David Gotfredson, who lists his title as “Investigative Producer” and who works out of CBS News 8 and KFMB, San Diego, has been closely following, and digging into, the circumstances surrounding the death of a Garner Valley woman Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021. The woman died in a reported all-terrain vehicle (ATV) rollover at the same Bonita Vista Ranch La Jolla millionaire Lydia “Dia” Abrams, 65, who has been missing a year and a half, owned.
On Dec. 24, Gotfredson had reported that back on June 9, 2020, Riverside County Sheriff’s detectives (RCSD) had written in a search warrant that, “Abrams went missing under suspicious circumstances and foul play is suspected.” Neither Abrams nor her remains have been found.
Gotfredson relates that the person reporting the recent ATV incident was Keith Harper, 72, the boyfriend or fiancé of the missing Dia Abrams. It was Harper who called police around 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 23 and reported Jodi Newkirk, 46, of Mountain Center, had been killed on the Bonita Vista Ranch in an ATV rollover accident.
RCSD personnel responded to the ranch at 5:39 p.m. and soon realized the victim had “unexplained injuries.” The first responders called in homicide detectives and secured a crime scene.
Newkirk was a horse handler at the Bonita Vista Ranch since this past August. Sheriff’s Central Homicide Unit arrived at the scene, and the next day, in sheriff’s statements and press releases Gotfredson republished, the incident was described as a “crime scene” and a “suspicious death investigation … with unexplained injuries” that were inconsistent with an ATV rollover accident.
Harper apparently told sheriff investigators that Newkirk had been riding a quad on the property, during a rainstorm, because she wanted to cut down a live Christmas tree. He said he had discovered the quad on top of the woman and had performed CPR on her before authorities arrived and found Newkirk deceased.
Gotfredson recounts that detectives questioned Harper. No arrests were made regarding Newkirk’s death. The autopsy results and toxicology testing on Newkirk’s remains are still pending.
On Jan. 3, Gotfredson followed up in an interview with Newkirk’s sister, Kelly Berkowitz, who described her sister as a barely 100-pound outdoors woman, a horse trainer, who spent all day outside. Berkowitz said Newkirk was a very strong, capable, even intimidating woman who “could hold her own” and loved being in nature. Berkowitz is quoted by Gotfredson as saying, “This was not an accident.”
Gotfredson reports court records indicate Newkirk had had a long criminal history that included the possession and use of drugs, but there currently is no indication that drugs played any part in her death.
Gotfredson also reported that Harper was Newkirk’s landlord as well as her work boss, as she had been renting another Abrams-owned house in Garner Valley, and that Harper himself still lives on and is acting trustee of the ranch from which Abrams went missing and on which Newkirk was killed.
Harper has declined an interview with Gotfredson, but he has previously denied any involvement in the disappearance of Abrams. However, Gotfredson relates that, in text messages to News 8, San Diego, “Harper indicated he received information that one of Abrams’ workers escorted her off the ranch into the hands of those who execute[d] her” and that “Harper further claimed a Riverside sheriff dive team recently attempted unsuccessfully to locate Abrams’ remains in Lake Hemet.”
An RCSD representative, responding to News 8 inquiries, emailed, “Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any additional information on this open and active investigation.”
On Jan. 4, Gotfredson reported that Harper has since described Newkirk in a call recorded by one of her relatives as “an amazing individual,” saying “you had to just love her,” further relating that Newkirk had been “an awesome help” and “an amazing person to have on the ranch.”
“I don’t know if you know this, but my fiancée, she disappeared a year and a half ago,” Harper is quoted as saying in the recorded call. “She disappeared and we’ve been dealing with her missing.”
Gotfredson recounts that during the telephone call, Harper stated that Newkirk rode off on a quad just after sunset on Dec. 23 to cut down a live Christmas tree, saying, “She wanted to go get a Christmas tree and she took the ATV up on the hill and, I don’t know, I don’t know if she turned the wheel wrong, or what happens. But the machine flips and when I find her, she has been under that machine probably a half-hour, I would suspect,” said Harper during the call.
“The only thing I could see was her face and probably six inches of her chest, the rest of it was underneath the machine. You know, because it was on her chest she couldn’t breathe. I moved the machine off. I moved it off so I could do CPR on her,” he said. Harper then added, “I’ve got to file a complaint against the sheriff’s office because they leave her body for a day and a half in that rain and snow, and it just pisses me off. I’ve never seen inhumane treatment like that.”
Gotfredson reports that, according to Newkirk family members, RCSD detectives did not serve a search warrant on the house Newkirk had been renting from Harper. But family members claim to have found a handwritten journal when they packed up her belongings.
The following is the Town Crier’s best effort at a start-to-finish transcription of the above two journal pages, which transcription agrees in relevant particulars with the excerpts transcribed by Gotfredson.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KFMB
“Dear Harper,
“So I know I shouldn’t be writing this down & you most likely not going to read it anyway. Sometimes it really helps to vent. And Boy I have a ton to say about everything obviously. With you being gone its [sic] very hard for me to feel OK with everything. I need to communicate and in person is always best. I feel like we have kinda gotten on different pages lately. Probably because I felt like your [sic] a computer dog like a High Class gigolo (sp). Anyhow, you really do sleep with as many females and you can & you tell all girls what they want to hear and you tell them all basically the same thing. I used to you [sic] & I really am feeling very strange about the always going to miss me comment in the text a few days ago? What was that about & you never did elaborate. Anyhow I don’t like the way that sounds. Not a Bit! Its [sic] weird with you gone tho I do miss you, but I’m thinking things are going to be different when you are back. Not sure who will initiate it but I’m feeling it Big Time.”
RCSD investigators have not named anyone as a suspect in Newkirk’s death.
Editor’s note: David Gotfredson has done exemplary, commendable investigative reporting of the death of Newkirk. The Town Crier re-reports his work with his permission. Read his own original articles at:
