Malibu Murder Mystery: What Happened to Beauty Queen Mitrice Richardson?
Troubling questions surround the death of a beauty pageant queen, whose body was found in a ravine a year after her disappearance.
UPDATE: In 2011, Mitrice Richardson's parents reached a $90,000 settlement with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department over its handling of the beauty queen's disappearance. In 2015, Kamala Harris, then-Attorney General of California, declined to review the case, although her office changed its decision a year later and ultimately found no evidence of wrongdoing. In September 2019, 10 years after Richardson's disappearance, the department announced it intended to go back over the case "with fresh eyes."
When the body of the 24-year-old beauty pageant contestant was discovered in a rugged ravine in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was in such a rush to retrieve her remains, deputies left behind several body parts.
"We went back twice, and collected small toe bones, finger and vertebrae," the Los Angeles County Coroner Assistant Chief Ed Winter tells The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview, revealing for the first time how the investigation might have been compromised.