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 Mind of a Murderer. I'm Kristin
Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined today by Catherine Miles, author of
the amazing book Trailed, One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandomo Murders. Kate,
thanks for joining us today. It is always an honor and a privilege.
I am so glad to be with you both. Now. If we
only had some things that were worth talking about, we could talk about my
garden I'm planning some sunflowers. Is that helpful? I love sunflowers. Yes.
And we just had a garden tour come through our gardens, which are
really Pamela's gardens. Y see, we could talk about gardens too. I
can only talk to a limited extent. I know a fair amount about hauling
mulch and taking brush to the recycling center. Enough of that foolishness. We
do have some big news to talk about. And the first person that I
thought of when I heard this big news the other day was Kate. My
first thought was, how is Kate reacting to all of this? So,
Kate, why don't you tell us what the big news was and how did
you react to all of it? So the big news is that the FBI
hosted a press conference in which they announced that they believe they have now found
the individual responsible for the nineteen ninety six double murder of Julie Williams Molly Winan's
that his name is Leo Jackson Senior, that he is a known serial rapist
and someone who was known to frequent trails. As to how I found out
about this, I happened to have been teaching a writing workshop in a very
lovely part of upstate New York that had very bad cell reception and even worse
Wi Fi reception, And we happened to be taking a quick break that morning
and I checked my phone and it had blown up with requests from national media
sources, from national TV places like that, do you know what the press
conference is about? Do you know what the press conference is about? And
my first response, of course, was what press conference? And luckily my
very good friend Bill Thomas had also texted and so I can't remember if I
called you, or I think I called you and was like, what is
this about? And you, oh, by then had found your way to
the press release that had not been sent to me, despite the fact that
I have national journalistic credentials and obviously ought to have been there. And as
soon as you started to read to me the number of high ranking individuals who
were going to be at that press conference, it became very clear to me
that they intended to announce that they were going to solve it. And we
had heard from our media sources that there was going to be a press conference.
This was all on very short notice. Much of this is remarkable classic
FBI, by the way, classic and exactly the same very unfortunate scenario created
by the FBI which we experienced back in January eighth, twenty twenty four,
when they announced the first ID in the Colonial Parkway murders. Our media context
reached out to us and they had said, were we going to be sitting
in on this press conference? And we were like, what press conference?
The same reaction you had, and then we got a media alert with a
dial in number, And then of course I was desperately trying to track you
down, and you're off doing good work teaching other talented writers how to be
even more talented writers. But I remember you were like, Okay, what's
the bottom line here? So I said, I can send you the press
release. I think I actually read some of it to you, because you
wanted to hear the meat of what was going to be announced. They didn't
identify a perpetrator or an offend or anything like that, but once you saw
the list of heavy hitters from law enforcement who were involved, it was very
clear they had some significant news correct. And I, again, I was
teaching writers who had spent a fair amount of money and traveled a very long
distance and left jobs and families and things like that, so that they could
come do this, and I explained to them what was happening. Now.
I was obviously having a lot of emotional, I think, and mental responses
to this, and I had said to them, listen, I am here
for you all right. Now. I've alerted my TV producer that this is
happening. They're going to be there, They're going to record the press conference.
They'll text me. And these incredible students were like, no, absolutely
not. We will sit here and quietly write and you will go join this
press conference, which was incredibly generous of them, and so I did,
and I was able to hear it in real time and had, I think,
along with every other human who was a part of this, a very
wide range of emotions and responses in terms of what was said. Hey,
what we did is we asked people on Mind of Murder to submit some questions
that they wanted to ask you with regard to this press conference. And this
seems like a great idea to jump to this very first question, which I
think is the question on all of our minds, and the question from Jamie
is I'm curious if Leo Jackson was someone Kate was aware of at all.
When she was researching her book, Kate, had you heard this guy's name
before? I had never heard his name, and Hi, Jamie, great
to meet you and thank you for the question. I had not heard his
name ever before, and that's not super unusual in these cases. I think
sophisticated killers are great at flying under the radar, and a lot of times
were surprised to find someone. However, I will say that some of the
sources for my book believe that they saw Jackson in the days immediately after the
murders in the park and prior to the press conference, had described this individual
to me in a way that tracked as credible once I finally saw a picture
of Jackson. When you described what they had said and how they described a
person which we believe could be Jackson, the way they described him was pretty
spot on. When you actually see his photograph from back in the day,
he really looks essentially exactly the way they described him. They mentioned a particular
actor who really does look a fair amount like Leo Jackson. Yes, and
so for folks who are not familiar with the book, there were a group
of women who were hiking through Shenandoah when the murder happened, and I followed
their story for a variety of reasons. First, I feel like it really
set the tone of what it was like to be a hiker, and especially
a female hiker in the park while all this was going on. I think
it's really important to remember that we believe the women were killed on May twenty
eighth. Their bodies were found very late in the day on the last day
of May, the morning of June first. At that point, no news
had been released, the crime scene had not been processed, the bodies were
still at the scene until very late about eleven am on June first. The
park deliberately chose to withhold information about the murders for several days, and then
when they did finally release this late in the day that Tuesday, which would
have been the third they first tried to say it was a bear attack,
and then they tried to say it was a murder suicide. So I think
that's just some important context here. These women encountered two men very early in
the morning on June first, so again before any news had been released anywhere.
They were approximately thirty miles north of the crime scene, still in Shenandoah
National Park, and they encountered a man who purported to be a through hiker
who immediately asked them at about seven am, did you hear about the murder
of the two women? And then he was very quickly joined and was rendezvousing
by with a friend in this parking lot. And again this is pre cell
phone, right, so nothing was coordinated here. Information was not traveling the
way it travels in twenty twenty four. This friend showed up also knew about
the murders. These men had a very performative conversation about the murders. And
the women have always described this man in the car to me as a driving
a beater car and b looking just like Philip Seymour Hoffman. And if you
look at the picture of Jackson, he looks like Philips Seymour Hoffman. And
what they've said to me is the minute we saw that photo, one of
them said to me, I like all the hairs on my neck stood up.
I got goosebumps. I felt it in the pit of my stomach.
She had this very visceral reaction to seeing Jackson's photo that in the nearly thirty
years since this crime she has never had. And I put a lot of
stock in that, and I put a lot of stock in the fact that
they have been telling me this story since twenty eighteen, long before Jackson,
and so far as I can tell, the FBI and National Park Service never
followed up, despite the fact that they immediately told a ranger. So by
eight am at the very latest that morning, they had told Arrange about this
experience. Within a day or two, they had called the FBI. Within
a day or two after that, they had gotten the photo of the through
hiker developed and sent to the FBI. And when readers read my book,
a lot of them will email me and they'll say this through hiker. When
I was making a case that I thought mark of on its should have been
looked at in more detail, very perceptive readers would write it and say,
but yeah, but does the through hiker look like mark of on its?
And I'd be like, no, he doesn't. And I'd be like,
that calls mark of on It's into question for me, which is the exact
right response here. Again, I think it's one of those very unfortunate cases
where people citizens and women in particular, are ultimately discredited by investigators as not
having useful information when that information ought to be very valued. Kate, We've
used the expression through hiker several times for the benefit of someone that's never been
to the Appalachian Trail or maybe from another part of the world through hiker.
Great question, thank you. So the Appalachian Trail is approximately twenty two hundred
miles long. It begins in Georgia and it goes to Maine, all along
the Appalachian Mountain Ridge. A through hiker is someone who takes about usually four
to six months to hike the trail from beginning to end. So if they're
a northbound through hiker, they start in Georgia and they continuously hike all the
way to Maine. If they're south bound, it's obviously reversed. So these
are folks who are going to do the whole trail in one bit, as
opposed to flip flop hikers or section hikers who are going to break up this
trip. So this person purported to be a through hiker, I will say,
having covered hiking for a variety of publications for a very long time and
spent a lot of time on the trail, first of all, and I
say this with great love to all through hikers. Through hikers have a very
distinct smell after they've been on the trail for a while. You can't watch
it on your gear out. I've written on stories about through hikers who have
not been allowed on planes even after they've showered and washed their gear because it
still has that special funk to it. So through hikers have a look,
they have a demeanor, they have a smell. These women always thought that
this guy looked way too clean. They thought his pack was way too small
to be carrying. They thought he was really going out of his way to
establish to them that he was a through hiker in a way that didn't really
feel legit to them. So he has always stood out to me and to
readers as a very peculiar part of this story that can't but needs to be
explained. And these women, it's Is it fair to refer to them as
the Ands? These are the ans who were referred to in Trailed your book?
Yes, I call them the Ans, conveniently because all three of them
are named Their first names are Ann And so this was to be their first
real sort of multi day backpacking experience. They had for it for a really
long time. They'd prepared. It's through their experience that I think we really
see the very real fear that was happening because of the misinformation and lack of
information that the park Service was giving to folks in the park who rightly wondered
about their safety. The sixty four thousand dollars question from two of our listeners,
Rebecca and Deborah is Leo Jackson, the man the ANNs saw on the
trail and took a photo of no and I have that photo. I'm still
in the process of trying to track down who that individual was. But that
individual knew his friend who rendezvoud in the parking lot with him. And again
this is pre cell phone, So rendezvoyenne at seven am off of a trail
in a parking lot without contact, it's hard to do. In nineteen ninety
six. The ANNs strongly believe that the friend that rendezvoued in this so called
beater car is in fact Jackson. And did they happen to recognize the car?
So they want to be I should just say, first of all,
they're great humans, and they take all of this very seriously, and they've
been really scarred by all of this they believe it to be. But they
are also very cognizant of this kind of influential thing that happens, like when
you see a car, your brain does that own kind of version of confirmation
bias and says, oh, yeah, that's the car. So will they
swear on their life that it was the car? No? Are they really
certain this was the guy they saw on the parking lot? Yes, and
it is twenty eight years later. Some people are into cars, some people
are not, and they weren't necessarily fixed on those details. But it is
very striking that the man who drove up for the rendezvous with the guy who
presented himself as a through hiker so strongly resembled Jackson as we see him now.
And again they told me this years ago. Right, if they had
just called me on Sunday and said, Kate, did we mention that the
guy looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman, my journalistic spidey sense would go off and
I'd be like, Okay, prove it. But again, I have this
in notes going back years, and I think that lends a lot of credibility
to their experience. And I also frankly believe in our bodily responses to things
like these are sophisticated humans. They're outdoors people, they're professionals. Like,
when you have that strong of a visceral reaction to something, I key in
on that. I think there's something to that. I want to go back
to some of our listener questions, because when we say they've been clamoring to
hear from you, we are not exaggerating in any way. So many people
as soon as we put the word out, and I think it was immediately
after the press conference and Bill was like, we got to talk to Kate.
I put out a little thing and said yes, we're having Kate Miles
on the pot and everyone was like yeah. They blew up. They were
so excited. There's a lot you have a lot of fans. I need
to say how much that means to me, just really quickly. This work
is so hard, as you two know, and you sometimes really feel like
you live in a vacuum and it's a really ugly, yucky vacuum, and
so I just want to quickly say that hearing that just makes this work that
much easier. And so I just want to thank you all for that so
much. And this actually leads into a comment here from Raven and she starts
by saying that you're an absolutely wonderful person and she is so thrilled to have
done an interview with you when Trailed was released. I'll do first and last
names a little bit later, but you may know who I'm talking about.
I know exactly who you're talking about, Okay, she said, I'm so
glad that Kate gets to see some resolution, as most of us who write
about cold cases do not. How do you feel about the fact that you
have an answer? Finally, for Julian Lawy, that's got to feel.
I actually don't want to put words into your mouth. You tell us,
how does it feel. I was not prepared for the significance, and I'd
even go so far as to say the severity of the emotional response that I
had when this happened. I think I had thought about it intellectually, but
I hadn't thought about what it would mean. And as I say in the
book, Lolly and Julie's story had resonated with me on a very personal level
from the start by sheer coincidence. Beginning in two thousand and one, as
a twenty seven year old, I took my first college teaching job at Unity
College, which is where Lollie had been a student when she was murdered,
and so I was immediately thrust into her friend group. Her professors had become
my colleagues, and along the way I have gotten to know their friends and
family, and I've seen firsthand how significantly this has impacted them. So there
was a lot going on in my tiny little brain that day, and I
am obviously delighted that we can hopefully say we know who did this and move
on. And I think that's really important. I think the word closure is
a tricky one. I don't know that anybody has closure because of this.
I think that potentially being able to identify the perpetrator here is important and great.
I personally left that press conference with far more questions than I had answered,
and it definitely created these two minds of me where I was feeling and
experiencing and talking to friends and family who felt some real relief. They also
were very angry, as I am as well too. So I think parsing
all of that out is really tricky, Even these number of days later,
absolutely I can see that. And so then before we get to more listener
questions, let's go ahead and jump in. Let's talk about the press conference.
As Bill and I are fully aware, there is a lot that the
FBI will not say in their press conferences, and there was a lot left
unsaid here. So Kate, why don't you run us through what didn't you
get an answer to that you feel is really appropriate for them to answer.
The short answer is just about everything. Right. Look, I have made
no secret that a the FBI is a black box indefensible ways that make it
very difficult for journalists to do their work and make it very difficult for family
members like Bill to exist in the world, and they need to improve on
both of those things immediately. I, as a journalist, am always paying
attention not only to what is said, but what is not said, and
I think both of those things are really important here. First of all,
the FBI, I think really misled folks in some real ways in that press
conference, particularly concerning their treatment of Darryl David Rice, who your listeners may
recall was indicted for capital murder in two thousand and two. Again, John
Ashcroft and the DOJ were seeking the death penalty again Daryl Rice. They prosecuted
to the point of persecution Daryl Rice. They excluded all other suspects because they
were so single minded in their belief that Daryl Rice was guilty, and they
persisted in that well after the publication of this book. So what I did
not hear, for starters was any accountability in terms of the treatment Darryl Rice
had, and I would be happy to unpack that in more detail. They
certainly did not apologize to Rice. They did not acknowledge the tremendous damage they've
done to him. They did not acknowledge the way in which their own confirmation
bias meant that we only now think that Jackson has done this after he is
dead. So this case will never officially be closed because they can only say
they believe he's responsible based on the DNA, so that prosecution will never happen.
And because that prosecution will never happen, we will never get any more
answers than the FBI wants to give us if in the case of Dale Rice.
One of the main reasons I was able to do the work I did
in the book is because of what's called discovery rules in court. Right.
Discovery rules are the prosecution of the defense have to exchange evidence before the case,
and because that occurred, I had a lot of resources available to me.
Because this is never going to court. The FBI doesn't have to answer
any questions, does not have to show their work. And there are myriad
questions, both in terms of what they said, some of which I think
is patently misleading at that press conference, and what they didn't say and what
they are now refusing to say. That is not acceptable for anyone. This
is beyond garbage. Because now the FBI plays it both ways. I can't
help but can compare and contrast. In the Colonial Parkway murders, they're saying,
oh, no, we can't answer those questions of the suspect in that
case because it's an ongoing and investigation. And I do understand that to a
certain extent. But when the question came up January eighth that the murder of
Robin Edwards and David Nobling as part of the Colonial Parkway murders had been resolved,
a number of press people sent in foyer Freedom of Information Act requests for
more information, In other words, how did you solve this case? All
of a sudden, the FBI and the Virginia State Police are backing up saying
we didn't mean to say that the case was closed. Oh no, we
can't provide any additional information. Now turned to Julian Lawley's case. It is
truly exciting news, and it is good news. I would argue, as
the brother of a murder victim, when you've been waiting for twenty eight years
for answers in terms of who killed your loved one, to have those answers,
it's not going to make your life perfect, but it is something you've
been seeking for nearly thirty years. Your point that they're not going to answer
any more questions, this is beyond the beyond. This is completely unacceptable.
There are so many questions that I have about how they arrived at identifying Jackson
as a suspect. And I think, and I will say this repeatedly until
the FBI responds in a meaningful way. They have a responsibility to the people
of Virginia and the American citizens. We have a right to know how this
happened, how was this case solved. I'm not a big fan of Daryl
David Rice personally. I think he has his own set of extreme issues.
So I'm not liked in the Daryl David Rice camp with both feet far from
it, but I know they're never. The FBI will never apologize, they'll
never admit fault, they'll never say they were sorry. They did the same
thing to our families when we found out they had destroyed my sister's rape kit
and that of Rebecca Dowski. They burned them as medical waste, eight years
after the fact, and they refuse to apologize, They refuse to even call
it a mistake to burn someone's evidence in an unsolved capital murder case. The
FBI owes the American people an explanation for how this case was solved, full
stop. Yes, yes, And before we even get to that, let
me just remind folks that, regardless of your thoughts on Darryl Rice, let's
just quickly unpack the incredible links they went to to try to coerce a confession
from this guy, despite the fact that their lab repeatedly demonstrated that his DNA
could be exclusively excluded from all of the evidence taken from the seat. And
let's also remind folks that Darryl Rice had an ironclad alibi for May twenty eighth,
which is when the medical examiner said that the women were killed, and
that when that happened, both the FBI and the Park Service walked back the
date of death three days, and all of a sudden, we're like,
oh, the medical examiner using the best technology available to determine time of death
was wrong. It was actually May twenty fifth, and again the women were
found on May thirty first, there was no sign of decomposition on the women,
and so then again they went out to discredit and intimidate witnesses, like
there is actual malfeasons that happened here, and that doesn't even go into the
untold resources that they spent after Daryl Rice's DNA was excluded to try to entrap
and coerce him into a confession. You're listening to Mind over Murder or we'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at mindover
Murder. Before we get back to the podcast, just wanted to remind you
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can afford is very much appreciated and will be incredibly helpful. The link is
in the show notes and in our social media pages. As always, thanks
for your support. Now back to mind over Murder, putting undercover counter terrorist
investigators in his cell, a three year pen pal campaign, fabricating issues of
The Washington Post using Darryll's mental illness to try to coerce confuction, and then
even after he was released for the nineteen ninety seven crime, planting stories about
Darryl in papers such that Daryl basically had to go underground, which is where
he is now. Can I quote from your own book for a second,
please, because I was just rereading this earlier today and I went through and
like I'd annotated it even more than I already annotated at the first time.
I just send you a new copy by that, But I just this really
encapsulates what you were just saying, and I happen to have highlighted it a
little bit earlier today. Over the next five years, investigators went to extraordinary
links, not just relying on forensic analysis and physical evidence, but also employing
extensive psychological profiling, exhaustive interviews, and an undercover FBI agent whom they embedded
in Rice's cell. But in the end, the only evidence they had implicating
Rice was, by Tim Alley's own admission, only circumstantial. Mic Drop.
I mean, you couldn't put it any better than that. That's insane.
They hounded this guy for decades and destroyed his life, There's no question about
it. Not the FBI's finest hour. No, it's not. And the
fact that you know, as Kate was saying, are not going to apologize.
You said this too, Bill, and I agree with you. They're
not going to apologize. They're not going to offer accountability. That's so important.
You and I have used that term a number of times with regard to
our friends at the FBI, good evening, to the analysts who are listening.
Accountability and transparency are not their strong points, and they know it because
it is all about reputation and face saving. And here again is another example
of them deciding, you know what, we screwed up, and we know
we screwed up, but we're not going to mention that to anybody. Hopefully
they're going to forget about it. Kate didn't forget. Bill didn't forget.
We've got the receipts it's right there in Kate's book. It's garbage what they're
doing. And not only that, but at this press conference, they went
out of their way to try to justify the fact that they had honed in
on Darryl Rice. And these are my words, not the words of the
FBI that then proceeded to say that they basically had to have a series of
lemonade stands to pay for this new DNA testing. And I really want to
unpack all of that, to which I say, hey, guess what,
had you not hounded Darryl Rice to these indefensible means when your own lab told
you he wasn't the guy, you would have had the financial resources that you
needed to test this DNA. Dale Rice's legal team had been asking repeatedly for
this DNA to be retested. They've been asking since two thousand and four for
this, and we kept being told it didn't need to be retested. And
again, I am not anti law enforcement. I am not. However,
I will say that when you make the kind of egregious mistakes that were repeatedly
made in this case over the course of almost thirty years, you would buy
a lot of trust with the American public. If you would own that,
and I would really like to see the Attorney General's Office and the Department of
Justice stand up and say, look, we did this wrong, and we're
going to immediately have an internal investigation to understand why this went sideways so badly
and so that it doesn't happen again, because we see again and again this
level of confirmation bias completely steinying investigations, which is why we have two hundred
and fifty thousand cold cases in America right now. Yeah, we're seeing a
new number, by the way, from reliable sources that now put that number
at three hundred and fifty thousand unsolved cold case homicides in the United States,
many of which, like Lolly and Julie, are solvable if you are willing
to continue to look at this with a beginner's mind, right or retesting DNA
or for instance, loading DNA results to CODIS, which I know you all
have had some experience with in terms of even being able to figure out what
DNA is loaded to codis and why. But look, we had Jackson's DNA
a long time ago, we had the DNA technology needed to test it.
The FBI lab has had the DNA technology to test this for twenty years,
really, and so this idea that new techniques have suddenly emerged that make this
possible, I'm going to call BS on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
now I will as well. One of my first reactions to reading the
FBI press release, which came out shortly after the press conference started, was,
wait a minute, there's nothing in this material as put out that indicates
that there's anything new about the evidence that they've had in this case since nineteen
ninety six. I do agree there have been significant advances in forensics in the
last ten years, certainly in the last five years post Golden State Killer,
but that evidence was all there, this entire Yeah, and let's be clear.
They had the saliva of the perpetrator. They had hair that was in
the duct tape, They had hair that was in the gloves, They had
cigarette butts, they had a beer can, all of which we believe.
There was a Mountain dew bottle in a Walmart bag, which was not brought
by Lollly and Julie. They had the evidence to retest again back in two
thousand and four. What they did not say, among other things at the
press conference, is what of this DNA they tested. We don't know,
for instance, if it was trace DNA. We don't know if it was
the saliva. We don't know why it was sent to a private lab when
FBI Forensics at Quantico is more than capable of taking care of this. We
don't know what DNA technique was used to test this. The other thing that
was very notable to me was the fact that they stated that had Jackson been
alive at the time of the press conference, that he absolutely would have been
charged not only with two counts of murder, but also with rape. That
is new. That is new. Rice notably was not charged with rape.
I have the medical examiner's reports. No semen was found, no sperm were
found. I'm not saying that Lolly and Julie were not raped. We've always
believed that this was a sexual crime, and we've always believed that Julie was
a target. But that's a bomb drop that all of a sudden we know
without the fact that these two women were raped. So based on what exactly,
and again I'm not doubting the findings, but I am saying it is
notable that they are not explaining any of these findings, and after twenty eight
years of maintaining that Julie and Lollie were not sexually assaulted to come out and
say that they were sexually assaulted. Again, I agree with you, Kate.
I'm not disputing what they're saying. They owe us more, and I
don't mean the three of us, Kristen, Kate, and Bill. They
owe all of us more of an explanation than we're getting for them to come
out and say the two women were sexually assaulted. Okay, by what evidence?
How did you solve this case? How did you connect Jackson and Kate?
As you're saying, this evidence has been sitting in evidence lockers since nineteen
ninety six, So what's new here? Their failure to answer basic questions about
how they solved this. I get the fact that Special Agent charge Meter is
proud of the fact that when he came in and took over that Richmond office,
he ordered a top to bottom review of this case. As I understand
it, that's great. So what did they find. We're not taking Jackson
to court here, There isn't there There aren't going to be any charges filed.
But I think we deserve answers to these questions, and we're just starting
on the first pass here. Now, you recently sent a letter to the
FBI with a series of questions. I did, and I asked them a
variety of questions, including what DNA was retested, what evidence was retested.
I asked them what mechanism was used to retest it. I asked why a
private lab was used. I asked whether there was any DNA found that was
not Jackson, Lay and Julie. I asked whether there was going to be
an internal investigation. I asked whether there was going to be an apology for
Daryl Rice. I asked whether these results were loaded to CODIS. I asked
whether they were going to be compared to some of the very similar crimes that
happened, including Alicia Showalter Reynolds, and I was told that no further information
would be forthcoming and that they would not be answering these or any other questions.
Those are questions very similar to things that our listeners are also asking.
One that I think was particularly interesting is from a listener who lives in that
area of Virginia. Karen says, does Leo does Leo Jackson have links to
Virginia and what is the probability that he could be the perpetrator in other unsolved
cases in Virginia during the times he was not incarcerated. I am not trying
to pin every unsolved case on him, but we now know he was in
Virginia at least one time. It is so scary to think we had multiple
creeps praying on the area of the Commonwealth that I deem a safe place to
live, work and raise my daughters. And I think Karen's bringing up a
great point here, what do you think about whether or not he might be
linked to some of these other crimes. I realize it's only supposition on our
parts, but do you want to lay that out a little bit? Sure?
Absolutely, What the FBI tells us is that he was an avid hiker.
Again, it's not clear to me how and why they know that,
but assuming that they're telling us the truth here, we know that we know
that he was a serial rapist. What forensic profilers are telling me is,
Look, it's a really big jump from being a serial rapist to someone who
commits a very sophisticated, very controlled double homicide of two strong outdoor leaders who
also have a dog with them. This is a person who arrived with a
murder kit. This is a person we know who had duct tape, who
had a very large serrated knife, who knew how to commit this crime in
a way that would leave very little trace. So the idea that this that
Jackson would go from serial rape to super sophisticated controlled double homicide doesn't really work,
doesn't really track with many people, and so probably we don't know.
But probably if Jackson is in fact the perpetrator here, there's some middle,
pretty big middle chapter we don't know about where he went from rape to double
homicide in such a controlled way. The other question, then, of course,
is what we know. Obviously, there are plenty of serial killers and
violent offenders who stop killing and go on to live lives, so it is
possible that would happen. But it's also a little improbable that this person would
make the jump from serial rape to sophisticated double homicide and then return to rape,
which we know he did almost immediately within, but then not return to
killing. That doesn't seem likely. It's possible, but it doesn't seem likely.
Is it the case, for instance, that Jackson is in fact responsible
for other murders? I think that's likely. To what degree are we looking
at? Has the FBI, for instance, formed a special task force,
which they did very briefly with mark of Hoonness, but then disbanded that task
force before it had done any work. I think that these are all again
questions that need to be answered, and what I'm being told by experts in
the field is that probably there was at least one, if not multiple murders
between rape and Lolly and Julie. So what's being done to parse that out.
Some of our experts have told us about escalation, and we've talked about
how offenders will start and they'll grow. This is not in the positive sense,
but they'll grow into extreme violence, which ultimately may lead them to crimes
like this involving rape and murder. I'm disturbed that they seem to be saying
he's over here in Ohio committing pretty heinous rapes and the word kidnapping has been
used as well. Yees correct at my point, which is good right now,
but that could be part of a pattern of escalation, without question,
But they're really failing to address how they think this guy got to this point.
One other thing I'm terribly disturbed about is they made this statement that this
was not a hate crime I don't know if this was a hate crime.
I don't know that it wasn't a hate crime, and I'm sure not very
comfortable with the FBI blithely announcing this was not a hate crime, because Kathy
and Becky's murder in the Colonial Parkway murders could be a hate crime as well.
I don't know yet if it is or it isn't. I hope to
have answers someday. I don't know how they can make this statement that the
murder of Julie Williams and Lawley Wining's was not a hate crime. By what
standard of evidence are you telling me you've researched this exceptionally violent, horrible man's
history, because you're not finding any overt expressions of homophobia or a hatred of
lesbians. He certainly is someone I could argue hates women on some level.
He's out attacking women repeatedly. Where does the FBI get off suddenly announcing,
oh, this wasn't a hate crime? Is that because they made such a
big deal back in the DARYLD David Rice era that this was a hate crime
and now that we've clearly screwed up and that wasn't the right guy, and
now we finally identified the offender. Oh, but it's not a hate crime
because that's sterile David Rice's department. For anybody who wasn't able to watch the
press conference, I want to put that remark in context here for a second.
This is what was said with regard to the hate crime or not hate
crime aspect. Quote, make no mistake, this crime was brutal. This
crime was definitionally hateful. Nevertheless, we do not have any evidence that the
victims were selected for, or that Jackson had any knowledge of, or was
otherwise motivated by their membership in a protected class. Quote hate You want to
sure, Leena. First, I want to say that there's the legal definition
of hate crime, and then there's the social reality of hate crime. This
was absolutely a hate crime in the sense that it did, in fact mean
that a lot of people who identify as feminine or female or queer felt like
they could not go to the wilderness after this crime occurred, and in that
regard, it had the impact of a hate crime on an entire generation of
people. The legal definition of hate crime means that you're identifying someone because of
certain protected groups, and you mentioned that, so obviously in this case,
it's Lolly and Julie's sexuality. I think it's very important to remind folks that
investigators did not believe that this was a hate crime going into this, and
that what investigators told me is that they were blind sided in two thousand and
two when John Ashcroft announced that he was going to be treating this as a
hate crime, because they had no evidence of that. In fact, it
took them quite a while to realize that Lolly and Julie were in a same
sex relationship, and again to prove that this was a hate crime, which
was a pretty political stunt. In my opinion, This is right in the
wake of September eleventh, John Ashcroft and the DOOJA is under tremendous pressure to
show that they're going to be tough on hate crimes, which at that time
we're escalating against Muslim Americans, people who looked like Muslim or Middle Eastern Americans.
They were under a ton of pressure from various groups to show that they're
going to be willing to take action. In the spring of two thousand and
two, they announced the indictment against Rice, and they announced that they would
be training it as a hate crime. What is very important here is the
evidence that they use to substantiate that. After a very long interrogation, Darryl
Rice was returned to a holding cell where a jailhouse snitch was wearing a wire.
And I have this transcript in which Daryl says, this is crap,
basically, and the snitch says, what do you mean? And Darryl says,
they keep trying to get me to say that I hate gay people,
and the snitches that's bullshit, and Daryl's like, that's right. And what
they did is they clipped that recording so that it just said I hate gay
peace, and they used that to seek the death penalty against Daryl Rice when
it was clearly taken completely out of contact. So prior to that moment,
there was no evidence that Rice or anyone else even knew about Lolly and Julie's
sexuality. So again this is the flip flopping. We don't know if the
perpetrator knew Lolly and julie sexuality. We will probably never know that, but
they from ninety six until two thousand and two it was not a hate crime,
and the perpetrator didn't know then. From two thousand and two, until
twenty twenty four, definitely a hate crime. Definitely Daryl Rice and now all
of a sudden summer of twenty twenty four, definitely not a hate crime based
on what and why are you flip flopping without again giving us any reason for
these changes. I was shocked that they brought it up. There's so much
about this. This just doesn't pass the smell test here. They're not giving,
not even close to complete information. It'd be one thing if they actually
sat members of the media down and took some pride in their work and showed
us how they got to where they got to in terms of identifying Jackson.
There's some great work that went into this case, and there's probably some real
aha moments from people whose names we will never know by not explaining their work,
especially given all the screw ups and all the wrong headed, waste of
time approaches in this case, focusing on Rice and then refusing to even consider
other alternative suspects, suddenly wanting to wrap this all up in a tight little
bow, this perfect little package. It just isn't working. This press conference
was woefully inadequate. If anything creates more questions than any answers that it would
have provided. And let's look at other recent cold cases, like high profile
cold cases that have been solved. The folks at Parabon Nano has done some
great work with all the genetic forensics. We've seen some high profile cases solved
where the investigators rightly stand up and proudly take credit for the work. And
yes, they should and we should all be really impressed, right, So
I'm not bemoaning that. Think about a case like Dark Angelo, for instance,
where they're like, look, here's what we did. We took his
trash, we found a coffee cup, we took DNA from the coffee cup,
we loaded it to I don't know what it was, twenty three and
meters or ancestry dot com or whatever, and we got this hit of his
aunt or in the case of the BTK killer right where all of a sudden
they're like, look, we went in and we got the pat smear results
of his daughter and used that. So they've been very clear about how they
did their work, because again, we don't want to interfere with investigations when
they're happening. Investigations need to be largely secret. That's fine. You don't
need to tell us what you're doing while you're doing it. But in a
case like this, what are they losing by telling us how they did this
work? I would argue absolutely nothing. I would argue again, I'm super
curious why a private lab, Why did you need that? Again, what
were you testing or retesting? And why is it not in the public's best
interest to know? When I asked them through a foyer request to tell me
whether or not Mark A. Vonnitz's DNA has been loaded to COTIS, because
probably it hasn't been, I was told that it was not in the public's
best interest to know if a known serial killer's DNA was loaded to codis.
How is that a defendable position? Yeah, which probably just means no,
they haven't loaded it and they don't want to admit it. Any kind of
non answer like that makes me go then you know the answer is no,
you didn't load it. And are you looking at Jackson for instance? Alicia
Showalter Reynolds very tragic murder? What about Anne McDaniels, what about Philmas Froggins,
What about these other people who are about the spate of crimes? We
may never know to what degree those are ongoing investigations or to what degree any
of these now known perpetrators are being compared to these other similar and contemporaneous crimes.
We have so many more questions for Kayden, so much more to discussing,
so many more opportunities for Bill to rail against the FBI, that we're
going to go ahead and continue this in a second episode for right now.
Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of mind Over Murder.
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 McLeod.
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space. Meetia Yeah.
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also
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listening to mind Over Murder.