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 Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. 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 Deavor Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley 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, One 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 Traut. 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 bragg. 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.
Audio book, which is really ably and expertly narrated by Gabra Zuckman, won
several awards. We just won the main Literary Award for twenty twenty three.
A 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, 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 Lally 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 like the fact that you started out with
pictures of Lally and Julian. You grounded everything in and 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 looking 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's
Margot Carpenter, and her company is called Hartdale 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 quietly evoking the style
of the National Park Service maps and guideboards 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 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
doesn't 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 and 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 before. For how do 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 and some of my very favorite photos of them. And obviously Lolly and
Julie can't consent to the photos and would be ideal if they could, but
the friends giving them to me offered their consent. And I think that,
you know what I've 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 photogra graphs? They're from one of
their cameras? Correct, So Lolli 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 back country 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
Lollie 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 Lollie
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 relative 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 in 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 secondhand 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 reexamine 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 secondhand 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 secondhand 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 Lali
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 I've never had it. The number of rape kits and DNA samples that
we've never tested, the number of DNA that we've never loaded to kodis.
This is a national endemic problem, and it's a crisis. I think it's
such 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 Doowski were
murdered, DNA hadn't come out of the lab. But by the time we
get to nineteen ninety six, when Lolly 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 Lolli 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 Avonet'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 Lolly
and Julie. We know we have fingerprints from the scene. Why would we
not test that. There's 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 really 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 move cases along all the time.
So I think it's beholding 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.
And 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
show Walter, who's the surviving mother of Alicia show Walter Reynolds, who was
killed about six weeks before Lolly and Julie, she didn't know that gloves had
been found at the scene of where Alicia's carr 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 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 like don't even can we
exclude even the DNA from those and the DNA from Allie 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 Avonets?
In particular? The most I think significant work that's happening on the Avonets front
is actually being spearheaded by Deirdre Enwright at the University of Virginia, and she
and her students have really been combing through a lot of the evidence that was
preserved from Avonitz'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 remember. And in the book I outline just a few
of the leads we have about ways in which he was predating on other women,
some of whom are still alive as well too, And so for me
it's very clear. I think that we don't know the breadth of Avonitz'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 Ivanetz's
history in terms of what we know who his 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 key details about of ants in 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 Kristen Lisk and Sophia Silva, two 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 kotis, 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. Of course, I don't understand how that's possible,
but 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 we're probably fairly young teenagers to grown women scrunches. 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 confirmed 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 teased through
these records of women he was pursuing in Chicago and Square that against women who
either went missing or were murdered or have called any kind of violent cases against
them. But the cousin for sure is not Vanitz. It's actually a separate
person. Correct. Wow, that's something I've never heard before. Well either,
Well, and his full name is Richard Mark Ivanits is that right?
Let see? And I'm interested too. Is he had a definite m and
he would bind the women in a particular way. He would kind of trade
them, usually was 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 mo down to the stolen car, which was another thing that Evanets 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 believed
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 to get some of the DNA that was taken from this particular crime
scene and to see if you can get it tested against of 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 surround
here, we are primarily Navy. Any luck in 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 Kolsch, 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 Kolsch
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 times, 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
Kolesh the ship itself. You're gonna have to check me on it, but
I'm going to try to remember that it's kol Sh. I'm not exactly sure
about that C, but that'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 Kolch, we'd love to talk to you.
And I know that many Navy ships, including the ly 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 Kolsch, we'd love to talk with you. The
idea of getting Richard markovan It's's service records is a really interesting one. And
one other quick thing in talking to my dad, who is also a NAP
officer, he had mentioned to me that when ships are in dry dock,
as Avonness'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 serverboard 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. Will be right back after this word from our sponsors.
We're back here at Mind over Murder. And we know that evanits 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 break about stealing cars
and how easy it was to hot wire cars. And again we know his
m O. And so when you take a look at this particular case.
You consider the man Dennis de 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 Vonets 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 Evans
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, in your safety in
it? Right about now, it's been about a year since this came out.
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 seeing
photos, and I know you two have had experience with this as well.
Having seen the crime, seeing photos and having them just really indelibly seared in
my brain, it is very difficult for me to be an a tent 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 serial rapist who attempts to approach me in the wilderness,
because that person is probably going to be going to the police claiming that they
are being harassed and threatened because I'm so And I do not say that as
a challenge, but I do say that I am 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 are 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 May, 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 pack off.
And whereas a tiny little canister of bear spray angling on your backpack, that
seems like a reasonable thing to have for a variety of reason, including gravid
animals, so that 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?
Critically, 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, and 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 part 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 stormtroopery 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 altar boy many years ago in 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. Well, I know you're familiar with this work, and
I don't know if your listeners are at Paul Burkowitz 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 harrishes 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 Christian
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 at large.
In the book Trailed, 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, and
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 the 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 I hate crime? Because Lollie and Julie's legal
case very famously became the first of ficial 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 i 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, as 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 were that 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. 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 in 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 and 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 had was experiencing PTSD and really found a sense
of renewal in hiking, which I think so many of us have. He
was attempting a 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 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
fan girl perspective. Here did you I saw you wrote two pieces about Scott
Jarek. Did you get to meet him. I did. Oh my god,
that's so cool. Yeah, And 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 Bell, Scott Jarek is a
He's an ultra runner and he made an FKT fastest fastest known time attempt to
run the eight 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 Jarek. Okay, that's so cool. Help well,
if I can recommend Jen far 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 in 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 recovering 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 a huge part of why that's my christ And
I know you run five ks I would rather run fifty miles in a five
K. I feel like five k's are the most painful thing ever, where
it's 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 like
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 and root you on. We're
so thrilled that you were able to spend some time talking with this 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. I know better than that,
and I'm already grateful the number of favors I need to repaid to Bill
Thomas our 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 Kristen 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.
Kay. After your talk and afterwards, I stumbled back to my hotel
room and I think I was 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. Okay, 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 episode. 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 McLeod.
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral 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