David Hunt: 0:04

Go back in time with me. It's Saturday, February 14th 1981, Valentine's Day, a holiday celebrating courtship and romantic love in countries around the world. In Los Angeles, California, police working the Hollywood division are overwhelmed with cases. Crime is soaring throughout the city, with robberies and murders up more than 25 percent in the past year. But LA is also in the midst of a budget crunch and there are 300 fewer cops on the job. Hollywood's overworked investigators ask colleagues in the elite robbery homicide division to handle a case that needs a closer look. An unidentified man has been found robbed and beaten into a coma on a residential street. Detective Mike Thies, who took over the case, remembers those days like they were yesterday.

Mike Thies: 0:59

During that time it was kind of interesting. The city of LA, the county of LA, we had several serial murders going at the same time. We had the Hillside Strangler and the Night Stalker, the Skid Row Stabber. It was just crazy. It was just some real crazy times and our murder rate was just skyrocketing.

David Hunt: 1:22

Thies didn't know it when he started working the case, but he was on the trail of another serial killer in Los Angeles. This one frequented gay bars and expressed interest in hooking up with other men. The gay men who thought they were leaving the bar for a one-night stand ended up beaten and robbed, or worse. To bring a halt to the crime spree, Thies did something that had never been done before by the Los Angeles Police Department: he worked with the gay community to catch a serial killer. I'm David Hunt. In this program, I'll return to a story I first covered as a radio reporter in the early 1980s. I'll share more of my interview with the retired detective who led a dramatic manhunt, forging an unlikely alliance of cops and queers to crack the case. I'll revisit a controversial California Supreme Court decision that nearly let the killer go free before trial and the detective work that ultimately saved the case and sent the killer to death row. And I'll bring the story into the present day, talking with the queer niece of one of the victims, who's striving to learn more about the life and times of a relative who died before she was even born. Join me now for Manhunt on This Way Out.

David Hunt: 3:04

After two years in the Army at the height of the Vietnam War, Mike Thies came home to Los Angeles in 1968 to a different kind of battle. He returned to his job as a patrol officer with the LAPD at a time when crime was rapidly accelerating, fueled by the rise of street gangs and illicit drug use. By 1981, the year the major crime rate peaked in Los Angeles County, Thies was an experienced detective with the Robbery Homicide Division.

David Hunt: 3:36

The assault and robbery case he took over from the Hollywood Division on Valentine's Day 1981, seemed routine for the time. The victim was in a coma and couldn't provide details of his attack. The man's wallet and ID were missing, so Theis didn't even know his name or where he lived. What he did know was that the man, later identified as 28-year-old Ernesto Ramirez, a local hairstylist, had been found after midnight unconscious, lying on the curb of a residential street in Hollywood. His skull, face and right ear were badly injured and he was covered with blood. Thies got his first break in the case a week later when the victim's friends reported him missing. Luckily, one friend, Mario Aguirre, had seen Ramirez leaving a West Hollywood gay bar, the Rusty Nail, with another man on the night he was assaulted. On February 20th, Aguirre sat down with a police artist to create a composite drawing of the suspect. Unsatisfied with the result, he asked to be hypnotized to enhance his memory. As a result, the drawing was slightly modified. Meanwhile, Thies got down to business.

Mike Thies: 4:50

After I got the case, of course, Ernesto was in a hospital. He remained in a coma for, I guess, almost two months before he died. But I talked to Aguirre and the other people, his friends, and then I just started looking into other cases for similarities, and that's, it just started developing from there.

David Hunt: 5:16

Thies reasoned that if the assailant targeted one gay man at one gay bar, he may have targeted other gay men at other gay bars, and so he called detectives in the Sheriff's Department and other LAPD divisions throughout Los Angeles to see if they had unsolved cases involving violent crimes against gays. In the Hollywood division alone, police had reports of more than a dozen unsolved murders of gay men in 1980. After poring over copies of crime reports for hours — this was years before the LAPD's records were computerized — Thies found what he was looking for: a pattern. Here are the cases he began to connect. On July 11, 1980, Michael Thomas, a 32-year-old West Hollywood florist, had been found bloodied and beaten on a local street. He died of head trauma a few hours later. Friends told detectives that Thomas was last seen at a popular West Hollywood leather bar, the Spike, just after midnight. An autopsy showed that Thomas had been struck on the head at least four times with a heavy, blunt object. On November 29, 1980, Robert Sanderson, the 36-year-old owner of a Burbank hair salon, had been found by a security guard on a West Hollywood street at 1.30 in the morning, staggering and covered with blood. Sanderson remained conscious just long enough to give his name and say that he'd been attacked. A friend told detectives Sanderson was last seen at a gay bar, the Rusty Nail, just two blocks from the Spike. Sanderson died in the hospital on February 12, 1981, of head trauma. An autopsy showed that he'd been struck on the head with a heavy object.

David Hunt: 7:03

On January 24, 1981, the body of Danny Harman, a 22-year-old Kentucky man who'd moved to Los Angeles just weeks earlier, had been found in a Compton, California park south of Los Angeles. A friend told detectives that Harman was last seen at a gay bar, Woody's Hyperion, in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles. An autopsy showed that Harman had been beaten with a heavy blunt object and had died of head trauma. On February 21st 1981, 28-year-old Douglas Allison had been found on a Hollywood Street at 1:30 in the morning, bloodied and gasping for breath. According to a police report, Allison had sustained multiple facial fractures, including fractures to both his upper and lower jawbones. A surgeon who treated him stated that the injuries were caused by blows of substantial force with a smooth and probably heavy blunt object. Allison survived the attack but remained in a coma for two months. Friends told detectives that he'd visited several gay bars on the evening before his attack, including the Spike and the Rusty Nail.

David Hunt: 8:13

With the passing of Ernesto Ramirez on April 20, 1981, the death toll stood at four. Thies knew he needed the help of the gay community if he had any chance of stopping the carnage. There was only one problem. Cops and queers in LA were divided into warring camps back then. You're listening to This Way Out: the International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. I'm David Hunt. At a May 1980 hearing in front of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, dozens of angry gays and lesbians confronted three LAPD division commanders, demanding an end to police harassment of gay bars and their patrons. The owner of one gay club, circus Disco, said repeated police raids had effectively shut down his club but resulted in no prosecutions. Four city council members sharply criticized the police for devoting too much attention to gay bars and not enough to serious crime. One suggested that the council could trim the LAPD's budget even more unless the department changed its priorities. In a newscast for Pacifica Radio I reported that gays and lesbians felt squeezed between two oppressors gay bashers on one side, police on the other.

David Hunt: 9:47

It is not just criminals who terrorize gays and lesbians. Raids of gay businesses and homes by vice officers and even the FBI are facts of life in many parts of the country, Despite the bad blood.

David Hunt: 9:58

Thies realized that there was one very good reason for the gay community to put the past behind and work with his investigation.

Mike Thies: 10:06

Well there, you know mutual interest. You know their community is being victimized, so they've certainly got an interest in helping out.

David Hunt: 10:16

Detectives, assisted by Ernesto Ramirez's friends, began circulating copies of the composite drawing of the suspected killer to gay bars throughout the city. They hoped someone could match a name to the face Mario Aguirre. The friend who had seen Ramirez leave the Rusty Nail with the killer went a step further. He agreed to take part in a stakeout of the Rusty Nail in hopes that the killer would return looking for his next victim. On Friday, february 27, 1981, aguirre joined two detectives at a restaurant across the street from the bar, while backup undercover officers cruised the surrounding streets.

David Hunt: 10:55

After nearly three hours waiting and watching, aguirre and the detectives decided to go inside the bar, on the off chance that the killer had used the back entrance. Still, they knew running into the killer was a long shot, as they waited for a traffic signal to change so they could cross Santa Monica Boulevard. Aguirre looked to his right and saw a man crossing the street toward him. A familiar man, that's him, he shouted to detectives, I'd like to say the search for the killer of four gay men in Los Angeles concluded with the arrest of a 40-year-old welder, donald Miller, outside the Rusty Nail in West Hollywood on February 27, 1981. The truth is, the easy part of the investigation was over, the lead detective, mike Thies, would soon find that keeping Miller behind bars and building an airtight case against the suspect would put him at odds with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and, ultimately, the California Supreme Court. The high-tech tools of modern police work were limited in those days.

Mike Thies: 12:14

We didn't have DNA, we didn't have computerized fingerprints, we didn't have all the surveillance cameras that are so prevalent today. So it was a challenge.

David Hunt: 12:26

Simply put, the case against Miller was largely circumstantial. He was seen leaving the Rusty Nail with Ernesto Ramirez. He drove the type of sports car that witnesses had seen in the vicinity of the assaults on Michael Thomas and Robert Sanderson. He lived near Woody's Hyperion, the bar where Danny Harmon was last seen alive, and he grew up less than a mile from the park in Compton where Harmon's lifeless body was found. The key piece of evidence, though still circumstantial, was found inside Miller's 280Z parked across the street from the rusty nail. It was a piece of metal pipe stored behind one of the car's bucket seats For Thies. Discovering the heavy metal pipe confirmed his suspicions. He knew he had his killer.

Mike Thies: 13:14

You know it's a steam pipe from the railroad. He was a welder and these pipes, I mean you can't be a fairly strong guy to even wield them, and Miller was a big guy, I mean he had to be a fairly strong guy to even will him, and Miller was a big guy.

David Hunt: 14:05

But when Thies presented the case to the D. A.'s office, prosecutors rejected it, citing insufficient evidence.

David Hunt: 14:05

Thies would need more evidence or additional witnesses. Four days later, Donald Miller was released from police custody. Unwilling to give up on the case, Thies ordered plainclothes cops to put Miller under surveillance. If he tried to kill again, the LAPD would be watching. You're listening to This Way Out: the International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. I'm David Hunt. I'll return in a moment with the next chapter of Manhunt.

David Hunt: 15:15

Take a step back in time with me. It's Friday, May 8th 1981, a cloudless evening in Los Angeles, California. James Mack rides the bus to Hollywood to visit a few of the town's popular night spots. 11 o'clock finds him at Woody's Hyperion, a gay bar in the Silver Lake neighborhood east of Hollywood. Mack didn't know it when he started his bar crawl, but he would soon come face to face with a serial killer, a killer who targeted men he met at gay bars. Whether he would survive the encounter depended on a tenacious police detective and luck. About 30 minutes after he arrived at Woody's Hyperion, James Mack struck up a conversation with a man standing at the bar, a man who introduced himself as Robert and said he lived in Long Beach, about 25 miles south of LA. What brings you up to Los Angeles? Mack inquired. I was looking for you, the man flirted.

David Hunt: 16:21

Mack left the bar with Robert and the two men drove around in Robert's sports car, ending up at a dark house with a long driveway in front. It turns out the men weren't alone. Robert, whose real name was Donald Miller, was the prime suspect in the murders of four gay men. As Detective Henry Cadena watched from a distance, Miller and Mack got out of the sports car and began walking up the driveway. Then Miller stopped, turned and struck Mack hard on the right cheek with his fist. Before Cadena could sprint up the driveway to stop the attack, Miller hit Mack again, this time in the mouth. Mack fell to the ground bloodied but alive.

David Hunt: 17:09

Within seconds Donald Miller was back in custody. Now Thies believed he had enough evidence to charge Miller with four counts of first-degree murder. Police had literally caught the suspect in the act of attacking a gay man he had picked up at a gay bar, the same bar where 22-year-old Danny Harman was last seen alive in January 1981. But prosecutors in the DA's office told Thies he had a problem. His suspected metal pipe killer was caught beating a man with his fists. Where was the heavy metal pipe that would connect the assault on Mack with the murders of Danny Harmon, Robert Sanderson, Ernesto Ramirez and Michael Thomas? Thies theorizes there was a simple explanation.

Mike Thies: 17:48

He forgot his pipe that night because the surveillance guys had a good visual on him, and when he gets out of the car he's looking behind his seat, which is normally where he kept that pipe, but for some reason he had forgotten that.

David Hunt: 18:04

As it stood, the case was highly circumstantial. Prosecutors would have to rely on the testimony of just one key witness, Mario Aguirre, who saw his friend Ernesto Ramirez leave a gay bar on the night he was murdered in the company of Donald Miller. But because Aguirre had undergone hypnosis to enhance his memory of that night, prosecutors feared his testimony wouldn't be allowed by the courts. And so, for the second time in 10 weeks, the DA's office refused to charge Miller. The killer had escaped justice again and Thies was convinced would kill again.

David Hunt: 18:41

In a bold move, Thies went public with his frustration and anger at the DA's foot- dragging, telling the Los Angeles Times, "n my mind the case is solved. The Times headline trumpeted prosecution lags in gay murders. Thies knew public pressure on the DA's office would only go so far. What he really needed was more evidence and additional witnesses. Once again, the detective turned to the gay community for help. With the assistance of volunteers from the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, thies distributed more than 2,000 flyers to local gay bars and he picked up the phone and called a reporter at the Advocate, a bi-weekly gay and lesbian news magazine.

Mike Thies: 19:22

You know from talking to people I knew the Advocate had a nationwide distribution. It was highly read in the gay community and it certainly proved quite useful.

David Hunt: 19:34

In an article in the Advocate, Thies appealed to the gay community for help solving the case. He implored anyone who had survived a similar attack in Los Angeles to contact him. The gambit worked. The story in the Advocate yielded two new victims and, more importantly, potential witnesses. Richard Salida, a gay Chicago man, told Thies he visited Los Angeles in May 1980 to see a friend. During the visit he hitched a ride from a man in a black sports car on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. After a few minutes the driver pulled onto a side street and asked Salida if he wanted to make out. When Salida declined and started to get out of the car, the driver struck him on the back of the head with a heavy metal pipe, inflicting an injury that required seven stitches. Next Thies heard from a San Francisco man, Rodolfo Pambid, who said he visited Los Angeles in October 1980. During his visit, Pambid was attacked by a man he met at the Spike. The attacker used a club of some sort that he had retrieved from the back seat of his black sports car, Pambid told Thies. Pambid managed to block the blow with his arm and run from the car. A West Hollywood man, Michael Pietilla, also called Thies after seeing a flyer about the investigation at the Spike. He told an eerily familiar story of being attacked by a man driving a black sports car who had offered him a ride on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood

David Hunt: 21:02

on December 31, 1980, new Year's Eve. Thanks to the cooperation of these gay men, thies finally had enough evidence to bring the case to trial. You're listening to this Way Out the international LGBTQ radio magazine. I'm David Hunt. On Christmas Eve 1981, the DA's office charged Donald Miller with four counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. An additional attempted murder charge was added later, but nothing about the case was ever easy. On March 11, 1982, the California Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling that threatened to sideline the trial before it even got started. I reported on the development for Pacifica Radio.

David Hunt: 22:05

Here in Los Angeles, the man police believe brutally murdered as many as five gay men may never even go on trial due to illegal technicality legal technicality. In March, the California Supreme Court dealt a near-deadly blow to the case against the suspect, Donald Miller, when it prohibited the use of any witness who has undergone hypnosis. The key witness against the accused steel pipe killer was placed under hypnosis a year ago to help him recall details about the suspect. Without his testimony, a conviction might be impossible, according to the district attorney's office.

David Hunt: 22:39

In an interview shortly after the ruling, Deputy District Attorney Dino Fulgoni, the initial prosecutor on the case, shared his thoughts with me on the use of testimony aided by hypnosis.

Dino Fulgoni: 22:51

My opinion as to the effect of hypnosis on a witness is that I'm opposed to people hypnotizing witnesses because I think it can affect their credibility.

Dino Fulgoni: 23:02

Problem with the Supreme Court decision is that it is a flat exclusion. All witnesses who have ever testified, whoever been hypnotized, are prohibited from testifying regarding the subject of their hypnosis. There are cases and I've cited some in a brief that I'm doing to try to get the Supreme Court to rehear. There are cases where there couldn't possibly have been any suggestion because the police had no idea at the time the hypnotism was done who the guy was, where you can rule out this confabulation or making up of details by showing that after the hypnotism occurred, that the results of the hypnotism were confirmed by independent evidence.

David Hunt: 23:51

In June 1982, due to the efforts of Fulgoni and others, the California Supreme Court added a footnote to its March ruling, giving prosecutors some hope that the issue would be resolved in their favor. When I interviewed Fulgoni a second time, he was cautiously optimistic.

Dino Fulgoni: 24:10

We're up in the air. What I think they mean is that they're going to take it on a case-by-case basis, see what the evidence is in each case and make a determination as to whether or not the hypnotic session interfered with the reliability of the witness. So there is a good chance that we might be able to use the witness that was excluded under the rule decision.

David Hunt: 24:35

Ultimately, the trial judge allowed prosecutors to put Mario Aguirre on the witness stand, even though he had undergone hypnosis to enhance his memory. Deputy District Attorney Steve Sowders, who took over the case just weeks before trial, told jurors that Miller's history of violence spanned 20 years. The gay men who responded to the Advocate article testified about their experiences on the receiving end of Miller's rage, although it meant traveling to Los Angeles from out of town and sitting for hours in a crowded downtown courtroom. I reminded Thies that cops and queers didn't mix well in the 1980s. He shrugged off the suggestion. In his eyes, they were on the same side.

Mike Thies: 25:17

I had nothing but positive relationships, off the suggestion. In his eyes they were on the same side. I had nothing but positive relationships with the community. I found them to be probably some of the best witnesses I ever had. You know, I'd tell them okay, you got to be in court at 8 30. Well, they were there at eight o'clock, Never complained. No, they were just very, very responsible witnesses. No, I had no problems at all.

David Hunt: 25:42

On October 13, 1983, a jury of six men and six women found Donald Miller guilty of the murders of four gay men and the attempted murders of four others. They handed down the death penalty. In a final twist, the California Supreme Court took up Miller's appeal in 1990 and threw out Aguirre's testimony ruling. It was inadmissible, but they agreed that the testimony of the other witnesses was sufficient to justify the jury's guilty verdicts on all counts. Had Thies not worked with the gay community and the media to bolster the case, the guilty verdicts almost certainly would have been overturned on appeal. Thies has no doubt that Miller would have continued his killing spree.

Mike Thies: 26:29

He was vicious. I mean you see the results of his actions. I mean it's horrible. Who knew what deep sociological issues created this monster that we saw that carried out all these crimes?

David Hunt: 26:43

Donald Miller died of heart disease at San Quentin Prison in California on October 14, 2005, after 22 years and one day on death row. You're listening to This Way Out: the International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. I'm David Hunt, continuing my feature on an unlikely alliance of cops and queers that caught a serial killer in 1981. Flashback to 1980, to a conference room at Parker Center headquarters of the LAPD. The eight-story mid-century building nicknamed the Glass House features a jail with unbreakable tempered glass windows instead of bars. Ignoring the old adage that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon lobs an insult across the conference table aimed squarely at his guests leaders of LA's gay and lesbian community. You are all blasphemies, he shouts, referencing the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. Respond to that. Vernon would get a response, but not the kind of response he was looking for. In the coming years, relations between the LAPD and the gay community would improve, and some of the credit for that goes to Detective Mike Thies and to gays and lesbians across the city who put aside their differences with law enforcement to bring a killer to justice.

David Hunt: 28:24

The 1983 conviction of a 42-year-old welder, Donald Miller, for the murders of four gay men in Los Angeles was welcome news for the city's LGBTQ community, proving that cops and queers could work together if they respected each other. After their tense meeting with Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, gay and lesbian leaders had regrouped. They convinced LA Mayor Tom Bradley, a retired cop, to create the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force to give gays and lesbians official standing with the city's police commission. Captain Ken Hickman, who later earned a PhD in criminal justice at the Claremont Graduate School, was appointed the police department's liaison to the LGBT community in 1981. In a public presentation at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, Hickman pointed to the Miller case as one of the year's success stories. He thanked gays and lesbians for helping police circulate more than 2,000 flyers to gay bars in LA and West Hollywood. The flyers resulted in a key witness coming forward to testify against Miller, vital evidence in what was largely a circumstantial case against the killer. As important as the Miller case was to strengthening relations between the LAPD and the LGBTQ community in the early 1980s. I don't want to overstate the pace of progress. By 1991, 10 years after the murders, the LAPD had just six openly queer cops on a force of more than 8,000 sworn officers. The department finally agreed to stop discriminating against LGBTQ employees and job applicants in 1993, and then only to settle a lawsuit. Police conduct toward marginalized people and communities remains a concern to this day.

David Hunt: 30:18

After Miller's conviction, the case disappeared from the media and quickly faded from public memory. In 2016, 35 years after the killing spree, I told the story of the case on my blog, tellmedavidcom. The mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was in the headlines, and the savagery of the attack on the gay club triggered memories of the killings I had covered in the early 1980s in Los Angeles. I felt compelled to honor the memory of four young gay men who had been senselessly and brutally killed in places they thought were safe by a man they thought they could trust.

David Hunt: 30:57

It seemed unlikely that I'd hear from anyone who knew any of the victims, but in April 2022, a man named Bob Taylor posted a comment, a tribute to a long-departed friend. Robert Sanderson was a sweet, kind individual that I had the privilege of knowing, he wrote. He was also a hard-working individual and hairdresser that owned his own shop over by Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. He is thought of often and will never be forgotten. Then, in July 2024, a visitor posted another comment about Sanderson. Robert Sanderson was my grandmother's brother and the only other gay person in my family besides me that I know of. She wrote. His story is heartbreaking and I would love to learn more about who he was. And that's how I met Madeline Brancel, a policy manager at a research center in Boston, who's on a quest to understand the life and times of a gay relative who died before she was even born. We spoke recently.

Madeline Brancel: 31:57

I have one memory of sitting with my grandma at her kitchen table and I must have been pretty young because I was trying to get a sense of like who, what her family was like and who her siblings were and she told me then that she had had a brother who had passed away, and she said that he was. He lived out in California. I think she told me at that point that he was gay and he had moved out to California California, he opened up his own hair salon and that he had basically gotten kind of beat up at random one day when he was leaving his hair salon and that he had ended up dying while he was out there.

David Hunt: 32:38

Until she was an adult. That's all Brancel knew about her Uncle Bob. In 2015, the year same-sex marriage was legalized in the United States, Brancel fell in love with her partner, Alex. The couple traveled to Brancel's hometown to share the news with her extended family. The family's positive response made Brancel wonder if Sanderson had been supported and accepted when he came out in rural Wisconsin more than 50 years ago, and so she asked her grandmother to share what she knew of Sanderson's life before he moved to California.

Madeline Brancel: 33:08

I think she reflects on that period with just so much empathy for him. It sounds like he didn't have a lot of close friends or she doesn't remember a lot of close friends coming around, and she hasn't given me specifics but it sounds like he had a really rocky relationship with my grandma's dad, who was actually his adoptive dad. It sounds like their relationship was bad. I didn't get a sense of like if it was violent or what exactly that looked like, but my grandma said that it was really rough for him.

David Hunt: 33:39

After Sanderson moved to Los Angeles, his family rarely saw him. In the days before text messaging and email, news traveled slowly if at all.

Madeline Brancel: 33:48

Like I wonder how much of the distance was due to his sexuality, either on his part or on their part. I think my grandma said it was never really explicitly talked about, that they kind of knew that it wasn't talked about. His life in California was a big black box.

David Hunt: 34:05

Brancel shared some of the information on my blog with her grandmother, revealing details. She hadn't known that her brother wasn't killed at his salon but near a gay club, targeted because of his sexual orientation. But she also shared the thoughtful comment posted by Sanderson's friend, Bob Taylor, declaring that Sanderson was kind and hardworking and would never be forgotten.

Madeline Brancel: 34:28

The look on my grandma's face was she was so surprised and so moved and she couldn't stop thanking me and she gave me a huge hug and she said that this was a really momentous moment for her to see that someone in California had known him and respected him. It was just so meaningful for me to see my grandma, just like a small snippet of information, be so meaningful to her and that made me want to keep going on this journey and finding out more information, because I just can't imagine from her perspective like you're in your early 20s your brother leaves, you don't get to see him very often, you don't know much about his life, you know that he's gay but nobody talks about it and like all the signals you're getting are probably that that's bad and that's a sin. Well, you're still kind of figuring out what you think about things at that age and then he dies super violently and you never really get any closure.

David Hunt: 35:23

Although she was shocked to discover that her uncle was killed by a serial killer who targeted gay men, Brancel took heart from the way the community responded.

Madeline Brancel: 35:32

For me the most interesting piece is the collaboration between the LGBT community and police at the time, because I had just come off of reading this book that was talking about how difficult those relations were kind of across the country in the 70s 80s.

Madeline Brancel: 35:46

Relations were kind of across the country in the 70s 80s and so I was really curious as to like why, what were the drivers who were like the champions within the police department who made this work and who interacted respectfully with the gay community at the time? And then I was really moved once I started digging deeper and I learned that like the gay community had put up some like I don't remember if it was two or three hundred or thousands of flyers around kind of places that were key landmarks in West Hollywood for gay people to frequent and they were all kind of warning about this happening and kind of trying to raise awareness and trying to catch this person. And so that was moving to me, just knowing that like people, like an entire community of people, had rallied that an entire community of people had rallied.

David Hunt: 36:30

Brancel yearns to learn more about her uncle's life in Los Angeles and his experiences as a gay man in the 1970s and 80s. She wonders as well what her uncle Bob would make of his young relative, a proud queer woman with a loving partner and a supportive community.

Madeline Brancel: 36:44

I've thought about what he would think of how easy my life is in my family, how easy my life is in society. I think I live a pretty privileged existence, even for today. The things that he would have had to go through to just feel comfortable in his own skin and find his people is just something that I've never even had to imagine going through, and I hope that he would be very happy looking down on me and the experience I have as his gay niece just kind of thriving and living my best life with a lot of ease, which I'm very fortunate for.

David Hunt: 37:29

I'd like to thank Madeline Brancel for discussing the life of her uncle, Robert Sanderson. Other voices you heard in this feature belong to retired Detective Mike Thies and former Deputy District Attorney Dino Fulgoni. Information also came from a legal deposition by former Police Captain Ken Hickman and coverage of the Miller case by the Los Angeles Times and United Press International. Special thanks to the One National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California for preserving audio cassettes of some of my radio reporting from the early 1980s. For this Way Out. I'm David Hunt.