Pushkin

When Vernus' first husband Bill Johnson died, she inherited their duplex on broad beach in Malibu.

She and her kids Kim and Doug lived in one half.

In an early 1976, she rented out the other half to her friends Patty and John Lytel and their two kids.

Patty soon met Gene Rayler.

The three of them, Patty, Vernus and Gene, all had kids around the same age, so these started spending a lot of time together.

On October 15th, the day Gene went into a coma, Patty had spent the day at home babysitting Fred and Gene's younger daughter.

Patty didn't find out that Gene was in the hospital until the next morning.

Here she is, telling the story to an investigator while on break from her job at the bank.

I was going to get my hair done that day and Vernus came running out of her side of the house.

It, you know, just hysterical and told me what it had.

She was just ready for it.

Yeah.

After Gene's memorial service, Patty and Vernus went to a Mexican restaurant in Ventura called the Red Onion.

As they sat there trying to process everything that had just happened, their vibrant, confident friend, dead at 34,

under such ambiguous and bizarre circumstances, they allowed themselves to think the unthinkable.

What if Fred had murdered her?

Fred had made such a big deal, you know, that if Gene died, she'd speculated we both speculated whether he had killed her then.

I remember because we were seeing up with the Red Onion in Ventura after the funeral.

And we had sat there getting some hard work.

We had a special meeting with the men.

I had numerous times getting drunk, I'm pretty sure he had done it or not.

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