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A few days before she died, I got a letter from Willow.

Willow was my neighbor and one of my best friends as a kid.

We grew up in the Redwoods outside of Sebastopol, California.

It's about sixty miles north of San Francisco, and even though we were just through the woods from one another, we had very different childhoods.

Willow was part of a commune, or what they called it a collective.

It was a group of maybe thirty people and it was called tender Hearts.

It was one guy, really, the leader, Elric, and then women, then kids.

That's Sheriff Maldonado.

He was the sheriff back in the eighties and the nineties, so he ended up dealing with the tender Hearts when birds would complain or if kids got into trouble.

It was hard to wrap your head around it.

Was nature and trees and praying.

I guess it would be called meditating today, and drugs those pot mushrooms Mescoon.

Willow's mom was a founding member of Tender Hearts, so she lived there with Willow and her sister Anna.

When we were young, Willow and I were close, really close.

We used to meet in the woods between our houses and spend all afternoon together, sometimes camping out, but things got complicated in our teens.

By the time I got her letter, I hadn't talked to her in years.

I didn't even know she had my address.

She was in Panama, in Pocas del Toro.

It's a series of islands close to Costa Rica.

Apparently she'd gone with an organization to help sea turtles protect their habitat or something, but really it sounds like she went to get away and to get sober.

The letter was mostly about what she was up to in Panama, working in a vegan pizza place down there.

Before I could at her back, I found out she took her own life.

My mom saw it on Facebook.

So you're still in touch with her mom.

Well, only through Facebook.

I mean, it's not like I see her or talk to her, have private phone calls, but you know, she posts things, and this was one of the things she posted.

I was surprised.

It's really sad.

It's really sad.

She was begging me to come visit her.

This is Noah.

He grew up with Willow too.

She begged me.

She was like, hey, please please come visit.

I'm really lonely.

I need a friend, I need some help.

You know.

She wrote me this.

Poem that was very you know, in that context, was quite deep and dark and basically just talking about loneliness and isolation and kind of meaninglessness of everything.

He's now a psychiatrist up in Seattle.

And it's really challenging.

It's really I mean, I've had a number of patient suicide and even with that, it's really hard to reconcile that of like, could I have done something more?

If I was honest, I might not have even written her back.

I mean, we were in very different places.

She was single, childless, hopping around different countries.

I'm married, I had a kid.

I live in LA I work as a writer director, and as you might know, I host a podcast about the TV show I was on as a kid, Welcome to Vodney's World.

I'm Dannie official.

I'm rather strong than I'm will Fordell.

Willow was still chasing new experiences, new people, and new places in a way that when we were young was exciting and admirable, but now that we're in our forties, it felt a little desperate, erratic.

I remember for the first few years of our friendship, you know, like it was kind of like being a being on a drug near her.

She had so much energy and excitement and spotanity and like.

But then I remember as she started to decompensate in our teen years, it was like it was it was really challenging to be around her.

I should say all this with a caveat that it's impossible for me not to use my psychiatric nosology on her now now looking back, I mean, she was just the archetype of someone who had had clearly had a lot of childhood trauma.

There's a few traumas Noah could be referring to here.

There was the fact that she grew up on a collective in the woods.

She definitely had some awful boyfriends, there were drugs, But the central trauma of Willow's life had to do with her sister Anna.

Anna was two years older than us, which isn't much except when you're fifteen.

Back then, she was in a whole other category of existence, and I probably would have gotten to nowhere better.

Except on Halloween night nineteen ninety five, Anna disappeared.

It was a horrible time for a couple of there.

It seemed like everyone we knew was a suspect or had a secret.

We all got interviewed by the cops.

People blamed Willow's mom, people blamed the Tender Hearts and his boyfriend.

People blamed the town.

But no one knew what actually happened.

Nobody was ever found, no charges ever filed.

Most everyone assumed that Anna ran away, that she just wanted out of Tender Hearts or small town took off.

But Willow never thought that she knew her sister would never leave without her, or at least without saying goodbye.

This is from Willow's letter.

I know I made you promise something about the night Anna disappeared.

You and Christo Vecchio and Oriyan and Connor were there too.

Do you remember we pinky swore.

So here's the deal.

I want you to know I don't fucking care anymore.

I released your pinky, Sir, I am no.

I can't read this, but I think she wrote authority.

But I want to know the truth.

If Anna is still out there, or the person who killed her is out there, then keeping my secret is stupid.

It always has been.

I kept going back over the letter, going back over my memories and my relationship with Willow.

I kept wondering, why did she send this to me?

Why didn't she decide to tell the truth herself.

In nineteen ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared.

She was seventeen.

Her body was never found, no one was ever arrested, no explanation given.

And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody because Anna's sister, Willow asked me to.

I've decided to go back to my hometown, interview my friends and family, and talk to police and journalists whoever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

I am actor and filmmaker writer Strong This is the Red Weather.

Before I left for Sebastopol, I called up my friend Chris because he's one of the few people who knew what Willow was talking about.

Yeah, what's up right?

Recorded?

What that you no it's the thing Elly, that it's recording.

That is Sean Hayes with you telling me that this all being recorded.

Chris is a comedy writer now who also lives in La So I don't I don't know if you've heard, but Willow Trainer died.

Yeah.

My cousin Tarn texted me.

You've never torn, right, No, Sacramento torn.

Uh, there was a Thanksgiving you came with I'm pretty sure you came with me anyways.

Crazy.

I don't know if she killed herself in Puerto Rico or Panama, Panama.

Well, she was always a fucking train rack, dude, I mean, even before the kid fucking grew up in a cult.

Well, I don't know if I would even call it that.

I think that's because you're a sweetheart, sweetheart.

Okay, I'm gonna call it a call, because there's a creepy fucking tree calls.

They were out, They were basically like rural homeless.

Before she killed herself, she sent me a letter she's I know and saying that we can uh tell the truth.

Chris had also made a promise because he was with me and Willow the night that Anna disappeared.

Who cares if we could tell the truth now, like I know, I know, but I mean there's there's so much that I don't even know about the case.

The case, you know, oh, yes, oh the case.

Like these detective riders on the case.

Now there was a first party and they didn't they like find a bullet in a tree.

Or bullets in yes, three bullets country, multiple bullets.

That's what I mean.

I don't even know the basics.

It's like and then let alone the fact of.

Like what we did, but what Willow did?

Right, So that is why you're recording this phone call.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I'm just I you know, I feel like I've got this this this platform.

You know, dat's a public figure.

I did a podcast and all right, Colombo, well you're not going to go solo on this.

Brother will be the Hardy Boys or the Scooby Gang.

And I'm not gonna be Shaggy.

It's too on the nose.

I want to be Scooby or Velma.

I'm definitely Velma and testing testing one about sound gear so I could doc a man everything I could.

I said goodbye to my wife Alex and her son.

Indeed recording right now, Yeah, I'm never gonna stop rowing.

That's the whole point, okay.

And you have the draft.

Too, Yeah, but it's I've got time, so I think while I'm up there, I'll be able to get writing done with this loud guy.

Hey dude, I'm saying goodbye.

I had three months to write a script, a horror movie for a small studio.

It wasn't my original idea.

They had brought me in after they sold the pitch, but they were pain This sort of thing has become my life, writing movies that never get made.

All right, I love you having fun having special, dude, time special, all right, I love you guys.

A week or two week or two?

What?

Yes, we're two?

Hell hello it is.

I drove across town and I picked up Chris.

I was glad he was coming with me.

I knew there'd be gaps in memory, conflicting versions and things people maybe didn't want to think about it or talk about, so I thought it'd be good to have his help.

I am not driving at all.

Not at all.

You do not need to see my road rage.

Bro Ooh another fun rule.

You get one moody whiny white guys song per hour.

That's okay, that's all I have.

I know that.

So we're gonna put on your phone.

Yeah, dude, you're getting beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett.

He'd also, I know, keep things lighthearted.

I did some research before we left l A.

And when I looked into Anna's case, there was one name that kept coming up.

Monica Tremblaine.

All right, Hi, I are you doing.

Hey?

She was the journalist who covered the story for the Press Democrat or local paper.

Hey.

You know we've met before, right, Well, yeah, I mean we talked back in the day.

I mean I feel like my mom was there.

No, no, no, no, no, this was way after then.

It was in the two thousand and three.

Yeah.

I came to the Graduate play when you did it with Jerry Hall.

We talked for a second at uh huh at the opening night party.

Okay, yeah, I was for sure.

I was like, oh, he doesn't remember me, or either you were avoiding me.

No, oh god, sorry, do me a favor, though.

Don't look up the review of that play.

Manica graduated from Berkeley and then moved to Santa Rosa to work for the Press Democrat only a month before Anna disappeared.

It was a small paper doing all the things paper did in the nineties, classified its town hall meetings, the kind of things today you just find online if at all.

You know, it was like my first real story.

I mean I was only twenty three then.

I was so young.

Yeah, But what was interesting was that, like everybody, everybody at the paper assumed that Anna was a runaway.

But I did not believe that.

Why hmmm, you know, there.

Was something off and everything about this, I mean everything just felt like there was something there, felt like there was something more, like more going on.

I felt a vibe vibe.

I was younger than everybody at the paper, you know, and so when I talked to the kids, you kids, I felt closer to you than everybody else.

But then again, you guys were a bunch of white kids in this very white hippie town.

I mean y'all had money.

I mean you you were already on TV, you were famous, so right right, it was a lot, you know, the commune, the drugs fire, that's.

Like I want to get into all of that stuff, but let's just start with this.

What can we just do?

Like the uh, what where Hannah was that night?

What happened to her?

Just like the pure only the facts version of what we know.

Anna Trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball that.

Would be Heather Colburn's house, a Halloween party.

There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna was there and she was drinking, and that she had a fight with her.

Boyfriend or ex boyfriend, depending on your point of view.

His name is Mick Bowden.

My brother Shilah was actually there at the party.

I remember sitting there.

I just remember he punched the window.

There was a lot of screaming and arguing going on, and then, you know, I don't remember exactly what it was about, but it definitely stopped the situation.

Lateryone was like whoa, okay, and then you know, but it's kind of in a party scene, so like everybody's you know, and I think they might have been out smoking.

Well yeah, Mick, he left the party an hour or so before Anna.

More on that later.

So she gets a ride.

So she gets its ride from these three girls, Lindsay Green, Gianna Parata, and Audrey Wick.

So I don't know if I should tell you this, but I call them the mean girls.

Were they pretending to help her or I mean they were you know, honestly, there was a lot of back and forth with that.

Lindsay, Jenna and Audrey gave her a ride and when they were asked by the police, they said they drove her home.

On Lindsay told the police that they were actually messing with Anna and that they dropped her off a few miles from her house.

Actually, like I said, mean girls.

But we can assume at least that she didn't go home because then Nick got that page from Anna ten oh three.

This was the era of pagers.

We all had them, and we all had our own code that we used to let someone know if we wanted them to call us back or meet us somewhere.

Well, first she paged him to a phone number, which we let her found out was the Juniver Street pay phone, and he told police that he paid her back with his cold that he was going to meet her there.

But then the fire a devastating night in western Sonoma County as fire rage over one hundred acres and burned four homes in its path.

Sources te well, we have that the first witness caught in the fires at ten twenty pm.

It started out on the Tenderheart property and then you know, as we know, it's bread.

No one was hurt, but a lot of loss.

It was a big deal to firefighters I don't know their names.

In front of me on the way towards the fire, they saw a young woman, blonde walking alone on Juniper.

That was the last time anyone saw an a trainer.

Well, I have some info, some new info, maybe answers for some of this.

Well, damn rider, it's only been thirty years.

It's an eight hour drive from La to Sebasterful.

So along the way, Chris and I talked about our hometown.

Yes, I mean when we were kids, it was like this tiny, crusty and now it's like now it's like nice, nice restaurants and cute little shops.

Yeah, and like even the Foster Freeze is now a place that you know, you get like milkshakes and fifteen dollars Hamburgers are so good.

So Basketball isn't all that different from a lot of small towns in California.

But back in the seventies it had a very particular culture.

Here's how my brother Shiloh put it.

A lot of hippies that moved from San Francisco, like our parents.

But then there were also the pot growers and like that sort of edgyness to it.

Kind of where the hate Ashbury Summer of Love crowd went to grow up, grow some vegetables, grow some pot and raise kids with names like Rioter and Willow.

In the actual town where Chris grew up, you could still have a pretty typical suburban childhood.

But outside of town it was the wild West of alternative parenting.

There were all kinds of situations.

Take my buddy Ryan.

He grew up on a commune.

It was fifty four acres of land.

There was a ranch house where all of this stuff happened, like a central ranch house that was owned and common by everybody.

So this was the common land.

You know, people would take turns with, like running the daycare.

It wasn't religious or spiritual, but it was certainly a counter cultural.

Scene, kind of like you know, hippie dancy thrill your hands and spacey, you know.

Kind of just like you know tied I.

That was so much Tied Die.

Yeah, yeah, a.

Love as it really was that it really was.

Yeah, my own home life wasn't that extreme.

Chris and I pulled into my parents place that evening, I.

All right Island.

They moved into the woods, put in a well built our house.

As a kid, we had electricity, but we didn't have TV.

I was homeschooled on and off.

We were vegetarians.

And while my parents' property has a name, we call it redwood Shire, unlike Tender Hearts.

That started as kind of a joke.

As soon as we bought it, you know, we just the redwoods were just so beautiful, and so Dad, coming from an accounting background, he wanted to make something that was productible.

So we made it an experimental farm, and we had to give it a name, so I said, well, it has to be redwood Yeah, and then.

It also relates to my dad's name, which is for real, King Arthur Strong.

Well yeah, but a lot of it came from King Arthur like Shire.

Yeah, so redwood Shire.

It's just stuck.

Our day to day life was positively mainstream, compared to Willow and Anna, who were literally a few hundred yards away living in tents and barns with some kind of guiding spirituality or philosophy, which I was realizing I knew nothing about, and neither did Oryan.

I think I understood what was going on more even later, when I was in my twenties or something like that.

But girth family.

So this guy was called was he called like the father or something creepy like that?

You know, very much polyamory, but like not modern you know, consensual, et cetera, much more of kind of like dude has a bunch of wives kind of thing.

Our lives couldn't be more different.

But we were within walking distance, which is how I ended up physically smack dab in the middle of this case.

And that was news to Monica.

So I was.

I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, and.

Yeah, you and your friends are at kind of Drake's house watching horror movies.

Well that's that's what we said.

Yeah, that's what she said.

But we were actually in the woods.

We were on the Tender Hearts property.

Wait, if you're on the Tender Hearts property, you can confirm none of the adults were there.

Yeah, I mean we didn't.

As far as we knew, no one was there.

They were all on the sunrise seance hike the night that Anna vanished.

The adults of Tender Hearts said they were holding something called a sunrise seance, which was an annual tradition for them.

El Rick and the women would hike up Mount Saint Helena for a ceremony and apparently it involves psychedelics.

Shiloh and I actually went on one of these with Oryan and Willow when we were younger, like maybe twelve or thirteen, and the whole idea is to go up there and watch the sunrise.

Yeah.

I just remember being so tired and exhausted.

Yeah.

I did it a couple of times, but only got lost the ones.

Oh ma.

To us, it was just a hike, but who knows.

We were clueless kids.

At the time of Anna's disappearance.

None of the Tender Hearts were charged with a crime, but it was shut down within a year.

I never knew why, and WILLI never talked about them.

Part of doing this podcast is about finally getting some answers about what was going on next door.

So does that does that change anything?

I don't think so.

I mean it confirms what they said at the time.

Yeah, so, I think what we were doing, me and Willow and our friends.

I think the person that it affects the most is Mick.

Mick Bowden was the ex boyfriend and argued with that night because he.

Was also with us.

He hold on, I need to grab a pin.

Hey, right, are you talking to me?

And that's fine?

But are you voting on record?

Are you hoping to officially reopen this case?

I actually wasn't sure if what I had to say would warrant that, but I was willing to find out.

Our first morning in Sebastopol, Chris and I went to the police station.

I thought it'd be good to do this in person and get an honest reaction in real time, but I had a lot to learn.

Hello, Hi, So we're here to talk to someone about an old case from nineteen ninety five.

I tried to explain what we were there for, which took way longer than I expected.

Peterburg teenager on Juniperle.

I think that's county, but let me ask, hey, Ken, turns out I wasn't even in the right jurisdiction.

Really, that would be the Sheriff's office, Western County.

Yeah, if you're asking about a missing girl outside the town limits, we wouldn't have anything to do with that.

That was a huge dead ends.

That was awful.

It was so embarrassing for you.

I gotta say to a question, God, Sherlock Homeschool to crack the case wide over.

Oh she called nine years ago.

Did you take that call personally?

Idiot?

Dude, you gotta leave this in no, no, no.

Of course, if I had just asked Monica and stead of running off and trying to play gotcha, she could have told me that the Sheriff's department ran the investigation.

But when she and I talked, we were deep in the weeds of my whereabouts that night.

Mick Bolden was with you when after the.

Party and then before Anna paged him.

I think, I really, I'm not exactly sure what the timing is.

Well, what were you doing out there?

Uh, it's kind of a long story.

A lot of this goes back to, well, let me ask you this, what do you know about Anna's social life?

I know she was in a tough spot.

It was sexual, some rumors in any window, harsh stuff with you guys.

I'm actually surprised Monica even knows that Anna was going through a lot that fall.

There's a reason the mean girls were picking on her, and there was a reason that I was running around the woods that night with my friends.

And this is the most uncomfortable part of doing this podcast, because in order to really get into the story, I'm going to have to get into what was going on among us kids in ways that will probably be hard to confront.

But as it turns out, even Sheriff Maldonado, who was indeed the correct official investigator, he knew some of this.

Well, I know she had a REP.

I do know that.

I remember that.

I tracked down Maldonado easily just to google away.

It turns out he's retired now, but he remembered the case immediately.

Well, yes, and no.

I mean we tend to assume run away with a team like that, you know, But then there were also other things there.

You had that home situation that she was in, and you know, that's not something that we're used to dealing with.

Then there was the fire, the fire that there was for a loop, and then I do remember we found her car down south of here.

Anna's car technically it was her mom's car was found almost a month later in a parking lot near the San Francisco Airport.

Well, finding the car like that that pushed us in the in the runaway direction, you know.

Uh, But at the same time we had the bullets and then uh yeah, there was there was just.

A lot of a lot of loose ends with that.

Mm hmmmmm.

Man, uh, you just calling me, that's that's uh bringing it back, that's for sure.

He agreed to talk with me, so we made a plan to meet at his house and sit down for an interview.

After my utter fail at the police station, Chris and I went to the Pine Cone Diner, which is one of our favorite old downtown spots.

This is the real stuff, the stuff that everybody cuts out of their podcast.

That that's gonna say.

That's I just want I just want to make sure that you know the sharer or whoever it is like that.

I want them to take me seriously.

If they don't arrest you, Oh come on, then why would they arrest because you lied to the Okay.

Yeah, we're gonna thank you.

Oh my god, I love her.

Look I'm saying, is teke to be to exhale, like cover your bases.

Like have you talked to a lawyer?

You should talk to my brother in law.

I like, find out where you stand legally.

Well, I mean I already talked to Monica the reporter.

You did, Yeah, I just with her before I left.

What did she say?

Okay?

Okay?

Well that was always one of the big questions.

For the first time I had broken the pinky swear.

I guess I'm honestly, I'm not sure.

Does that answer things or does that just create more questions?

Right?

I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast, That's what I want to find out.

I told Monica the truth that the night er sister disappeared, Willow started the fire.

She's gonna didn't immediately say lawyer.

Up, No, no.

And I know some of you might be thinking, why keep this a secret?

We knew Willow had accidentally started the fire, and we thought that if it came back to her, she might get arrested for arson on top of losing her sister.

But I'll be honest, I didn't really think through all that.

I was fifteen, Willa was my friend.

I didn't tell anyone because she asked me not to.

Yeah, That's what I'm saying.

So it made not It just might not change anything.

Maybe not.

But while we had lunch, I got out my notes.

Fine, let's just go over the theory.

Yes, let's talk about what we do know what we need to know.

Theory number one, Anna ran away the most likely situation by leeps and guts Okay, I mean that's what everyone I think, that's what everyone assumes.

But I have a hard time imagining that she changed her name and ran off to I Don't wear and has never called anybody, and now she's just what Sippy Martini is on a rooftop somewhere.

That sounds lovely.

Theory Number two, someone killed Anna that night, right, But well there's l Rick, the leader of tender Hearts, because he's a very shady guy.

Yes, maybe people except shady people.

From all that I know.

The cops did look into him, and he was exonerated.

At the time.

Oh exonerate.

It's just stup, look at you.

I think in order to get more information about that, I need to talk to Laney, because Laney is Willow and Anna's mom.

But she hadn't responded to any of my calls or Facebook messages.

There's gonna be her worst killer, says I know, so I'm not looking forward to There's also always the chance that it was a random Yeah, sure, some psycho killer just driving.

That happens all the time.

And have you not seen the dateline?

On dateline, it's always the husband.

She was too young to have a husband, yes, but the husband in this game.

No, the husband in this case is Mick, right, that is the theory.

But they never brought charges.

But maybe once I tell the cops what we were.

Doing that night or coffee?

Yes, was the coffee here?

Always this terrible Jesus Gars terrible.

Well, my friend is doing a podcast and we are trying to be very honest, so I'm just gonna lay it on the table.

This coffee is terrible.

But you, my dear, are it light.

You're wonderful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, And if you.

Need anything else, wave mede down.

I might think of something.

Are you kitty the waitress?

I mean, what you want me to call fee on?

She's just calm down, some random waitress with the pine co Oh my god?

What lighting up?

Okay, but excuse me.

My friend here thinks that I was hitting on you.

Now look I'm clearly married, and okay, I got it.

I was joking.

Yes I know.

Oh I know she knows.

Do you know?

Yes?

Now I know?

Now you know?

Yes?

Oh?

Now I'm sorry.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

What are you sorry for it?

For being too sensitive?

For thinking that you were making her uncomfortable?

You're it's fine, Yes, we're good.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you are such a debute downer.

Can you please just lighten up.

Let's have fun.

There'll be the brooding, sad, sack reformed child actor.

Okay, you're not going to crack this case, buddy, Okay, I know, but I gotta try it.

I knew I wasn't going to solve anything, but I hoped that looking back at this time in my life, I might be able to understand some things that never made sense and in some way and maybe this wasn't healthy.

I felt like I owed that to Willow and my parents.

That night round a campfire, Chris and I got into it.

Guess when I just think about Willow, you know how she was when we were teenagers, complete mess, right, But you know I wrote her off?

Yeah, I guess because I was out of town all.

The time, and the drugs that she did, and her bad attitude and the way she slept.

Around right right there that you know, we were still in the era of slugshaming and not like you and I did that.

But I definitely I felt like she was going down this path and I didn't.

I don't know how to deal with it.

I don't want to deal with it.

Willow isn't an easy figure to describe in my life.

I might have met her earlier, but I didn't really connect with Willow until I was seven or so, when I ran into her in the woods, this barefoot girl with hand me down clothes.

We used to meet between our properties.

We'd climb trees, find salamanders, banana slugs, play house, play war.

She sort of felt like an imaginary friend for a while.

She was funny, fearless.

I mean, I went back to my house every night.

But her house back then was a teepee and later they had a building a shack, but I think she still slept out in the woods a lot of nights.

My brother thought she was crazy.

She threw rocks at him once and he never got over that.

My mom said she has spunk, and my dad said watch out for that one.

But you know that was a compliment.

She was there when I broke my arm.

I was there when she stepped on a yellowjacket hive.

She taught me how to make.

A spear and how to skin a squirrel.

She was my best friend.

She was my first kiss.

For a lot of reasons, we drifted apart in high.

School, not the least of which I ended up on a TV show for seven years.

Oh what the heck with that?

Marry me?

I live in a trailer park and I have no education, but my hair does this?

Shut up?

Man, I'm going for it.

I had been acting since I was little, doing plays in Santa Rosa, which is the biggest town about thirty minutes away.

And then I got lucky.

I was discovered.

Boy Meet's World took over my life, took me away from Sebastamal to go work in La put me in magazines and on TV every Friday night.

And even though I still went to school back home and I flew home every weekend, it wasn't the same.

I never really fit in in my hometown.

And Willow and I got older, we got different.

There was a moment when it seemed like we should date, so we did, but then we went back to just being friends.

I woke up one day and realized I hadn't talked to her for years.

I was twenty years old when boy Met's World ended.

I moved to New York and Willow and I lost touch.

And then the letter.

So you feel like you bailed on her?

Kind of yeah, didn't you.

I mean, I guess yes, because all of us guys managed to stay in touch, right, we managed to stay friends, You and me, Connor and Oriyan, not Willow, And that's fucked.

She lost her sister and her whole family situation.

Just I feel like maybe if we had told the truth back then she asked us not to, she bret.

But you can see that was obviously the wrong call.

You're in full martyr mode right now.

Dude.

You're in for a world of pain.

I don't understand because you're the ones telling me that I should be honest and leave in everything, like going to the wrong.

Cops because that's funny, because that's entertaining, and that's not potentially going to get you arrested.

You keep saying that why would we be arrested because Willow accidentally started the fire, accidentally started a fire.

That that is not at all what happened.

What are you talking about?

What are you talking I'm with the pinkies where the barn.

Yeah, she lit the barn on right with the sixties that we had because she was trying to scare them.

It was not an accident.

She didn't accidentally drop m sixties.

She saw that weed, and she lit it all on fire.

What this was the first I'd heard this.

Apparently the barn that Willow burn was full of marijuana.

From Florida ceiling wald wall was most weed I've ever seen in my life, and Willow burned it down to the ground intentionally.

Did you really not know that?

Aren't you calling this thing the red weather because of the fire?

No?

No, from a walla Stephens poem.

Oh, of course an obscure poets even more obscure poem.

Holy Christ writer, No one cares.

Willow started that fire.

She took out four houses, burned to the ground because she found a craft ton of drugs in that barn.

Where'd the pod come from?

You should probably find out, shouldn't we.

I was only two days into recording, and already I felt like I had no idea what I was getting into.

For what it's worth, the title from a poem called Disillusionment of ten o'clock.

Here it is.

It's short.

The houses are haunted by white nightcounts.

A nun are green or purple with green rings, or green with yellow rings, or yellow with blue rings.

None of them are strange with socks of lace and peedded censures people are not going to dream of baboons and periwinkles.

Only here and there.

An old sailor, drunk and asleep in his boots, catches tigers in red Weather.

It's tough to not conform.

Maybe impossible.

We wear the same nightcowns, we have the same dreams.

And if I think about how my parents, how Willow and Anna's mom, just the baby boomers in general, they had such high hopes.

It really thought that they could change the world and remake it for us kids.

And they tried protests, the sex, drugs and rock and roll, running off into the woods to build houses, to join communes.

I want to believe that it meant something, but it did some good.

But maybe not.

Maybe they were just catching tigers and red Weather.

The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Strong, sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo milkis produced by Tess Bartholomey, executive producers at iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick, Associate producer Bo milkis original score by Kyle Morgan.

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Thanks for listening.