Original subtitles

Where my dad's cabin was,

there are not a lot of people, you can't just call for help.

The area is very isolated. It can be very dangerous.

Everything was completely dark.

And immediately, I knew it was bad.

He came out with a gun.

They didn't know, should I run, should I not?

Is he gonna shoot me?

I remember thinking, I didn't even tell my parents

where I was going today.

My biggest horror

was like, who's gonna be next?

July 28th, 2015,

I was 19 years old.

I was just hanging out with some buddies, Will and Keyton.

Will was like, "Hey, let's go shootin'."

He just got a new .22.

And we pack up and get some rounds, get some guns,

headed towards Caliente to Will's dad's cabin.

Caliente, California, it's a beautiful place, really.

It's about 25 minutes away from Bakersfield,

and it's about 15 miles of rugged terrain going up

to the cabin.

That desert area butts up against mountains where

the trees start, so you have thick forest, and then it gets

into very steep cliffs and very hazardous terrain.

I'm talking about rocks.

I'm talking about going vertical on rocks.

You need a four-wheel drive.

A normal SUV won't get you up there.

It has to be some type of off-road-like vehicle.

They drove to a point where they park, and then they take

a quad, and they drive up the rest of the way

on a dirt road to the cabin.

We're just listening to rock music,

talking, talking mess.

You know, we get to the cabin. It's very isolated.

There's trailers, RVs, a full-out shooting range.

Just a full-on man cave, basically.

As they park, and they're getting

their gear and everything,

they are confronted by

a gentleman.

My first thought was like, oh, that has to be,

like, Will's family.

So I was like, pretty cool at first.

I was like, "Hey, what's up, dude?"

Then I noticed he didn't say anything.

He was wearing all green. He had a sawed-off 12 gauge.

He had a bag that sounded like a bunch of rounds in it.

He also had a pretty long knife sticking out of his sleeve,

like he was ready to hunt or kill.

He was out in the wild, and he was prepared for it.

He approached us, and my buddy Will was like, "What the hell?

What are you doing here? You're trespassing."

And he's like, "There's no one that lives here.

It's just me."

That's when I knew this is bad.

And from there on, that's when everything went downhill.

He was definitely saying crazy things.

He told us about the government dropping him

from space in a body bag.

Made him seem unhinged, made him just crazy.

And I kind of started freaking out.

I even remember thinking like, man,

I didn't even tell my parents where I was going today.

I just took off.

Then he directed them into the cabin with him at gunpoint.

They didn't know, should I run, should I not?

Is he gonna shoot me?

Inside the cabin, he specifically told us,

"You sit in one corner, you sit in one corner,

and you sit in the middle."

We were all scared.

Your body goes into a certain state.

You don't feel nothing.

It's almost like you got to think of your next move.

I definitely was thinking of

my mom, my dad, my sisters, you know, like, damn,

like, this is it-- didn't even say, "I love you."

That was the rough part.

At that time, I wasn't too religious,

but I saved a prayer.

He had the shotgun in my face, finger on the trigger,

and he said, "Bang,

bang, bang."

He's like, "I can kill all you guys right now and get away

with it-- nobody will know."

Which he was completely right.

You know, middle of nowhere, no service, yeah,

you can definitely get away with it.

It's not uncommon in the rural areas for people to go out

target shooting or hunting,

and people are not gonna hear the gunshots.

And if they do, they may think it's just completely normal.

He wouldn't even have to bury them because he could have left

them in the elements, and they would have been taken care of

by the wild... and no trace of 'em.

Three young men have just disappeared off the face of

the earth, and no one knows why.

During that time, he was back and forth.

He's going outside, he's grabbing cans of food,

grabbing ammo, grabbing whatever

he thinks he needs.

And he would leave us in the room, and we'd kind of just

be talking between each other-- what are we gonna do?

My buddy Will was, "We're gonna try and take him down."

And I told him, I was like, "Stop, dude.

"You're gonna get us killed.

"Do you really wanna see one of our friends get shot or do

you really wanna die here?"

He even actually has a bag of butane tanks.

I thought for sure we were gonna die.

I couldn't fight my way out.

I couldn't shoot my way out.

I couldn't run my way out. I was stuck.

There's nothing I could do to get out of this situation

besides talk.

We asked him, "Can we smoke a cigarette, you know?

It's the least you could do it for us."

He hands us a cigarette,

We're just talking. He's telling us crazy things.

He talked about him knowing the devil, that the devil

brought him back to life, his last marriage, how it

wasn't good, talking about how he respects us.

He even told us one time, he said, "You guys are

my friends. I love you guys."

It was a roller coaster of emotions.

"Gonna kill you guys no matter what."

But we were talking, talking, trying to get out

of it-- it felt like torture.

But in those few hours,

we kind of started to figure him out.

He was just on foot, breaking into those cabins out

there, taking whatever he could.

He was kind of just living freely out there.

I mean, there's nobody around. There's nothing out there.

I think he was more mad that he ran into us, if anything, you know?

We kind of calmed him down to a point

where we came up with a deal.

Like, hey, you take all of our stuff.

You take our guns. You take our side-by-side.

You know, we'll just walk back, and you'll be free.

They told him, "Please just go, and we won't say anything."

He's like, "You're just messing with me.

You're just lying, you're just doing this to survive."

Which we were.

We all stuck to a certain game plan.

We're all on the same page on manipulating him,

on making this deal.

And he's like, "I respect you guys.

That's why I'm gonna let you guys live."

As crazy as it sounds, I shook his hand.

The suspect took the all-terrain vehicle

and drove away in it.

That's when we ran out that cabin.

It was just a rush of getting the hell out of here.

Didn't even look back, just ran.

Ran straight to the riverbed.

In that riverbed, there's a bunch of shrubs.

There's a bunch of things that can hide us, and it would take

us back to where we needed to be.

There's no cellular service in those areas, so they had to

make their way to safety before they could even make contact

with law enforcement. We're traumatized.

Any little thing, any wind, we're looking behind us.

We started to realize, like, we're not making any way.

Sun's already dropping.

That riverbed is taking too long.

So we got back onto the main road.

And as we're walking down the main road...

...that's when we heard him coming back towards us.

He'd changed his mind.

He was gonna come kill us.

We're walking down the dirt road, and...

we hear the side-by-side.

He was coming back to kill us.

He did not want them going and reporting

this particular incident.

They were actively being hunted down by him.

He was mobile. They're on foot.

We all dove face first, and...

and as we dove, we were capable

of just rolling over and kind of hiding ourselves

from the main road.

We laid there for a good five minutes until we didn't hear

that engine no more.

And that's when we got back up and started hiking that

trail again.

There's no doubt in my mind that he would have

eliminated those young men.

Keyton was sick.

I'm pretty sure he was dehydrated.

Dehydrated, scared, not a good mixture,

and we had to walk miles.

If you're not equipped in the mountains, it can not only

be scary, it can be deadly.

There is coyotes.

There's mountain lions.

There's a very high population of

poisonous rattlesnakes-- it can be very dangerous.

We seen some headlights.

I thought that he was coming back to kill us.

Our first reaction was to hide again.

But as it got closer, we heard a voice.

What are you guys doing? Where's the side-by-side?

And that's when we knew it was Will's dad.

That's when I kind of felt like a breath of fresh air.

I'm gonna make it home.

He could tell by our faces something happened.

And that's when my buddy Will hysterically started saying,

"We got held hostage, shotgun to our head, by a crazy man,

"and he took everything.

That was the only way we were gonna to survive."

Will's dad takes a deep breath and was just like, "What?"

And he's like, "Yeah, we got stuck up."

It was a quiet ride. I didn't speak.

I was just thinking of

what just happened, like...

I should be dead.

Thank God they escaped and reported to

law enforcement.

In 2015, I was a senior deputy

for the Kern County Sheriff's Department.

I had a dual role as a detective

and also as a SWAT team sniper.

We have a special operations group team that is primarily

SWAT team members that do special missions.

We realized how lucky these three young men were

and the manhunt really started.

At some point, the kidnapper tried to get out

of the area with that vehicle and managed to get it stuck.

He got it stuck in a very, very remote area to where it

was completely inoperable,

and he fled on foot from that vehicle.

The SWAT team tried to follow the tracks as far as

they could, and based on the terrain and everything,

they lost the tracks.

The three young men did a drawing to give us a general

idea of what the guy might look like.

We knew he had darker skin, black hair.

He wore glasses and kind of wore clothing that looked like

he might have been a hiker, but that's about it.

We had nothing on this guy. We didn't know who he was.

We didn't know where he was.

And we didn't know what his capability was.

We were worried he was going to hurt somebody eventually if

we didn't find him.

July 30th was a Thursday.

Thursday nights are a easygoing, relaxing night.

We'd play video games with the kids.

- That night, I saw my mother-in-law calling me.

And so I answered, and she was

kind of hysterical, saying that

Dave hadn't checked in that night.

Dave is my father-in-law,

and he normally checks in before dark.

My dad's cabin was out in Jawbone Canyon.

He loved it.

He would wake up at 5 o'clock and hop in his truck

and go out there.

The only reason my mom was not with him was she was

recovering from a surgery.

But he always checked in probably around 6 PM.

Sun would still be up.

He just wanted to let you know that I'm in for the night.

And, you know, everything was great.

Cheryl was a bit distraught and wanted to go out and check

to see if he was OK.

Early 2000s is when he actually purchased the cabin.

It was absolutely beautiful.

It was a wood, kind of like looking like a log

cabin, you know, and windows everywhere.

It faced where they had fields, it faced the pond,

very isolated,

and, of course, that was part of the charm.

It was very relaxing-- because we don't have cell reception,

that let us unplug just from life.

It just gave us a couple days where really all you did was

just enjoy where you were, like in the moment, like you're

just on vacation in this cool little cabin out there.

When he bought that, he was looking for a place to--

just to have his own kind of refuge.

He wanted his own spot where he could do just what he wanted

to do, make it his own.

My grandpa grew up gold mining, and so he taught my dad.

And my dad just loved it. We used to joke.

I said, you're the only dentist that has a dump truck

and a dynamite permit.

I just think to myself and laugh, like,

my dad is so cool.

Where my dad's cabin was, there are not a lot of people.

So your nearest neighbor, you can't just call for help.

I mean, that's really scary.

And here's my dad, who's just out there because

that's his retirement, and he loves it.

Cheryl comes over to the house, and she's very upset

at this point and wants me to drive.

So she says, "You know the road better.

"You know the place better. Can you drive?

And we'll go from there."

From our house to get to the cabin,

it could go anywhere from an hour and five minutes to

an hour and 15 minutes, depending on road conditions.

But I have to stay home because I've got two little kids that

are now in bed.

My mom and Ryan leave about 9:30.

And now the time is ticking, and I'm waiting.

I'm kind of doing this vicious cycle of cell phone calls.

I'm calling my dad's satellite phone, his cell phone,

the house phone.

I'm starting to now get a little panicked,

and I'm starting to yell a little louder,

"Dad, it's Kristi, dad.

"Like, you need to pick up this phone.

I'm really worried."

Earlier in the week, it was on social media.

Somebody had mentioned something about some boys

getting kidnapped and not a lot of information about it.

I thought, that's somewhat close as the crow flies.

But crossing that distance would take, especially on foot,

quite a while, so I didn't think too much of it.

As we pulled up in the headlights, I could see

on the ranch road where it looked like a car had skidded

to a stop and pushed up dirt in front of the tires.

My dad was very meticulous about keeping the roads

really nice-- that's not something my dad would ever leave.

If he had done something like that, he would have got out,

raked it flat, and made it look pretty again.

Immediately, I thought that that was odd.

When we approached the cabin, everything was completely dark,

and his truck isn't there.

So we think he's not here, he's not around.

I asked Cheryl, do you think we should check the cabin just

in case? And she said, "Yes."

- Cheryl was still very frantic,

as was I.

I was worried just because everything seemingly looked

fairly normal.

I had packed up my rifle, just in case.

You never know if an animal is an issue.

And on the rare case, there could be a person.

I grabbed my rifle, had my flashlight.

- Cheryl was

up on the steps going into the cabin.

And I was hanging back just a little bit,

shining my flashlight, just making sure there was

nothing out of the ordinary.

I noticed that that back window was open, and it seemed off.

I followed Cheryl in, and it was dark inside.

I still had my flashlight on so I could see a little bit.

And I walked around the corner,

and immediately, she screamed, "Oh no."

And I knew...

at that moment, it was bad.

Ryan runs into the kitchen,

and there was my dad.

He'd been shot, and I immediately knew

he was dead.

I knew what I was seeing.

I knew what was happening, but I couldn't quite

comprehend it.

Ryan immediately runs to my mom, and he's like,

"We have to get out of here."

We were in grave potential danger.

Somebody could be out here right now.

We jumped into the vehicle,

and I thought, what if somebody climbed in here while

we were inside?

I said, "Cheryl, make sure there's nobody hiding in

the back right now."

Everything's good.

We start going down the county road, and a lot of

that's a blur.

We were both hysterical.

It took us about a half hour to get back to a cell signal.

And we stop, and Cheryl calls 911.

And from there, dispatch does their thing.

At this point in time, our homicide detectives were

working the scene, collecting evidence.

What we did learn early on is that his vehicle was missing

from the residence.

Daybreak the next day, we did locate his vehicle

run off of a remote road, stuck in very similar fashion

to the ATV.

And outside of Mr. Markiewitz's vehicle, we were able to locate

shoe track on the ground outside of

the driver's side door.

Those boot marks were very, very similar in pattern

and size to the boot marks that we located and were initially

tracking at the cabin where the three young adults were

held against their will.

That was a very significant escalation in the case.

We suspected this was the same person that had eluded us

the first time.

I was really concerned that he's out there free,

running around.

We're in the span of two days, and we know this person has not

only kidnapped and held people against their will,

and threatened them at gunpoint, he's now murdered

an innocent person.

When you have someone who has no qualms about taking a life

from a complete stranger, that means he has no problems

taking another life if they happen to cross him.

So this is a person who needs to be stopped.

That makes this an all-hands-on-deck investigation.

We dispatched special weapons and tactics team members to

Mr. Markiewitz's cabin,

and we began tactical operations in that area.

Man tracking, it's not the same as, like, search and rescue.

Search and rescue, you're looking for someone

who wants to be found.

When you're man tracking, that person's trying to

avoid you, and they've already got time on you.

They've already got distance on you.

Our whole SWAT team was split up into two 10-man groups.

Each team had a couple snipers. We had off-road vehicles.

We had the helicopter flying.

The plan was is hopefully find the tracks up ahead further so

that then we could gain ground on the person,

find this person as fast as possible.

We realized that he probably knew what we were doing

because every day was a different track.

He doubled back. He was circling around.

He knows we know what he did.

So he used every trick that he knew to evade us.

It appeared that this person not only knew the area,

but he was leading caches around for him to come back to,

so he could move back and forth and resupply, which tells us

that he's thinking ahead.

Every little thing can be a clue.

It's not just footprints, candy wrapper, cigarette butt,

broken branches.

All this stuff, these are clues.

We found a water bottle

and some supplies that were abandoned.

Bottle had been used.

It wasn't fresh. It wasn't sealed.

So we thought maybe we could get a DNA hit on it.

It was delivered to the labs.

They did get a positive hit.

And that's where we first identify the stranger that

we've been tracking this whole time.

The suspect was Benjamin Peter Ashley.

Several years back, he had been arrested for breaking into

houses and burglarizing the house.

And so he was in our system. So we had a picture.

We had a name, age, all of that.

He was from the LA area.

And he was a drifter, just kind of did his own thing.

And he was very familiar with the area and was an avid hiker.

Dealing with somebody that we think may know this terrain

puts us even on more high alert.

This was a mountain man, very capable of eluding us.

He was in really good shape.

He was acclimated to that type of terrain.

He was acclimated to that type of weather.

We were in his element, not ours.

And when you're in the other person's element,

they have an advantage.

On the morning of August 1st, 2015, we continued tracking.

As we came across structures and trailers and residences

that appeared maybe unsecured, and there was nobody obviously

there, we would search those to ensure that

this person wasn't there.

Now this is a small team, because we were

a tracking team-- this was not the typical SWAT call out.

We find the track again on a dirt road,

and we start following it.

And the tracks go into a field and towards a house.

I tried the door, and it's unlocked.

I let my team leader know, hey, we got an unlocked door

and we make a game plan-- I will go first.

And I didn't see anything out of place that just, it just

didn't feel right.

I take two more steps, and...

and then I feel...

the bones in both my arms break at the same time,

and next thing I know, I'm looking at the ceiling.

I'm laying on my back, and I see that there's blood

on both my arms, and I call out that I'm hit,

and all hell breaks loose.

Benjamin Ashley was shooting at my team, and my team was

backing out of the house to get away from the gunfire.

I can't fight back. Both my arms are down.

I can't get up.

And so I was kind of laying there, thinking the last thing

I was gonna see was Ashley look at me, point a gun

in my face, and that was gonna be it for me.

About that time, one of my teammates grabbed me

and drags me out of the room and onto the deck.

And while the team was shooting into the house,

they were trying to patch me up.

The bullet shattered the bone in my forearm and blew out

the artery, and they were trying to stop the bleeding

and save my life.

And because of that, Benjamin Ashley was able to

escape out the back door of the house,

and he ran off into the forest.

We couldn't chase him because he had the advantage.

He knew the terrain.

So we focused on getting Booker to survive his wounds.

And thankfully, we had our helicopter close,

and we loaded him up and got him medical aid.

If he had just waited a second longer, if I had taken another

step, it wouldn't have hit my arms.

It would have hit underneath my armpit where

my armor doesn't cover,

and it would have gone through lungs and heart,

and I wouldn't be here.

We now know this person just has no fear and will do

anything humanly possible to evade capture.

I was really concerned that he was gonna hurt more of

my team or if he's gonna hurt somebody who just lives

out there and minding their own business.

That was my biggest horror about it.

It was like, who's gonna be next?

In those initial days after Booker was shot,

we had either lost track or the terrain was not capable

of preserving a track.

It was evident that we were gonna have to try to do some

things differently at this point.

Mr. Ashley is 34 years old, 5' 11", 180 pounds, black hair,

green eyes, and he's a black male.

And... what's that?

I can't go into too great a detail in this investigation

because it's still ongoing.

But, again, I'd like to commend the officers and the civilians

of this organization for the commitment

and the tenacity it took to get to where we're at,

and we're not done yet.

This is very, very widely broadcast into the media,

and the community took a vested interest in this and wanted not

only safety and closure, but wanted to support us.

It is almost like the worst game of telephone people have

ever played-- you don't know what's correct.

You're watching the news.

You're getting phone calls from sheriff's detectives,

this and that.

And they kind of had lost the track for a little bit.

Now we're scared.

Is he coming to get us now?

Like, a lot of irrational things go through your head.

I heard that he had shot and killed somebody.

And I felt depressed.

My first thought was like, we could have stopped all this.

Maybe we could have possibly held him down.

But I felt like God gave us a reason to live.

He let us live that day.

And I would almost say it's a miracle, because I still think

till today, we should have been dead.

August is as hot as it gets in Kern County.

We had to be careful that we didn't get heat exhaustion.

Our personnel are getting very little sleep,

hiking miles per day,

wearing body armor and carrying equipment.

Our tactical team members were being very vigilant on

the lookout for where could somebody hide.

Is he in a cave? Is he in a mine shaft?

What's gonna prevent him from ambushing law enforcement?

We had a lot to think about from our safety standpoint,

not just capturing Benjamin Peter Ashley.

But we're not going to come off this till we have

Benjamin Peter Ashley in custody.

August 15th,

we get a call from Brady's Mini Market in

the community of Inyokern.

This was approximately 20 miles from where I was shot.

The clerk explained that the person that was on the news

just walked in the store, got some ice cream, a couple of

candy bars, and then left.

We dispatched patrol deputies out to the Brady's Market in

Inyokern, and they were directed to a trail behind

the market to where the person was last seen.

When the person saw them, he hid behind a tall bush where

they couldn't see him, and they stopped and they drew down on him.

We know what we're up against.

This is somebody who is not going to comply with us.

They were challenging him, saying,

"Come out with your hands up,"

and he came out with a gun.

He wasn't gonna go quietly.

The patrol officers pulled up and confronted Benjamin Ashley.

They gave the orders to come out with your hands up.

He came out with a gun.

And at that point, they had their weapons drawn.

He was given every opportunity to turn himself in

and chose not to.

That's when an officer-involved shooting occurred.

Benjamin Peter Ashley was ultimately

shot and killed by our deputies.

I never feel joy for a death.

You don't know what was going through Benjamin Peter Ashley's

mind, but at the end of the day, none of that matters

when it comes time to protect your community.

Why kidnap three young men that have nothing to do with you?

Why kill a person in their own home?

I think that he wanted to stay incognito and just do what

he's wanting to do without any resistance.

He was worried they would call for the Sheriff's Department

and then people would be looking for him.

He obviously didn't want that.

Seems to me like this was like six weeks of a manhunt,

but it was 18 days.

It was a 24-hour-a-day operation for 18 days.

That's nothing that we had experienced.

And the support that we received

from our leadership,

as well as the community, it couldn't have been

accomplished without that support.

I needed to know that he wasn't a threat anymore.

So I drove out there, and it was definitely him.

That was a relief for me, kind of ending to this

whole nightmare.

The hunt is over. We're done.

I get a call from my brother. He says, "They killed him."

I'm like, "What?" "No, they got him."

At the time, I was, you know, like,

hell yeah.

I was happy, but now that I grew older, man, I kind of wish

that guy could get some help, figure out what the hell was

wrong with that guy.

If I had to piece together what I thought happened,

I think Dave was done for the day working,

mining, and came back to the house, opened a window

or two-- and that guy had been watching,

and snuck inside,

and took that opportunity to shoot him...

That's maybe what happened.

Unfortunately, Dave being such a loving, sharing, caring kind

of guy, this guy could have come up to him with any kind of

story, and Dave would have helped him.

I've been out in the wilderness, been camping,

been shooting, but never went back to Caliente, California.

Never been back.

It changed my life forever.

12 surgeries later, and a couple of years of

physical therapy and everything,

and getting things back to right, and I'm...

back with my family and not with

the Sheriff's Department anymore.

My dad was one of my husband's best friends.

And that was hard because it was like my husband losing his dad,

you know, just because my dad always treated my husband

just like his son.

It was never, well, that's my daughter's husband.

It was, that's his son.

Without David, it's like there's a void,

a missing piece.

I miss him a lot.

There's so many different things that we would do on

a regular basis out there between

mining, and hunting, and shooting, and fishing.

That kind of stuff would have been done monthly.

We'd be out there all the time, and now that hasn't happened.

Life can change in a heartbeat.

After that instance, you're like, when's the last

time you're gonna tell someone you love them?

When, you know?

So never forget to say I love you.

Just cherish life, you know? Cherish the things that matter.

Don't worry about the things that don't.

Hold on to the ones that you love a little tighter,

because life is definitely precious, and it's a gift.