know, I, I was 19 years old and I just got caught having sex with a, an underaged minor type of thing, you know? So they tried to try to minimize it to explain what their love interest was.

if you want to call it that, potentially could find out down the road. So I would imagine Tony is going to Ruth knowing that there's maybe some public records or if anybody really digs into him that they will find out that he has this conviction and this prison sentence. And so he's maybe saying, oh, well, yeah, I had this, but, you know, really, it wasn't that big of a deal. And

And, you know, I'm sure this accusation from the 13-year-old from his past that was dismissed by a judge is not in the newspapers. So this can't be something, I'm assuming, that her kids dug up. Otherwise, I cannot see, from what I know about Ruth, that doesn't seem like something that she would, you know, stay with a man knowing that there was even this accusation. I could be wrong, you know.

It sounds like what they dug up was the conviction, you know, the federal charges, the conviction, and that he was sentenced to 12 years is what they brought to him. And who knows? You're right. Who knows what he said to them? Well, in the 1970s, you think about, well, actually going back to the indecent liberties with the 13-year-old.

You know, that probably didn't make a local newspaper, but if it did, which local newspaper did it make? Right? You know, they would have to go from library to library, you know, and to see if they could find something. And it was so different back then than what we have today by, you know, on the keyboard and the online searching capabilities.

you know, when you say that he was convicted of like seven, I think you said seven interstate fraud charges? Seven counts of interstate fraud and one count of conspiracy. I don't know the difference. Well, the

Well, the conspiracy indicates that he's got another, maybe another partner in this that may have been brought up in some charges. But what's catching my attention is the fact that these were interstate fraud. And so I'm wondering if there was an FBI investigation.

And there you could have potentially when he's convicted out of the timber industry, maybe there were some headlines, you know, that weren't necessarily just in a local newspaper, but maybe in a more broadly distributed type of newspaper where it'd be much easier for the family to find this out. Now, it would be easy now to pull up

the complaints, the charges, trial transcripts, any of that kind of stuff, there's a plea deal, I guess, it would not be that difficult now. What would you do in the 70s if you're just a citizen, a layperson, and you find out that this guy who's dating your mother went to prison for six years and was released? Where would you go to get a transcript of whatever happened in the 70s?

You'd have to go to the courts. If it made the newspapers and you knew roughly where this crime occurred and where the media had attention on this crime, then yeah, you could go and maybe do newspaper searches from around the date range that you think it possibly would have occurred. But once you get the information as to what court he was tried in,

Now you can go to that court and request the public records out of that court, which could include the transcripts from the court reporter taking material down, the various motions. Everything is kind of kept by the courts and their public records. And to this day, that's how you still will do things. You can only get so much detail online.

You can go to, let's say, superior court website and find out a docket number, you know, when the case occurred, how it was disposed of. But to actually get the details, that's where you'd go to the courts and request the records. And I'm assuming that her daughters, the rest of her family thought these articles would be enough. Hey, mom, look at this guy's background. Did you know that he had just been released from prison a year before for ripping people off?

And it sounds like she did know, or at least she played it off like she did know to not sort of, you know, embarrass him or embarrass her. Let's talk about his credentials, because I said that he opened up this counseling clinic that was not far from Ruth's house.

So when he was incarcerated before he knew Ruth, he did get an associate's degree through a Tacoma Washington Community College. And according to the Longview Daily News, he continued working on the degree once he was paroled. We don't know a lot about his educational history, but most of the sources agree that he was pursuing a degree in psychology. Somebody said that he studied law, maybe ecology, but psychology seemed to be what everybody agreed.

read on. He had attended the Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma for a little while, and he enrolled at a college in Florida, and he received like this honorary doctorate, which it doesn't sound like meant very much. He went to Washington State, where he studied acupuncture, and then opened up this clinic as Dr. Anthony Fernandez, and then he meets Ruth. So, I mean...

He is definitely not a doctor, but he seems like knowledgeable enough and bright enough to be able to pull off this counseling clinic. I don't know how popular it was and I don't know how long he kept it open after he and Ruth were married, but he does start to sound like a serial fraudster for sure in a lot of different aspects of his life.

Yeah, well, he sounds like a con man, right? Yeah. What was that movie with Tom Hanks and he was law enforcement chasing Leonardo DiCaprio's character? Catch Me If You Can? Catch Me If You Can, you know, where that type of criminal has the aptitude and the skill set to be able to, you know, pose, right?

as a certain type of person. And that's what con mans do. They have the personality and maybe the aptitude. Like if you want to pose as a psychologist, you have at least some knowledge base to convince people, oh, he knows what he's talking about. But maybe another well-educated psychologist, you know, asking deeper questions would go, oh no, he is not a licensed psychologist. Mm-hmm. Yep, that's it.

That's why when you're a con man, you have to be really careful who you talk to at dinner parties. Make sure that this is not somebody who knows anything. That's right. Let's get back to Tony and Ruth and see if Ruth at any point catches on to this guy. They met in 71. They married in 72. We are now two years into their marriage in 1974, spring of 1974. At this point, Ruth...

Ruth is saying things are not going well. She tells a close friend of hers named Irene Rise that her marriage is in shambles.

And she decides she needs some space from Tony, which sounds like a great idea. She takes a month-long trip to Texas where one of her kids lives, where Kathleen lives. And Tony, of course, doesn't go. When she's on this trip with Kathleen, with her daughter, Kathleen says that Ruth told her they weren't getting along.

that he wouldn't come home at night, and that he either had another woman or an alcohol problem. And as an aside, I would suspect probably both, but who knows? Kathleen said that her mother was going to talk to an attorney about divorce issues.

She said that her life has been difficult. You know, of course, she had lost her first husband, so it sounded like she really loved him. And now she's married to this loser of a guy who isn't coming home at night and that she couldn't do this anymore. She could not continue to live under this constant pressure, financial pressure. And, you know, I know we're going to talk about this. Talk of a divorce can be an inciting incident for a lot of murderers. And it sounds like she was making a decision. And

and I'm sure this was not going to be a surprise to Tony. No, well, Tony's fully aware of what the state of the relationship is, too. You know, it is going to be coming down to, well, what is his true feelings for Ruth, and was this marriage just a sham so he could have access to her financial assets? And when she starts to threaten to take his access to those financial assets away, that's when things could probably get kind of ugly in this relationship.

And I wonder in the 70s what divorce would have been like. Like, would she have been able to walk away with half of what she had, which would have been a substantial estate, without him having any of it?

Or would there have been some sort of spousal support on his part? I don't know enough about what would have happened in the 70s, but I just wonder that must have played into it somehow. Also, he knew he probably wasn't going to get anything if they did divorce. Yeah, you know what? I think it's state by state, you know, in terms of once you get married, each individual's assets become community property. And so upon divorce, is it split evenly unless there's a prenuptial agreement, you

And was there a prenup in this particular case? Because Ruth does have some financial assets that maybe she wanted to protect ahead of time. So that's all part of evaluating, okay, what is Tony going to lose out on when Ruth goes, I want a divorce?

Well, Tony's determined to not lose out on anything because while Ruth is in Texas with her daughter Kathleen, he is calling and strong-arming Ruth into giving him power of attorney over her affairs. And now Paul's leaning forward and wanting to say something.

And I will say one more sentence before you talk about power of attorney, which is another inciting incident. Ruth doesn't want to do it, but eventually, inexplicably, she says, okay. So there you go. He gets power of attorney. He's obviously making a play in order to be able to scramble and get...

kind of being directed towards him in the event of this potential, sounds like likely divorce. This is where it almost sounds like, you know, Tony is reasonably sophisticated when it comes to business transactions.

You know, he's running a timber company. He's committing fraud. Sounds like he's able to dupe some other sophisticated business associates for the fraud cases. And I think he's taken advantage maybe of Ruth's naivety when it comes to this aspect. Ruth is probably recognizing, oh, if I give him power of attorney,

He can do X, Y, and Z, but what's the likelihood, right? Not necessarily recognizing, you know, he's sort of a wolf in sheep's clothing on this front, and he knows exactly what he's doing, you know? So he's just saying, hey, I want power of attorney. Who knows what those conversations were like, whether she felt like she's intimidated, but I bet he fully understood what

what he could do once he got power of attorney, and she probably didn't have the same level of understanding. That's my guess in this relationship. I think you're spot on because he immediately starts selling off some of her land using power of attorney capabilities. Ruth does not know that he's doing this, and he is selling the land far under price than what it's worth.

So he is gathering resources right now before she comes back, and she's only gone for a month. Yeah. He's purposefully undercutting the going rate because he wants to move it quickly. So she goes back to Washington state from Texas. I'm sure Kathleen does not want her to do that. I know everybody is fearful at this point, but...

I'm not sure anyone is thinking this is going to have a violent outcome. I think they're just thinking this guy is sleazy. Maybe she can divorce him. And maybe she gave him power of attorney just to get out of this, just knowing that maybe this would shut him up long enough for her to file for divorce. Right.

But, boy, it's pretty risky, and especially considering the estate she has, which I will tell you, Paul, by this time is about $400,000 to $500,000 in 1974. So we're talking, I think, about $4 million to $5 million. Lots and lots of money is her estate at this point.

Sure, she could come back from this trip to Texas and be so completely pissed off at what he's doing that she has motive to off him, you know? So it'll be interesting to see how this develops. Well, here we go. She returns to Washington State. He is there, and he does something that is charming or convincing because she agrees to go on a week-long camping trip with him. Oh. I know. Oh.

And I hate to phrase it like I don't know what she was thinking, but that's what I say in my head. What? What happened? He must have really turned on the charm because she agreed to be in an RV in Winnebago with this man to go to a campsite near North Bend, Washington. And she owns land there. And she says, let's go. She and her now deceased husband, Les, used to do that all the time. She drove RVs all the time. She loved camping. She loved doing this.

I don't know why she would go with Tony, but something switched, and she said, okay, she did not go against her will. Well, you know, first, it tells me she's not feeling any type of threat to her person, you know, her safety. You know, she...

is unhappy in the relationship, but Tony hasn't demonstrated maybe a level of violence that she's thinking, I cannot be alone with him. I'm assuming he's taken advantage of her love to do this type of activity to isolate her. I'm sure there probably aren't other people going on the same camping trip. It's just him and her, and he's now done what we see killers do,

do is they need to isolate the victims and then that's when bad things happen. I think you're probably right. I think that he took advantage of the fact that she was feeling vulnerable and it could be that she felt like she was looking for any kind of sincerity or affection, authenticity from him and he probably turned on the charm and said,

Let's go do this. She didn't feel threatened. They packed up. They have a little SUV. I think they called it a Scout. Another source has called it a Jeep. They bring that along with them, I'm assuming, so they can go do, you know, some off-road stuff or go take adventures without the RV. They stop at a restaurant called the Mount Sai Golf Course.

And we have information sort of from witnesses. People are trying to piece together before what happens happens what their interactions were like beforehand, because that hopefully will tell us a little bit. They have lunch and they have some cocktails there. Ann Rule, the author, reports that they had been in the restaurant for a long time. And according to witnesses, they had had several drinks. Ruth was known to have several drinks, not overindulged, but she was definitely no teetoler. And

She had a few drinks, and some of the witnesses said that it seemed like they might have been a little bit tipsy, definitely not drunk, not attracting tons of attention, but they seemed to be getting along. So this was about lunchtime, and then more witnesses around 4.15, so several hours later, said,

See them when they stop at an office for a local timber company on a business errand because he's got some timberland. Ann Rule says that the employees there recalled that Ruth seemed to be very unhappy.

But Tony was very quiet. Neither of them seemed drunk or tipsy at this point. And then they head to the campsite. So that is sort of the way things went. Nobody was fighting. There weren't, you know, the police weren't called. They didn't seem to be overly thrilled with each other, but it seemed to be a rather peaceful trip going toward this campsite. So in the restaurant where they are in a public location, people are able to observe them and it sounds like

Ruth and Tony are interacting fine as what you would expect a couple that's not fighting. You know, they're just kind of engaging in conversation, having a few drinks together. It's interesting that when Tony goes to this, what was it? It was a timber business? Yes, it was a timber business.

And their demeanor sounds like from the witnesses is a little bit more reserved. She sounds a little more sullen. So I'm wondering that after they left the restaurant, they have a few drinks in them. Now they're in an RV. They're in private. And I wonder if there was maybe some.

More negative conversation, you know, that transpired. You know, it's kind of speculating, but it seems like that could have occurred. Yeah, whatever their interactions were at both the restaurant and this timber office, nobody was alarmed by any of it.

They get back into the RV and they head up to the campsite. So this is like a mountain pass. They have to go up. And then it puts them on a logging road. And then everything goes silent for a while until 830. So the last people to see Ruth were 415 at this timber company, 415 p.m. At 830 that same night, so four hours later, Tony says,

calls the restaurant where they had been, Mount Sai Restaurant, where he had had lunch, you know, eight hours earlier. And he says Ruth had gone to the campsite with him. They were hanging out. She turned to him and said, I'm going to go on a walk. And she's gone. And he says...

Has anybody seen her? And I don't know why he would think the restaurant would. I mean, it sounds like they're kind of quite a bit away from the restaurant. But I don't you know, I actually don't know how far away they are, but it doesn't seem like she would walk to a restaurant at 830 at night, even if it's July. And it would be lighter because it's summertime. It just seems kind of like an odd thing. But he is establishing that his wife is gone from the campsite.

Were they able to drive the RV all the way up to this campsite, or did they have to park the RV like at the restaurant and then take this scout or jeep on the logging road to get to the campsite? Do you know anything about that?

I know for a fact that they took the RV. Okay. And you're going to find out shortly why. Well, that just kind of informs me as to, you know, how accessible the campsite is. And basically, if an RV is getting back there, this campsite is accessible to just about any type of vehicle. Okay.

Well, and it's a logging road that they eventually have to go down to get to the campsite. So it's a mountain pass that hooks them up to a logging road. So that's big vehicles, I would assume, right? Yeah, though, you know, these logging roads can be a little bit tougher for your average vehicle, and especially if they have...

you know, rougher terrain, you know, an RV could struggle because if they're towing the Scout or Jeep behind the RV, you know, that's, and you see that kind of setup, that's so, you know, the people can go to other locations and

that the RV typically isn't going to be able to get to, or they just want to, you know, kind of drop anchor with the RV at a location and then use a smaller vehicle to go and tour around and hit town or whatever else. And so this is where I'm just trying to picture

how remote this campsite is. But it sounds like this is a campsite that pretty much anybody could get to if they wanted to. Any type of vehicle can get to it. And if Ruth is out there walking by herself, it increases the likelihood that there's potential witnesses who are driving by.

When I go out in my Jeep with some of the side roads, there's nobody out there except maybe other people with a well-built off-road rig, right? So you have a smaller potential pool of witnesses because it's not –

that heavily traveled in that scenario. Well, it sounds like when she went for a walk, he, you know, unhooked the Jeep. We're just going to call it a Jeep. It's sort of inconsistent, but some SUV. He unhooked the Jeep and went down to the nearest place to make phone calls. He called Mount Sai Restaurant. They said, no, we haven't seen her. He called a nearby cafe in North Bend, said the same thing. Do you know where she is?

They had known Ruth probably because she owned land and she had been up there before. She was familiar with this area. She knew how to drive an RV. So she's not scared to do any of this. The cafe says, no, we haven't seen her either.

So he makes these calls and then panics and reaches out to the Washington State Patrol station and says that he's worried about Ruth. But now things start to get a little odd. Ann Rule, the author, says that Tony changes his story during this particular call to the Washington State Patrol station.

He says that the couple had decided rather than camp that they were going to return to their Auburn home and that he decided to take the SUV and she decided to get a head start by driving the Winnebago. Okay.

So, now the story has completely changed. It has not, she walked off and now she hasn't come back and maybe a bear ate her. This is, we decided to head back to Auburn and she went ahead in the RV and I'm in the SUV and now I don't know where she is. Right. But at the time that he is talking to the state patrol, they don't know that he's given different statements to the two restaurants. Right.

Right. So, you know, they're now, okay, this is the facts that they know. She's in an RV and he says, I've got our Jeep.

And he says that he waited about 20 minutes to leave. So she had a 20 or 30 minute head start. He didn't see her or the RV anywhere on the road. He had reported that eventually neither were in Auburn. He finally goes back to the couple's house and no one hears from Ruth throughout the night. So the state police are saying, well, it's dark and now the family is alarmed. So this is where things get a little bit complicated.

The next day, Tony and a man named Donald Stafford, who is engaged to Ruth's daughter Susan, the other one that's not in Texas, start driving around. And Donald is the one who spots this. Okay. There are skid marks on this logging road that has a steep, rocky embankment off its shoulder. So it's been described as a slope or a cliff.

that leads into a ravine. And about 300 feet down the embankment is their smashed Winnebago RV. And it looks like, if Ruth was driving, that she had careened off the logging road sometime that night and crashed below. Okay. I'm picturing several different...

visuals of these skid marks. I can easily see the logging road in my head and, you know, the steep embankment. You know, the skid marks are interesting. Are these skid marks just showing almost like the Winnebago RV rolling off the embankment? Or is it showing that the Winnebago is traveling at high speed and brakes are being applied? You know, this is where getting

some experts to assess the mechanics of the Winnebago after it's recovered, as well as evaluating these skid marks. So that would be something I wish we had pictures of.

I know. Sorry, Paul. I know. I'm a little shocked we don't from the 1970s, but we have some pretty good descriptions that I'll tell you about. So first, let's talk about Ruth. We have this smashed up RV and Donald investigates and, of course, is scared to see what he finds here. So not far from the wreckage, about 100 feet down the embankment from the RV is the lifeless body of Ruth Fernandez. So

So she is not in the Winnebago, but she has clear signs of trauma to her head and to her stomach. And the presumption is that the RV veered off the steep embankment that sits along the logging road. And on the way down the rocky slope, she had been ejected from the vehicle. So this is a story about whether or not this was an accident.

or whether or not this was a murder. And these sometimes can be tough to try to, you know, tease out. So I'm kind of curious, of course, what the autopsy shows, what the evaluation of the Winnebago shows, you know, and I'm sure you will fill me in on that. In one week. I knew it. You got me hanging on the edge.

Oh, hold on. No pun intended. That number one question that I don't want you to answer right now is, have you worked a case like this where somebody is ejected from the car? And it is a question about whether or not this is murder or whether or not this is an accident because...

This seems like an excellent way to cover up a murder, but I also thought fire was an excellent way to cover up a murder, and I have since found out that I'm wrong. It's all in how it's done. Okay. Well, I will see you in one week, and we will talk about Ruth and Tony Fernandez and what may or may not have happened here. Okay. Looking forward to hearing the rest of the story. Okay. See you soon. Sounds good.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.