Episode 4: Sarah Cheiker’s long strange trip

Sarah Cheiker and former LA neighbor Jim Caccavo in 2012. [Caccavo/LA Times photo]
Sarah Cheiker and former LA neighbor Jim Caccavo in 2012. [Caccavo/LA Times photo]
Sarah Cheiker happily lived most of her 80-plus years in her Los Angeles bungalow. That changed when three drifters befriended her. In 2008 she disappeared, turning up 3,000 miles away in Maine four years later, abandoned in a ramshackle cabin that the police officer who found her said he wouldn’t keep his dog in.

What happened to Cheiker from the time she met Nicholas and Barbara Davis in the mid-2000s to when she was found in Maine in 2011 will make your hair freeze.

We discuss her long strange trip on this week’s Crime & Stuff, and then have attorney Matt Nichols clarify some of the nuances of multi-state crime in Ask a Lawyer.

We also trash Santa Claus, moon over Dennis Lehane and discuss Tig Nataro’s “One Mississippi.”