Pod Insights Park Predators The Getaway About this episode When a weekend camping trip along the Applegate River in California turns suspicious after a man’s body is found wrapped in a tent and shoved down an embankment, law enforcement investigators from two states work quickly to unravel a web of lies involving sex and fatal drama.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
0:06 Speaker 01 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
0:09 Speaker 00 We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.
0:24 Speaker 02 Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
0:30 Speaker 03 Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Speaker 03 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today involves a horrible murder, but it's also a story about a father's determination to see justice served, to chronicle his family's loss in real time as the wheels of the criminal justice system move forward. I was drawn to this story for a lot of reasons. For example, the victim and I have the same birthday. He was about my age when he was killed, and he was a dedicated parent to young children. When he was presented with the opportunity to go on a getaway with his spouse in the great outdoors, he jumped at it. The crime took place along the Applegate River in Clamath National Forest in Northern
1:53 Speaker 03 California, very close to the state's border with Oregon. The region is situated adjacent to the Red Buttes Wilderness, which, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is nearly 21,000 acres and stretches over the nearby Siskiyou Mountains. Typically, starting around November, snow begins to cover trails and campsites in the high country of this area, and it stays that way until about May. So in terms of prime visitation windows, the winter is not necessarily the most desirable time to camp, unless you're into that kind of thing. However, in November 2012, which was reported to be late in the season, a family did manage to squeeze in one more camping trip there before conditions worsened.
2:37 Speaker 03 And for one of them, the expedition would turn out to be his last. This is Park Predators.
3:26 Speaker 03 Around 11:30 a.m. on Monday, November 19, 2012, a deputy with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office in Oregon named James Biddle received a call about a missing person from a 26-year-old woman named Patricia McCallum. Patricia, who often went by the nickname Trisha, told Deputy Biddle that her husband, 33-year-old Chris McCallum, was missing. After a weekend camping at the Applegate River just over the Oregon-California border, Chris hadn't returned home or shown up to work, which was out of character for him. Trisha explained to Deputy Biddle that she and Chris had gone camping a few days earlier on Friday, November 16. But at some point during the outing, she decided to travel home to their kids in Medford, Oregon,
4:10 Speaker 03 because the children were young and she'd gotten cold. However, Chris had stayed behind because he said a friend of his was coming to meet him. Trisha said the plan was for her to return the following morning and pick up her husband. But when that time came, Trisha said when she'd arrived back at the forest where she'd last seen Chris in their tent, she didn't find him or any of their gear. So she figured he'd found his own way home and she left to drive back to their house. When he didn't contact her or his coworkers by Monday morning, the 19th, that's when Trisha said she suspected something was amiss. The same day Chris was reported missing, Deputy Biddle generated a missing persons report for him, and confirmed with his employers that he'd been a no-show.
4:54 Speaker 03 Biddle also asked Tricia whether Chris would have had his cellphone and wallet on him, and her response was yes, he likely did have those items with him as far as she knew. So, operating on that limited information, Deputy Biddle got in touch with a search and rescue deputy named John Richards, who went to speak with Tricia and eventually dispatched another deputy to visit the spot in the national forest where she claimed she'd last seen Chris. But when that deputy arrived, he didn't find any camping gear set up, and he definitely didn't see Chris, so he left. Later that same day, Deputy Biddle spoke with Tricia again, and she informed him that her and Chris's toddler-age daughter had found Chris's wallet and cellphone in the center console of her car,
5:36 Speaker 03 which meant those items weren't actually with him as previously believed.
5:42 Speaker 03 The following morning, Tuesday, November 20th, two investigators returned to the couple's campsite in the forest to look a little bit harder for clues regarding Chris's whereabouts. And this time around, law enforcement discovered something unsettling.
5:57 Speaker 03 Down a nearby cliff was a tent that appeared to have been rolled up and bound with rope. From the looks of it, it had rolled down the embankment and come to a rest near the bottom. Just from its shape and position, the deputy staring at it could tell that it had something heavy inside. So, the two investigators, suspicious the heavy object might be a body, decided to take a closer look. One of them used a knife to cut a hole in the tent, and when he did, he saw there was blood inside as well as several spent shell casings. At that moment, the deputies decided to pull back from the scene and drive to where they were able to get cell service and call in some reinforcements. Additional investigators arrived the next morning, Wednesday, November 21st, and began thoroughly processing the crime scene.
6:43 Speaker 03 Some of those folks descended the cliff to get the tent and eventually transported it to the Rogue Valley Medical Center where it was x-rayed. Not long after that, authorities moved it again to the Jackson County morgue, where staff there opened it up. Inside, they found a man's body clothed in a t-shirt and underwear. He was dead from apparent gunshot wounds, and there was bullet casing scattered around him. This discovery changed the investigation from a missing persons report to a death investigation because the victim was ID'd as Chris McCallum. Robert Scott wrote in his book that at that point, Jackson County Sheriff's Office considered his death a homicide. But other than that, they weren't telling reporters much else.
7:27 Speaker 03 The agency was also working with the Oregon State Police, Medford Police Department, and the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office, since that was the jurisdiction where Chris's body was found. Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, forensic techs had collected and photographed pieces of evidence they suspected were connected to the campsite he'd been staying at, as well as possibly his death. For example, there were tent stakes scattered around and in a fire pit, a folding chair nearby, a nylon bag, and a tent pole sitting in the fire pit. Naturally, the one person deputies wanted to speak with the most to figure out what happened to Chris was Tricia. So authorities visited her at her home twice between the evening of November 20th and the morning of the 21st.
8:10 Speaker 03 And her story was not the same as the version she'd provided to Deputy Biddle when she first reported her husband missing. In her subsequent interviews, she claimed that in addition to Chris being with her, her 27-year-old stepsister Amber Lubers had joined them to go camping. She explained that by Friday afternoon, she and Chris had dropped their kids off for the weekend, picked up Amber, and visited a market to buy sandwiches and alcohol, before eventually arriving at the National Forest around 2:30 PM. They'd prepared for the camping trip by bringing multiple sleeping bags, sleeping mats, a tent, a Coleman brand lantern, a hatchet, and a 40 caliber firearm that was registered to Tricia that had extra magazines and ammunition.
8:54 Speaker 03 Not long after they'd settled in, the trio hiked to a nearby waterfall, took some pictures, gathered firewood, ate dinner, mixed some drinks, and bundled up in their sleeping bags. At some point around 8:00 PM though, Tricia said she and Amber had decided to leave early and go home to be with the kids. According to her timeline, they arrived back in Medford, watched some movies, and went to a Jack in the Box restaurant. She said that the last time they'd seen Chris, he was at their campsite with food supplies, a sleeping bag, the handgun, and a lantern. She explained that when she returned on Saturday morning between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. to pick him up and look for him, Amber was with her and the two of them got out of her car to look around but didn't see anything.
9:36 Speaker 03 Tricia stuck to this version of events when authorities asked her to do a third interview on the evening of November 21st at the police station in Medford. But when deputies spoke with Amber, her story was different from Tricia's. She claimed she had never gotten out of the vehicle when they returned to look for Chris on the morning of the 17th. And discrepancies like this slowly became a recurring theme between the two women's accounts. There were inconsistencies in their statements, conflicting information, confusing information, and you get the picture, which only made investigators grow more suspicious of them. On top of that, investigators had also tracked down surveillance footage from a bank ATM in Jacksonville, Oregon.
10:20 Speaker 03 And that machine had captured footage of a roadway authorities believed Tricia should have taken to return to the campsite on the morning of the 17th. But nowhere in that video did authorities see her vehicle pass by, which contradicted her claim that she'd gone back to look for Chris at that time. Deputies were also curious about the fact that she'd said she hadn't found anything at the campsite when she'd allegedly returned for Chris. It seemed awfully strange that she hadn't noticed something as obvious as a tent pole in the fire pit, or the tent stakes on the ground, when it seemed investigators had managed to find those items rather easily. In addition to these puzzling observations, the further investigators talked with Tricia,
11:01 Speaker 03 the more they learned about her marriage with Chris, and that information really made them tilt their heads. According to coverage I found from a detailed blog by Chris's father, Mike, Chris and Tricia had met in September 2008, and then gotten married in the summer of 2009, when he was 30 and she was 24. When Tricia met Chris, she already had a son from a previous relationship, but Chris accepted the boy as if he was his own. A few months after getting married, the couple welcomed a daughter together, and from the outside looking in, the McCallum's seemed to be a happy family of four. Chris's dad, Mike, said that after the couple's daughter was born, Chris was the happiest Mike had ever seen him.
11:44 Speaker 03 Chris was described as energetic, smart, hardworking, extremely dedicated to his family, and pursued higher education in the field of dentistry so he could make more money to provide for his wife and kids. By the summer of 2010, though, the family's financial situation and living arrangements had hit a bit of a rough patch. According to Robert Scott's book and Mike McCallum's blog, the family had been living at Tricia's grandmother's home since they'd gotten married, but in the summer of 2010, she'd forced them to move out of that residence. And after that, both Chris and Tricia had difficulty finding jobs in Medford. So they moved to San Antonio, Texas, and Tricia enlisted in the Army with the plan of becoming a medic.
12:25 Speaker 03 But during her training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, she injured her foot and was eventually discharged in June 2011. And it seems that's when the family's dynamic really took a turn for the worse. Tricia was apparently unhappy with her and Chris's marital and financial situation, so she left him in Texas and took their kids back to Oregon in August of 2011. Being separated from his children and wife was not what Chris wanted, and according to his dad, he was devastated by the situation. Mike cautioned him, though, not to go back to Oregon, and instead encouraged him to stay put in Texas to try and pick up the pieces of his life by continuing with his education and establishing a career.
13:07 Speaker 03 But Chris was determined to make his family whole again, and so in November 2011, he decided to move back to Medford and work whatever jobs he could, like driving a taxi and working in a call center, to provide for Tricia and their kids. Meanwhile, Tricia was reportedly still out of a job, but expressed to some people in her life that she didn't mind that so much. Author Robert Scott wrote in his book that she really didn't want to work. She relied almost exclusively on Chris, whose income paid for their children's needs, despite the fact that the couple had separated and was not living under the same roof for most of that time. Reportedly, Chris wasn't very happy with this arrangement and had even expressed to a friend that he believed Tricia was just using him to pay bills.
13:52 Speaker 03 But he stuck around because he didn't want to be cut off from his children, especially his and Tricia's three-year-old daughter. It seems that to keep the status quo, he'd gone above and beyond to make sure Tricia was happy and even had money to spend on herself, in addition to the funds he provided for the family's bills and basic necessities. But when push came to shove, investigators looking into Chris's murder knew they needed to be able to confront Tricia and Amber with something more than just circumstantial evidence. Marital issues and money problems weren't going to be enough to convict them, which is why on November 23, investigators got search warrants and seized Tricia's computer, car, cellphone, and Chris's phone.
14:35 Speaker 03 At Tricia's residence, investigators found a receipt for a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant in Medford that surveillance footage later corroborated Tricia had visited with a passenger in her car during the early morning hours of November 17. The timestamp of 12:04 a.m. on that receipt proves she'd been a little over an hour northeast of the National Forest the weekend Chris died. However, the receipt didn't really prove she had a rock-solid alibi. It just confirmed she'd managed to get back to Medford in the window of time after authorities suspected Chris had been killed. A day after the search warrant was executed, a deputy medical examiner named Dr. James Olson concluded Chris's autopsy and determined that he'd been shot numerous times from different
15:17 Speaker 03 directions, and he'd sustained fatal and non-fatal gunshot wounds to his arms, head, chest, shoulder, and right hand. Several of his injuries had fibers from the sleeping bag he'd been found in embedded in the entrance wounds, which meant the bullets had passed through Chris's sleeping bag before entering his body. The ME concluded Chris had most likely been laying down asleep in his tent with the sleeping bag pulled up close to his face when he was shot. Unfortunately, though, because several days had passed before he was found, decomposition had set in. And so the doctor couldn't determine for sure when exactly he'd been killed. And because Chris's body had been moved postmortem,
15:58 Speaker 03 the ME couldn't confirm the trajectory of where all the shots that killed him had come from. The assumption was that he'd been attacked on the night of Friday, November 16th, and the ME confirmed that the diameter of the rounds retrieved from his body were consistent with having come from Tricia's 40 caliber firearm. Interestingly, though, that gun, the one she'd said she'd left with Chris, was not found at the campsite or in the tent with Chris's body. On December 1st, a few days after the autopsy concluded, Chris's loved ones took on the difficult task of holding his memorial service at a church in Medford. And to say his murder hit his family hard is an understatement. He was one of four brothers, and his mom Sarah wrote in his obituary,
16:43 Speaker 03 "I miss you dearly. I'll always love you, my dear sweet boy. My wonderful young man and daddy. I am happy to have been your mommy." End quote. Chris's dad, Mike, who would eventually go on to write an in-depth blog about the crime, made it a point to visit the spot in the national forest where Chris was killed. He told the press, "It's a beautiful, pristine location, and it's hard to reconcile such a beautiful place with the violence that was committed there. I wish I had taken the time to talk to him more, been there a little more for him." End quote. As the story got more and more attention, Tricia wasn't shy about discussing her husband's murder case with news outlets either.
17:28 Speaker 03 In one interview, she emphasized she didn't like being treated as a suspect, and she was just as surprised as everyone else by what happened to him. She claimed she didn't have anything to do with his murder and stated, "I wouldn't kill him. I had no reason to kill him. I wish I knew what happened." End quote. She told KOBI TV News that she believed if she'd stayed at their campsite and not left early, she likely would have been killed too. And for her kid's sake, she was glad she drove home. Her only regret was that Chris had not come with her. Despite her denying that she was involved, investigators suspected otherwise. And the further they dug into her life and learned about what she'd been up to
18:11 Speaker 03 during the time she and Chris were separated, the more bombshell information they uncovered.
18:23 Speaker 04 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
18:43 Speaker 05 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
18:50 Speaker 04 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
19:01 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
19:06 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
19:11 Speaker 04 I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
19:27 Speaker 03 Information authorities learned through their interviews with Trisha was that she'd not only dated other men while separated from Chris during the summer of 2012, but she'd had multiple romantic partners online and in person during that time. Turns out, prior to Chris's murder, Trisha had gotten really involved in websites and web forums that serviced people interested in fetishes related to submission, bondage, and dominance.
19:55 Speaker 03 She also had profiles on the websites Match.com, Seeking.com, Sugardaddyforme.com, Fetlife.com, and OkCupid. On some of those platforms, she'd posted pictures of herself in provocative poses alongside information that stated she was interested in meeting a sugar daddy, either in his mid to late twenties or as old as 45. She put in her bios that she was a single mother and college student who liked to travel but couldn't live the lifestyle she really wanted to. She also noted that she desired to be with a man who, in her words, "knew how to treat her right." She explained that she'd never been spoiled or pampered in a relationship before and thought it would be nice to have that experience.
20:38 Speaker 03 In time, men from various states and even Canada who were using these websites sent Trisha private messages, virtual kisses, and communicated with her about making plans to meet up. There were even some exchanges that discussed Trisha earning money or fulfilling violent sexual fantasies that users expressed to her they wanted to act out. Some of the conversations she kept, others she deleted before responding. The running theme in many of these messages was that the men would pay for everything, including food, travel, expenses, and she'd just be along for the good time. In June 2012, though, so about five months before Chris's death, she'd formed a regular
21:19 Speaker 03 sexual relationship with a man named Jeremiah, who was compatible with Trisha's BDSM preferences. And he'd given her a black collar to wear as a token of their dominant submissive relationship. On one particular night, though, Chris came by the house where Trisha was living with the couple's children while Jeremiah was there. Chris and Trisha argued about her often wearing the collar because Chris expressed he didn't want that kind of stuff or sexual activities she and Jeremiah were engaged in to be happening in the same house where their kids slept. Reportedly, at some point, that argument boiled over and Chris ended up leaving really upset. According to author Robert Scott's book, after the dust settled from that argument,
22:00 Speaker 03 Jeremiah allegedly heard Trisha say something to the effect that her life would be much easier if Chris were dead. And that wasn't the only time she'd made those kinds of comments about her husband in front of Jeremiah. He later testified in court that she'd previously brought up the fact that Chris had a life insurance policy which she was the beneficiary of. Her remarks signaled to Jeremiah that she might have been baiting him to eliminate Chris for her so they could both benefit from that money. But Jeremiah wanted no part of that kind of situation. And he maintained that same stance another time when Trisha reportedly asked him if he knew of anyone who might be able to kill Chris for her. Basically, the way I interpret it, Jeremiah was more or less like, "Look, Trisha, if
22:45 Speaker 03 you want Chris gone, you're on your own. I'm just here for our relationship. Bye." Obviously, that's me paraphrasing, but you get the point. Eventually, though, in early September 2012, so this would have been about two months before the murder, Chris and Trisha patched things up and he moved back in with her and their children. And according to what Trisha told investigators, Jeremiah was no longer in the picture at that point. In October, a month later, she, their kids, and Amber took a camping trip to the Applegate River without Chris. After returning from that outing, Trisha floated the idea to Chris that the two of them should return to the camping spot to celebrate his upcoming birthday on November 17.
23:28 Speaker 03 Come the beginning of December 2012, with most of this information as background, authorities were mostly focused on Trisha and her stepsister Amber as suspects. And on December 7, Jackson County authorities made their move. They officially arrested the women for the crime, and not long after making their first appearances in court, the duo was extradited at separate times to Siskiyou County Jail in California to face murder charges. Trisha was also charged with corporal injury to a spouse and assault with a deadly weapon. When investigators got Amber in the hot seat, they approached her with an offer: immunity in exchange for testifying against Trisha. In early December, after she accepted that deal and pleaded guilty to accessory after
24:13 Speaker 03 the fact, she spilled the beans in closed-door interviews. Amber claimed that she and Trisha were more than just stepsisters. They were best friends. She said that after her and Tricia took their first trip to the National Forest in October 2012, Tricia talked about how she wanted to take Chris back there, tie a rope around him while he was inebriated, and pull him into the river so he would drown. There was even a test run one weekend prior to November 16th, when Amber said she and one of her cousins had traveled to a camping spot near the river and set up a tent. Unbeknownst to her cousin, though, Amber said the whole point of them going up there was to wait for Chris and Tricia to arrive so Tricia could carry out her plan.
24:57 Speaker 03 But the couple never ended up showing up, so eventually Amber and her cousin packed their things and left. Amber said she suspected that Tricia being a no-show that time was because she'd gotten cold feet and changed her mind about killing Chris. But that was not the case, because the women had eventually come up with another plan. Amber claimed that in the hours before Chris's murder, Tricia had attempted to harm him while the three of them were trying to cross the river. According to Amber, Tricia had asked Chris to tie a rope around himself and walk to the other side of the waterway so he could secure it to a tree. That would allow Tricia and Amber to have something to hold on to while they crossed the river. However, Amber said when Chris was in the middle of the stream, Tricia pulled tightly on the rope and he fell down.
25:42 Speaker 03 But he didn't get injured or swallowed by the current. Instead, he just looked back at Tricia and the two of them started hollering at one another. Amber said it was at that point she just walked off into the woods because she suspected that Chris suspected Tricia was trying to drown him. But apparently that wasn't the case, because when they all got back to their campsite that evening, the topic didn't come up again and things seemed normal. The three of them shared a meal together and then Chris went to bed. A short time later, though, Amber said Tricia typed messages on her phone that suggested various ways they could kill Chris. Finally, Amber said Tricia wrote a note that explained "under no circumstances was Chris coming home from the camping trip with her."
26:24 Speaker 03 Amber explained that Tricia then expressed they needed to pack up their camping gear and leave. Amber claimed that she was under the impression her and her stepsister were maybe just gonna bounce. But then, Tricia grabbed her gun from the car and walked over to the tent Chris was in, and shot him multiple times. After emptying the magazine, Tricia reloaded the gun with a new magazine and fired all the rounds in the second clip, too. After the shooting, Amber said Tricia secured the tent Chris was in with rope and kicked the whole bundle down a nearby embankment. Immediately following that, she said Tricia tossed the murder weapons, some spent casings, and the magazines into a nearby waterfall.
27:05 Speaker 03 For her cooperation and testimony against Tricia, the possible prison time Amber faced was as little as 16 months or a maximum of three years. At Tricia’s preliminary hearing in early February 2013, Amber was the state’s star witness, along with Tricia’s previous partner, Jeremiah. After hearing from both of them, as well as investigators who’d been involved in the homicide investigation, the presiding judge quickly ruled in favor of Tricia’s case moving forward to a jury trial. She was held on a $1 million bond and her trial was scheduled for the summer of 2013, which, due to continuances, ended up going on the docket for mid-November of that year.
27:47 Speaker 03 A few weeks after Tricia’s preliminary hearing, Amber’s plea deal was finalized when a judge sentenced her to 16 months with nearly 200 days shaved off for time she’d already served. At the sentencing hearing, Chris’s mother, Sarah, asked the court to consider giving Amber a harsher punishment because, in Chris’s family’s opinion, she was getting off too easy. And Sarah believed she’d played a much more active role in the crime than she’d admitted to. Sarah said, quote, “I have a very hard time believing that Amber would have come forward if she had not been caught. This seems like a slap on the hand for all her involvement and participation.” End quote. But cutting a deal with Amber seemed to be a necessary evil for Siskiyou County prosecutors
28:32 Speaker 03 to ensure they would get a murder conviction for Tricia. Even the judge who handed Amber her, we’ll call it, “light” sentence, admitted the outcome was the deal of a lifetime. The judge said, quote, “Miss Lubers, I must say that this is a windfall, a great windfall for you. You need to be thoughtful of that for a long time. The court understands that Ms. Lubers’ cooperation in assisting the district attorney’s office is never going to be sufficient to compensate for Christopher McCallum’s life. But at this point, it is the best that can be offered.” End quote. And according to coverage by KTVL 10, things only got better for Amber after that.
29:17 Speaker 03 By mid-August of 2013, her sentence was reduced again, this time permanently. And she was released from prison without being supervised by a probation officer. This news deeply disturbed members of Chris's family, particularly his mom. She told the news station that she couldn't understand how a person like Amber, who had admitted to assisting in a brutal homicide, had been allowed to walk out of prison under zero supervision. She called the act "an injustice", and warned people in the community that Amber being out and about might pose a danger to the public. Whether or not there's truth to that claim, I guess is a matter of perspective. Obviously, I see where Sarah McCallum was coming from with her statements,
30:01 Speaker 03 because Amber's situation was definitely unusual. Anyway, when Trisha's trial began on November 18, 2013, almost one year to the day of Chris's murder, prosecutors laid out their theory of the case rather succinctly. Representatives for the state implied that, in an effort to free herself from her marriage, Trisha had plotted to murder her husband, and had come up with two different scenarios by which to commit the act. The first one was drowning him in the river after pushing him in. And the second was drowning him while he crossed the waterway with the rope tied to him. When those plans failed, after Chris fell asleep in their tent, Trisha shot him.
30:43 Speaker 03 Then she got an Amber to help her try to cover it up. Both scenarios presented a situation where Chris would have been taken off-guard. Which was kind of an important detail, because, you see, Chris wasn't just your average person with an average self-defense skillset. He was way more prepared for a fight than that.
31:08 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
31:15 Speaker 01 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
31:17 Speaker 00 We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time.
31:33 Speaker 02 Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
31:39 Speaker 03 Everyone has those go-to wardrobe staples that get reached for constantly. The sweater that works with everything, the perfect-fitting jeans, or the bag carried everywhere. Quince specializes in those exact permanent fixtures. Quince creates elevated essentials using luxury materials like organic cotton, washable silk, and 100% Mongolian cashmere, with cashmere sweaters starting at just $50. But beyond just knitwear, the collection includes premium stretch denim, leather bags, footwear, and 14K gold jewelry designed to pull any look together. That same approach extends beyond clothing into home goods, including hotel-quality bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and thoughtfully-designed furniture. Some of my favorite items that I've ordered from Quince over the years come from their Home Goods collection.
32:24 Speaker 03 I've ordered candles and blankets and all sorts of things for our new house. But one of my go-to purchases is their handbags. I think I'm up to like four or five at this point, but that's because I love them so much because they're such great quality. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/parkpredators. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/parkpredators.
33:00 Speaker 04 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County.
33:07 Speaker 04 Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.
33:17 Speaker 04 The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
33:20 Speaker 05 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
33:27 Speaker 04 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
33:38 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
33:43 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
33:48 Speaker 04 I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
34:05 Speaker 03 Chris was a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, which meant if he'd found himself in a one-on-one struggle with his killer, he probably stood a better chance than most folks at surviving a confrontation. But because, as the ME had determined, he'd been in a vulnerable position when he was shot, likely completely unaware he was being approached by someone with a gun, he'd essentially stood no chance. And that was part of the prosecution's point. They argued Trisha had done everything in her power to make sure her husband never saw what hit him. Now, when it was the defense's turn to present their side of things, it seems their strategy was to point away from Trisha as much as possible. For example, Trisha's lawyer pointed out
34:49 Speaker 03 that the food market the trio had visited on November 16th on their way to go camping had captured video of Trisha, Chris, and Amber, including what they'd been wearing. What the defense found noteworthy about this footage was the fact that the clothing Trisha was wearing at the time was later recovered at her home. However, the only clothing item of Amber's that was later tracked down were her shoes, and those had been donated to a thrift store along with a jacket of Chris's that he'd been wearing on the surveillance video. A criminalist who testified for the state explained to jurors that he'd examined ammunition authorities had obtained from Tricia's home that went to her 40 caliber handgun. And those bullets had the same design, length, and lands and grooves as a round the Emmy had pulled from Chris's shoulder.
35:34 Speaker 03 Now, the defense didn't deny that Chris had been shot. They just claimed he'd been shot by someone other than Tricia and Amber. Investigators had never recovered the murder weapon from the waterfall where Amber claimed Tricia had thrown it. A Siskiyou County Sheriff's Sergeant testified in court that it was too unsafe to attempt such a search early on. And so, law enforcement had postponed that effort until 10 or so months after the crime. Which, in my opinion, feels like a poor decision, but then again, if conditions were unsafe, I get why there was such a big delay. But like I said, they never did find it, and really, when it came down to it, the state didn't need Tricia's gun to prove their case to the jury. Tricia had been doing some of the prosecution's work for them in terms of making herself
36:19 Speaker 03 look bad. You see, after her preliminary hearing, Tricia penned a letter to her former lover Jeremiah in which she'd expressed that she wanted to get back together with him because she was jealous of his other submissive partner and expressed she desired to be a better sub for him. She also wrote that she wished she'd done things differently. And then, she asked him to read between the lines of a dream she'd had recently where someone anonymously submitted a letter to the court confessing to Chris's murder so that the charges against her would be dropped. I know, when I read this part of the case, my eyes nearly rolled out of my head, but the important takeaway is that the defense obviously did not want this letter to see the light of day in court.
37:04 Speaker 03 And they referred to it as both inflammatory and irrelevant. But you better believe prosecutors were all over it and wanted every juror to know that it existed, as well as what the contents of it were. And on day eight of the trial, much to the prosecution's delight, it was allowed in as evidence. Tricia's former partner Jeremiah was asked questions under oath about the letter, as well as the nature of his relationship with Tricia, his prior interactions with Chris, and so on. Jeremiah testified that he'd seen Tricia for several months before she reconciled with Chris, and during that time, he'd witnessed dysfunction and several arguments in their fractured marriage. When asked by the prosecution why jurors shouldn't think he was involved in the crime,
37:49 Speaker 03 Jeremiah explained that he had an alibi for the night of the murder. He'd been at work. He said he also didn't own a vehicle or a gun. He also had no idea the camping trip was even taking place. But the more powerful piece of testimony for jurors came from Amber Lubers. A few months after accepting her plea bargain, Amber had participated in a videotaped reenactment of the crime at the campsite where Chris was killed. In that footage, Amber took authority step by step through the incident and where she'd been in relation to Tricia when the murder took place. At no point did Amber admit to participating in Chris's slang. She claimed she'd hidden behind Tricia's car the whole time, but she'd heard the shots ring out.
38:34 Speaker 03 During her testimony, which lasted two days by the way, Amber stuck to her story of knowing that Tricia had wanted to harm or kill Chris weeks before the murder. She also explained that she'd tried more than once to talk Tricia out of murdering Chris. When the trial came to a close on December 16, 2013, jurors deliberated for about two hours, and they eventually decided to convict Tricia for Chris's murder. They found her guilty of first-degree murder, corporal injury to a spouse, and assault with a firearm, which all came with a possible prison sentence of 50 years to life. Due to postponed hearing dates and Trisha petitioning for a public defender,
39:17 Speaker 03 she wasn't formally sentenced until January 20th, 2015. At that hearing, she offered little remorse and emphasized in a brief statement that she was innocent of the crime and that Amber had lied to save her own skin. Her verbatim statement to the court was, “Your Honor, I know you are just doing your job, but I did not kill my husband. I am sorry that all of you were fooled by Amber Lubers. I hope that someday you come to realize that I am just as much of a victim here as everyone else. I felt that I just had to say something to the court.” End quote. Trisha later appealed her conviction, but that petition was denied in 2019.
40:01 Speaker 03 As of this recording, she is still incarcerated at a women’s prison in California. And according to the California incarcerated records and information search database, she won’t be eligible for parole until at least 2036. It’s hard to put your finger on a definitive why behind this crime. In the coverage, I saw mentions of possible life insurance money or social security benefits as the motive, but that was never proven. Mike McCallum, Chris’s father, summed up in a victim impact statement several motives such as greed, freedom, a desire to keep the kids, and downright vindictiveness, which he’s convinced drove Trisha to murder.
40:42 Speaker 03 But in the end, only she knows the reason why she did what she did. Something I found myself thinking about a lot, though, as I researched this case, was whether this whole thing might have been planned even earlier than some people suspect it was. Full disclosure, this is my personal curiosity, but right after Chris’s cause of death was released, Trisha said something kind of interesting to KOBI TV News. Or at least, her remark was interesting to me, considering the fact that her husband had just been killed. She told the news station about another crime that had happened in the area, a murder that she thought Chris's case had similarities to. It was a shooting death that had occurred in Medford the month prior to Chris's killing,
41:26 Speaker 03 and the victim was a cab driver like Chris. And he'd been murdered close to his birthday. There's a part of me that wonders whether Tricia mentioning this incident was, I don't want to say inspired by that case, but rather I question whether she used details of that murder to possibly make people think Chris died from a similar random murder. Anything to throw suspicion off her. Like I said, though, none of us will ever know for sure why Tricia killed Chris. But I do know this: He remains deeply missed by his family. Last year, his dad, Mike, told me via email that he was thankful I reached out to him before diving into Chris's case and that I was interested in using some of the information
42:10 Speaker 03 from his blog as source material for this episode. From everything I saw, the website appears to be something Mike poured a lot of time and energy into. But Mike told me he's not sure he'll keep it accessible forever. He told me that now, more than a decade after Tricia's conviction, he believes the website has served its purpose, and he plans to eventually take it down. But blog or no blog, the legacy of his son will never die. The good times and memories that Chris's family has of him and continues to keep in their hearts are something no crime can ever take away. I want to leave you all with this, a note from the homepage of Mike's blog.
42:50 Speaker 03 He wrote, quote, "To Chris, one of the finest, toughest, smartest young men I have ever known. I was so proud to have you as my son and so pleased with all you had done. You will always be in my heart and in my thoughts and prayers. Rest in peace, my son. May God grant you the joy and happiness you so richly deserve." End quote.
43:19 Speaker 03 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
43:37 Speaker 03 I think Chuck would approve.
43:44 Speaker 03 In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous The Buddies Next The Tradition Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated