Episode 33: Deep Dive

Dec 18, 2015

Sgt. David Mascarenas is the Dive Supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. He's been diving his whole life, and prides himself on never refusing a dive, no matter how treacherous. At least until the summer of 2013, when a murder investigation led him into unusually murky waters.

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what are you most often diving for looking for weapons or bodies or our basic search is for bombs bodies narcotics and evidence Dave maass Karina's is a sergeant with the LAPD he's also the supervisor for their underwater dive unit where he's been diving for the last 18 years are diving aspect is not like what most people think that you go down recreationally and you can see

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in the waters warm and all that good stuff our average dive the waters are cold off our Coast so we were wearing you know seven millimeter quarter-inch wetsuits and most of the time our visibility is less than a foot he started scuba diving in high school performed waterborne operations in the military and then join the LAPD where he's worked in a lot of different units the crash unit anti-gang unit bike Patrol in Hollywood but no matter what department

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he was working with he could be called away at any time to go on a dive I have been in underground watersheds that are about a hundred feet wide by 200 feet long by almost a hundred feet deep that are completely enclosed and cement and had to be lowered in by a rope to get in there and do investigations that's kind of troubling when you know that there is no Escape if you have an issue I have been in dams you know in top of mountains

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have been in the LA River searching for bodies I've had to be deployed by helicopter you know into the ocean and do giant strides off appears we pretty much do everything and our department because we try not to say no to an investigation if at all possible because then we're sending a message that hey this is a good idea to dump evidence here but in the summer of 2013 the LAPD dive unit got a call that sounded so unreasonable it had

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to be a joke detectives had gotten a tip on a high-profile murder case a case they still aren't releasing many details about the murder happened in 2011 and the investigation had gone cold until they got word that evidence may have been thrown in the La Brea Tar Pits it was like being asked to scuba dive in a pit of toxic cold molasses how could you even see in it let alone breathe and at first you know we were joking

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I was like yeah that's you know that's not really going to happen there's no way we could pull that off but once we receive a request from a detective to do an investigation my job is to see if that's something that we can do I would feel like that would be something to just say I'm sorry that is absolutely nothing we can do well keep in mind that yes we're the underwater dive unit but there's a lot of things that we can do that might not necessarily mean we have to do a dive investigation we have remote

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operated Vehicles we have accessories and equipment that we can deploy sometimes and nobody knew if anything would function or not everybody's best guess was no nothing will work when he says everybody's best guess was no he means everybody this was an all-hands-on-deck analysis the Ellie Fire Department Port Police Beach police geologists archaeologists diving experts and even the people who design the underwater search

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equipment their concern was that those remote operated Vehicles emit small electric Sparks even when they're supposed to be airtight to go underwater no one could be certain they wouldn't let off Sparks that might cause an explosion and set the whole carpet on fire they tried other options Hooks and Grabbers magnets nothing worked but they were able to use a sonar system to confirm that the pieces of evidence were in fact down there

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in the tar so now we were in a situation where we have identified items that need to be looked at

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and we can't retrieve them be equipment so we decided that maybe we would try to put a diver into the into the tar I mean did you place it sooner and pick straws or did you think I'm you know this is my call I mean how did you get chosen to do this well at that time I

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the oh I see the officer in charge of the investigation if this is a scenario where I could be asking somebody to go In Harm's Way and most likely they're not going to come back from it how would I feel being the person that makes a phone call and says I told my officer to do that and he did it and knowing he's most likely going to get hurt and he does and then I have to deal with the family so I decided if anybody was going to do it was going to be me and that way nothing could possibly

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we come back if something if I get injured or I don't come back well it was my decision did you stop and me are you married I am married 29 years 29 and you have kids I have two sons 31 and 25 so did you call your wife and say listen I have to do this kind of crazy thing what do you think we're excited better not to tell her no that was one of those scenarios where you you know beg for forgiveness later

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and not say anything I looked at like this I've had a good life I've had a great career I've done a lot of things my kids are older if something bad happened my wife's going to be taken care of and when I talk to my lieutenant at the time who's now retired he basically said Dave do we want to send the message that you know we can't do this there's somewhere a bad guy can go and get away with something and so

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and his colleague started planning and preparing for the dive but most of that planning went straight out the window as soon as he got under water I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal

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there is actually three pits the main pit that most people see it looks just like a big small Lake of black tar it to the consistency of like putting it looks like to me tens of thousands of years ago tectonic pressure started forcing oil up to the surface of the Earth and it pooled in these small lakes in what is now Los Angeles

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and the reason there's something of a tourist attraction is because prehistoric animals would weighed in and get stuck they couldn't escape and would eventually die and their bones were perfectly preserved by the oil they're still there today there's a saber-toothed tiger that's thought to be 44,000 years old and a coyote that's forty six thousand years old it looks like it looks like something that you would walk into and just disappear forever yes you see bubbles coming up that's the

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gasps from coming through and some are bigger and smaller so you're always hearing popping noises but it basically yeah it looks like you know once you step in you're not you're not coming back in fact they even have a couple of prehistoric dinosaur creatures you know that fake ones that they have on the side some of them are halfway in the pitch shown depicting them what happened in the past on June 6th 2013 Dave and his team arrived at the Tar Pits very

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early in the morning Dave were hazardous materials suit the suit manufacturers said they thought it should hold up in the tar but also that if too much time passed the suit could dissolve and eventually burn itself up

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so Dave took extra precautions he put duct tape on all the seals for his breathing air was pumped down from the surface and they'd set up a radio system so Dave could hear instructions from people on land I asked him if he was nervous I don't know about being nervous my more thought was I got to pull this off we're probably only going to get one shot at this and now everybody is there the media and everywhere else and I have you know all my

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appears there I want to do the best job that we can and I want to do it as safely as possible and at the end of the day I kind of wanted to be able to go back home the first step was to bring in a fire truck to use a high-powered hoses to clear away the top layer of tar until the surface was something more as Dave says liquidy then they rigged safety lines in two different directions going across the pit and lowered a rowboat into the tar and then Dave waited in

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as soon as I got in as soon as my face pass through the first layer want the second layer and third layer all you see is like a dull green like avocado covered Hugh

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some parts of the tar were like like putting where you could basically kind of Pat it and feel it and you would be okay in other parts you touched and you immediately got stuck and it was like like a cartoon commercial or my your gloves would stretch like a foot till it finally give away

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the plan was that people on land would monitor the sonar they would then guide Dave through his radio on where to look or in this case were to put out his hands and try to grab it something however it was very difficult you can't like swim normally in tar you can't really kick so we came up with is we had a 30 or 40 foot pole that the guys from the boat put in the tar and once I submerged I grabbed onto that pole

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and I would use that to pull myself down and to pull myself and then keep moving it forward a foot at a time into the directions that the radio man was given me we need you to move three feet to your right to feet to your left that kind of thing because my gauges and equipment I could see him nothing was working

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so you'd get you beer maybe radioing to you and saying it's there it's there put your hand down you put your hand down you'd feel the object whatever this evidence were not to is and and you'd grab it and then you'd put it somewhere in a pocket or well it's not I wish it was as easy as that now you have a you have a dry suit on you have a glove on have you ever put on like two or three layers of gloves when it's real cold and in the winter time for the snow and you can't really grab very well

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it's kind of the same situation so you had say okay that's not basically shape or size of what I'm looking for this is basically shape or size what I'm looking for and there was no way of putting it in an Evidence bag or container so what I basically did is once I found that item I brought it up to the guys in the boat and they put it in an Evidence container I mean you could have had your hand on like million year old crocodile jaw

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I could have yeah there's there was some weird things down there so it was supposed to be a nine-minute dive that's what they'd planned it wasn't safe to be down there longer first off it was very hot but also because the longer his hazardous material suit was exposed to the tar the more likely it was to dissolve but then they've got stuck I got my whole arm and hand in a shoulder stock into all the came up to my face mask and I started grabbing on the

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all and pulling as hard as I could and let them know that I'm stuck in to start pulling with the ropes and then my left leg got stuck and my fin got stuck and I thought well you know I gave it a good shot you know I can feel like you know the pressure on my I'm wearing a harness system so I could literally feel it pulling on my chest and ribs and finally I got out he got unstuck and pulled himself to the surface too

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hand the recovered object to the men in the rowboat he could have called it a day but he knew that there was more evidence down there the job wasn't done and in spite of that close call Dave went back down and immediately got stuck again and that time I don't even know how I didn't lose a my fin I felt it like coming off and I went to reach down with my hand and when my hand got stuck the glove felt like it stretched about a foot to two feet you know my my fingers and everything I finally

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snapped out and you know I thought okay well I'm not going to make it this time someone is going to have to make that phone call and I got out so this is a this is a good this is a good commercial for duct tape duct tape actually works what was supposed to be a nine-minute dive ended up being 77 minutes because none of his dive equipment functioned no one knows how deep Dave went

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the estimate is anywhere from 7 to 17 feet

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what did it look like when you emerged you must have just been you must have been quite a sight

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I was mostly full of tar my my suit had to be trashed the mask was full of tar on my gloves were full of tar trashed the fins actually whatever the material were they they were partly melted and deformed and when we took off the gloves my hands were full of tar and then somehow my hood had to have moved because when they took off the mask one side of my face and my ears and my neck

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full of tar he was nauseated and lightheaded but after being checked out by the EMTs and monitored for a couple of hours they gave him an all clear

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so what did you say when you got home that night to your wife I actually didn't get a chance to say anything like normal I don't like to come home and talk about my work because the different units I've been I've been a lot of specialized units I've had some very bad experiences I mean some of the stuff you've seen on TV I've been involved in kind of things so I would just come home and normally I have my clothes in a plastic bag and say or take this to the cleaners and don't touch

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because it's got you know biohazard on it or something and just this day I was coming in I walk in the door my wife is standing there and she had a mean look in her face and I said hi honey and the first thing she did is punch me and she punched me hard I mean she she works out so she had me pretty hard and then she burst out in tears and then she hugged me and she said you almost died and you didn't even tell me like well what are you talking about she said it was all over the news we were watching it at work

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work

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I wasn't happy Dave's wife Leslie mascarenhas I walk through the door and I said walked up to him and I punched him in the chest not hard and then I hugged him and I said don't ever do that again and he said okay he just kind of I think he was shocked because I've never had them like that I just I was just so angry but then just so happy that you know he was still standing there

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and he wasn't you know dead or you know in the hospital seriously injured or something with the methane gas though it was kind of mad and happy at the same time and and scared you said that you didn't punch him hard but he says that you did and he said you punched him hard because you work out

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well for a girl I guess it was hard but I do try to take care of myself so what is it like to live with someone who is actually doing a job and has this mentality and mindset of you know I care about my job I love my job so much that yeah I'll risk my life

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and that's funny because people ask me that all the time like aren't you nervous or don't you get nervous every time he goes to work and I said no he's one of those people that you know you just know he can take care of himself you know it's just who he is when I knew that Mary and I'm so you just have to take it in stride if I worried about it every day I would I would probably have all forces something

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the evidence they've recovered in the Tar Pits did help the detectives bring suspects into custody we checked in with him one more time last week to see if he could give us any update on the case and he wrote in an email that the investigation is still open and at least one individual is outstanding he says his fellow officers have a nickname for

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now the Brea Dave and while you think this would give him a free pass on the next weird job it hasn't now people know what he can do

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