Mystery Endures Years After 24-Year-Old Died Following Release From Sheriff’s Station

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Just after midnight on Sept. 17, 2009, Mitrice Richardson was released from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Malibu-Lost Hills station. She walked away into the night, alone, without a car, money, cellphone or even a jacket to ward off the chill.

The 24-year-old had been arrested on misdemeanor charges on Sept. 16 after behaving bizarrely at a Malibu steakhouse and failing to pay her bill. Almost a year later, her unclothed partial remains were found in a remote canyon known for its rugged and treacherous terrain. With the state of the body, an autopsy was unable to determine how she died but noted there was no evidence of trauma prior to her death.

The “undetermined” cause of death is just one of the enduring mysteries around her final hours. Multiple law enforcement agencies have drawn fire for their actions from the start, beginning with her arrest, their controversial decision to release her from custody in the middle of the night, and the drawn-out and incomplete efforts to recover her remains. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by her parents against the county resulted in a $900,000 settlement.

Her mother, Latice Sutton, told Essence she believes her daughter had bipolar disorder and it was “absolutely absurd” that Richardson was released from the sheriff’s station in the middle of the night. She has spent years calling for changes in law enforcement policies.

“ No one, male or female, mental health issues or no mental health issues should be released in a remote area when the city shuts down at 9 p.m., unless someone is there to pick them up or they know the person is safe,” she told Essence in 2020 .

And though law enforcement officials have said they don’t believe Richardson’s death was caused by foul play, a reward continues to be offered for identifying the person or persons responsible. Fifteen years after her remains were found, Los Angeles County officials reestablished a $20,000 reward on Aug. 6 for information leading to the arrest and conviction in her “suspicious disappearance and heinous death.”

Mental health worker Kim Howard places a photo of Mitrice Richardson at the Lost Hills Sheriff Station in Calabasas for a memorial and press conference on the 10th anniversary of her disappearance following her release from the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff's station in 2009 and whose body was found in August 2010.

Malibu Mystery

Richardson graduated with honors from California State University, Fullerton, in 2008 with a degree in psychology. She was planning to get her master’s degree and become a psychologist, Los Angeles Magazine reported , and was living with her great-grandmother in South Los Angeles to save money. She did clerical work at a shipping company, performed as a go-go dancer and competed in beauty pageants .

“She was very loving, a vivacious personality, full of life,” her aunt Lauren Sutton told ABC 7 . “I mean she would walk into a room, and she would make sure that everyone took notice.”

But in the months leading up to her disappearance, Richardson’s frequent, melancholy posts on MySpace began to trouble friends and relatives, Los Angeles Magazine reported , and she became more withdrawn and talked about going to therapy.

“Mitrice wanted people to think she had everything under control,” her ex-girlfriend told the magazine, but her unusual behavior — and a series of garbled texts she sent her mother in the days before her disappearance — suggested otherwise.

Richardson abruptly left work early on Sept. 16, 2009, the L.A. Times reported and drove her Honda Civic more than 50 miles away to Malibu. She had no ties to the area.

She pulled into the parking lot of Geoffrey’s, a steakhouse on the famed Pacific Coast Highway with panoramic ocean views. The valet and restaurant hostess said she made some bizarre comments to them, but she appeared harmless, the L.A. Times and Los Angeles magazine reported.

After ordering a Kobe steak and an ocean breeze cocktail, she left her table and sat uninvited at the table of a party of seven. When they left, she followed and tried to skip out on paying her $89.51 bill, according to multiple news outlets and a sheriff’s report. She told the restaurant manager she couldn’t pay — she had no money or credit cards. She reportedly had no wallet; deputies said they’d found only her driver’s license in her car.

Restaurant workers told investigators that they believed she was experiencing a “mental issue,” according to audio of their interviews obtained by ABC 7 .

She was saying “something about cracking a code” and hearing voices, one staff member told investigators, according to the police interviews.

The restaurant manager said she told him she was from Mars and couldn’t pay her bill because of the “language of the numbers,” the L.A. Times reported .

A restaurant employee then called her 91-year-old great-grandmother Mildred Harris, who had the only phone number Richardson could remember without the contacts in her cellphone. Harris offered to pay the bill using her credit card but was told they could not accept payment over the phone, Los Angeles Magazine reported . The employees talked about paying the bill themselves, but Richardson’s strange behavior made them fear for her safety if she was allowed to leave the restaurant on her own, the restaurant hostess told ABC 7 . The bartender who called the sheriff’s station said she sounded “really crazy” and that she might be on drugs, ABC 7 reported.

Latice Sutton, the mother of Richardson, listens to Mike Hennig explain the workings of a drone before it was deployed in search of her daughter in the Monte Nido area of Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu Canyon.

Richardson’s Arrest

Deputies arrived at the restaurant at around 8:30 p.m. They said Richardson was “cooperative and polite,” according to a July 2010 police accountability report , appeared lucid, and passed a field sobriety test. The deputy who conducted the test said she did not seem to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

In addition to her driver’s license, deputies who searched Richardson’s car found a small amount of cannabis, empty prescription bottles and several gallon-size bottles of liquor and beer, according to the report.

She was taken into custody on a misdemeanor charge of defrauding an innkeeper and driven to the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff’s station — about 20 miles from the restaurant. Her car was towed to a tow yard about 11 miles away.

While Richardson was en route with deputies, her mother, Latice Sutton, called the station after being told by her grandmother about the arrest. She wondered whether she should drive to Malibu to pick Richardson up immediately or hold off until the morning.

“It’s dark, she doesn’t have a car, and I don’t want her wandering out,” she told a deputy in the recorded conversation obtained by ABC 7 . “I feel safe with her being in custody. It’s being released that I’m worried about. It’s crazy out here.”

The deputy reassured her that her daughter would be safe inside the station.

“The only thing is at least in this station here she will be separated so nobody’s going to be with her,” he said in the recorded call. “At least that’s the plus thing — you don’t have to worry about her safety.”

Deputies booked Richardson, who had no criminal history, on an additional charge of possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, also a misdemeanor. Two hours later, just after midnight, Richardson walked out of the station alone.

About six hours after her release, a resident of Monte Nido — a Calabasas neighborhood more than 5 miles from the sheriff’s station — called police to say they found a woman, later identified as Richardson, sleeping on the back steps of their home. By the time deputies arrived, she had disappeared and was never seen alive again.

An internal review conducted by the sheriff’s department’s now-defunct Office of Independent Review (OIR) found in July 2010 that deputies had acted “legally and responsibly” in arresting and releasing her.

But Sutton told Essence that deputies ignored their “duty” to get her daughter help after the restaurant staff told them about Richardson’s peculiar behavior.

”Our first responders need to be able to get us the assistance that we need because law enforcement is not just there to enforce the law. They are also there to protect and serve us. And if they are being told by witnesses that someone is acting crazy; speaking in gibberish and you are seeing this person acting in a peculiar manner, and you know that they are not intoxicated, then you have a duty to get them some help,” she said.

A member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department looks over a guard rail along Malibu Canyon Road on Sept. 26, 2009, during a search of the area for Richardson.

The Search For Richardson

Authorities conducted extensive ground and air search and rescue operations for Richardson and assigned a homicide team to investigate her disappearance. But they found nothing for nearly a year. Ultimately, her remains were discovered by happenstance.

On Aug. 9, 2010, rangers charged with investigating and destroying cannabis cultivation sites discovered her partially mummified remains in Dark Canyon, about 2.5 miles from the house in Monte Nido where she was last seen, the L.A. Times reported .

Her body was nude, with her jeans, bra and pink belt found scattered hundreds of feet away, according to Los Angeles Magazine and ABC 7 . Her underwear, shirt, socks and the Vans sneakers she was seen wearing have never been recovered.

The coroner was unable to determine her cause or manner of death, and not all of her bones were recovered. The hyoid bone in her neck, which could potentially indicate whether she had been strangled , was never found.

The sheriff’s department faced additional scrutiny for deputies’ handling of Richardson’s remains, resulting in a second OIR review regarding breakdowns in communication between deputies and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Department, the retrieval of Richardson’s remains, and notification of her family and chain of custody issues.

A coroner’s official accused sheriff’s deputies of removing the bones from the scene without authorization from his office and before coroner’s investigators could visit the scene.

More bones were found in a second search of the area two weeks later, The Associated Press reported .

Then, in November 2010, Richardson’s family found a finger bone when they visited the site. They urged authorities to conduct another search.

In February 2011, investigators conducted another sweep of the area and found eight more bones belonging to Richardson.

Sheriff’s officials said they were not made aware of the coroner’s concerns due to unreliable phone and radio communications, that nightfall forced them to leave the scene, and were concerned that animals might disturb the scene.

The review did not find any culpability but recommended specific measures be taken in the future “to ensure smoother coordination in future joint recovery efforts.”

Sutton and Richardson’s father, Michael Richardson, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, contending that deputies had been negligent in releasing their daughter , given her mental state. They reached a settlement of $900,000 with the county in 2011, and the county did not admit any wrongdoing.

After pressure from Richardson’s family, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris launched a criminal investigation in 2016 into the sheriff’s department’s handling of Richardson’s case but concluded in 2017 that there was “ insufficient evidence ” to support a prosecution.

Despite that ruling, Rep. Maxine Waters told ABC 7 in 2021 that she believes the sheriff’s department bears responsibility for Richardson’s death.

“All of the facts of this case leads me to believe they just didn’t care about her,” Waters said. “She wasn’t important. She was just a Black girl. That’s all.”

A poster was made for Richardson at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Webb Way in Malibu on Sept. 26, 2009. Richardson was released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Hidden Hills after midnight on Sept. 17.