Lisa Mather is dead in Hollywood Hills, killed by Edmund Arne Matthews

The Sunset Strip was the place to be in 1980s Los Angeles, but when a young woman’s body was found buried in the Hollywood Hills, her friends and loved ones were shaken with fear .

Lisa Ann Mather, 18, was one of many young Angelinos who flocked with friends to the Strip for a taste of the nightlife on a Saturday night in 1985. The heart of West Hollywood was where she spent many weekends listening to live bands and skipping dancing. club to dance club.

Lisa was a people person and a free spirit, Lisa’s best friend Aimee Steckler told Buried in The Backyard, broadcasting Thursdays at 8/7c to Oxygen. We felt like when we were together, we could just take on the world.

On January 11, 1985, Lisa, Aimee and their friend, Anthony OFarrill, met on the Strip. When they were denied access to 21-plus clubs without proper ID, they resorted to the sidewalk, where they could still hear the live music. They joined other revelers and found a construction site nearby, continuing to dance near the tailgate of a truck.

Friends last saw Lisa talking to a long-haired stranger, but moments later police arrived and ordered the minors to disperse.

Lisa was gone, Anthony OFarrill said. She was literally nowhere to be found.

Aimee and Anthony searched nearby clubs. In a time before cell phones, the friends hoped that Lisa could contact them via a payphone, but by morning there was still no sign of their friend. When she didn’t return home, Lisa’s mother filed a missing person report that morning.

Days passed, but nothing was found.

A few weeks later, Lisa’s mother received a phone call from a man asking for her daughter. The man on the other line claimed he had Lisa’s name and phone number on a matchbook he found inside his van, which was stolen from the Sunset Strip in around the time Lisa disappeared. The man called Lisa’s number hoping to find out who had stolen her van.

Authorities followed the lead and searched the vehicle, but ultimately found nothing.

It was a very frustrating situation for both victims and detectives, said retired LAPD detective Ted Ball. There were a lot of dead ends. You can’t go any further and you need a break from the deal.

Days, weeks and months passed before another theory emerged: Could Lisa Mather have fallen prey to the Night Stalker?

Throughout the 1980s, serial killer Richard Ramirez kept Los Angeles in the grip of fear after killing at least 13 people and committing a number of rapes across the city. His arrest in August 1985 came seven months after Lisa Mather disappeared.

There was no one in the city of Los Angeles who wasn’t terrified [of Richard Ramirez], including myself, said Det. Ball. There hadn’t been a serial killer working around Los Angeles in quite some time, in this way: extremely violent deaths.

Police determined that the pattern did not quite match. If someone abducted Lisa from the street, it wouldn’t make sense that Ramirez, known for breaking into his victims’ homes and attacking them on their own turf, would use a different MO. Authorities have ruled out the Night Stalker as a suspect in Lisa’s disappearance.

The trails dried up until Dec. 3, 1986, nearly two years after friends last saw Lisa Mather on the Sunset Strip, when a camper looking for a clearing began pitching a tent at Coldwater Canyon. High above the sprawling metropolis of LA, the camper made a grisly discovery when he tried to drive a stake into the ground, only to hit bones under brush and wintry leaves.

At the scene, investigators found a rope tied to the base of a tree and handcuffs hanging from the tree branch. Dental records confirmed that the skeletal remains belonged to Lisa Mather. Due to the condition of the body, the cause of death could not be determined.

It was the worst outcome we could have hoped for, said Lisa’s sister, Rosalind Lutz. And we were all grieving in our own way. Really don’t understand anything [about] What happened.

Without knowing how Lisa died, detectives hoped to link other similar deaths from the area within the same time frame.

We had a stroke of luck with this particular case involving fellow detectives in North Hollywood, Det. Ball. When we discovered the remains of a woman found on the hill, the detective in charge of the rape detail in North Hollywood informed us that they had a serial rapist at that exact location in Coldwater Canyon who had been captured, arrested and for follow-up.

The victims reported that their rapist, Edmund Arne Matthews, assaulted them in the same area where Lisa was found in 1986.

Edmund Arne Matthews was something of a staple on the Sunset Strip. Known as the Count for wearing a cape and top hat, the reveler dressed in character and claimed to be part of the rock and roll scene, having rubbed shoulders with many celebrities.

He was also convicted of two violent attacks on women just weeks before Lisa’s murder. The Earl lured his victims from the Sunset Strip to Coldwater Canyon with the promise of taking them to a celebrity after-party. Authorities arrested Matthews on January 28, 1985 for the Coldwater Canyon rapes.

Lisa’s loved ones were disheartened to learn that authorities had not linked Matthews to Lisa’s disappearance earlier.

They found him coming down the hill from Coldwater Canyon with a lantern and a shovel, and they arrested him, Rosalind said. I don’t know what they thought when they saw him coming down the hill, but for some reason they didn’t come back up to where the women had been raped.

The family believed that if the authorities had searched the hill, they would have found Lisa’s body.

As part of the ongoing investigation, Lisa’s friends Anthony OFarrill and Aimee Steckler have identified Edmund Matthews as the man they saw Lisa talking to just before she disappeared. But lacking physical evidence linking Matthews to Lisa’s death, authorities faced a challenge: All of their evidence against Matthews was circumstantial.

Detectives visited Matthews, who was serving a 10-year sentence for his rape convictions, and questioned him about the death of Lisa Mathers.

Matthews confessed to picking up Lisa from the Sunset Strip, but claimed Lisa voluntarily left with him. Matthews told detectives that he and Lisa had consensual sex at a nearby school pool before taking her to Coldwater Canyon. He claimed that Lisa allowed Matthews to tie him to a tree to continue their sexual relationship before she lost her balance and slipped, becoming tangled in the rope, which resulted in her death by strangulation.

Matthews admitted to drinking too much and alleged he couldn’t free Lisa from the ropes and that her death was the result of a horrific accident.

At some point he returned to the scene, Det. Ball. Then he partially buried the body, but still couldn’t untie the rope from the tree.

Shortly after, police arrested him on previous rape charges as he descended the hill with a lantern and a shovel.

Police did not believe Lisa voluntarily climbed the hill with Matthews, nor did they believe she had become entangled in the ropes, as the suspect said.

What the physical evidence showed was that Lisa was most likely lying on her back and had been tied at the neck to the base of the tree, the detective said. Ball. Based on the evidence, it’s more likely that there was strangulation.

Although Matthews maintained that Lisa’s death was just an unfortunate accident, a jury convicted him in 1991 of the first-degree murder of Lisa Mather.

He took away a beautiful girl who could have had anything in life; she was so bright, Rosalind says of her sister. Her life mattered and she didn’t have the opportunity to live. And to see what difference she would have made in this world, she would have made a difference.

Edmund Matthews is currently serving his sentence without the possibility of parole at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran, California.

For more on this case and others like it, watch “Buried In The Backyard,” airing Thursdays at 8/7c to Oxygen or stream episodes here.