You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to My ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and
I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined again by author Kate Miles here to talk
to us about her award winning, multiple award winning book, Trailed Woman's Quest
to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. Kate, thank you for joining us again.
I can't believe you want to have me back, but I'm so grateful now
that you're going into paperback, which is a really big deal. After the
success of the hardcover book, this is a great time to have a follow
up conversation and find out all the good things that have been generated by your
writing and publication of Triut. So start by bragging in a little bit.
Tell us about all the awards you've won, because you've won a lot and
it's really impressive. So do the brag thing, and it doesn't even have
to be humble brag. I've just been so grateful for the reception of this
book, and I'm particularly grateful by how many people have been impacted on either
a primary or secondary basis by this particular crime who have reached out. So
for me, that's definitely more important than any possible award. But the book
has done quite well and we're really excited at the New York Times named one
of the best true crime books of the year. That was great. The
audio book, which is really ably and expertly narrated by GABRAA. Zuckman,
won several awards. We just won the Main Literary Award for twenty twenty three.
Book was a finalist for the Edgar Award. We just now learned that
the book has just been named a finalist for the Virginia Book Award Reader's Choice,
so quick overview, I'm really exciting all around. That is so fantastic.
Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Congratulations on all of that. It's
just really great to know that this story resonates with people. You all know
that when you're in the trenches and thinking so much about a particular crime or
a particular issue, it gets all consuming for you. But sometimes it's hard
to know whether or not it's going to be all consuming for people who read
and listen to true crime as well. But reading the reviews, Kate,
people really talk about how much they were drawn into Julian Lawley's story by reading
Trailed, and how compelling they thought it was. And yes, there's a
very sad component to this unsolved murder of these two beautiful young women, but
it's a story that just pulled you in. Well, And thank you for
saying that. The most important thing for me all along has really been to
foreground the stories of Lolly and Julie, primarily obviously as living, breathing humans
who were really just exemplary leaders in their fields, and also in love,
and telling that love story was really important to me, And then of course,
honoring them as victims as well as living people as well, and making
sure people understand just what was taken away, not only from friends and family,
but I think also the larger public when we lost these two individuals.
I do want to make sure that we talk a little bit more about your
recent Library of Virginia speech that you did. But I really liked the fact
that you started out with pictures of Lolly and Julie, and you grounded everything
in your presentation that way, with the fact that we are concerned primarily about
these two women, and I like that. I appreciated it, and I
could tell the audience did too. With the book going into paperback, what
changes if any, were made to the book between the version that we have
several copies on our bookshelves and the new version that is out in paperback.
Now, what got changed if anything? In general, paperbacks are not changed.
When we find a few typographical errors or things like that, those sorts
of things might get changed. But really the book reads pretty much exactly as
it was written. Bill and I were lucky enough to get advanced reader copies.
But the one thing I know the paperback has in it that our arcs
did not is. There are a lot of wonderful photographs and maps in there.
Can you tell us a little bit about, like how did you come
into possession of those and why was it so important to include those in the
book? Sure? I have worked with a really wonderful cartographer on all of
my books. Her name is Margot Carpenter and her companies called Heartdale Maps,
and she does a really brilliant job of interpreting not just data but also stories
in order to tell something. And she and I work together to create a
series of maps for the book, and she did a really great job to
of quietly evoking the style of the National Park Service maps and guidebooks and things
like that. But it was really important for me for readers to first of
all understand in a general way place and starting on a kind of macro level,
with Shenandoah Park as a whole, it's a really peculiar National park in
some ways, in the way, especially in the fact that it's this long,
kind of winding park with one major road through it and then basically tumbles
down both sides of a mountain, and so the idea of backcountry means something
very different in that park than it does and say Zion or Bryce or something
like that. And so I wanted readers to understand both that and the proximity
to population centers, to parking lots, to major roads and things like that,
which I think is ultimately relevant when we think about who might have done
this and how and why. I also really wanted folks to get a sense
of the murder scene and how it relates to the area around Skyland Lodge.
That was also really important to me. And then equally, if not more
importantly, was making sure that we could put the context of these two murders
within a larger context of a group of women, mostly young women, most
of whom had some real I think physical similarities to Lolly and Julie, who
were killed over the course of a year and a half in a fairly small
circumference in what is largely rural Virginia. And I think when you see that
on paper, the idea that this was an isolated incident becomes harder to accept.
How do you go about getting permission to use photographs? Kate? I
know that you've got a lot of amazing photographs, many of which were never
published, but for how did you go about getting permissions that's a great question.
Some of the photographs were published by the FBI. They were given to
the FBI by the families, and so the FBI used them in press releases
and posters and things like that. So they have permission to grant the media
permission, and some of the photographs came from there. But Lolly and Julie's
friends and family were the ones who supplied some of my very favorite photos of
them. And obviously Lolly and Julie can't consent to the photos, and it
would be ideal if they could, but the friends giving them to me offered
their consent. And I think that, you know what I really love about
them is I think it really just gets at their personalities and their love of
life and their humanity. And again, I think it's just really important that
people know that and really understand who these people were. Some of the photographs
were actually taken by the two women themselves. How did you end up with
those photos there from one of their cameras? Correct, So, Lollie was
a very avid photographer and she had brought her camera on the trip, So
that became really important, I think for the investigation. Initially because although the
time stamp was way off on her camera. I would say something like January
first, nineteen hundred or something like. We can't know the exact days,
but we can know the chronology of some of the places where they were in
the park. That, coupled with their journals, coupled with their backcountry permits,
allows us to recreate their time in the park in really good detail.
There was also a young couple at the time who were vacationing in the park
and they had run into Lolly and Julie and just struck up a conversation and
they all took photos of each other. That became relevant as well too in
terms of understanding where Lolly and Julie were and making identifications and things. And
the woman who had been the wife of that couple they're now divorced, she
had sent those photos to me as well too. So it's nice, I
think, to be able to do this triangulation so that we can say,
for relatives, certain we know they were at X place or why place,
and at least be able to approximate when you brought up the FBI already,
So I guess let's go ahead and dive into talking about their response and really
not just the FBI, though, let's talk about the response from law enforcement
National Park Service as well. What has their response been in relation to the
book. It has been hugely varied. Recently, an attorney for the Department
of Justice recently reached out to me and told me he had read the book,
and he asked me if I would be willing to come talk to the
DOJ to ensure that this kind of investigation and these kind of foibles don't happen
again. That to me, was a huge endorsement of the research in the
book, I think, especially where the ideas of confirmation bias come in and
some of the interview and interrogation techniques that I outline, which I think are
morally questionable at best, So that was really great. I've heard second hand
from the family of some of the other surviving victims in Virginia that those law
enforcement officials have been reading the book and using the book to re examine some
of those cases. They haven't reached out to me, which I find peculiar,
but at least they're reading it, so that's something. And then I
also have heard second hand that the publication of the book prompted the FBI to
re examine the case and to re examine some of the Park Service law enforcement
rangers who were involved in the case. And I've heard again second hand that
they even went so far as to try to obtain some DNA swabs from some
of the rangers. They are understandably not pleased. The reaction from at least
one of them in particular has been very loud, I think, and so
that's obviously not my preferred reaction, But I think it's good that this information
is hitting a nerve, and I think maybe the more nerves it hits,
the more likely it will be that the story is propelled forward, and that
the investigation is propelled forward. As the brother of a murder victim whose sister's
case is sometimes linked with the murder of Lally and Julie, I will just
say this should have been done years ago, and the fact that the FBI
and the National Park Service and other law enforcement agencies are circling back around and
collecting DNA samples from investigators and first responders now more than twenty six years after
their murders in the Shenandoah is shocking. This should have been done decades ago,
and it shouldn't take all of the work and the research that you've done
to produce Trailed, to get the FBI and the National Park Service to do
something that they should have done twenty something years ago. And I can't imagine
how frustrating it is to be the family member of a victim and know that
so much hasn't been done. It's for me as a journalist, it's frustrating,
and I don't have that personal connection. And that's one of the things
that I like to try to highlight when I'm talking about this book is the
number of cold cases out in the country, the number of people like you
who deserve answers and deserve a thorough investigation and have never had it. The
number of rape kits and DNA samples that we've never attested, the number of
DNA that we've never loaded to codis. And this is a national endemic problem,
and it's a crisis. I think it's a crisis of justice that we
really need to resolve. I'm not hinting, by the way that any of
these people are directly involved, or that someone in law enforcement is a murderer.
I'm not saying that, But what I am saying is you would think
I understand that this stuff didn't happen. Back in nineteen eighty six, when
my sister Kathy and her girlfriend Rebecca Dowski were murdered, DNA hadn't come out
of the lab. But by the time we get to nineteen ninety six,
when Lollie and Julie are murdered, DNA has made its way out of the
lab, thankfully, and just for elimination purposes. You would think that everyone
involved in responding to these murders and investigating these murders would have submitted their DNA.
Heck, I submitted my DNA at the FBI's request about five or six
years ago. Again because my DNA could have been in my sister's car,
and why is it, I have no problem whatsoever. They came to my
office. They also met with my brother Richard in Washington, DC, ME
and Los Angeles, where I was living at the time, and my younger
brother in New York, and we said, sure, come on down,
and I sat with the FBI agents because I wanted to have a conversation with
them, to ask them if they knew why they were collecting the DNA,
which interestingly they did not, but they were very curious people. And I
explained a short version of why they were there, and I have no problem
with that. And I don't think anyone in law enforcement or any legitimate person
would have any difficulty whatsoever turning over their DNA so that they can be eliminated
and that would allow their brothers and sisters in law enforcement to focus on potential
suspects. I will challenge people listening to this podcast today to my friends in
law enforcement. I can't believe any of you are pushing back on giving your
DNA. It should come with the territory, so cough it up. We
all did it, except for a handful of people that somehow are so righteous
they can't stand the idea that their DNA would be looked at. No one's
calling them a murderer. They're saying, let's narrow the focus to where it
needs to be. Well, I know you've had firsthand experience and tremendous frustrations
as well getting evidence from the scene tested as well. Right now, one
of the things that I'm really fixated on is a bottle of Gatorade and a
Walmart bag that were at the scene of the crime. They don't belong to
Lolly and Julie, and Julie had a liquid in her stomach which matches the
gatorade. They didn't buy it. Spoiler alert. We know that known serial
killer Mark ofvon It's regularly shopped at Walmart and also preferred to and this is
really just sadistic and terrible, but really preferred to keep his victims well hydrated,
and he would regularly give them energy drinks while he was molesting them and
abusing them and assaulting them. And so again, there are fingerprints on that
gatorade bottle. We know it doesn't belong to Lolli and Julie. We know
we have fingerprints from the scene. Why would we not test that there is
an oily palm print on Julie's sleeping pad, Why would we not test that?
Why would we not test the hair that was in Kathy Thomas's hand?
I just it boggles the mind, It truly does. We're no stranger to
getting tips with relation to our case. Have people reached out to you with
tips that they want you to follow up on or that they think law enforcement
should follow up on? Oh my, so many tips. And I would
say all of them from very well meaning people. And I would say if
I can say it politely and decorously, I would say they run the gamut
of plausibility. But I think anybody who takes the time to reach out,
that's meaningful to me that somebody took the time to find me to tell me
that as well. And certainly I keep track of all of them. Your
listeners probably know that. Again, sometimes Shenandoah and the First Colonial Parkway set
of murders are linked. And so whenever I get anything that seems like it
might be at all relevant to the case of Kathy and Becky, I like
to afford that to Bill, and so he also has had a long suffering
experience with some of these and is always a really good sport about receiving them
as well too. But you never know. I think, if anything,
what we're learning from podcasts and streaming shows, list serves and discussion boards is
that citizen investigators moved cases along all the time. So I think it's beholden
upon us to take all of them seriously. Yeah, Over the years,
both Kristin and I have fed a number of tips into the FBI, and
again, we can't necessarily evaluate what's a good tip and what's not a good
tip, and sometimes we talk about does this person seem completely screwed down to
the deck or not. But even then, just because someone's a little out
there, or maybe even a lot out there, that doesn't mean they shouldn't
be listened to, because they may actually have something to say. And our
attitude is we're going to turn those over to law enforce because the FBI agents
and Virginia State Police agents who were working our case, they know a lot
more about this case than we know. Something might be said in a tip
that would mean something to those investigators. Yeah, and I think anything that
moves these cases along, and also I think anything that might link these cases
to other cases as well too, I think that's really important. I was
really appalled that when I was talking to Sadie Showalter, who's the surviving mother
of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, who was killed about six weeks before Lolly and Julie,
she didn't know that gloves had been been found at the scene of where
Alicia's car had been pulled over. She didn't know that cigarette butts had been
found there as well. There's a very similar pair of gloves found at Lolly
and Julie's scene. There's very similar. I don't know the brand because they're
just butts, but cigarette butts as well too. What does it take then
to cross test those even? Can we exclude even the DNA from those and
the DNA from law and Julie's anything. I think that moves these cases along,
not to some conclusion I want or choose, but to any kind of
resolution whatever that looks like, seems really important to me. Have you received
any new information or tips about Evonnce In particular, the most I think significant
work that's happening on the Avonance front is actually being spearheaded by Deirdre Enright at
the University of Virginia, and she and her students have really been combing through
a lot of the evidence that was preserved from Avonnance's residence, and so she's
been working very actively to link him to other crimes as well too, And
I've been trying to assist on that in any way that I can. Again,
I think that's super important as well too. When he was in the
high speed police chase that would eventually lead to him taking his own life,
he very famously said to his sister when she said, how many times have
you done this? And he said more times than I remain, and in
the book I outline just a few of the leads we have about ways in
which he was pre dating on other women, some of whom are still alive
as well too. And so for me, it's very clear that I think
that we don't know the breadth of Evonnorce's crimes, but I find it almost
entirely unbelievable that he killed only three people, and I think anything that we
can do to further close cases that he might have been involved in is really
important as well, for the benefit of someone who's buying the book today and
hasn't read it yet. Can you recap Ivonance's history in terms of what we
know who is specific victims are. I know we have suspicions beyond the core
group, but can you talk a little bit about his criminal history as we
understand it? Sure, and I'll try to do it chronologically in terms of
how we learned things. So, he abducted a young woman named Kara Robinson
who was sixteen at the time, and brought her back to his house where
he really brutally abused her in myriad sexual ways. Incidentally, that's part of
how we know about the gatorade, is that he would try to keep Kara
hydrated with the gatorade. He had her handcuffed and shackled to his bed.
When he had fallen asleep for the night, she managed to extricate herself and
get help. Her story alone is utterly fascinating and worth telling in more time
than we probably have here. But once she was able to alert the authorities,
and because she had done such a brilliant job of memorizing details about Evonnets
and his apartment, they were able to very quickly figure out who he was.
And so that's what led to this high speed chase across multiple state lines,
and it's what led to him committing suicide in Florida when it was very
clear that he was about to be apprehended. Once he had been once he
had killed himself, the authorities then had access to his DNA, to his
fingerprints and things like that, and using that they were able to confirm that
he had killed both Katie and Kristin Lisk and Sophia Silva to three young women
who were killed in the month right after Lolly and Julie in rural Virginia.
And so we know those three for a fact, what we don't know is
whether or not his DNA was ever loaded to Cotis, and so we don't
know, and the FBI refuses to answer any of my Freedom of Information Act
requests asking if his DNA has been loaded. They told me it's not in
the best interest of the American public to know this. I don't understand how
that's possible. So we have those three, But we also have because we
have his belongings. He had a chest that had dozens of women's underwear,
ranging from what were probably fairly young teenagers to grown women scrunchies. He had
locks of hair that he had removed, and he kept this incredibly disturbing kind
of log book of women he was actively pursuing and in some cases stalking,
using both online dating services phones things like that as well. Too. We've
been able to make contact with a few of them and confirm that they're alive.
We haven't been able to make contact with all of them. We also
know that he had a cousin that shared his name who lived in Chicago,
and that he spent a lot of time there acting as the cousin. And
one of the things that Deirdre and I are also starting to do is really
tease through these records of women he was pursuing in Chicago and Square that against
women who either went missing or were murdered or have pulled any kind of violent
cases against them. But the cousin for sure is not evon It's it's actually
a separate person. Correct. Wow, that's something I'd never heard before.
Well me either, Wow. And his full name is Richard Mark Ivanits is
that right to see? And I'm too is he had a definite mom and
he would buying the women in a particular way. He would penetrate them,
usually with foreign objects, and then there was a way that he would tend
to leave them after they were killed. There's a very similar case here in
Maine involving a young woman named Sarah Cherry that one hundred percent fits this m
down to the stolen car, which was another thing that Avonnets used to do.
And we know for an absolute fact that he happened to be stationed at
the naval base and the iron works, a shipyard here in Maine, literally
ten miles away from where this crime happened, right when it happened. There's
a huge number of people here in the state of Maine who believe that he
actually committed that as well too. And there's currently an innocence movement. A
man was convicted of the crime and is serving life in prison, and most
people here have always assumed his innocence, And there's a growing movement right now
now to get some of the DNA that was taken from this particular crime scene
and to see if you can get it tested against the honors. Has there
been any luck in obtaining his naval service records? I do find it interesting
that he was in the Navy, as was Kathy, and we are a
naval area right here, and we have every type of military base and here
we are primarily Navy. Any luck and getting those records. I don't have
his full records, but I do know that he spent most of his time
here on the East Coast on the Colsh, which was the ship that was
used very oddly to collect the remains after the Challenger disaster, the Challenger explosion,
the space shuttle, And so that's probably if listeners know that name,
that's how and so with some accuracy we can say where the Coulsh was and
so where he was as well too. But I don't personally have his naval
records. I would love to get them, however, because I think that
again, knowing where he was, knowing his propensity for these types of crime,
I don't think we can say with any certainty whatever that it was only
three victims. Do we know how to spell kolsch the USS Kolsch the ship
itself. You're gonna have to check me on it, but I'm going to
try to remember that it's kolscch. I'm not exactly sure about that c,
but I'll get folks close enough for sure. We'll look that up. Boy,
it would be interesting if any of our listeners know anyone that ever served
aboard the US Cools, we'd love to talk to you. And I know
that many Navy ships, including the l Y Spear that the ship that my
sister served aboard, there are groups that are kind of alumni groups of service
personnel who had served on ships. If anyone knows anyone that has ever served
aboard the Kulsh, we'd love to talk with you. The idea of getting
Richard Markavonitz's service records is a really interesting one. And one other quick thing
in talking to my dad, who is also an officer. He had mentioned
to me that when ships are in dry dock, as Thevalance's ship would have
been up at the Bath Iron Works in Beautiful Maine, there's a lot of
downtime for the personnel that are aboard those ships. They're still assigned to the
ship, but they're not out at sea. It's more of a nine to
five kind of job when you're in dry dock because you're literally not going anywhere,
and so there's much more downtime for the men and women that serve aboard
those ships because during those months or even be a year or more, while
the ships are being refitted or repaired, they end up, as my dad
put it, they have a lot more time off and they have a lot
more time to get into trouble. You're listening to mind Over Murder. We'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mindover.
And we know that evonatz Is one of his favorite pastimes was driving around
country roads. We know that was a real hobby of his. We know
that he would regularly brag about stealing cars and how easy it was to hot
wire cars. And again we know his moo and so when you take a
look at this particular case. You consider the man Dennis d'shane, who's currently
serving life in prison, zero criminal history, zero criminal record whatsoever, zero
evidence of violence that anyone could find. And then you consider a mark of
honors, and you look at this particular case again, Logically speaking, he
makes an infinitely better suspect. Wow. Absolutely, I want to switch gears
for one second away from Evonance and let's talk a little bit. You're a
dedicated runner, You're a dedicated outdoors woman. How do you feel about the
outdoors and your safety in it? Right about now, it's been about a
year since this came out. Where are you with your relationship with the outdoors.
I still have not been able to solo camp in a tent. I
think having seen the crime scene photos, and I know you too have had
experience with this as well. Having seen the crime scene photos and having them
just really indelibly seared in my brain, it is very difficult for me to
be an attent and not feel panicked. My brain just draws this immediate connection.
And so while I know that statistically speaking, backpacking and camping somewhere like
Maine, I'm extremely safe, it's not a psychologically pleasant experience for me.
So I haven't done that, but I do spend a lot of time in
the wilderness. I'm an avid trail runner, I'm a hiker, and I'd
like to joke right now that at this point I'm so angry about all of
this that God help the serial killer or cerial rapist who attempts to approach me
in the wilderness, because that prop person is probably going to be going to
the police claiming that they being harassed and threatened because I'm so And I do
not say that as a challenge, but I do say that I'm just in
a place right now where when you think about the politics of the country,
when you think about the ongoing misogyny in the country. And I say this
as a woman, I say this as somebody who identifies as queer. I
say this as a sexual assault survivor. I am so angry about what it
is to be a woman in our culture right now, and so I think
that kind of fuels me a little bit in the wilderness, But it's also
it's a place of real beauty and refuge, and I really believe in the
value of forest bathing and immersing yourself in the wilderness as well too, and
I think everyone should get to have access to that. Let me ask you
a question that I don't think I've ever asked you before. If you were
going to be through hiking the Appalachian Trail, and I know the usual route
is to start in May in Georgia and then head north ending in Maine,
sometimes taking an entire summer to do that, which sounds like a wonderful experience,
and I know people that have done it. If you were to do
that today, would you carry a weapon? That's a good question. Does
bear spray count as a weapon? I would say so in point of view
of the person or bear at the receiving end. Yeah, I think there's
I have very mixed thoughts on firearms in this country. As I detail in
the book. I did go through multiple firearms courses and training, and I
feel like that was really the right decision for me. I am not entirely
comfortable with gun ownership as it's defined in this country right now. Bear spray
seems like a really reasonable tool. The other thing that I always thought about
with guns too is I always joke like, what are the logistics there if
my gun is in my backpack and I'm being apprehended. Do I just say,
hang on just one second, I just need to take this path off
and we here whereas a tiny little canister of bear spray angling on your backpack.
That seems like a reasonable thing to have for a variety of reasons,
including rabid animals. So that seems like a fair compromise to me. Are
there additional steps the National Park Service could take in making people safe in the
back country? Do you think, oh, how much time do we have?
Specifically? Yes. One of the things that first of all, that
I outline in the book is that there is currently no codified mechanism for reporting
violent crimes. So as citizens of this country and as park goers, we
don't know how many crimes are occurring. We know that the GAO, the
Government Accountability Office, has done several studies and taken the Park Service in the
Department of the Interior to task for their lack of reporting. It's up to
whoever is the head ranger and whoever is the superintendent of a park, whether
or not these crimes ever get reported, and frank, to what degree they
ever get investigated. So first and foremost, we can start accurately accounting for
that, and once we actually know how pervasive the problem is, then I
think we can take more steps. The Park Service is woefully underfunded. There's
a lot of attrition happening with rangers. Law enforcement rangers are not always adequately
trained, they don't have adequate weapons or communication devices. In some cases,
there's only one law enforcement ranger for an entire park that is going to span
in some cases hundreds of square miles. So I think policing and making that
presence known in a way that's obviously not intrusive and kind of storm troopery for
visitors, but making sure that folks know that you don't get a pass.
There is something else that's really important as well. The Park Service has been
criticized though for a culture of cover up over the years. They've been likened
to the Catholic Church, and I was an ultra boy many years ago and
raised Catholic. The Park Service has been criticized in writing, in magazine articles,
in books by people inside the organization and outside that they cover up criminality
among National Park Service employees, as well as downplay statistics involving crime, vandalism,
potential violence within the National Park Service. How do you feel about that.
I think it's accurate. Bill. I know you're familiar with this work,
and I don't know if your listeners are at Paul Berkowitz has written two
books really exploring this in depth, and I highly recommend them if this is
an interesting subject. His book on the Indian Trader, which is a story
of what happened in the Grand Canyon, I think is particularly relevant and particularly
telling. He's a former law enforcement ranger himself, and he talks about this
notion that's called noble cause corruption, where sometimes rangers or any law enforcement officer
will do the wrong thing legally or morally because they believe it's the right thing
to, for instance, protect a fellow ranger or preserve the sense of calm
and peacefulness within a park. He outlines in real detail some of how this
happens, and this transfer system, which is very similar to this idea of
the Catholic Church, especially what we saw in Boston during the sexual abuse cover
ups that were happening, is that parishes would transfer a priest rather than hold
the priest accountable. And we've seen this in the Park Service as well,
that rangers who have either been found negligent or have had disciplinary action taken against
them. Rather than having that get filed or sent up the personnel chain,
they in fact have been transferred to other parks as well. And what I
think is really most disturbing about that is we don't really have a sense of
how often that happens, but we know that it's enough that it's a significant
problem. All Right, I want to make our listeners jealous for a second
and tell them about the fact that I did get to meet you in person.
Was it only a week ago? Wow? Was it two weeks ago,
ten days ago? Okay? All right, Yeah, whatever it was,
it was a wonderful experience to get to hang out with you. So
tell us a little bit about your speaking engagement at the Library of Virginia and
what all that entailed. Yeah. I was really delighted to be asked by
them to come speak, especially because Richmond is obviously so close to where these
crimes occurred, and I know how deeply personal it is for so many of
the people there. So in addition to get to have some time with the
great Kristin Dilly, I was really thrilled to be able to talk to the
audience as well too, And I was really profoundly moved by the number of
people who waited online after to chat and to tell me their stories. And
it was people who used to go to the park and don't go to the
park anymore. It was a woman whose husband had been an initial suspect and
the family had really been and for an apart by that, oh it was
it was a lot of people who had a very personal connection to these stories.
And for me, as a journalist, it's incredibly poignant to hear those
stories and to remind myself not only how deeply personal it is for the immediate
friends and family of victims, but the way in which these kinds of acts
of violence really do start to serve as hate crimes in the sense that they
take entire demographics and radically change their relationship to play. And for so many
of the people that I met at this library event, this event radically altered
and negatively altered their relationship not only with Shenandoah, but with the wilderness.
Writ large in the book Trail, do you talk about this quite a bit,
how meaningful the outdoors have been for you as a woman and as an
outdoors woman, and for so many other people that you've befriended. Yet here
we are again. You're speaking about the book. The book's been out for
a year, it's had a tremendous impact, but you're hearing from people who
are talking about the ripple effect of this nineteen ninety six double homicide. Yeah.
When I was working on the book, I interviewed Claudia Breunner. She
and her partner, Rebecca White, were both shot just off the Appalachian Trail.
Rebecca was killed, Claudia had multiple bullets in her and somehow managed to
hike miles out and get help. And she wrote about that very poignantly in
a book called Eight Bullets, and she talked not only about what it was
to be the victim of what was a very intentional hate crime, but then
also what it was to be investigated by law enforcement officers who had next to
no experience dealing with someone who had been in a same sex relationship, and
just how re traumatizing that plus the court was, and we had talked about
this notion of hate crime and what is a hate crime? Because Lali and
Julie's legal case very famously became the first official federal hate crime case in the
United States. So there's a lot of really significant historical resonance there. People
are very divided about whether or not this was a hate crime in terms of
the perpetrator's motivations, whether the perpetrator was aware of Lolly and Julie's sexuality.
But what Claudia Brenner said to me, and I've always just really taken this
to heart, is she said, for me and for my entire community of
lesbian women, we no longer feel safe in the wilderness, and in that
regard, for every woman, for every LGBT person who has severed their relationship
with the wilderness because of this violence. This is absolutely a hate crime,
and that's a really important distinction to me. We can talk about hate crimes
in terms of the perpetrator and the motivation, but I think understanding the deep
impact of a crime is just as useful in terms of identifying it as a
potential hate crime. There's a flip flop there, I think that has happened
where people that w identify with the LGBTQ community would probably say that they feel
safer in America's big cities than they would somewhere out in a beautiful spot in
the middle of the woods or mountains. I think people think, oh,
you're much more at risk if you're in a big city. And yet for
I think a lot of members of this community, they feel safer they are
in the big town than they ever would in the woods, probably because of
the number of incidents like this of harassment, assault, and you can just
keep escalating rape murder, even though hate crime is not an expression used commonly
till about nineteen ninety six, the phenomenon and this sad series of incidents has
been going on for decades. Yeah, and we can fold in all sorts
of what we call socially subordinate groups, and that as well too, the
number of black people and bipoc people who don't feel safe in the wilderness,
not only because of current events, but also this kind of epigenetic generational memory
of centuries of really terrible things that have happened to people of color in the
wilderness as well too. And so one of the things I definitely wanted to
try to highlight in the book is this question of who gets to feel safe
in our parks and our forests and our deserts, in our wilderness places.
Who gets to feel safe and why? And I think as a country and
as a culture, we still have so much work to do on that front.
It's really a position of privilege to go for a hike in the woods
and feel safe and not be looking over your shoulder, and I think we
haven't really talked about that as a country. Kate. I'm scanning right now
your archives on Outside Magazine, and you've done a lot of work, wonderful
work for Outside before there was Trailed. It looks like there was a lot
of different articles about murder and violence on the at Can you highlight for our
listeners some of the additional reporting that you've done for Outside and where they can
find it. Sure. One of the most heartbreaking cases actually occurred while I
was writing one of the penultimate drafts of Trailed, and that was the murder
of Ron Sanchez, who had been hiking. He was a veteran of the
Middle Eastern conflict and he had come back and was experiencing PTSD and really found
a sense of renewal in hiking, which I think so many of us have.
He was attempting to through hike on the trail when a young man who
had some profound mental illness and long history of violence assaulted not only Ron Sanchez,
but three other hikers who happened to be camping for the night as well,
and Ron really, I think valiantly tried to save the other three hikers
and lost his life as a result. So that was a case that really
resonated with me and just made it really real how this continues to be a
problem on the trail. And there are others as well too, Thankfully,
not a lot, and I think that's a really important point to make,
but addressing these and thinking about these, I think is really important. And
luckily, when I served as trail correspondent for Outside magazine, I rod leeway
in terms of what I was covering, so I could tell those stories,
which are again really upsetting. I told stories about the history of segregation at
Shenandoah, But then there were also fun stories too, like folks who were
setting fastest known time attempts on the trails and some of the silliness of the
Appalachian trail culture as well too. It was really a very sort of immersive
experience for me to do that work, and I really loved it. Yeah,
just from a total fangirl perspective, Here did you? I saw you
wrote two pieces about Scott Jurek. Did you get to meet him? I
did? Oh my god, that's so cool. Yeah, Carl, He
and Carl Meltzer both had and I don't think they'll mind me saying that they
both had a very show up and blow up fastest known time attempt. I
really love the little guys who aren't sponsored and don't have all of the kind
of bells and whistles and fandom following them, who have gone on to do
it very quietly in the old fashioned way. I'm a traditionalist where that's concerned.
I'm always cheering for those guys. And because I know you don't know,
Belle, Scott Jarek is. He's an ultra runner and he made an
fkt fas fastest known time attempt to run the at it's insane. He wrote
an amazing book about it, and I'm in love with his book. It's
amazing. So I'm very jealous. You got to meet Scott jered Kate.
That's so cool. Help well, I can recommend jenfar Davis, who held
the record for quite some time regardless of gender. She has a book that
came out a couple of years ago called The Pursuit of endurance where she tells
not only her own story, but she talks to a lot of these fastest
known time record holders and these very long distance hikers and runners to look at,
what is it that motivates us to do this? Why are we so
compelled by it? And I just think it's a wonderful book, all right,
I wrote it down. Yeah, And you do ultra You do ultras
as well. You were were covering from one still when we talked. For
anybody who doesn't know, can you tell what an ultra marathon is and why
do you do them? Yeah? The first part of that is easier to
answer than the second. So an ultra technically is any race that's longer than
twenty six point two miles. In trail running, one of the most common
distances is fifty kilometers, and then fifty miles, one hundred kilometers and one
hundred miles. And I have a dear friend and running partner who talks about
how you do this, and she calls it burrito pace. And so basically,
if you can't eat a bean and cheese burrito at the pace that you're
running, you're doing it too fast. So that's the huge part of why
That's why Kristin, I know you run five k's, I would rather run
fifty miles than a five k. I feel like five k's are the most
painful thing ever, whereas just looking along in the woods for a day feels
a lot more manageable to me too. So I think it's people like you
who are doing the crazy, hardcore work. Oh thank you, appreciate it.
All I can say is color me intimidated with these two amazing work.
Can I just stay home and man the phones and maybe have a burrito?
You on? We're so thrilled that you were able to spend some time talking
with us today. If people want to find your book, and I don't
see any reason why they wouldn't, where can they go to find your book?
Where is it available? I always love it when people patronize their local
independent bookstores, so that's always my very favorite go to. If they don't
have it, they can certainly order it. Obviously Amazon is another option as
well too, And we're just really glad for anybody who takes the time and
our natural question what's next for Catherine Kate Miles. We finally put together the
full package for the streaming series version of the book. We've just signed on
a really wonderful director. I don't know if I'm actually allowed to say her
name yet, but she's exactly perfect for this. And so now right now
as we speak, we're starting to take this out to market. And that's
a really exciting prospect for me, largely because I think it's an entirely different
population to reach by way of this story. And I also feel like it's
a really great opportunity to continue the investigation and to talk in more detail about
everything that's happened since the book was published. They called me a week or
two ago and said, would I be willing to appear on camera and talk
about you in the book? And I said, I'd think about it.
Ha. I know better than that, and I'm already grateful. A number
of favors I need to repay to Bill Thomas are a list that I feel
I'm never going to be able to get through. And I was thrilled,
actually that after this mutual admiration society, I was thrilled that you and Kristin
were actually able to be in the same room. And she just came home
buzzed from your incredible talk at the Library of Virginia again, talk about mutual
admiration societies. I honestly, I think the work that you do is so
great, and to finally get to sit and chat with you was just such
a gift for me too, and was absolutely worth the trip. So thank
you. Good call on the two of you having an early dinner beforehand,
because it sounded like everybody wanted to talk to you, Kate. After your
talk, but afterwards, I stumbled back to my hotel room and I think
I was a bed in bed five minutes later, so I wouldn't have been
much of a dinner date after all of that. The book is trailed one
woman's quest to solve the Shenandoah murders, and we can definitely hope for that
eventual ending. Kate, thank you so much for joining us in this episode
of mind Over Murder, My pleasure. Thank you for having me that's going
to do it for this EPI, thanks so much for listening. We'll see
you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another
Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo
art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud. Mind
Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media. You can follow us
on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also follow our page on
the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas
on Twitter at Bill Thomas. Five six. Thank you for listening to mind
over Murder ant