The Prairie Chicken
October 2, 2009
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The Restaurant
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The family says that in the day immediately before her disappearance, she was talking and texting her friends and family in a strange manner. If it was a single incident, or within an hourly time frame, I would suspect the use of Ecstasy. But for a day or more it does sound more like a manic episode. Latice Sutton, Mitrice's mother, has stated the same, leading one to think that she has a past of bi-polar behavior.
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Examining exactly what happened at Geoffrey’s Malibu interestingly showed that the story from the restaurant has changed significantly over the days she has been gone.
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“Why Richardson was in Malibu on a Wednesday evening is unknown. She sat alone at a table overlooking the ocean, but then attached herself to a large group nearby.”
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It appears obvious to me that she went there to have a nice dinner, a good drink and to enjoy them while watching the sunset. She started talking to a large group and they did not object to her presence. It sounds as though it was the restaurant staff that did not think she “belonged” there. It would not surprise me to hear they suspected her of being a hooker.
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“She seemed a little euphoric -- a little odd," said restaurant owner Jeff Peterson, who was home but conferred with his manager by phone. "The people she joined seemed OK with it. When she said they were going to pay her tab for her and they weren't -- that's when we realized we had a situation.”
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The real problem came when she tried leave and told staff that the group she had been sitting with was going to pick up her tab. After the group denied that offer, she said she had no money. This would have pissed off the restaurant manager. I’m sure.
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“When she couldn't pay, she provided the phone number of her great-grandmother, who offered a credit card number. The restaurant requires a faxed signature -- credit card companies insist on it in cases of disputes, Peterson said -- but the woman did not have access to a fax machine…”
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Not true. They were already peeved about her trying to pass her bill to her new friends, now she wanted them to take credit information over the phone. There is no credit card requirement for phone purchases except for the 3-digit code on the back of the card. They suspected there WOULD be a dispute--that she was trying another scam.
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"Richardson said she was from Mars and started speaking in a made-up language," Peterson said his staff told him. "She did tell my valet at one point that she was here to avenge Michael Jackson's death."
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Could this be part of the manic episode or Mitrice just being a smart-ass at this point, like I would have been?
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All of these statements from Jeff Peterson, the owner of Geoffrey’s Malibu, are second hand knowledge. He was at home and speaking to his staff on the phone. The owner and spokesperson Jeff Peterson was not even there. He is relaying what his wait-staff said to him. They are covering their butts, and he is adding to it to cover his. After all, to their thinking, what was this single black woman doing in a nice restaurant in Malibu?
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Now, with racial accusations and the NAACP asking questions, Jeff Peterson says it was not the bill at all! No, they called the police because they were worried about her driving, since she was so erratic and ‘out there’. According to her mother, a manager she spoke to at Geoffrey's said Richardson appeared to be in ‘no condition to drive’. During the phone call, Mitrice was in the process of being arrested in the parking lot.
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Sutton said she found out over the phone that her daughter was going to be booked at the Sheriff's Malibu/Lost Hills substation. When she called the substation, she was told her daughter was en route. In a later call to the station, The deputy said "We will usually keep them until the morning hours' and said he ‘didn't know her bail because she was not processed."
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"Perhaps I should not have assumed morning time meant daylight," she said.
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The Richardson family stated that Geoffrey’s would not release the video tape to them. Jeff Peterson countered by saying no one has asked for it, from law enforcement or family.
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The Arrest
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Matrices Richardson had been arrested about 10 p.m. Wednesday after failing to pay an $89.21 bill at Geoffrey’s Malibu. Sheriff’s deputies discovered a small amount of marijuana in her white 1990 Honda Civic, which was then impounded, authorities said.
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She was taken to the Malibu Hills sheriff’s office just over 14 miles away to the east, across several unpopulated and rugged canyons. She’s a black woman in a fancy restaurant, by herself and she drives an old Honda Civic, with pot in it. How different would the scenario have been if she had been driving a new Mercedes or Escalade?
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There are several statements from officers on duty that have been covered in the media.
At the sheriff's station, Whitmore said, Richardson chatted with a custody assistant. After Richardson was released, the custody assistant suggested that she stay overnight in the station lobby. Richardson declined the offer. When the assistant asked if she had a ride, Richardson said she didn't but she had come to Malibu to meet up with friends, Whitmore said. Did she realize how far up the canyon they had gone?
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"She refused to stay overnight," Whitmore, the sheriff's spokesman, said. "We had no reason to hold her because she did not exhibit signs of mental illness or intoxication," he said, adding that Richardson signed several release forms and made a couple of calls.
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The Release
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Wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt, Richardson, 24, had no car, no cell phone and no purse as she left the station about 1:25 a.m. No one has explained where her purse, ID, and cell phone are. We have assumed they were in the car. Sometimes gay women don’t carry purses, but her ID? Driver’s license? Was she escorted out of the restaurant with no time to pick it up?
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Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the nearest Starbucks and fast-food restaurants are about a mile away in a shopping area to the south of the office. It’s not clear if the patrolman who walked her out gave her directions there. To the east stretches Las Virgenes Road, which turns into Malibu Canyon Road, winding through Malibu Canyon and emptying onto Pacific Coast Highway near Pepperdine University.
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If you don’t know the Malibu area, it is a beautiful area on the Pacific coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s the area where the mountains roll right down to the ocean. The roads through these canyons are two-lane winding roads with massive cliffs on one side and breathtaking canyons on the other. But it’s also dangerous and desolate. The curvy road winds up and down, with no street lights, and in places, no shoulder on the road. At one point on Malibu Canyon Rd, a tunnel runs through a cutout in the mountain. It is no place that any responsible member of law enforcement should allow anyone to wander off into in the dead of night.
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It is very secluded until you branch off to a housing area here and there. It was at a home on Piuma Rd, close to Cold Canyon Rd in Malibu’s Monte Nedo area that at about 6:30 a.m., Thursday morning, a homeowner in the Malibu Canyon area called to say a woman was resting in the backyard. When deputies arrived, she was gone. Whitmore said the department is almost certain it was Richardson. It’s too bad the woman couldn’t have just said “can I help you?”
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Authorities carried out a search on Saturday, September 27, in a residential neighborhood off Piuma and Woodbluff roads, which is about five miles from the sheriff's substation, said LAPD Det. Kristin Merrill.
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On Saturday afternoon, as her friends stood on Pacific Coast Highway, holding up fliers featuring the missing woman's face, sympathetic passersby stopped to chat with Sutton. One even offered a clue. "I think I may have seen her walking," said middle school teacher Janette Goeglein.
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About 7:30 a.m. Sept. 17, Goeglein said she was driving to a meeting when she saw a woman walking south on the road through Malibu Canyon. "I thought it's strange to see a black woman walking in the canyon," she said.
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A search involving the sheriff’s department, park rangers and other agencies was conducted shortly after Richardson was reported missing. Search and rescue teams with scent dogs looked in the immediate area and spread out to the mountains, including Tapia Park. An aerial search was also conducted.
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Sutton said she doesn't understand why deputies would release her daughter in the dark when she had no identification, no money, no cell phone and was unfamiliar with the area. She now believes her daughter was in a manic state of mind because she had been sending "erratic" texts to friends and family earlier in the day.
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The woman's mother said deputies told her nearby residents had called to say a woman was sleeping on porches, indicating to her that Richardson was stumbling around a nearby residential neighborhood early Friday, the Times reported.
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Responding to criticism from Richardson's family, the Sheriff's Department defended her release in a statement made by Whitmore. He said the department has a series of checks that are done before anybody is released and that those checks were done, again noting she was neither intoxicated nor mentally impaired.
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At the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Office in Calabasas on Saturday, a member of the Richardson family asked, “Where is the scene of this crime? The last place Matrice Richardson was seen was here.”
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Terrell says the department has been slow to follow up on the two phone calls Richardson made at the station. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Steven Eguchi confirmed Tuesday that Richardson’s calls have not yet been traced.
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A friend of Richardson’s asked what the station’s surveillance cameras showed. A deputy said the cameras were not functional.
