[soft piano music]
* *
- Laguna Beach is totally different
from the rest of Orange County.
You know, we usually think of Disneyland
and "Real Housewives."
Such a beautiful place. It's so charming.
It has this history as an arts colony.
- There was a very strong gay community at Laguna Beach.
- I knew Damon was gay from very young.
Acceptance was difficult for a few family members.
Moving to Laguna Beach,
he was accepted for who he was, for sure.
* *
- We had the entire world in front of us
and the rest of our lives.
narrator: Starting a new life out loud in Laguna Beach
is a priceless opportunity.
But for Damon Nicholson, it cost him everything.
- It was shocking, of course.
I mean, how does one react when they find out
that their best friend had been murdered?
[ominous music]
- We knew his cell phone was taken,
and we were hoping to find somebody that has it,
and that could be our suspect.
- Blunt force trauma over the head.
Why would anyone wanna take his life in such a violent way?
narrator: To find justice
for a beloved member of the community,
detectives must get inside the mind of the killer.
- Our heads, we're trying to think,
well, what's the motive? Why would he wanna do this?
- So I thought, OK, Damon knows a secret.
You eliminate the person, you eliminate the secret.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
[soft foreboding music]
* *
- I'm Tim Kleiser.
In 2009, I worked for
the Laguna Beach Police Department.
On Friday, October 23, 2009,
we got a 911 phone call
to do a welfare check on a residence on Dolphin Way.
Officers respond out there immediately
to a small residence with a gate around it,
and they speak with Lindsey, a coworker of the victim,
get a statement from her and what she saw,
and then the officers go inside.
- My name is Jason Kravetz.
I started my career with the Laguna Beach PD in 1989
and spent my career there.
The police officers started walking
up a staircase to the sliding glass door,
which is how you entered his home.
- The residence is laid out,
the couch is immediately off to the left
a few feet inside the door.
And at that point, they saw a male
slouched over on the couch.
- He was fully dressed,
but covered up a little bit with some pillows.
- The back of his head was covered in blood.
That's not a normal sign you see from somebody
that just passes away.
So at that point, they notified
Laguna Beach Homicide.
narrator: A murder in this small beach community
is shocking, but even more disturbing
is the identity of the 41-year-old victim.
- We went inside, and when I saw his face,
I immediately knew it was Damon Nicholson.
[dramatic music]
Locally, everyone knew him.
Even I did, and many other people
in the police department knew him.
- He worked at the Hotel Laguna.
It's one of our oldest hotels.
He worked there doing special events.
- He would always wave at you
when you're driving down the street.
He would come into the police department sometimes
and bring cookies.
He put together our Christmas parties
for us every year at the hotel.
He would be out there dancing with everyone.
You know, he was a character.
The strangest thing about being a cop
is you desensitize yourself to a lot of things.
But when I saw him, it was like, ugh,
the personal side came out.
I just wanted to give him justice.
- My name is Larry Bammer.
I worked there at the police department
for 21 years in Laguna Beach.
The Crime Scene unit started dusting for fingerprints
and bagging evidence,
but the case was a challenge in that everyone knew him.
Also, Damon had a lot of friends,
so there was inevitably gonna be a lot of fingerprints.
And then, we went in.
It appeared that the assault took place on the couch,
because where Damon's head was resting,
blood had soaked on the pillow cushions,
but we didn't see blood anywhere else.
We did not see bloody footprints,
bloody fingerprints anywhere in the apartment.
- They looked at rigor mortis to determine
the cause of death to be right around
between 1:00 and 3:00 AM.
- Based on the damage done to his skull,
it was evident that he wasn't murdered by a firearm,
that it was something like a crowbar,
a tire iron, a baseball bat.
The crime scene investigators
did evidence collection and DNA swabs.
- They looked for a murder weapon.
Nothing was found at all.
- We walked over to the entrance of the kitchen area.
- There's just a pile of trash,
like somebody dumped it on the floor.
- It was so bizarre to have this mound of trash
in the middle of this kitchen floor.
- And the trashcan sitting next to it,
and there's no trash bag.
That raised our suspicion that they probably took the bag
and used the bag for the murder weapon.
- Crime scene investigators
swabbed the lid of the trash can
to try to recover any type of forensic evidence
for DNA testing.
But in 2009, Laguna Beach PD
did not have rapid DNA testing,
so we really have to wait three weeks
before getting any results.
Then, we look to see if there's any
other non-forensic evidence.
That's when we started to realize,
here's a guy that is a very social person.
Obviously has a phone, a cell phone,
and we can't find it anywhere.
- We were also beginning to notice things were missing.
- We found a receipt for a laptop, a MacBook,
but we looked around for the computer,
could not locate the computer at all.
- There was dust around an area
where something had obviously been sitting there,
like a computer.
narrator: Could this have been a robbery gone wrong,
or something more?
Did the victim know his killer?
- Blunt force trauma over the head
is kind of a very violent,
very passionate,
very angry way to murder somebody.
I felt like the suspect had to know Damon.
narrator: Detectives canvass the neighborhood
late into the night, but are unable to find
any witnesses to the murder.
Then, they perform the heartbreaking task
of informing Damon's family about his death.
[somber music]
- My name is DeVonne Blauser,
and my brother is Damon Nicholson.
After hearing the news about Damon, it was surreal.
It wasn't right. It wasn't fair.
He didn't deserve this.
He really didn't.
He was a good person.
[sniffles]
* *
We grew up in Tucson, Arizona.
My mom and dad gave birth to 11 kids,
and Damon was number six.
I was number seven.
So we're really close. We did everything together.
Everything.
He liked to be center of attention.
He liked to make everybody laugh.
And he did.
I knew Damon was gay from very young.
It didn't bother me. He was my brother.
But I can't say that my parents ever really accepted it.
I think it was tough on him.
narrator: According to his sister,
Damon's search for acceptance eventually led him
to the sun-drenched paradise of Orange County.
- Moving to Laguna Beach, he was accepted for who he was,
for sure.
- My name is Carla Bravo,
and I was a very close friend with Damon Nicholson.
There was a very strong gay community in Laguna Beach.
It was a community that welcomed
everyone without judgment.
He loved Laguna and the people.
I could not think of anyone that would want to hurt Damon.
- He'd give you the shirt off his back.
Why would anyone wanna take his life in such a violent way?
narrator: Two days after the murder,
detectives are still trying to find answers.
That's when a call comes in that could give them
the lead they've been searching for.
- We knew his cell phone was taken,
and you're hoping that, you know,
you'll maybe find somebody that has it,
and that could be our suspect.
- The phone company got in touch with us.
Detectives came racing in and said the phone's pinging.
The phone's pinging.
The phone company gave us the address
of the Timbers Apartment Complex in Lake Forest.
- Lake Forest is just immediately
right outside of Laguna Beach.
There is more violent crime there in the city.
That could be a location for our suspect.
narrator: Coming up...
- His cell phone was showing he was there in Laguna
the night of the murder.
- Did he meet somebody online
that came over there and committed this?
- Maybe he's trying to keep his sexuality a secret.
- So, at that point, you have to determine,
did he do the murder,
or did this other person do the murder?
[dramatic music]
* *
narrator: Two days after the murder
of 41-year-old Damon Nicholson,
investigators have tracked his cell phone
to an apartment complex in Lake Forest.
- We knew, at that point,
whoever committed the murder had taken his phone
and left the location.
But when we arrived at the address,
there was a big apartment complex.
So it was like a needle in a haystack, really,
for us to try and find his cell phone.
- The cell phone was still in the same vicinity.
We couldn't find exactly where it was.
- Now, in the perfect world,
the phone is being held by the murderer.
But in reality, 99% of the time,
they have been dumped somewhere.
- Actually, you're hoping it was gonna be in the dumpster,
because it's a lot easier to search
than to try to identify which apartments it's in
and get a search warrant.
I remember, we were looking at each other like,
OK, who's gonna dive into the trash can?
- There's quite a few dumpsters we went into
that day to try and find his cell phone.
narrator: An army of men wearing suits
digging through the trash is bound to draw attention,
and it does.
- All of a sudden, the custodian for the building
came out and asked, who are you guys?
What are you guys doing?
- And we told him we were looking for a cell phone.
And he says, oh,
I found a cell phone in one of these dumpsters two days ago.
So we walk with him over to his office
and he hands us the cell phone.
And we called Damon's number...
[phone buzzes]
And it rings.
- So we began to question him.
How did he find it? Where did he find it?
- He's very cooperative.
And so he takes it back over to this dumpster.
And he says, I was digging through the trash.
People throw out some good stuff.
The story seemed genuine.
- He also voluntarily gave us a DNA sample
to try and rule him out as a suspect.
- Police collect the DNA and the cell phone for processing
and consider an urgent question.
Did the killer randomly dump the phone at this location,
or is it possible that he lives somewhere
in the complex?
- We did canvass the neighborhood,
But we had no eyewitnesses, no one heard anything.
- My name is Claudia Koerner.
Back in 2009, I was the Laguna Beach reporter
for the "Orange County Register."
This was really shocking to hear
that there had been this kind of violent death
in Laguna Beach.
It's just this really cute
little residential neighborhood.
It was just so hard to imagine something
like that happening here.
- It's all over the news,
so we're getting lots of calls from people that knew Damon.
- My name is Jason Wamhoff, and Damon Nicholson
and I were friends for over 20 years.
I was about 22 when I moved to Orange County,
and that's when Damon and I met.
I just remember we had fun.
Laguna Beach was definitely an enclave
for the gay community.
We were young. Life wasn't serious.
You know, we had the entire world in front of us
and the rest of our lives.
[somber music]
- Jason Wamhoff was very helpful,
because Jason knew all about his life
and kind of who he dated, websites he would go on,
names he would use, who he'd hang out with.
- Damon didn't have any steady boyfriend.
You know, he wasn't in a relationship.
- He would chat with people online,
different type of websites.
Did he meet somebody online that came over there
and committed this?
narrator: It's what Jason says next
that really grabs the detectives' attention.
- During a conversation with him,
he mentioned he had some concerns on Damon's safety
with a gentleman that Damon used to see named Jesse.
- He was an individual that had
a bit of a sordid past.
But Damon never would hold that against anyone, you know?
Damon continued to have interactions with him.
- Damon had dated him years ago.
When they broke it off,
the man got married to a woman
and he had a child.
Jason felt that Jesse was using Damon for money,
and he said he may have a violent history.
In our heads, we're trying to think,
well, what's the motive?
And so a couple of things I keyed in on,
maybe he's come to Damon for money
and Damon finally cut him off.
That angered him, he kills him and steals things.
Or maybe it was a crime of passion.
Damon's body had been covered up a little bit,
which usually tells us that the murderer knew the victim
and doesn't wanna see what they did.
Jesse's now married with a child, so I thought,
OK, maybe Jesse would have had a fear that Damon was going
to expose his personal life and who he was seeing in the past.
- Maybe he's trying to keep his sexuality a secret.
[dramatic music]
* *
narrator: While investigating the vicious murder
of Damon Nicholson, detectives in Laguna Beach
begin to look closely at the relationship
he had with an ex-lover.
- Damon had met Jesse years, years before,
and then, Jesse got married.
Now, maybe he doesn't want his wife, you know,
to know about him and Damon had had sexual intercourse.
Maybe he now wanted to kill Damon because of the secret.
And the next day, we went out to his house in Chino Hills.
He shared with us how he had a longstanding friendship,
and he had just recently seen him a week before.
He seemed very forthcoming, very honest
about his relationship that he had with Damon.
- Not only does Jesse seem genuinely broken up
about Damon's murder, he claims to have an alibi.
- He said he was with his family that day.
And when the family was interviewed,
they corroborated that he had been with them.
He even volunteered to give DNA tests to eliminate him.
narrator: While detectives wait for the test results
comparing DNA found on the trash can at the crime scene
to DNA from Jesse and the apartment custodian,
they continue looking for other leads.
- It kind of felt like we were back at square one.
We didn't have anything to go on other than just,
well, let's interview everyone we possibly can find
who has seen him in the last few days.
* *
- Damon was a really social guy,
and he was just really well-known in Laguna Beach.
There's this, like, real sense of community here.
It looked like police were trying
to investigate every lead, so it was a lot of information.
- There are a lot of people that may know something
that could be involved with this homicide.
- Jason had told us that Damon would commonly
use a website called Adam for Adam,
where he would meet other guys.
- We got a search warrant
to see the inbound and outbound messages.
- We start looking at the ones he was actually
in the communications with.
- OK, this person had talked to him about coming over.
This person talked to him about coming over.
So those, again, all potential suspects
that we have to track down and interview
and see if they have an alibi for that night.
We also keep going back every day
and interviewing people in the apartment complex
where we recovered Damon's cell phone.
Maybe someone had seen or heard something.
- Three days after the murder,
in the midst of their full-scale canvass,
detectives make a key discovery.
- We obtain a search warrant for Damon's cell phone records,
and that's when we found out that somebody
had called Damon's phone a few times
on the night of the murder.
- The Orange County coroner's Office
had determined the time of death
to be right around between 1:00 and 3:00 AM.
- There were four calls from a man named Alex
around the time that he was killed.
- This could be the last person to speak to him
before he was murdered.
[line ringing]
I reached out to him initially to interview him.
- He was extremely reluctant to talk to me on the phone.
- He was very nervous.
His answers were awkward and evasive.
- As far as his relationship with Damon,
he would never confirm that he actually
ever came over to his house.
So we knew he was being dodgy and lying to us.
And at that point, he said
he didn't have time to talk to us.
When you're the last person to talk to this person,
maybe see him alive, just hours before
the coroner said time of death,
and you're unwilling to talk to me on the phone?
That really has set up some red flags.
When I hung up the phone, I thought,
I got our suspect now.
Alex had said he was going to school
in Cal State Dominguez Hills down in San Diego,
so I figured, well, we'll take the conversation to him.
We went up to the campus,
had the campus police pull him out of the class.
Found a private room that we could interview him
because he was just so cagey.
At that point, I think he realized how serious it was.
[dramatic music]
* *
narrator: Detectives in Laguna Beach
are grilling an evasive suspect named Alex
who may have been the last person
to see Damon Nicholson alive.
- He told them that he had met up with Damon
on the evening of October 22,
so just hours before Damon was killed.
- He said that they hooked up and then he left.
- So now, we wanted to nail down, like, hour by hour,
where were you to prove or disprove
whether he was the person that killed him.
- He told us that after he left the house,
he went to an In-N-Out outside of town.
He used his credit card, and he gave us a receipt.
- The coroner had determined time of death
between 1:00 and 3:00 AM,
so the credit card transaction at In-N-Out
was a really strong alibi to him not being near Damon
around the time he was murdered.
So at that point,
we put him to the side as being a suspect.
* *
narrator: Three weeks after the murder,
heartbroken friends and family gather
to remember Damon Nicholson.
- Damon's memorial service was here in Laguna.
I came with my mom and one of my kids.
- The room was absolutely packed.
There were over 300 people there.
It was standing room only.
- I just remember the emotion in there was palpable.
Like, people were just grieving together.
- The day of the memorial, I remember nothing.
I don't even remember speaking.
It was shocking, of course.
I mean, how does one react
when their best friend had been murdered?
Just sad.
Just so sad.
[somber music]
- Well, the family asked me to speak at his memorial.
Although it was very hard,
I felt like this was an opportunity for me
to tell the world about the Damon I knew.
* *
I said he was never afraid to take chances.
He had a thirst for knowledge, was never-ending.
His humor, oh, his humor brightened so many of my days.
He recently went to a taping of "Dancing With the Stars,"
and he had the audience and the hosts laughing.
That was Damon.
Expect the unexpected.
- They had a big picture of him walking on the beach.
It was overwhelming.
It was really good, though, to see...
how many people really loved him.
narrator: While friends and family grieve the loss
of their loved one, investigators get some news
that could finally help them catch Damon's killer.
- On November 17, which was a little bit longer
than three weeks after the murder,
the crime lab contacted us and told us that they had a match
on the DNA that had been recovered
from underneath the trashcan lid
found at the murder scene.
narrator: After waiting more than three weeks
for the DNA analysis, the DNA doesn't match anyone
on their list of suspects,
including Jesse, Alex, or the apartment custodian.
- All of them that voluntarily gave their DNA
were all eliminated as suspects.
narrator: But when the lab runs the DNA profile
from the crime scene through CODIS,
which is the FBI's nationwide database
of convicted offenders, they get a hit.
- The DNA came back to a name of Matthew Dragna.
[tense music]
- So it was like, well, who is this guy, Matthew Dragna?
- The first thing we did was run a DMV check on him
to see where he lived, and the mic drop moment came
when we found his address.
- He lives over at The Timbers.
That's where Damon's cell phone was.
[suspenseful music]
* *
- So we do a background on Matt Dragna.
Matt's DNA was in the system already
because at the young age of 19,
he'd been arrested for a drug offense in Orange County.
- Also, there was an assault charge on his record
that, obviously, would demonstrate
his propensity for violence.
* *
- So now, we obtained a search warrant
and we went to his apartment.
narrator: Dragna isn't home, but his mother is.
She explains it's her apartment
and Matt has been crashing there.
Then she gives them what could be a key piece of evidence.
- At one point, the mother mentioned
he recently had come into money,
and she didn't know where the money came from,
and she handed us some software...
and said, he gave this to me.
It looked like expensive software
that had been purchased.
When she asked him about it,
he looked at her and said, "You don't wanna know.
I'm gonna end up paying for this."
I think, in his own way, he was probably confessing to her
that he had done something horrible.
narrator: Matt's mother says she doesn't have a clue
as to his whereabouts.
- He would just come and go as he pleased.
narrator: As investigators continue to track down Dragna,
they conduct a forensic analysis on the software CD.
- When we ran the registration number on it,
it came back to a woman who was a friend of Damon,
and she confirmed she had loaned it to Damon
and he hadn't returned it yet.
narrator: Then, 26 days after the murder,
investigators get a solid lead on Dragna's whereabouts.
- We found out that he was on probation.
And we spoke to his probation officer.
She had informed us that he was at a rehabilitation center
in the city of Santa Ana.
We go up to Santa Ana.
- Authorities there, they brought Matt into the office.
And so the detectives started to interview him.
- That's like, OK, setting the tone
for where this is gonna go.
[dramatic music]
* *
narrator: At a rehab facility in Orange County,
investigators corner their prime suspect
in Damon Nicholson's murder.
narrator: Investigators now challenge Matt
with their most damning evidence.
- We had already thought that that trash had been dumped
so the murder weapon could go in there,
so we had that in the back of our minds.
- So we confronted them with the DNA match.
- So once police start asking him
about why his DNA was found on Damon's trash can,
he changed his story.
- He admitted that he had been with him.
Dragna said that he knew Damon through a friend,
and he had one hook up with him
the night before the murder.
- He came up with the craziest story
that he'd been there the night before, which was truthful,
but that the victim had asked him to take the trash out.
I've never been to someone's home
for the first time when they randomly
had me take their trash out.
So his story just didn't make sense.
- When pressed, eventually,
he, I think, realizes that we know more than we're sharing.
- I can tell it was becoming tense.
- So at this point, we have probable cause
to arrest this person.
- We're not gonna let this murderer go.
- I walk in to assist the other detectives
that were in there and had placed him under custody
for the murder of Damon Nicholson.
We transported Dragna back to the city of Laguna Beach,
to our police department.
narrator: Back at the station, investigators don't let up.
The grilling continues.
Then, Dragna suddenly changes his tune.
- He ends up telling us what happened.
He has a friend named Jacob.
Dragna had told Jacob that
Damon had a lot of camera equipment in the house,
and Jacob said, let's go rip him off.
- He and his friend had decided to go over to Damon's house
because they believed it would be easy to get in.
They knew the door was open sometimes.
And he said that the friend brought along a baseball bat,
just in case anything would go down.
- They went to the house, but he stayed in the car,
and Jacob ran in,
and he committed the murder with the baseball bat.
Then, he came out covered in blood,
and that they left and threw away the clothes somewhere.
- So the question was asked of Matt,
well, how come your DNA was located inside Damon's house?
His story to us was that he walked inside to get
the trash bag to put his friend's bloody clothing in.
narrator: Matt has now placed himself inside the house
on the night of the murder, but he continues to insist
that he did not kill Damon Nicholson.
- When Matthew talked about the murder,
he made himself out to just be the accomplice
and sort of Jacob was the murderer.
- So, you know, at that point, you have to determine,
did he do the murder,
or did this other person do the murder?
- We need to question Jacob on his involvement
with the murder of Damon Nicholson.
- And I believe it was Detective Bammer
called Matthew's mother and asked her,
he's talking about this guy, Jacob.
Do you know who Jacob is?
And the response was, yeah, Jacob Quintanilla.
He's sitting right here.
So a couple detectives race back out there.
- When they arrive, Jacob is casually visiting
with Dragna's mother and sister.
- They learn Jacob Quintanilla was a neighbor who lived
in the same apartment complex, and he had a car,
and Dragna would ask him for rides sometimes.
- And we found out Jacob hung around Dragna
because he wanted to date Dragna's sister.
- They begin to question Jacob on his involvement
with the murder of Damon Nicholson.
- Jacob didn't admit to being involved in this at all.
They asked to search his apartment.
He lived with his parents at the time.
narrator: The search of the apartment doesn't turn up
anything incriminating, so given the lack of evidence,
he's free to go.
- But based on what Matt is telling us about
Jacob's involvement, we obtain a search warrant,
and we got his cell phone records.
It showed that the night of the murder,
his cell phone was pinging in Laguna Beach.
- It's significant to us because he told us
that he'd never been to Laguna Beach that night.
narrator: But detectives still don't have enough
to tie Jacob directly to the murder scene.
- That's when we got a phone call from
the Orange County Crime Lab.
There is a fingerprint match on a software CD
that was taken from Damon's house
on the night of the murder
that we'd found when we searched Dragna's house.
It had Jacob's fingerprint on it.
- For investigators, that provides
that last piece of evidence to back up Dragna's claim
that Jacob Quintanilla was also there that night.
narrator: Even though Jacob could claim he touched the CD
while hanging out at Dragna's house
and not at the murder scene, investigators hoped
this might rattle him enough to make him confess.
narrator: Investigators turn up the pressure
on Jacob Quintanilla.
[dramatic music]
* *
narrator: After linking a second suspect
to the slaying of Damon Nicholson,
investigators begin tightening the screws.
- We went to talk to Jacob at his house.
Jacob was starting to be evasive.
We told him his cell phone was showing he was there in Laguna
the night of the murder,
and the fingerprint of his on the software,
and the fact that Matt was implicating him
as the one that killed Damon.
At that point during the interview,
he confessed to our detectives on what occurred that night.
[ominous music]
- Quintanilla confirms that he and Dragna
had gone over to Damon's house to try to rob the place.
- Jacob really didn't ask a lot of questions
about who this guy Damon was or how Matt knew him.
So he drives them to town.
- And they walk inside Damon's house.
- He tells them that
Dragna was the one holding the baseball bat,
and that he started beating Damon
almost right after they entered.
- Jacob just sat there, frozen.
Then Matt started ordering Jacob
to gather stuff from the house that they could steal.
- He said that they grab a computer,
Damon's cell phone, some computer software,
and they left the location.
Jacob said that Matt ditched the cell phone in a dumpster
with the murder weapon in a trash bag.
And they went their separate locations that night.
narrator: On December 4, 2009,
nearly six weeks after Damon's murder,
Jacob Quintanilla is also arrested
and charged with the murder of Damon Nicholson.
- I remember my mom calling and saying
they found these two individuals,
and they have been arrested and are in jail at the moment.
Many thoughts go through your mind.
Where do you go next? What happens next?
- There were still so many questions
about what had happened.
- When we were looking at the two of them
and their conflicting stories,
the one thing that continued to stand out
with Jacob's story was he had no prior interaction
with Damon, where Dragna had been with him
just two days before the murder.
- Matt and another gentleman were over at Damon's house
a few nights prior, so that gave us closure
figuring out how Matt knew to go there
and knew Damon's practices of leaving his house unlocked.
* *
narrator: Both suspects are prosecuted separately,
beginning with Matt Dragna.
- This case goes to trial in 2013,
and Dragna is convicted in December 2013.
Dragna is sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
* *
narrator: But prosecutors hit a snag.
- Dragna appeals this conviction.
- Dragna's case was overturned on a technicality.
Eventually, he pled guilty to a lesser charge.
- In October 2021, he pleads guilty
to voluntary manslaughter, burglary,
assault with a deadly weapon, and he also admits
that he was the one who used the deadly weapon.
- Matt accepted a 30-year sentence,
with 12 years already served.
So that means he's got another 18 years to serve
before he gets out.
narrator: Once Dragna accepts a plea deal,
Jacob Quintanilla does the same.
- Quintanilla agrees to plead guilty as well
to voluntary manslaughter and burglary.
He's sentenced to seven years in prison.
[somber music]
- Damon left his hometown and traveled to Orange County
because it was a place where he could be free
to be himself.
Him exercising that freedom cost him his life.
- I think it's like--
it's trite to say, at least there was justice, you know?
I think, uh,
his friends and family would,
obviously rather have him back.
- If Damon was here now,
I'd tell him how much I miss him.
I'd tell him how much he will always be in my heart.
I love him.
- I think the last memory or image I have of Damon
is on the beach.
He loved to sit out there and watch the dolphins.
He loved the beach so much.
* *
[waves crash, seagulls chirp]