I just came across this. Has it been posted before? The large marijuana grow discovered on one of the other ranches and the fact he went off on a drive to New Mexico the day after she disappeared.
This just sounds so shady.
www.bitesizedcrimepod.com
This is incredibly complicated by the sounds of it all. I have copied this section from the episode.
"In a search warrant obtained on June 9th, Investigator Donald Atkinson stated that Dia Abrams had gone missing “under suspicious circumstances and foul play is suspected.” He detailed the discovery of the marijuana grow and his belief that it may be connected to Dia’s disappearance. That night, officers from the Riverside Sheriff’s Office executed the search warrant on the Sky High Ranch, seizing more than 2,300 marijuana plants and over 350 pounds of processed marijuana.
However, there was no sign of Dia at the Sky High Ranch. According to Isidro Garcia, Dia had rented that property out back in 2019, and she never went over there. Whenever something needed to be fixed, she sent Garcia to take care of it. It’s possible that Dia had no idea that an illegal operation was taking place on her property.
Although investigators didn’t find Dia at Sky High Ranch, the search warrant gave them access to all of Dia’s properties, including all living spaces and vehicles. It also allowed them to search any electronics or cell phones found on the property or in the possession of anyone on the property.
At the Bonita Vista Ranch, investigators entered multiple items into evidence. According to CBS 8, the list included a bed sheet with possible blood, two spent bullet casings, an internet router, and two handwritten letters.
While some detectives searched the ranch, others traveled to New Mexico to find Keith Harper. On June 12th, they seized Harper’s RV in San Juan County. According to the inventory report, they removed “a section of the front driver seat”. They also searched his storage business, American Storage Complex, but the list of items taken was not released to the public.
Keith Harper claimed that he was in contact with the sheriff’s office the entire time he was in New Mexico, and he cooperated with the searches. But Dia’s son Clinton was not convinced. “It’s unsettling to me that on the morning that the search and rescue team arrived, and the homicide unit arrived, Harper was not there. He had fled.”
If investigators agreed with Clinton, they never said. And they never made a move to arrest Keith Harper. But they continued to dig, and what they uncovered sent them down a whole new path. In the weeks and months prior to her disappearance, Dia Abrams had been locked in a tense legal battle with her two adult children.
For this part of the story to make sense, we need to go back in time a bit and look at how the Abrams family got to this point.
In 1979, 25-year-old Dia met 39-year-old Clem Abrams. Clem was a land developer in La Jolla and was already a multi-millionaire by the time he met Dia. Dia was a college graduate with a degree from San Diego State University, and she was gainfully employed, but when she and Clem married in 1984, everything changed.
On their wedding day, Clem presented Dia with a prenuptial agreement: Any income made by Clem would belong to him, and any made by Dia would be hers. Dia was shocked, but she didn’t have much of a choice. She was four months pregnant, and if she walked away from Clem, she would be an unwed mother with no financial security. Dia signed the papers.
Over the next three decades, Clem kept a tight fist on their finances and on Dia. Clem insisted that Dia leave her job and stay home with their two children, Crisara and Clinton. Dia had no access to their bank accounts, and because of their prenup, she had no way to make money of her own.
Clem’s business continued to grow, and in 1998, the family moved to the Bonita Vista Ranch property in Mountain Center, where they resided for the next 20 years. When Clem eventually passed away in 2018, his estate was worth over $10 million. Dia was provided for through a marital trust, but Crisara and Clinton inherited the bulk of the estate.
In 2019, six months after Clem Abrams died, Dia filed a petition to have their prenuptial agreement dissolved, saying that she had been forced to sign it. She also requested that $6.7 million be transferred from Clem’s estate to her marital trust. In her petition, Dia alleged that Clinton and Crisara had not fulfilled their duties as the trustees of Clem’s estate. In other words, Dia’s children were not providing for her as Clem had intended. “Dia brings these claims before the court to preserve her rights to Clem’s estate, and to avoid any possibility of losing what is rightfully hers.”
Crisara and Clinton filed their own petition in response, claiming that Dia had known exactly what she was doing when she signed the prenup in 1984 and that they hadn’t been neglecting their duties – Dia had plenty of assets through the marital trust and was able to live quite comfortably on what she had.
Over the next year, Dia and her children went back and forth in probate court, each side refusing to budge. In May of 2020, just two weeks before she disappeared, Dia transferred all of her property, including the ranch and rental houses, into her own personal trust. She also made a significant amendment to the trust itself – she removed her children entirely. The document now read, “Trustor leaves nothing but her love and affection to her son, Clinton Abrams, and daughter, Crisara Abrams.”
The new trustees were none other than Keith Harper and Diana Fedder.
In my research for this case, I found the relationships Dia had with Keith Harper and Diana Fedder to be the most confusing. I’m going to share what I learned and attempt to piece everything together.
Dia met Diana Fedder in 2015. Diana was a retired special agent with the Secret Service and had 30 years of experience in law enforcement. She lived on a property near the Bonita Vista Ranch, and she and Dia became fast friends. Diana told Dateline, “I loved her the minute I met her.”
According to Diana, Dia chose to give her power of attorney when she was transferring properties into her trust. Harper was named the first trustee, and she was the second. But Diana also told a reporter for CBS8 that she didn’t know Harper, and had only met him once in the years she had known Dia. It strikes me as odd that a close friend like Diana wouldn’t have been more familiar with Dia’s fiance. In all honesty, I don’t know what to make of this."
idyllwildtowncrier.com
www.crimewatchers.net
