Killer with a Badge: How the LAPD Missed a Murderer in its Ranks

When a helicopter crash killed actor Vic Morrow and two children on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the filmmakers called it an unforeseeable accident. An LA County Sheriff’s detective saw something else: broken laws, reckless risks, and an A-list director who ignored warnings.

On the summer solstice in 1990, a UCLA student with an interest in the occult was stabbed to death in a railway tunnel in the San Fernando Valley. Rumors of ritual violence swirled in the era of the so-called Satanic Panic. Police investigating the murder of Ronald Baker found his killers knew him well. One of them had even carried his casket.

When 21-year old college dropout Christopher Boyce got a job as a clerk at the TRW Defense and Space Systems complex in Redondo Beach, he was given access to some of the country’s biggest government secrets. And under a Robin Hood-like ethos, he and his childhood pal Andrew Daulton Lee began sharing those secrets with the Soviet Union. Their story lived on in the 1985 film “The Falcon and the Snowman,” but their friendship had a much shorter shelf life.

When comic John Belushi died of a speedball overdose at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, it wasn’t clear there had been a crime—until the National Enquirer got involved. This episode follows the tabloid reporter who hunted down Belushi’s dealer, coaxed a confession, and transformed a drug overdose into a homicide investigation.

James Sexton endures weeks of solitary confinement in federal prison, as prosecutors finally gear up to take Lee Baca to trial. Baca’s lawyers claim he has Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s late 2016, and the recent presidential race has made the FBI unpopular in liberal Los Angeles. Sexton testifies for the government and is released early, a humbled man, to begin rebuilding his life. The jury deadlocks at Baca’s trial, only one wants to convict him, but prosecutor Brandon Fox presents a more fleshed-out case and wins a conviction in March 2017. A judge gives Baca a three-year sentence. In his late 70s, he goes to prison. Anthony Brown, in prison for life, wins a $1 million settlement against the county, while Leah Marx is promoted to the FBI’s behavioral science unit. The conviction of Sheriff Lee Baca marked a rare prosecution of a lawman at his level and closed a turbulent chapter in Los Angeles history. What began with a smuggled phone ended with the county’s top law-enforcement officer in prison. The series is told by Chris Goffard, whose reporting on Dirty John reached millions around the world. Topics in this episode include: Sheriff Lee Baca trial, Los Angeles jail corruption, James Sexton prison, FBI investigation, Anthony Brown settlement.