West
Grieving moms dig with ‘bare hands’ to unearth the dark truth behind their missing and murdered children
In the blistering summer heat, Cheryl Holsonbake found herself driving two hours from her home to California’s rural Kern County, where she would search with her “bare hands” any land that appeared like a shallow grave.
The matriarch was joined by two other mothers in search of answers for their children.
“We took shovels and looked for my son there,” Holsonbake recalled to Fox News Digital. “I would think if I could just search with my own hands and find him, I could bring him home. I could bring him back to his family. That’s what we would do on weekends.”
HARRIS FAULKNER HOSTS ‘AMERICA’S MOST WANTED: MISSING PERSONS’ ON FOX
Cheryl Holsonbake is seen here with her son Micah Holsonbake. (Investigation Discovery)
“People have sent us information when they wouldn’t speak to detectives,” she shared. “They’ve sent us what they think are clues. We’ve opened our phones before and had pictures of human remains. ‘Does this look like it might be part of your son?’ Who lives that life? But we stick together.”
Holsonbake is one of the mothers of the “Bakersfield 3.” It represents three cases that were entangled with each other. The quest for answers is being explored in a new Investigation Discovery [ID] true crime docuseries premiering Sunday, “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood.” Fox News Digital contacted the Kern County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
The mothers of the “Bakersfield 3” spoke out in a new docuseries premiering on Mother’s Day in hopes that it will encourage anyone with leads to come forward. (Investigation Discovery)
“One of my son’s favorite shows as a kid was ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and shows where they would look for missing people – he loved them,” said Holsonbake. “As long as people listen to the story, we’re going to tell it. And it brings information to our detective.”
According to Marie Claire, Micah Holsonbake’s service was cut short in spring 2003 by surgery to remove a large benign growth in his throat. (Investigation Discovery)
The tale of tragedy started in March 2018 when Holsonbake’s 34-year-old son, Micah Holsonbake, went missing. He vanished the same month as Jane Parrent’s then-20-year-old daughter, Baylee Despot, whom he knew. Then, in April 2018, Diane “Di” Byrne’s 38-year-old son, James Kulstad, was shot to death in his car. He shared a social circle with Micah and Baylee.
Holsonbake said it was Byrne, who died in 2024 after a battle with ovarian cancer, who realized that the cases may be connected.
The “Bakersfield 3” mothers. Cheryl Holsonbake (center), Jane Parrent (left) and Diane “Di” Byrne (right). (Investigation Discovery)
“She called me out of the blue and said, ‘I heard your son is missing. My son was murdered. They knew each other,’” Holsonbake recalled. “I had no idea.”
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James Kulstad, an avid surfer, was killed in a drive-by shooting. (Investigation Discovery)
About two to three weeks later, Baylee went missing. Holsonbake realized that her son knew her. Her husband, who had spotted missing posters for Baylee, texted the number listed. It was her mother.
It is believed that Baylee Despot knew Micah Holsonbake. (Investigation Discovery)
“He told Jane, ‘You don’t know me, but I think our son and daughter knew each other,” said Holsonbake. “Then we banded together.”
Parrent still vividly remembers the last time she saw Baylee.
Jane Parrent said that her daughter, Baylee Despot, was struggling with her mental health before she disappeared in 2018. (Investigation Discovery)
“I gave her a quick hug in front of Matthew Queen’s house [the man she was living with],” she tearfully told Fox News Digital. “I just wish that hug was tighter. But in hindsight, you never know what’s going to happen. But that last day, I saw her, touched her, smelled her, heard her voice.”
The children were all going through personal struggles during those final months. James, once obsessed with surfing, became addicted to drugs after being hit by a car in 2007 and prescribed opioids, Marie Claire reported.
According to James Kulstad’s mother, he had hung out with Micah Holsonbake. (Investigation Discovery)
According to the outlet, Micah, who enlisted in the Navy after 9/11 and later became a stockbroker, also became addicted to drugs after surgery. Baylee was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and survived an overdose. She also endured domestic violence in a previous relationship.
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After surgery, Micah Holsonbake became addicted to prescription drugs. (Investigation Discovery)
Holsonbake still grapples with guilt over the last time she heard from Micah.
“He called me and asked for money,” she said. “I didn’t have it. He got angry with me. He raised his voice at me.
Marie Claire reported that ANDE was a company that offered automated DNA testing in less than two hours. (Investigation Discovery)
“I hung up on him, and I never talked to him again. I’ve replayed that moment a million times. . . . The last time I saw him was about two weeks before that. He was teasing me and joking. I try to focus on that because he was more himself. . . . But I don’t hang up on people anymore. Be careful hanging up on your kids.”
Diane “Di” Byrne (right), James Kulstad’s mother, was the first to wonder if the cases were somehow connected. (Investigation Discovery)
According to the docuseries, the women became frustrated by the lack of information they received from the police. The investigators argued that, like with any case, they withheld key details from the public to prevent any potential evidence tampering or alerting potential suspects.
The mothers took matters into their own hands. Whenever they received a tip on social media or through a phone call, they went searching. Parrent put up missing posters daily, even after they were taken down and poles were greased. If she drove by a strange-looking black plastic bag, she wondered: Could human remains be inside?
Micah Holsonbake’s father saw the missing flyer for Baylee Despot. He went on to text the number that was listed. (Investigation Discovery)
“I’m not a very religious person, but I have gotten closer to God, and I haven’t walked this path alone,” said Parrent. “But it’s just so painful to relieve this every day. And you get so frustrated. You tell law enforcement, ‘We got a tip to go look here.’ Well, we can’t go search there on a tip, because that costs money and time. OK, we’ll go do it ourselves. And we’ve been told to go to so many places. I’ve always said, ’I have nowhere to look and everywhere to look.’”
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James Kulstad’s 2018 murder remains unsolved. (Investigation Discovery)
In 2018, a woman’s leg was found in a Kern County lake, about 25 miles southwest of Bakersfield, Marie Claire reported. Parrent was certain it was Baylee’s. It belonged to 64-year-old Santa Ana resident Shirley Mae Cassel.
A month later, a severed arm was found in a bag, weighed down with rocks. According to the outlet, Holsonbake read an article about ANDE, a company that offers DNA testing in less than two hours.
Like Micah Holsonbake, James Kulstad struggled with addiction. (Investigation Discovery)
The outlet noted that while bone fragments had been sent to Sacramento for DNA through the State Department of Justice, results could have taken a year or more. But just before Christmas in 2018, Holsonbake learned through ANDE that the arm belonged to her son.
In 2019, Baylee Despot (left, seen here with her mother) was charged in absentia in Micah Holsonbake’s murder. (Investigation Discovery)
In 2020, Queen and Baylee were charged with Micah’s kidnapping, torture and murder, Marie Claire reported. According to the outlet, investigators believed that Queen and Baylee brought Micah to Matthew Vandecasteele’s garage in 2018 to question him about a firearm. Micah was accused of stealing the gun from Queen.
The Bakersfield Californian reported that several people interviewed by police who knew Micah said he had grown increasingly paranoid of Queen leading up to his disappearance. Others claimed Micah owed debts to various people for drugs.
The outlet noted that police had interviewed Vandacasteele while he was serving time on separate convictions. He claimed Queen asked him to use his garage to extract information from Micah. Queen and Baylee were alleged to have placed zip ties on Micah’s arms, and Baylee retrieved a knife from inside the apartment. Afterward, Baylee looked shaken.
According to the documentary, Jane Parrent’s missing posters for her daughter Baylee Despot were being mysteriously removed. (Investigation Discovery)
The outlet also noted that police discovered Vandecasteele had searched for how to dissolve a body online, days after Micah was suspected of being killed.
Parrent told reporters that Baylee wasn’t capable of doing anything that horrific unless “her life was in danger, or she was threatened.” She argued that her daughter should be found to get answers.
Prosecutors alleged that Micah had been dismembered, and that his remains were scattered throughout Kern County. His skull, found inside a bag, was retrieved in 2021.
Baylee Despot’s mother said she previously dealt with domestic violence. (Investigation Discovery)
Some thought that the news would break the mothers apart. It didn’t. They continued to lean on each other.
Baylee Despot is still missing. (Investigation Discovery)
“I have done things I’d never thought I would do before,” said Parrent. “This has made me a different person. I hope I’m a better person. I know not to be afraid to speak up and call people out on what’s wrong and broken. . . . I’m stronger now, but sometimes you don’t want to be strong. You just want to crash into the waves and have it be over. But you can’t give up hope.”
In 2022, Queen was convicted of second-degree murder in Micah’s death. KGET reported that he had been sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, plus 56 years.
The rest of Micah’s remains have never been found. James’ killing remains unsolved and is not believed by authorities to be directly connected to Micah or Baylee, Marie Claire reported. Baylee is still missing.
MISSING WOMAN FOUND AFTER MORE THAN 60 YEARS, SHERIFF REVEALS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The mothers of the “Bakersfield 3” are urging anyone who may have any information to come forward. (Investigation Discovery)
Today, the surviving “Bakersfield 3” moms are urging anyone with information to come forward.
“We need people to think to themselves, ‘Could this tip help a mom find her daughter, find a shallow grave?’ ‘Would I want someone to do this for me?’” said Holsonbake. “Just come to us. We’ll sit and listen to you, because I’ll always be searching. We’ll take it from there.”
“The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” premieres May 11th at 8 p.m. on ID and will stream on Max.
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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A recent Civil Grand Jury report has identified wildfire risks in San Francisco’s Glen Canyon, warning that vegetation management is needed to reduce the potential for a fire in an area not typically associated with wildfire danger.
The report focuses on the canyon’s large population of Blue Gum eucalyptus trees, an invasive species originally imported from Australia.
Historical photographs show Glen Canyon was largely treeless in the late 1800s, when the land was used primarily as a dairy farm.
The eucalyptus trees were planted after investors believed the fast-growing species could be harvested for timber.
“And these people were so stupid, they didn’t realize they were going to build railroad ties and use the wood for building, and it’s worthless. It warps, it splits. it has no commercial value,” said Rick Carell, a member of the Civil Grand Jury.
While the timber venture failed, the trees remained.
Today, their flammability is a concern for fire safety officials and grand jury members.
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“The leaves have a lot of oil in them, and so actually, if it’s very hot, and it’s been very, very dry, they actually explode, because it’s highly flammable. And so, you can see here, look at all the debris right next to this road. So somebody throws a cigarette out into there, and you have a potential fire,” Carell said.
Carell said assessments of the trees have raised additional concerns.
“They evaluated something like 427 eucalyptus trees and 80% of them, back in 2012, were in bad shape,” he said.
Although CAL FIRE has repeatedly rated San Francisco’s wildfire risk as low because of the city’s cool, foggy climate, the grand jury report points to the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles as an example of how fires can occur in urban areas where vegetation management is inadequate.
The report notes that Glen Canyon has only two fire hydrants, one near the Glen Park Recreation Center and another near a day camp building.
However, San Francisco’s Emergency Firefighting Water System provides additional resources through reservoirs, high-pressure hydrants and underground cisterns.
One nearby cistern at Chenery and Surrey streets can supply 75,000 gallons of water. Based on a fire engine’s typical pumping rate of 1,500 gallons per minute, that amount of water would be exhausted in about 50 minutes. Additional cisterns are located in surrounding neighborhoods.
MORE: CAL FIRE urging Bay Area residents to create defensible space as wildfire season begins
Despite the concerns, the report concluded that removing all eucalyptus trees is not a practical solution because of the canyon’s steep terrain. Large-scale removal could increase the risk of landslides. Instead, the report recommends managing vegetation by clearing brush and fallen debris and removing diseased trees.
“To remove any brush that might be a fire hazard, if something could really ignite quickly. We’re going to raise up the branches, the lower branches of the tree because that’s where a lot of the problem is for the spread of the fire, and if there are any dead trees that are really hazardous or branches that may hang over the roadway, that we can take them out as well,” said Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Department of Public Works.
Public Works officials are expected to coordinate closely with CAL FIRE on vegetation management efforts.
“CAL FIRE guys, they train in the type of environment, and so what they do, they get their chainsaws out, they eliminate. They limb the trees, they bring out the debris and that sort of stuff so this is an ideal training site for them,” Carell said.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages a small portion of the canyon, has already removed trees on its property to prevent them from falling across O’Shaughnessy Avenue, a potential emergency evacuation route.
The agency has also hired habitat experts to remove non-native vegetation and replace it with fire-resistant native species, including coast live oaks.
“That has all these tannins in the foliage that resist fire. You can put a lighter right under that thing in the middle of the hottest day of the year, and it will not burn like these willows. They will not burn, and so that’s what we want to load our parks with instead of having things like the eucalyptus and the pine — which, as we all know, they just burn like a crazy Christmas tree fire,” said Habitat Specialist Josiah Clark.
The majority of the 66-acre canyon is managed by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which agrees that improved coordination among city agencies is essential to maintaining fire safety in the area.
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The Regional Transportation District’s BroncosRide buses, running from Park-n-Ride lots around metro Denver to Broncos football games, will be back this fall after a five-year suspension.
RTD directors this week voted 10-5 to reinstate the service.
The agency suspended the service before the Broncos’ 2020-21 season due to bus driver shortages and agency concerns about public transit equity.
Despite RTD’s current budget crisis, the directors decided that the BroncosRide — which will cost $1.6 million, according to information that agency staff provided to directors — will help boost RTD’s lagging overall ridership and increase the appeal of public transit.
If the buses are full, Director Chris Nicholson said, fare revenues estimated at $497,855 will offset the cost.
“At RTD, we make lives better through connections, and there’s nothing better than seeing (Broncos quarterback) Bo Nix connect for a touchdown,” Nicholson said. “Previous boards didn’t see it as a fundamental part of service. We do.”
Before the Broncos’ Aug. 21 preseason home game against the Green Bay Packers, RTD officials plan to announce detailed plans to run about 92 buses from about 18 locations around metro Denver, including stations near Denver International Airport, East High School, the Highlands Ranch Town Center, Interstate 25/Broadway, Broomfield, Longmont, Littleton and Parker.
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Seattle, WA
FOLLOWUP: Sound Transit Board finalizes $400+ million spending installment for West Seattle light rail
Two weeks ago, we reported on the Sound Transit Board‘s System Expansion Committee recommending approval of actions to allot $406 million toward West Seattle light rail – the first big commitment after the ST3 plan revision that cemented ST commitment to WS. At this afternoon’s meeting of the full board, the actions all got final approval, as did a much-smaller installment of spending on Ballard light-rail planning.
(Here’s the full slide deck as presented at the committee meeting, also including the current WS light-rail cost estimate of around $5 billion.)
On the horizon, according to the most-recent ST email update, is work to advance the plan for the new cross-Duwamish River light-rail bridge, shown in this rendering:
(Sound Transit rendering)
That work on the south end of Harbor Island (in a parking lot at 1001 Klickitat, according to city docs) will see crews drill a test bridge shaft approximately 10 feet wide and 250 feet deep to better understand ground conditions,” ST says, to obtain “key information needed to finalize the bridge design.”
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