HERB LEE:. Unloaded clothes at Marshalls and catered events at a law firm. It wouldn’t be a place where you can just belt out Karaoke, and then wander home, still singing, on curving, moonlit roads. EMILY GUERIN: She was 79 when I first met her. Hah! I will sue you for defamation of character and false accusations if you will not stop this.”. And we'd dump them out of the truck and we'd take, give them to the up, the up guys at California City and they'd take em out and show them their property. DIANE LEVINE: They gave us a free lunch, which, as you know, there's no such thing as free lunch. I would never recommend that to anyone. Mike Kessler is Senior Editor of Investigations and Projects at KPCC and LAist.com. EMILY GUERIN: Don taught me a lot of new words. But, hey listen, it’s just, who knows, I wasn't the kind of guy that was going to sit back and second guess a guy like Nat Mendelsohn. The only thing there isn’t an only of, is churches. And when Debbie asked her about it later, she admitted it. Maybe it runs in my blood. I could tell he thought it was important, because he explained it to me nine times. Show support by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. He told me, it just seemed like something I needed to do. No Standard oil, Union oil, Shell oil, Mobil oil, or Texaco station. He wants to be on the show, Final Table, which is a showdown between famous chefs. Ok, ok, I just have to read this whole part. In mid-2017, this state agency called the California Department of Business Oversight received its first complaint about Silver Saddle. In this case, the land was the 1020 acres of empty desert that you could see from the top of Galileo Hill, including the Silver Saddle Ranch property. EMILY GUERIN: Kathryn had been lying about her age for years. This one time, another inmate bashed his face in with a mop handle. He said he trusted me. Good atmosphere. KATHRYN EFFORD: I did it all. Maybe I have the charisma. He should make good on the things he had said were coming. © 2003-2020 Southern California Public Radio. That's what you're talking about. Maybe it runs in my blood. He wants to support his family. I spent years looking into it. They gave me a timeline of when I would fall in love and how deeply. But then I met Antonio Garcia. Tom denied he sold land for up to 100 times what it’s worth. But much of the land they bought is nearly worthless. DON KUYRKENDALL: Why did Nat pick that spot? And after three hours, I was completely drained. And given the charges against Silver Saddle, and the dozens of investors I’d talked to, I assumed most people felt this way. California City is located 101 miles (163 km) north of the city of Los Angeles. You can see for miles, far across the empty desert plain. There were four employees of a company called Regulatory Resolutions, all wearing suits. And there was, most of the time I didn’t ask questions, I tried to find out the answers on my own. He said he grabbed the blade, and then blacked out. EMILY GUERIN: But when Ben talks about this, there’s a lot of inconsistencies in his story. EMILY GUERIN: Meet Nat Mendelsohn the scoundrel. MARIAN DUCREUX: I don’t know, maybe I have the charisma? KATHRYN EFFORD: Real estate is the basis of all wealth. Which is how he ended up ensnaring his friends. JAMES KIM: I mean, with you, um, would you say that Silver Saddle was doing any sort of suspicious activity? The oleander bushes that lined California City boulevard got scraggly and wild. An L.A. native and former writer-at-large for Los Angeles magazine, he has been working in journalism since 1996. ANTONIO GARCIA: But remember, Las Vegas was a desert before it became Las Vegas. But she convinced him. Um. Okay, so it’s 1976 at this point. And it was owned by a pair of very rich brothers also from Texas — the Hunt Brothers. I see her looking up at Nat, in awe of this man with a dream. And Marian told everyone it was her house, and they were all kind of impressed. EMILY GUERIN: I told Ken about how Tom had been so calm and confident as he denied everything. But at his first parole hearing, in 2008, he told the commissioners he and Nina were arguing when she came at him with the knife. This person had gotten a call inviting them to a buffet dinner, and there, they’d been invited to spend a free weekend at Silver Saddle, where they said they were pressured into spending a bunch of money. And in his online reviews of Silver Saddle, I mean, his anger was practically jumping off the screen. Once you cancel... LIANHUI ZHOU: I call them, but, they said no. When Don worked there, in the early 70s, the company spent almost a million dollars a year on flying people down to take a look. KEN DONNEY: That's what a judge who had been a family law judge before became a criminal law said. LEE SMITH: Um... that's a good question. They wanted a sewer. If you are buying or selling real estate, we hope you'll consider working with one of our REALTORS. BEN PEREZ: Ok. Yeah, just feel free to uh, email me or contact me. He had a great laugh. When they saw Nat, they got out of the car. The threat appeared to come from the, um, high profit side of the negotiations. EMILY GUERIN: Do you feel bad that you brought people there? EMILY GUERIN: Is this your little timeline of who owned what and when? Plus, Ben becomes part of Silver Saddle's sales machine. ALEX MENDELSOHN: He married my mother when I was about five. Right? This is 1958. And thousands of people were still getting swindled. Term. I don’t know, he seemed small-time, like, a regional player, not someone anyone outside of Southern California would’ve heard of. A quick warning about this episode: it does contain graphic descriptions of violence. And they said they’d received 17 complaints since 1984. 11/16/2020 Update . She was going to take them to visit some model homes a mile away. EMILY GUERIN: Ben was 26, but he looked younger than I imagined. Like...”. Show support by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. But unlike Kathryn, I got a bad feeling from them eventually. EMILY GUERIN: And just like Marian did with Ben, Don and the other salesmen would suggest that the students recruit their friends and family to come down to California City and buy a lot. So don't take what I'm saying in any way, Emily, as minimizing what I consider to be my offense. I mean, he was the one making the money. And there was a court hearing coming up. That’s after a break. An older man offered to buy me something to eat. By mid-September 2017, he began emailing company management, trying to get his money back and saying he thought he’d been scammed. Afterwards, California City fell apart. So the three of us went out back and we stood in the wet alley beneath the streetlight. And looking back on it, I think this moment, with Tom swiping on his phone, maybe that was when he started recording. I think it’s why I ended up getting married: I was on the fence, but my boyfriend at the time was convinced, and convincing. The Kern County Administrative Offices are in Bakersfield, at the very bottom of the Central Valley. I’ve seen pictures of the room: the wall is covered in photos. I don't know, unmemorable. By the time Ken started there in 1973, his boss already had a massive file on Nat and California City. And he had a small stud in one ear. And I think it says a lot about Ken. Because there's been a reputation up here in the high desert, too, of places for people to just dump bodies. But here was this opportunity to invest. EMILY GUERIN: They spent a lot of time wandering around the desert, carrying sticks. MARK HIRAIDE: Maybe a survey might be helpful. Nobody forced you.”. I still believe it. If you don't have the vision, don’t bother. EMILY GUERIN: They made arrangements to move most of the animals off-site, and feed the ones that stayed behind. LEE SMITH: Ok ok, now that's a good question. But some had tomatoes growing out front, and freshly watered flowers. Because Nat wasn’t just building a city, he was building the idea of a city. EMILY GUERIN: At 10 am, on Wednesday September 25, 2019, eleven people gathered in the parking lot of an industrial office park next to the airport runway in Burbank, California. And I don’t even have a slouch. The whole scene reminded me of oil paintings of 18th century French queens and their papillons. I mean, I'm a 25-year-old kid, you know, with no college education and you know. It’s a dude ranch. I needed to know he got big, so big, he attracted the attention of Ralph Nader. The ups climbed down the stairs and walked into the sales tent, where they were greeted by a bunch of folksy salesman. He had an entire white bankers box full of the stuff, and he brought it to my room at the Best Western on one of my visits, and began rifling through it. I mean, there are a lot of people like that in California. Commercial-Free CNBC, CNN, FOX News Radio & MSNBC, Commercial-Free Music For Every Mood & Activity. EMILY GUERIN: Ken investigated for a year. And remove the cars. It is so isolated that when you drive out there, you kinda feel like you’re in a horror movie. BEN PEREZ: I don’t know what to do, I been doing research since day one… and, no one, you know, no one can help me. You wonder, how did this person get my number? And how it left me feeling so confused. When he still had dreams he thought he could make come true. Until he can explain why he violently murdered his wife, he remains a danger to society. The pool is where Dallon Cox first overheard the adults talking about Nat Mendelsohn.. DALLON COX: And most of the comments that I heard led me to believe that he was just kind of a slime bag. EMILY GUERIN: What do you mean she's an independent contractor? EMILY GUERIN: The houses you do see are the same color as the dirt that surrounds them. Emails. EMILY GUERIN: After the seatbelt victory, Ralph started looking for something else to blow the lid off of. Cause I didn’t, sometimes I didn’t know who was who. Nat Mendelsohn was a real estate developer who 60 years ago, decided to build a city from scratch in the Mojave Desert. For decades, Californians have been obsessed with trying to profit off desert land. And, four: a nearly $4 million refund to everyone who had bought land since 1972. We stood with our shoulders nearly touching, in front of a large, abstract painting, and Ken told the guy, over and over, “count to three before you press the shutter,” as if he had never held a camera before. That's why I think the Filipinos, they love to buy land. A place you could picture yourself living. THERESA GRIMSHAW: Yes, yes. Nobody wants it. But then, he started ignoring me. A consumer protection hero. See if anything has changed. It had been on a computer in the Burbank office. Try SimpliSafe today at SimpliSafe.com/CALCITY. LEE SMITH: And, and, and, and a lot of people do do that. How did he pull it off? Should I find a lawyer? He had sold it a few years earlier, to generate more cash, and then he’d resigned and moved to Texas. The only bar is part of a Chinese restaurant. California City is a limited series with 8 episodes. EMILY GUERIN: Oh, that you don't have cigarettes? Parole denied. My baby bump doesn’t show, leave me alone.” That was, that has always been my attitude. DAVID DAI: You know what, we are immigrants… we thought, in America, we cannot imagine this happen to us. MARIAN DUCREUX: I'm Marian Ducreux, I'm a real estate broker here in California. Nina’s mother believes Nina was asleep in the study. 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