Remember that documentary crew that was running around Humboldt on and off through the spring and summer? Well, the finished project airs Sunday night at 7 p.m. on the Fusion Network, which is a real network that I looked up (channel 342 if you’ve got DIRECTV). The crew and its producer talked to Journal staff during their filming and, after casting around for a central narrative among the threads of weed, missing persons and homelessness, the team evidently settled on the story of Garret Rodriguez, a San Diego man who went missing and was later found dead in Southern Humboldt. The preview for Murder Mountain: Welcome to Humboldt County on Fusion TV’s Facebook page is a dizzying series of cuts between foggy roads, grainy reenactments, masked men with rifles on ATVs, pot farms and police, all set against an ominous soundtrack. The post offers the tagline, “Welcome to Murder Mountain, a secretive and surreal corner of America with a deadly history.” Not sensational at all. See the video below.
In a mass email thanking participants, Team Lightbox said, “The show that airs this Sunday is a true testament to the great people of Humboldt and what can be accomplished when everyone comes together.”
The email went on to describe the series: “Murder Mountain is the story of Garret Rodriguez, who left home in San Diego to seek his fortune in the marijuana fields of Humboldt County, California. Within a year he vanished, touching off a series of bloody events that still haunt local residents to this day. Set against the backdrop of marijuana legalization, Humboldt’s outlaws are now speaking out for the first time about Garret’s fate and the group of vigilantes who brought him home.”
Former Journal reporter Linda Stansberry, who agreed to be interviewed for the docuseries but declined a request to investigate on its producers’ behalf, says that producer Josh Zeman assured her the project was not aiming for “tabloid-style exploitation.” But the preview has her eyebrow up. She’s hoping the series will be more “nuanced and revealing” than the lurid preview. “The production crew that I worked with while they were here,” she says, “was very nice and professional.”
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This article appears in ‘A Giant Falls Among the Redwoods’.
Buy BC bud. Its better, cheaper, and we dont kill the people who grow it for us… shame on you America, for letting things get so fucked up in youre own backyard.
Watched it – very slick and dramatic.Condeming CAMP and the perils of legalization,takes Hum Co sheriff to task and waxes nostalgic for the earliest days of Cannibis ag pioneers and attempts at utopian communities with positive legacies.
I’d like to take the focus of the county and see a quality doc about the history of growing in general without these dark human tragedies –
During his tenure as sheriff, Mike Downey was renowned for being a do-nothing.
I always thought maybe that was a good thing, given the sheriff departments prior aggression towards tree huggers and pot growers. A passive sheriff is better than a thug for moneyed interests, as was the case when Irv Renner served as big timbers obedient lap dog.
I was nonetheless shocked to hear Mr. Downey explain to a camera that the reason for his departments glaring dereliction of duty in missing persons cases was pure and simple cowardice. According to him his deputies are scared of people with guns and doing nothing is better than asking for help or trying to establish detente with his own understandably cop-shy constituents, a number of whom voted for him and pay property taxes to secure his departments services. Its funny how Mr. Downey was a much braver officer when the feds were providing lots of money for CAMP. He showed little compunction over kicking in the doors of unarmed hippies when he was coming up through the ranks, but nowadays is more cautious.
If former sheriff Downeys determined inaction is not criminal, it should be, and I hope the Murder Mountain show prompts state prosecutors to look into the case. I also hope the families of the disappeared are organizing a class action against Humboldt County and its ever shifty, shady Sheriffs Office.
Cops were corrupt that’s why 3 witnesses are dead, plain and simple. The people of Humboldt voted a corrupt cop as sheriff. They were protecting the alleged perpetrator.