Doctor’s Orders | 1. Red Flags

When 21-year-old Juliana Redding is found murdered in her Santa Monica, Calif. bungalow, her friends all think the same thing. Juliana had been caught up with a mysterious man — older, charming and very, very rich. Could he be connected to her shocking death? Doctor’s Orders is produced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment’s The Binge. Binge all episodes of Doctor’s Orders, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia D'Amber, host of Park Predators. And every week I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human. Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Listen to all episodes of Doctor's Orders ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit Subscribe at the top of the page, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  With any building clearing, whether it's a building or a residence or anything, you have to have a heightened level of awareness. You're going in someone's house. You know? I don't know if she was a gun owner. Maybe she was sleeping, you know what I mean? Maybe if she gets startled, she'll grab that gun. You know, she has every right to, she's in her own house.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  It's March 16th, 2008, around 6:00 PM. Daylight is fading in Santa Monica, California, where Santa Monica Police Officer Greg Cap has been called out for a wellness check. He's getting ready to enter the bungalow apartment of 21-year-old Juliana Redding.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  I start trying to pick the lock. We open the door, make an announcement. Santa Monica Police, anyone inside?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  No one answers the officers' calls.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  As soon as we made entry, the first thing that caught my eye, there was candles on. So I'm like, okay, maybe she's home, or maybe she just left, but she had candles lit, right?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Picture a classic California bungalow. One story, four units, white stucco with a clay tile roof. Juliana had lived here about six months, since she'd quickly left her last place, after she discovered a man she trusted had lied about the most basic things in his life.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  We went down, it looks like a little hall, I think there was, into the bedroom. But we could see with our flashlights, okay, there's someone laying in the bed. As we all get closer, we could see that she had a undershirt-type tank top on and underwear. I could see that her foot was hanging off the bed, and I distinctly remember blood drops dripping from her heel onto the floor. And we could definitely see black and blue strangulation-type marks on her neck.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Then as we take a better look, her lips were blue, and there was no pulse.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  At the time, Officer Cap had no idea what he'd stumbled in on.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  So the supervisor that was with us said, hey, this is a homicide scene. We need to back out, lock it down.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  What starts at this young woman's Santa Monica bungalow is only the first act in a whole web of crimes crisscrossing California. Authorities say one of the biggest scams in California history, and cutting a path all around the world. It's going to take me and five reporters on three continents to figure this all out. And what we found is that the more you look, the more drama, the more scandal, the more charges you find.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  So we're backing out, and one of the officers realizes that the gas stove in the kitchen is turned on. And you can actually now hear the hissing of the gas coming out of the stove. So that, coupled with the candles that were on... You know, whoever did this wanted the place to blow up. And then, you know, all evidence, the body, everything, you know, would just be burned.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  The murder of Juliana Redding is just the beginning. I'm Ben Adair. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, you're listening to Doctor's Orders. This is episode one, Red Flags.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  This was the beginning of a long night for Officer Cap and the detectives who soon arrived at the bungalow. As you know, the first part of any investigation isn't necessarily about finding answers, but more figuring out the right questions to ask. First question, why were officers knocking on Juliana Redding's door in the first place?

• 5:33Speaker 03

  When somebody calls for a check the status, you're getting one side of the story.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Earlier that day, in Tucson, Arizona, Patricia Redding, Juliana's mom, got a call. Had she spoken with Juliana recently? She hadn't, and calls went straight to voicemail, which was weird. It was very unlike Juliana to have her phone off. Patricia made that call that no parent ever wants to make. She called the police. She asked them to stop in and check on her daughter. At the same time, a guy named John Gilmore was also wondering, where is Juliana? John was Juliana's on-again, off-again boyfriend at the time. He met the police at the apartment.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  He was a little scared. He wasn't sure what was going on, you know? Who knows? Maybe they had an argument. And she's like, you know what? I'm gonna put you on ice for a little while. I don't feel like talking to you now.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  After they discovered Juliana's body, everything changed. Everyone's a suspect.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  So, the body was, she was laying on her back. They saw kind of slid towards the bottom of the bed, which allowed her foot to be hanging off the bed.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  On top of the covers, there were no covers on her.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Examination showed signs of a violent struggle, that someone had tried to cover up.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  It's almost as if the suspect picked her up and put her on there.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Her body was on the bed, on its side, with her arms up over her head and her legs dangling off, almost like she'd been picked up and moved there. There were cuts and bruises on her legs, on her arms, on her neck. The house looked perfectly neat. The coffee table had books and knickknacks on it. The pillows on the sofa were arranged, but one was missing a pillowcase. The candles in a tray were flickering silently. In the kitchen, dishes were in the sink, the drawers and cabinets closed. A white towel sat on a bar height chair next to the stove, in front of the laundry. But as detectives looked more closely, they started finding strange things, signs that someone had tried to clean up this crime

• 7:49Speaker 02

  scene. They start taking pictures, putting things in baggies, dozens of pieces of evidence that would end up in Juliana's file. They examined Juliana's body. They find no signs of sexual assault, but they swab everything, including her t-shirt and her neck. Juliana's red BlackBerry cellphone was on the nightstand. Detective swabbed that. Detective swabbed the kitchen, the stove knobs, the dishes in the sink. They find a bloody fingerprint on the shards of a broken plate. Detective swabbed for DNA and lifted the fingerprint. In the living room, detectives note several things. Deep scratches in the wood floor where it looks like the coffee table had been dragged. There's a broken necklace on

• 8:31Speaker 02

  the floor. Blood spatter near the entrance to the bedroom. Strands of hair. It's a lot, and detectives send it all to the lab. But there's no sign of forced entry. There are no broken windows, no marks on the big, white security door. Meaning whoever did this was likely let in. Like, maybe it was somebody Juliana felt safe with, safe enough to let into her apartment alone.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  No neighbors were coming out. You know, usually there's, you know, lucky loo neighbors. Hey, what's going on? You know, nobody.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Officer Cap was put on door knock duty.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  And I started out right next door and it was like an older lady that answered the door. And, and she said she actually heard fighting earlier in the evening, probably sometime before midnight. And I was like, well, why didn't you call the police? Well, I was so scared, she says. That just stuck with me because it was like, man, if you, you know, would have just called 911, who knows? Maybe an officer would have been in the neighborhood there and got there and either caught the suspect, saw the suspect leaving, maybe had a chance to, you know, save Juliana's life. I mean, who, who knows? Who knows?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Here's what officers know at the end of the night. Juliana had been alive and in her apartment the night before. There had been an argument and then a fight, a big fight. And whoever killed Juliana tried to blow the whole place up, including maybe the neighbors, to get rid of a mountain of evidence. But they'd failed. And now all that evidence is being analyzed. So the next question the police are going to try and answer, because this crime seems so very personal, who is Juliana?

• 10:29Speaker 04

  It was the first day of kindergarten and her mom Patty saw me walking in with my mom in this little outfit that she thought was so cute.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  This is Jessica. Like a lot of people I interviewed for this podcast, she didn't want to use her full name because what happened to Juliana still makes her scared that something might happen to her too.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Walking and we both had dark hair, blue eyes and like similar little outfits on. She's like, I hope they become friends.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Jessica grew up with Juliana. She was one of her oldest friends.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  We went to a small school. And there was probably not more than 50 kids, I'd say, 60 kids per class from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade. We were always just kind of in that same group of friends and.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  And then freshman year of high school started, and then we just didn't stop hanging out.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  After her murder and everything that's come since, the thing Jessica says gets lost most is that people don't remember what Juliana was really like, like her sense of humor.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  She had funny jokes, one-liners. She could do movie lines and always like, she's a big Seinfeld fan. And so she used to always fun doing skits and different things with friends and different people that she was close with.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Take golf. Juliana was a great golfer.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  You know, golf's really stoic and really quiet. After she would hit a really good ball or something, she'd be doing cartwheels on the golf course. She would be like high-fiving people. I mean, you talk good and just very animated. And the golf team was always, and the coach was just like, this is the most ridiculous person, but hilarious.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Juliana was outgoing, energetic, charming, and beautiful. As they grew from young girls into young women, people began noticing Juliana.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  And then I remember high school. We walked in freshman year and she was wearing mascara. She had these beige-blue eyes. And she's just, her hair's really long, and she's just stunning. She just was pretty, that's the thing. That wasn't her identity, though. Her identity was so much different than that.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  I actually remember the first time I met Juliana. She was working at a sushi bar that two of my friends worked at when I was in college in Arizona, in Tucson.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  This is Alana Hadid. She's a model, fashion designer, an activist, and yeah, one of the very famous Hadid sisters.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  My two friends said, "Come and meet Juliana. You have to meet her. You're gonna love her." And I remember she introduced herself to me, and within like five minutes, she was quite petite, and I'm about six feet tall. And she had jumped up on me like a little monkey and was holding on to me. And I just knew she was gonna be like... A little sister and she just had that light about her that you just wanted to be around her all the time. You just wanted to see her. You just wanted to hear her talking. And so I spent a lot of time at the restaurant, spending time with her.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Alana and Juliana were fast friends, even though college girls and townies in high school hardly ever mix.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  I grew up in Virginia, right outside of DC. Arizona was kind of a culture shock for me because it was completely different than anything I had experienced. But I make friends easily and I had a lot of friends at the time that I met Juliana. And I kind of was in a place where I was like, I don't really need that many more friends. But I was like, she's coming along. I need her.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  But Alana didn't stay in Tucson long. She moved to Los Angeles. And then after high school, Juliana did too. Here's Jessica.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  We both liked California and she really liked the idea of going to LA. And I remember I was like, really liking San Diego. And I just remember we really kind of bonded on that. And I think she kind of started setting her sights on like, how to get to LA, like, you know, what schools and how she could get there. And I was, we're kind of like, we're both kind of plotting, like, how do we, you know, what's our next steps?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Jessica got into college in San Diego and Juliana went to Merrimount California University, LA adjacent, by the beach.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  She liked, you know, bigger city, the beach. She's a big beach person, loves the ocean. And I think we were just both ready for something different.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  So it's late summer, 2005. Juliana's arriving in Los Angeles to go to school by the beach. She's also signing up with a modeling agency.

• 15:08Speaker 05

  You know, Juliana always wanted to go into modeling and entertainment and acting and all of those things. And so I felt like it was a very natural progression for her to come to LA. I think that's kind of Juliana when she makes a decision or when she made a decision, she just kind of jumped in both feet. So yeah, she was just, all of a sudden, she was in LA and she was like, kind of living her life and doing it. And that's, that was her.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  After a year at Merrimount, Juliana transferred to Santa Monica College. She also applied to Cal State Long Beach to pursue a degree in communications. All the while, she continued to model. She made the pages of Maxim magazine. She was in a hair commercial. And she played a love interest in what looks like a very independently-produced music video. You can see it on YouTube. It's called Fade Away: The Original Music Video 2008. It's on L.A. Life.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  She worked a lot. She was a really hard worker, actually.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  She worked as a hostess at a Venice wine bar. She had a job at a surf store, modeling, other gigs. For a short time, she was an assistant to an L.A. doctor.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Even though she was younger, even though she was, had just moved to L.A., everyone loved her. No one was like, isn't she kind of young? Or like, how do you know her? Or like, you know, something like that. She just, she was constantly making friends and enjoying herself. And she would ask a little bit about, I'm dating this guy. What do you think? Things like that. But it was very much like normal girl talk. You know, we would sit around a dinner table. We would have those conversations.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  I mean, of course, she was dating. She had the longtime on-and-off boyfriend we mentioned. Her friends filled the police in on other guys she was seeing, both formally and not so. It's not going to give away too much to tell you that of all the DNA found on Juliana's body, some of it belonged to a soon-to-be well-known actor. He was questioned, but never considered a suspect or charged with anything. But just after her 21st birthday, friends did start to worry. There was another boyfriend, now an ex. And maybe things were going a little, hmm.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  She didn't really speak to me about it until they had broken up.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Alana had been watching her younger friend blossoming into her L.A. life. But also, you know, watching her make the mistakes that a lot of young people make. You date the wrong guy, you know? You've learned not to date those guys anymore. But something about this particular guy Juliana was telling her about felt, hmm, a little more than a mistake. Alana was rattled.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  I was at a dinner with her, I believe, and she kind of asked me, you know, you know, I was dating this guy. We'd broken up and I feel like he's stalking me. That was what she said.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  And I said, well, why do you feel like he's stalking you? And she said, well, he's, he's showing up in a lot of the places where I am that are nowhere close to his house. I see his car parked places. I see him walking by and I'm a little bit worried. And I said, well, if you're worried, you need to file a police report that you're being stalked. And she seemed to think like she was a little freaked out, but she wasn't, she didn't seem totally worried at the time. She seemed like, oh, he really wants to get me back and he's trying to show me that, that, you know, he wants to get me back.

• 18:46Speaker 05

  I think at the time she was definitely like rationalizing it away. And I was a little bit more worried, I think, than she was. But again, I, I, I really didn't know what to tell her other than call the police, really, if you're worried that he's stalking you. Yeah, that was the first time she talked about it.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  But things didn't stop there. It got more serious.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  She, her dogs had been in his house. Her dogs were missing and she was worried that he had done something to them. And then I was definitely quite concerned. And at that point, I think we were all very concerned and we weren't really saying like, it's not a big deal at this point. Then I think we were all like, okay, you need to get as far away from him as you can. And we were asking her if she was going to get a restraining order and things of that nature.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  But did she get away from him? Could she?

• 19:46Speaker 04

  I got a call. I was in the shower. Like, I was in the shower and my boyfriend walked in and he was like, "You need to take this." And his face was just like white. And he was just like, "You have to take this." I'm like, "I'm in the shower." He's like, "Take this."

• 19:56Speaker 05

  I was sitting at my house and our friend, our mutual friend, called and was extremely upset, to the point where I didn't know what was happening. I was afraid that she was hurt. I didn't really know what was going on. And she was just screaming at the top of her lungs.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  And he handed me the phone and the other line was like, "She's dead." Like crying and screaming, "She's dead."

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Eventually, I could start understanding what she was saying. And she said, she was saying, "She's dead. She's dead." And we didn't know who that was. And she couldn't get Juliana's name out of her mouth. It was really hard for her to say her name. And eventually, she said Juliana. And we were dumbfounded.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  I remember I was like, was in the shower, like on the ground, sobbing. And I was like, I'm like, "Are we sure? Are we sure?" And so then I called her mom. And her mom told me that she was dead. And so obviously, it was just pure shock.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  In the days after the murder, police would question more of Juliana's friends and acquaintances. And they questioned the guy who first raised the alarm about Juliana, the face they first saw when arriving at her house, the one everyone always suspects first, the boyfriend, John Gilmore. But if you think this is going to be an open and shut case, you haven't been listening to the binge for very long.

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• 22:03Speaker 07

  I'm Sarah Kaelin. This season of ID's Who Killed Angel Harris investigates the 2011 unsolved murder of a 31-year-old woman in Gainesville, Florida. It was definitely shocking.

• 22:18Speaker 08

  Either it's a bullet hitting a bullet, or there's a lot of really strong coincidences here.

• 22:23Speaker 07

  More likely than not, this is a serial killer. Listen to Who Killed Angel Harris wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  The first person police brought to the station was John Gilmore. Here's what they knew about him. John was 21 years old. He'd been arrested several times for battery, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, and vandalism. He had three convictions for vandalism.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  So when cops assess the scene and arriving at Juliana's apartment, John was there at the scene, they immediately start gauging. Who is this guy? What's his demeanor? Stoic? In shock? Is he acting like he cares about what's happening? And they asked him directly about how he treated Juliana.

• 23:10Speaker 09

  Did you guys argue very often? Do you? Once I argue.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  John tells officers they met shortly after Juliana moved to LA. They worked together at a Santa Monica surf shop, then started dating. And things went really well, except for when they didn't.

• 23:30Speaker 09

  All my friends crack jokes about it, like we're supposed to go camping this weekend for my friend's birthday, or it's gonna be Friday and come back Sunday.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  This is all video of the police interrogation.

• 23:40Speaker 09

  My buddy's chick goes, "If Juliana can come, as long as you two don't argue." But it was more love arguing, like we'd get on each other for stupid things, habits, trying to break each other, just like Bicker did. Bicker and...

• 23:55Speaker 10

  No pots and pans?

• 23:56Speaker 09

  Nah.

• 23:57Speaker 10

  Throw in no, no objects being thrown at each other, you know what I mean?

• 24:01Speaker 09

  No, not at each other. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, you know what I mean? I mean, like at that time, you know, when I kicked the door, I was all pissed, but I didn't, you know, hit on it, like, "Fucking open the door." I kicked it a couple of times. I mean, you know, but...

• 24:16Speaker 02

  But he insisted he would never hurt Juliana.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  John tells police that a year into their relationship, Juliana got hired by this doctor. He tells them that she moved into his house with her friend Stephanie, rent-free, more nearly. John says Juliana insisted to him that her relationship with her new boss was strictly professional.

• 24:40Speaker 09

  Her relationship with her new boss was strictly business? No messing around, going on anything like that?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Then, suddenly, Juliana moved out, eventually landing at the apartment in Santa Monica. According to John, the last time he saw Juliana was the morning of Friday, March 14th, the day before she was killed. Saturday evening, they were supposed to have dinner together. John worked late. He finished his shift at the surf shop around 8:00.

• 25:09Speaker 09

  I called her and she goes, "Can we do pizza? Or can we do order pizza in tonight?"

• 25:16Speaker 02

  John's all, "Nah, I've been eating pizza all day."

• 25:18Speaker 09

  He's just kind of like, you could tell she was just kind of disappointed in the fact that I wasn't like, "Yeah, let's do pizza." Like, it wasn't about the food.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  John had worked a 12-hour shift, but rather than wait for him, Juliana said she was gonna go you with a friend. John's all, "Fine, I'm gonna chill and have some beers."

• 25:34Speaker 09

  They bought us a 12-pack for working hard today. She's like, she's like, "Okay, fine, you know, whatever." Like, fucking, you know, and then hung up on me and I was like, "Fuck, dude, like, why'd you just hang up?" So I called her back and I go, "Please don't hang up on me." And she goes, "Okay, duh, duh, duh, love you." And I was like, "Okay."

• 25:52Speaker 02

  But things start to escalate, now over text.

• 25:54Speaker 09

  So, so I vented to her, like, fuck, I sent her like four, like, whole-page text messages, like, "It's really hurting me, it reminded me of fucking, you know, what happened." And then at like 8:30, because I'm already off, you know, they get off at 8:00, so, you know, women, they're on it, I get a text from her at like 8:30, she goes, "Are you fucking coming or what?"

• 26:16Speaker 02

  John explains he's getting beers with his friends. He'll see her later.

• 26:19Speaker 09

  Like, she texts me back, she goes, "Fine, just call me in a little." And then, okay, I'll just call you in a little, like, you know, just thinking everything's okay.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  But then grabbing beers turns into going to a party.

• 26:32Speaker 09

  I get a text that says from her, like, like, I'm, I'm getting tired. And then I get another text a minute later, like, two minutes later, and it goes, what the fuck, John? Like, all in exclamation, what the fuck, John? And I was like, okay, she's pissed because I didn't answer my phone, I didn't call her back.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  She calls, twice, around 9:45 PM. He doesn't pick up, but he texts her back saying, relax. He explains the situation.

• 26:59Speaker 09

  And she didn't text me back, so I was like, that's kind of weird, you know? I was like, you know, usually I would have got some smart-ass comment back, like, sure you were, you know what I mean? Like.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  At 9:53, he calls her.

• 27:09Speaker 09

  It rang like four or five times, like, and I think it was like six, four to six times it picks up an answering machine. And then it didn't go to her answering machine, like, it picked up, but it was, it didn't go beep, it didn't, I didn't hear anyone. And then the phone just disconnected.

• 27:24Speaker 09

  Now, when you say it picked up, picked up like the answering machine picked up? Or? Yeah, like someone picked it up.

• 27:32Speaker 09

  But I didn't hear anything, you know, no dog, you know what I mean, no, no voice, no hello. And then after? It just went right up, and then it was like someone tried to pick it up, and then it disconnected, and it just went, and then it said, call ended on my screen.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  He says he tried again, but straight to voicemail. He's like, okay, she's pissed, this is over. And he goes back to the party, tries to have a good time.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  The next day, John woke up around 9:00 AM. Still no messages from Juliana. His calls are going straight to voicemail. He decides, screw it, I'm just gonna go over and talk to her. John says he gets there about 9:30 AM, sees her car outside, assumes she's home.

• 28:19Speaker 09

  So I knocked, rang the doorbell, knocked, rang the doorbell. And then no movement, but the dog was, came to the door. Um, and started barking and whining. So whenever Gigi would do that.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Gigi, the dog.

• 28:35Speaker 09

  Even if Juliana, I could sometimes I'd come over and wake her up. And Gigi would come and bark and whine at the door. Juliana would always get up, me no ma- no matter what, you know? Even if fucking she told me not to come over, you know what I mean? No matter what.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  But no one came to the door. He thought, maybe she's in the shower? He says he goes around the house, sees the bathroom light on, knocks on the bathroom window. No answer. He peeps in through another window, sees a lit candle. That's weird. But John says he doesn't think foul play. He calls a friend.

• 29:09Speaker 09

  I was like, dude, I just feel like maybe like she has a dude in her room and she doesn't want to answer the door. Or, you know what I mean? Like, I was just, and like, I had that weird gut feeling that someone was in that house with, like, you know what I mean? And she didn't want to answer the door because she didn't want me to know who was in there.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  John leaves, goes surfing. But he can't let it go. He calls Juliana again, and again, still no answer. He calls her work, she's not there either. He goes back to her apartment. This time, he goes straight to the neighbors and asks them, have you seen Juliana today? The neighbor says, no. Maybe you should call the cops or her parents. But John doesn't have her parents' numbers.

• 29:52Speaker 09

  He's like, well, I can get the, I can call the landlord and maybe, you know, have the landlord call the parents. If you're really that worried. And I go, I go, actually, yeah. So what I'm gonna do is here, I was like, here's my cell phone number. I was like, write this down, uh, I'm gonna go.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Pretty soon, John gets a call from Juliana's mom.

• 30:08Speaker 09

  And, um, she goes, Johnny, what's going on? Like, the landlord called, said, yeah, like Juliana, no, it's not Juliana. I go, yeah, I was like, it's weird. I haven't talked to her since yesterday. And she goes, is everything okay with you guys? And I was like, actually, it's like, it's really good, you know? Or like, then, uh, she goes, like, where's Juliana? And I go, I don't know. She's like, well, she's at that photo shoot. And I go, oh, yeah, oh. And she's like, she's like, yeah. And I was like, and I was like, oh, that explains it all. Like, and then like, uh, uh, all of a sudden, I was like, everything's okay.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  But then John starts thinking about all that weird stuff. The candles, the unanswered calls, no text messages. He says it's weird that Gigi wasn't locked up. Juliana's mom says, okay, okay. She tells John she's calling the police. And a couple of minutes after John shows up again, Officer Cap arrives with his colleagues. Detectives scrutinizing John's story will find it mostly squares. They'll check Juliana's call logs and see the calls he mentioned, two to him and then two to her. In between, she called 911. But that call didn't go through either.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  In reality, though John was seeing Juliana nearly two years, there was so much he did not know about her. As detectives interviewed more of Juliana's friends, they learned about a whole other side of her life that started about nine months before her murder. It was while she was working as a hostess at a wine bar in Venice. There was a regular there. He was a little older, charming, attractive, and clearly had means. He started talking to Juliana, and Juliana started talking back.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  And she spoke to him, saying she was looking for other jobs and, you know, working, going to school. And he said, well, I actually am looking for an assistant to help me run, as I understood, it was like a portfolio, and help him run his business, like portfolio. I think, I thought it's, from what I remember, I thought it was something to do with real estate. He needed an assistant. And she was funny, because again, she's witty. And she's like, can't afford me, sorry. He's like, well, how much do you want? I think she, again, the number, but it was like some number. It was like $60 an hour. And he's like, done. And she's like, and I need a car. And he's like, done. And so she's like, okay. She was hired to be his assistant and to help him with like, because he had multiple

• 32:41Speaker 04

  businesses and a portfolio, I believe, of real estate is what I can remember from that.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Juliana's like, let's see where this goes.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  People in LA specifically always hear about, oh, they got this amazing assistant job and then it grew into something else because then they're managing, you know. So I think to me, it sounded, nothing about it sounded strange.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  High paying job, company car, turns out to be a Range Rover and soon, a glamorous place to live. She moved into one of his properties.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, nothing seemed strange at the time. She just was, because he didn't live there with her, wasn't like, oh, I'm moving in with my boss kind of situation. It was like he had an empty, an extra house. Yeah, he sounded like a wealthy businessman, pretty much. And I didn't think twice.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  So who was this guy? He told Juliana, he was 28, single, a surgeon. He had real estate. He had cars. The details, well, no need to get into those. And maybe when you're young, in a new city, going to school, working multiple jobs, maybe questions like, who is this rich handsome guy really, aren't so front of mind. Alana first heard about this doctor through a mutual friend.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  Who said that she was working for a doctor and that the doctor was very interested in her more than as an assistant or working for her.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  As an employee, like romantically interested in her.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  Yes. That was the first time I heard about him.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Juliana and the doctor's relationship was romantic for a time.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  I have kind of a motherly aspect to myself and I was worried a little bit, but again, I do feel that kind of everyone has to go through their dating trials and tribulations and it's just kind of part of growing up. He's a doctor, so hopefully, you know, he's a, he's kind of a good guy and we know how magnetic Juliana is and she is also someone who we felt like had a really good head on her shoulders. So, but we also knew that. She was in her early twenties. And so these are kind of things that a lot of girls go through. A lot of, a lot of girls in their twenties date men that are older than them before they

• 35:01Speaker 05

  realize, or maybe they don't, and that's a perfect guy for them. So I felt like, who am I to judge? Because I had done things like that myself.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  The next time Alana would hear about this doctor was after they broke up.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  We had a few other conversations, and I think they were kind of to the effect of her letting us then know that he had lied about a lot of things. That she then kind of told us that he had lied about his age, that he had a family in Lebanon, and there may have been some other kind of shady dealings with his medical practice. And I do remember her at one point saying, I'm scared. So, and that was concerning for me because I had really never heard her be like that.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  This doctor is the same ex-boyfriend that Juliana said was stalking her in the months leading up to her murder, showing up in strange places, going out of his way to bump into her. He's the first person Alana thought about when she found out Juliana was dead.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  There was no, for us, I never thought for one moment that it was a car accident, that she was randomly shot on the street. None of us said anything. Even though we had, nothing had really been confirmed, we all knew it had something to do with Munir. We just knew. And it was like instantaneous. Every single one of her friends and myself all knew that it had something to do with Munir.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Even before the investigation, even before knowing any evidence, they all suspected her boss slash boyfriend, Dr. Munir Uweda.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  Is it okay if I cry?

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Give me one fuck.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Sure. Sure.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  I'm good.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So those were the two main men in Juliana's romantic life in the year leading up to her death. One with a criminal record, and another, everyone would soon find out, was under investigation for even bigger crimes. And in the middle is 21-year-old Juliana.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  It's like hindsight's incredible, because of course you can go through everything. But when you're 20 years old and you grow up in a sheltered way, in a good way, in a positive way, you don't think that something, like what ends up happening or ended up happening, it's just not something you think about.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Coming up this season on Doctor's Orders.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  We knew that something had happened and that it wasn't an accident.

• 38:02Speaker 11

  They pick it up, they analyze it, and it matches the DNA that was in Juliana Redding's apartment.

• 38:09Speaker 12

  So I'm telling him, "It really, really hurts." And so he says, "Just be strong, just be strong, hang on, just hang on." And then he keeps pulling and pulling, and I'm starting to scream, and he pulls, and he pulls, and then there's this bloop that pops out of my arm. Bitch, go to hell, whore.

• 38:27Speaker 13

  I have that memorized, I'll be dead before I forget that. He was not a great person to be associated with, but we figured, you know, it was mostly about the money. Then some of the things revealed a possibly greater diabolical person than we had imagined.

• 38:44Speaker 14

  That's pretty suspicious, that sounds like mafia stuff.

• 38:48Speaker 12

  I said, "I need to see the doctor, and I need to see the doctor right frickin' now. This is wrong. What you did to me is just absolutely wrong."

• 38:55Speaker 14

  Such a manipulator, such a master craftsman at manipulation. He's evil.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Doctor's Orders is produced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment's The Binge. The executive producer and host is me, Ben Adair. The executive producer for The Binge is Jonathan Hirsch. Doctor's Orders was written and produced by Nada Salem. It was edited by Ben Adair. Lila Hassan is our fact checker. Legal review by Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP. Michael Raitthill is the mix engineer. Next up is episode two, Mystery Woman.

• 39:53Speaker 15

  I'm Josh Manikowitz, and I hope you'll join us for season five of Dateline: Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing person's case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. Maybe you could help solve a mystery. Search Dateline: Missing in America to listen completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium to unlock new episodes early.