Winona Ryder: Drowning, Designer Theft, and a Deadly Kidnapping

Between beatnik parents, an LSD guru godfather, and an unconventional upbringing in Northern California, it’s not surprising that Winona Ryder became America’s endearing weirdo in the 1990s. Her noir starpower shined from an early age in movies like Beetlejuice, Heathers, and Edward Scissorhands, but her penchant for dark roles would lead her towards crime in real life. The only thing weirder than Winona’s $5,000 shoplifting spree and the kidnapping of a girl from her own hometown is how the two stories unexpectedly intertwine. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including kidnapping and child abuse. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ Which actress best embodies Generation X for you? Why? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [email protected], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠X⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Double Elvis.

• 0:13Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 0:44Speaker 03

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• 1:15Speaker 04

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:28Speaker 05

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one of more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist

• 2:10Speaker 05

  about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.

• 2:18Jake Brennan?

  Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:36Jake Brennan?

  The stories about Winona Ryder are insane. She nearly drowned when she was just 12 years old. And she once stole more than $5,000 worth of designer clothes on a whim, even though she was a super famous and successful actress at the time. Earlier, she was raised by beatniks off the grid in Northern California. Her godfather was LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, aka the most dangerous man in America. Winona's unique upbringing molded her into an A-list actress and into America's endearing weirdo.

• 3:15Jake Brennan?

  Her weirdness drew from the deep fears that she experienced when assimilating from a sheltered early childhood to a more typical 1980s media overload when her family moved to California. And when one of those fears came true in her new California hometown, she found herself in an unlikely role, trying to draw attention to a horrific crime to help solve a kidnapping case. Before and after her involvement in that case, Winona Ryder made great films. And Winona Ryder made time with some great musicians as well. Musicians who, well, you know what I'm gonna say. Musicians who made great music.

• 3:59Jake Brennan?

  Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Johnny Forever MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Dream Lover by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that specific slice of five-octave cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 1, 1993. And that was the day Polly Class was abducted from her home, opening a kidnapping case that would rattle California and Winona Ryder to her core.

• 4:40Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, near drowning, designer theft, a deadly kidnapping, and America's auld sweetheart, Winona Ryder. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 5:24Jake Brennan?

  Winona Ryder had seconds to determine whether she was going to live or die. The seconds ticked by slowly, and the undertow moved quickly. A current whipped Winona's body around like a rag doll. It yanked her in circles, shook her like a snow globe. And the ocean closed in on her from every angle. It dragged her farther into the deep, five feet below, 10 feet below, Winona wasn't sure. But she knew she was fully submerged. Down was up, left was right. She spun until she had no clue which direction would lead her to safety. This was not a riptide. Winona Ryder could not calmly bob at the surface of the water and flag down help, someone who could pull her back up to shore.

• 6:09Jake Brennan?

  She was caught in the undertow, and the incoming waves bent Winona to their will. Winona thrashed her arms and legs. She was motivated entirely by desperation. She struggled to wriggle free from the ocean's grasp. And the more she jerked her body around, the harder it was to focus keeping her mouth clamped shut. She held out as long as she could. She clung to one thought: "Don't breathe. Don't breathe." And the sudden yank of the undertow pried open her lips anyways. A silent scream, a stream of air bubbles from her mouth, more than she ever knew she had in her. Her air supply was racing towards the surface, and there was only water now. A surge of seawater gushed into her mouth.

• 6:52Jake Brennan?

  The salt seared her windpipe as it forced its way into her lungs. Winona couldn't stop the flow. It burrowed into her chest, deeper and deeper, until it felt like her lungs would pop. She choked as her body tried to cough, tried to puke, tried to do anything that would stop her from sinking to the ocean floor, pruney and ragged, lungs ready to rupture. Winona's limbs slipped away. She lost all feeling in her arms and legs. She surrendered to the ocean. She surrendered to the ability to feel much of anything at all. Her peripheral vision darkened. Black curtains shrouded her sight. Her view narrowed to a fine tunnel, a thousand yards long. And she stared down the corridor, empty, quiet, numb.

• 7:36Jake Brennan?

  She didn't feel it when a lifeguard hoisted her from the water and laid her down on the sandy beach. Her body was limp, her skin a ghastly shade of porcelain. She had no pulse. Twelve-year-old Winona Ryder was dead. The lifeguard started to perform CPR, even though she looked like a lost cause. It was what he was trained to do. He pushed down on her chest, over and over. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose tight with his fingers, put his mouth on her blue lips, and tried to breathe life back into her. Suddenly, she twitched to life. She shot saltwater into the sand by the mouthful. Winona's friends watched from the sidelines, stupefied, or too stoned to understand the

• 8:20Jake Brennan?

  severity of what had just happened. What almost happened. And their glazed eyes watched the vomit bring a blush of color back to Winona's cheeks, and then a thought dangled in the back of their dazed minds: "Our parents are going to fucking kill us."

• 8:37Jake Brennan?

  This was the mid 1980s. There were no smartphones. There was no internet. It was easy for pre-teens to go missing for a few hours. In fact, it was expected. Legions of suburban latchkey kids went to school, came home if they felt like it fucked off down to the river or into the woods or even to the beach and just be home by dinner. And looking back at the 80s from the 2022 point of view, it might seem like this connection was standard operating procedure. And it kinda was. You might not even notice that the kids were missing until the streetlights came on. That's what Winona Ryder and her friends were counting on when they cut class earlier that day. The group left the drama of junior high in their

• 9:18Jake Brennan?

  lockers and rolled up to Dillon Beach instead, where they rolled a skinny joint and sunned their stone cells on the shore. Young Winona declined the drugs. She embraced the ocean instead, right until the undertow hugged her back so tightly that it almost didn't let her go.

• 9:36Jake Brennan?

  Winona survived that day, barely. The cold clench of death lingered in her bones later that evening. She felt it prying at her skin, pulling her under. Fresh dose of fear followed her home to Petaluma, trailed her like a shadow, climbed into bed with her, laid by her side like an old friend right next to all her other old childhood fears. The tally in her head was impressive. There was the Holocaust for one, the horrors of Nazi Germany that claimed so many of our ancestors. No one could convince Winona those ghosts weren't real. There was also the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation. But that was nothing that out of the ordinary for all kids in the 1980s. Then there were the neighbors. She wanted to get inside their

• 10:21Jake Brennan?

  heads, know what they thought when her parents' hippie van pulled into the driveway every day, what they thought of this new family, some implants plucked from a progressive commune in Northern California. Well, commune wasn't even the right word, but that's what everyone kept calling it. Commune sounded like a cult. And there was no cult where Winona came from. That was a flat-out misconception. Other details were correct, though. It was true that her last home had no electricity, no phone, no TV. Winona's hippie parents replaced technology with free thinking, traded the paranoia of broadcast news with nature. It was idyllic.

• 11:01Jake Brennan?

  Idyllic until you tried to explain it to anyone else. Winona worried the neighbors would misunderstand their family, conspire against them. She wondered if they would connect the dots that her godfather was, quote, "the most dangerous man in America," unquote. Well, according to Richard Nixon, anyway. Winona's parents appointed psychologist and LSD advocate Timothy Leary as her godfather, the guru of turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. He told Winona to question everything, so she did, just like she was in bed right now, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling, driving herself right up the wall, questioning. Sleep frequently escaped her. Winona didn't know the word insomnia yet. "What if the neighbors turned on us?" she thought.

• 11:46Jake Brennan?

  "What if they tried to lock us away?" There was another question burning a hole in Winona's restless mind. Why do children keep disappearing in California? That was the one fear that dwarfed all the others, the one that tortured her every time she indulged in the new luxury of watching television. Winona Ryder's worst fear was getting kidnapped. Gone were the days of living in a secluded bubble, cozy amongst the company of her parents and their fellow free-thinking friends. Now that Winona lived in Petaluma, California, she heard everything. There was no shelter from reality, not with a TV in the house beckoning to her at all hours. Kidnappings colored the screen on a regular basis.

• 12:28Jake Brennan?

  Some cases went in circles for months until they reached a tragic dead end, emphasis on "dead." Others never ended at all. Winona knew some of the victims' names by heart. Tara Burke, three years old, held in captivity for 10 months by sexual predators. Stephen Stainer, seven years old, trapped for seven years by a child molester. He only escaped because the sick bastard who abducted him wanted to lure in another boy, and the two kids made a mad dash together. Then there was Kevin Collins, 10 years old. He was from the same neighborhood as Winona, her older sister even babysat her once. His buck-two smile was printed across billboards and national magazine covers, a literal milk curtain kit.

• 13:12Jake Brennan?

  He was still out there, somewhere, dead or alive, nobody knew, no one might ever know. The chill of fear borrowed deeper into Winona's bones. She pulled the covers over her head. Her fingers trembled, but no one could convince her she was overreacting, that her fears were unrealistic or childish. She almost died today. Anything could happen to anyone without rhyme or reason. And that might be the part that scared her the most.

• 14:02Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 14:33Speaker 06

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• 15:01Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 15:26Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 15:37Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 16:00Jake Brennan?

  His blood ran cold when he saw the red and blue flicker against the trees. The colors were getting brighter and deeper. He knew the cops would show up eventually. It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. Deep breaths, he coached himself. He casually leaned against the hood of his car as the cruiser pulled over. He paced his breathing. He practiced his story in his head. But Richard Davis still didn't feel prepared. Sightseeing. He was just sightseeing, that's all. Pulled over to admire the great outdoors on a warm evening. Then he realized the sedan was stuck in a ditch. Wrestled with the damn car for hours. Even crawled underneath at one point. Been here ever since. Yeah,

• 16:41Jake Brennan?

  that would work. Davis recited the story word for word when a pair of police officers approached him. Their version of the story was slightly different. They had received a call about a mysterious man camped out on the side of the road on private property. It was all over the police scanner that night. Channel three, to be precise. Channel three covered all of Sonoma Valley, San Pablo Bay to Santa Rosa, but it did not extend to Petaluma, a city 17 miles away. In Petaluma, the scanner had different intel. In Petaluma, a 12-year-old girl had been kidnapped by a stranger. The very same girl Richard Davis just dumped in the woods.

• 17:21Jake Brennan?

  Little Polly Class left a window open on October 1st, 1993. Or maybe her mother left it ajar, right before passing out on a sleeping pill to escape a tedious migraine. Didn't matter. It was too late now. The window offered an invitation. And Richard Davis accepted it. He made quick, clean work. He slithered right through the open window and into the house. Picked up a knife in the kitchen. He cut the cords from video game controllers. Ripped up some bed sheets, too. He'd need binding materials for this to go smoothly. And the strips of cloth didn't have to be big. Children had itty-bitty wrists and ankles. Davis barged into Polly's bedroom as the family clock chimed 10:30 PM.

• 18:03Jake Brennan?

  May as well be midnight to a 12-year-old, or so Davis thought. He wasn't expecting to find Polly's slumber party just heating up. Davis saw panic flood the eyes of every girl in the room. He lingered in the doorway, the edge of the knife glimmered against the glow of Polly's clamshell nightlight. Davis kept his instructions simple: scream, and I'll slit your throats.

• 18:27Jake Brennan?

  They obeyed, shaking in silence. Davis then bound and gagged each girl, tied them up with their own sheets and video game cables, and then he bagged their heads with pillowcases from Polly's bed. He blinded all the girls except Polly. He had other plans for her. Davis bent down on his knees, eye level with the trembling hoods. "Count to 1,000," he ordered. "Polly will be back by then." Polly would not be back.

• 18:56Jake Brennan?

  Polly was tied up in the woods in Santa Rosa, California, and the local police force had no idea. All because they were tuned to the wrong channel on the police scanner: Channel 3. One cop used a flashlight to look Davis up and down, leaves and twigs poked out of his shaggy haircut, beads of sweat on his cheeks. His body language betrayed him. Davis just looked nervous. Not car trouble nervous, like when you're stranded at midnight with a flat. The guilty kind of nervous. One hand in the cookie jar nervous. But looking nervous wasn't against the law. When the other cop returned to the cruiser, he pulled up a report that summarized Richard Davis's driving record. Technology failed the police a second time that night,

• 19:39Jake Brennan?

  and the cursory report didn't include anything about Davis's criminal history, which would have revealed that he was a convicted felon. In fact, he was recently paroled after an eight-year prison sentence for kidnapping. But with their limited 1993 technology, all of that went uncovered. The police found no dirt on Richard Davis beyond the dirt that covered his hair and clothes, which he claimed was a result of trying to freeze car from the ditch. After a tow truck dragged Davis's car back to the road, the police escorted him to the highway. He killed time in the fast lane for 20 minutes before he circled back to retrieve his stolen treasure. Davis parked properly this time, and he ducked back into the woods to find Polly Class.

• 20:23Jake Brennan?

  He dodged branches and knotted tree roots by the light of the moon and found Polly where he left her a few hours earlier. He slung her over his shoulder. He untensed his muscles and released the nervous energy that had been racking his body since the police arrived. But Petaluma's panic was only just beginning. There was a longstanding rule when it came to child kidnappings. The chances of finding an abducted child alive or at all shrank significantly after the first forty-eight hours. The Petaluma Police Department had to act quickly. Polly's life could depend on it. And the FBI joined the case overnight. Bloodhounds, helicopters, detectives wearing up scores of ex-cons. They interviewed sex offenders in surrounding counties. Alibis checked out.

• 21:08Jake Brennan?

  Every volunteer and investigator came back empty-handed. Except for one thing. The perpetrator left behind a palm print pressed into Polly's bed frame. The FBI's database didn't include palm prints in 1993. This was unmapped territory. But it was literally all they had, and the clock kept ticking. The case spread like a California wildfire. Banners decorated the haunted town. "Right down Petaluma Boulevard, let Polly go," the signs cried, scribbled in sloppy handwriting of schoolchildren. Polly's image covered public buildings, her face cried out from flyers scattered across parks, libraries, shopping malls. Her story never left the news.

• 21:50Jake Brennan?

  An information hotline was a regular fixture on TV screens and viewers were implored to call. Over the course of the case, that hotline received more than 12,000 calls. That's 12,000 leads, all dead ends. The hotline rang again late in the night about ten days after Polly disappeared. A volunteer picked up the receiver. Soft sobs echoed on the other end of the line. The caller was moved to tears. She claimed she once lived only two neighborhoods away from Polly's house, and that they even went to the same junior high school. She just saw the news, and she was calling from the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel. And the volunteer asked for her name. Winona.

• 22:34Jake Brennan?

  She didn't have to say her last name. The volunteer could tell who it was from her voice alone. The sulky, unaffected teen in Beatle shoes. The love interest of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. And in real life, for that matter. The girl who literally killed her classmate on screen as part of a cruel series of fake suicides in the dark comedy Heathers. But this call wasn't an act. Winona Ryder's sorrow spoke volumes. Her tears practically trickled through the phone. Winona couldn't believe such a tragedy had struck Petaluma. Polly's parents couldn't believe someone as notable as Winona Ryder wanted to pitch in. There was perhaps no greater force that could pull Polly back to them. Polly was a Winona superfan.

• 23:19Jake Brennan?

  One of her greatest wishes was to meet her in person. Then again, most tweens, teens, and fully grown adults felt the same in 1993. Winona Ryder was the 90s. She was cool as shit. Her head-to-toe black ensembles were of Goth light legend. Her eyes brooded with attitude. Her smile could slice your heart open. She was on par with the other brilliant movie beauties of the day. Sure, Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman, but Winona was different. She was weird, wicked, wonderful. All wrapped into one peculiar package. She was named after a town in Minnesota, for fuck's sake. No one was quite like her. Winona's assistance with the Polly class case

• 24:03Jake Brennan?

  wavered between low-key and high-profile. She could answer the information hotline and join in-person searches just the same as any ordinary volunteer. Yet her celebrity status meant everyone listened when she spoke. Tabloids, fans, film critics. Winona witnessed the world's unquenchable thirst for a look into her private life. Then she yielded it to her advantage. If Winona accepted interviews, she automatically drew more national attention to Polly's disappearance. Certain news outlets had no interest in reports about Polly without their precious Q&As for Winona. First, Winona forced America to pay attention to the case. Then she put a price on it. Winona Ryder offered $200,000

• 24:46Jake Brennan?

  to any person who could safely return Polly to her parents. Weeks dragged on, months. Polly's parents published a letter to the kidnapper in the San Francisco Chronicle, imploring the stranger to bring their girl home. They left a note for Polly, too. "Our darling, if you can read this, please know that your mommy and daddy love you so much, and we will continue to search for you until we can hold you safely in our loving arms again." Every time Winona returned home from volunteering, she peeled the optimistic smile from her face. She would lay in bed and let the insomnia knock around all the bad thoughts in her brain again. The hope never left Winona, but it waned. Her childhood fear of kidnapping gnawed at it.

• 25:31Jake Brennan?

  Winona almost died when she was 12 years old, too. And this could have been her. Anything can happen to anybody. You could become a mega movie star or sink like a stone to a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean, or vanish from your bedroom, never to be seen again. Winona rolled over and turned her back on the fear, but it waited behind her and alongside her in bed, just like it had 10 years ago.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  We'll be right back after this. We're, we're, we're.

• 26:08Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:09Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 27:35Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 28:07Jake Brennan?

  The police did find Polly Class, but they didn't find her alive. A cool breeze whipped across an abandoned mill yard and overlooked the eyesore in Cloverdale, California, right off Highway 101, 30 miles from Petaluma. Richard Davis trudged through the empty field, dry grass crunched under his boots. The police followed close behind him. He was taking them directly to Polly this time. Davis wasn't hiding anymore. He couldn't. The secrets he stashed in the woods were out in the open now. Davis was sloppier than he realized on that night two months ago. The police made him panic on the night of the kidnapping, and his heart pounded.

• 28:50Jake Brennan?

  The sound drowned out his careful calculations. His attention to detail slipped away. Kidnapping tools slipped out of his grasp and left a trail of evidence in the forest. A piece of silk fashioned into a hood, strips of packing tape, perfect for binding, a pair of girl's tights tied into a knot, complete with a tangle of human hair. A resident of Santa Rosa uncovered the clues when loggers cleared a portion of the woods on her property in December of 1993. She was familiar with the Class case by now. Most of California was after hearing about Polly's disappearance for weeks on end. And now it was her turn to dial the information hotline.

• 29:33Jake Brennan?

  But there was something else. The jarring discovery in the woods jogged the woman's memory. There was a man stranded on her property not too long ago. Sweaty, panic-stricken, roughly two months prior. Right around the same time Polly went missing. When the police came to retrieve the items from the woods, she reminded them about the trespasser. They summoned the Santa Rosa Police records for good measure. On October 1st, police called the tow truck for a man named Richard Davis, and they knew that much to be true. But back at the station, there was more information about this man than just the flimsy printout of his driving record.

• 30:11Jake Brennan?

  Davis was an ex-con. His criminal record never seemed to end. Burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to rape, auto theft, kidnapping. Kidnapping. Richard Davis did eight years in prison for kidnapping. He was paroled in June of 1993 after serving only half of a 16-year sentence. Three months before Polly went missing. On October 1st, police had their prime suspect in the kidnapping of Polly Class, right there, standing in front of them. And then, they escorted him to his escape row. Investigators pored over his criminal record. Police even wrangled Davis a second time, later in October, arrested for drunk driving.

• 30:54Jake Brennan?

  Davis then violated his parole by failing to appear in court. A warrant was out for his arrest. Bingo. Police had their in. They weren't letting Richard Davis slip away a third time. They found him cruising around town in a van, not far from where he was staying on the Coyote Valley Indian Reservation about 75 miles north of Pateluma. Police booked him on violation of his probation, cuffed him, tossed him in the clink, and then they took his palm print. It was an exact match for the print found on Polly's bed frame. Investigators shared a knowing glance. The search for Polly's kidnapper was over. Davis knew it was over too. He cracked after a few days. "I screwed up big time," he told the police.

• 31:39Jake Brennan?

  And now, Davis was retracing his steps with the police by his side. He paused at a collection of weathered lumber, mushrooms spread up from the heat, and he thrust his chin towards the rotting pile. Investigators overturned the pile board by board, and they found Polly resting underneath, haphazardly tucked into a shallow grave. Polly's family had prayed their search would end soon, and they just didn't imagine it ending like this. And the closure shattered the Class family, now one member too small. It shattered Winona Ryder, too. Her heart shriveled up and shrank. It reverted back to being 12 years old, beating at a ragged pace, like she was a preteen,

• 32:24Jake Brennan?

  tortured by the undertow, once again barely clinging to life. Maybe Polly once felt the same when she was tied up in Davis's sedan. Winona would never know. She would never get the chance to facilitate Polly's happy ending. Winona struggled through the premiere of her new film, Reality Bites, in February 1994. The irony of the title sunk its teeth into Winona's soul. She successfully convinced Universal Pictures to make the Los Angeles debut of the movie a benefit for the Polly Class Foundation. But her work still felt unfinished, woefully inadequate. Polly's greatest wish had been to meet Winona in real life, and that couldn't happen now. So Winona did the next best thing.

• 33:08Jake Brennan?

  She reached for Polly through fiction. Winona accepted the role of Joe March in a new movie adaptation of Little Women. It was Polly's favorite book. Winona brought the story to life and dedicated her performance to Polly's memory. The role was a breath of fresh air for Winona. For once, she wasn't the weirdo, she wasn't bewitching. She was the strong female lead, determined and dependable, just like she had been for Polly's family for two months. Winona used Little Women to shoo away the darkness crowding her life, the same shadows that housed her fears and lingered by her side when she couldn't get any shut eye. Life didn't have to be a big, dark room all the time.

• 33:51Jake Brennan?

  Maybe through her performance in Little Women, directors and casting agents would see that, too. And if they didn't, Winona had to escape on her own, before that big, dark room caved in on her completely.

• 34:05Jake Brennan?

  She would have added it all up if she could think clearly.

• 34:09Jake Brennan?

  Winona Ryder's hands made quick work on the floor of a Beverly Hills fitting room. A Marc Jacobs cashmere sweater, $760. An E Saint Laurent blouse, another $750. Four handbags, those were at least two grand. A handful of expensive hair bows and bands worth about $600 and six pairs of socks just for good measure, and those were 80 bucks. Good with the snip of each security tag, Winona snuck a contraband into a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag. The same bag from earlier that afternoon. Her first shopping spree already gave her credit card a $3,000 workout. But if all went as planned, the second round was gonna be on the house. Winona crinkled a handful of tissue paper in the bag to cover the sound of her snips.

• 34:54Jake Brennan?

  When space ran out in the Saks bag, she stuffed the stolen clothes into bags she brought from home. A shopping assistant knocked on the door. Winona froze in her position, bent over on her hands and knees, scissors in one hand and a pair of cashmere Donna Karen socks in the other. The clerk asked if the A-list client needed anything. "A Coke," Winona said. "A Coke from the Saks Fifth Avenue cafeteria." Apparently shoplifting made her thirsty. The assistant's designer heels clicked on the tile floor towards the cafeteria. Fuck, she used that distraction once already, didn't she? Winona rubbed her forehead. Now where was she? Write the bags, fill the bags, blend in, then bust out of there. Winona loaded the bags onto her arms.

• 35:37Jake Brennan?

  She walked towards the exit with confident strides. Her gait spoke for her. Why, yes, of course, I already bought all this. I'm a celebrity. Why would I shoplift? Security didn't buy her charade. Instead, they wanted to know when she planned on buying the designer goods visibly stashed in her armful of bags. First, she played dumb, insisted her assistant had already paid for the clothes. Then she switched stories and claimed the employees were keeping track of her massive haul and would just add the items to her first bill, as if designer department stores let you keep an open tab like a bar. And by the time the police arrived, Winona confessed to the crime using a uniquely Hollywood excuse. She explained that a director instructed her to shoplift as research for her upcoming

• 36:21Jake Brennan?

  role in a movie called Shop Girl, or was it called White Jazz? Winona's web of incoherent tales impressed no one. She left the Beverly Hills department store in handcuffs on December 12, 2001. They wanted strange and unusual, she would show them strange and unusual. It was a new century now, a new millennium even. But pop culture still wanted the Winona of the 90s. A dark-haired goth girlfriend to tantalize them in Tim Burton films. A cute cuckoo-like girl interrupted. Her most recent smash hit from 1999. Winona's heart thudded with fear as she ducked into the back of a cruiser. Yet a snicker spread across her lips. She could be a felon now.

• 37:05Jake Brennan?

  She was still the outcast, still the weirdo. Typical.

• 37:31Jake Brennan?

  One year later, Winona Ryder was not snickering. She was sweating. Her dark eyes darted across the courtroom, from one stone-faced lawyer to another. She understood about half of this legal jargon they were spouting off, but she knew two things to be true. One, she was already guilty. She was a felon. It was right there in the shoplifting charges. Felony grand theft. There would be repercussions. Two, one of those repercussions could be jail time. Apparently, her lawyer's 100% real defense that Winona was too fashionable to shoplift and carry any weight in a Beverly Hills courtroom. Winona uncrossed her legs for the seventh time that day. Fidgeting didn't speed the sentencing up.

• 38:15Jake Brennan?

  This was one story she couldn't flip to the end of the script and spoil the ending. She had to sit through a bunch of men in suits bickering over her character. Not a character, her character. Not just another dark-haired beauty throwing smoldering glances across haunted mansions at movie sets. The people gathered in that courtroom had to see Winona for Winona. Her actions, not her acting, would determine her future. Which may or may not involve trading her pile of stolen designer booty for an orange jumpsuit.

• 38:47Jake Brennan?

  Winona's defense brought forward her extensive involvement in the Polly Class kidnapping as the clearest example of her sterling character. Sure, she had donated a fat stack of cash to the Polly Class Foundation, but she rolled up her sleeves alongside other regular volunteers, too. It was a tender, egoless gesture that Winona repeated for weeks. Maybe her help hadn't brought Polly back, but her murderer, Richard Allen Davis, was on death row, and that was the second-best-case scenario. And the prosecution refused to soften. Instead, they snapped. "What's offensive to me is to trot out the body of a dead child," the opposing lawyer retorted. Winona sprang up from the bench, her eyes welled with tears.

• 39:31Jake Brennan?

  Her lawyer objected before she could defend her involvement, and before she could explain why that case still rattled her to this day. How seeing her worst fear, the fear of being kidnapped, come to life in a little girl not unlike herself, shattered her heart. Maybe no one really knew Winona at all. She plodded back into her seat with a sigh. Winona sighed again when the judge announced her penance. Four hundred and eighty hours of community service and nearly $10,000 in fines and restitution. No prison sentence. The judge emphasized that if her sticky fingers ever stole again, she'd undoubtedly be pouting behind bars next time. The happy ending to her trial also created a happy ending for Winona's winning streak

• 40:16Jake Brennan?

  at the box office. For most actresses, an acting hiatus would be devastating. For Winona, it was a relief. She actually called her arrest the best thing that could have happened. In court that day, December 6, 2002, Winona was 31. She started acting in films when she was barely 16, and she never stopped. Winona Ryder performed more than 20 movies in the span of 15 years. A break was long overdue.

• 40:47Jake Brennan?

  After her sentencing, she veered away from her strict regiment of back-to-back leading roles, took a step away from movie sets and set new boundaries for herself, ones that would keep acting burnout at bay. She broke her newfound bliss sporadically for special roles. A hilarious turn as commandment-breaking puppet-loving Kelly Lafonda in David Wayans' The Ten in 2007, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot in 2009, Tim Burton's claymation-creation Frankenweenie, Darren Aronofsky's noir thriller Black Swan, which involved Winona repeatedly plunging a steel nail file into her cheeks. But another script came across her desk years later that contained the real comeback gold.

• 41:30Jake Brennan?

  Something happened to Winona when she took that break, something inevitable. She aged. By the 2010s, she was in her 40s. Casting agents couldn't picture her as a 20-something love interest in movies anymore. That's when Netflix called. They gave her a shot at a role that would be more age-appropriate: a mother, your average suburban mom in the early 80s. Totally normal, a little nervous perhaps, but with the stranger danger panic at the time, what parent wasn't? They needed her to portray a woman who would be tested, a woman who could portray gut-wrenching fear and grief in her eyes without uttering a word, a woman whose son would vanish without a trace.

• 42:12Jake Brennan?

  It's an uncanny coincidence, but stranger things have happened, and that is anything but a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand. All right, thanks for riding on this Winona train with me here through DisgraceLand. Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on. And guys, this week's question of the week: Which actress most embodies Gen X for you? And why? Is it Winona, Drew, Cameron, Penelope? Let me know, 617-906-6638, with your answers via voicemail and text, and at @disgracelandpod on the socials.

• 42:56Jake Brennan?

  And I'll answer you back in the next after-party bonus episode in your podcast feed. Leave a review for DisgraceLand on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus

• 43:38Jake Brennan?

  episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/disgracelandpod. Rockerola.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 44:03Jake Brennan?

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• 44:34Speaker 04

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• 44:47Speaker 05

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• 45:29Speaker 05

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