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
and 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 minde or Murder. I'm Kristin
Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by reporter and podcaster Paul
Wagner of the American Nightmare podcast. Paul, thank you so much for joining
us today. Can't thank you guys enough for having me. I love your
podcast, and so it's a thrill to be questioned by you guys. As
we were saying off air, Paul, usually you're the guy asking the tough
questions. That's fine, it's just go ahead. I'm an open book.
Hit Before we start talking about the podcast, let's actually go ahead and start
with you and tell us a little bit about how you got your start in
broadcasting. So when I was fourteen years old growing up just outside New York
City in northern New Jersey, I was fascinated by New York radio and I
would mimic all the DJs, and I just thought it was the coolest thing.
And I lived in a neighborhood where we had people that lived that worked
in the news business and worked for the big networks. Our next door neighbor
worked for ABC, another network, I'm sorry. Another neighbor worked for ABC
Television, another one for ABC Radio, another one worked for CBS, and
so I was always questioning them about the business, and I was just fascinated
with it. And so when I went to high school, we had a
little radio station there. And then in college, I went to one year
of college at William Patterson College in Wayne, New Jersey, but they had
what was called a carrier current. You could only hear the station in the
buildings. And I then had an opportunity to go to Mount Saint Mary's College
in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and they had at ten watt radio station, so
you could hear the radio station anywhere around the campus in your car, and
it was just so cool. I just thought that was the neatest thing.
And then while I was at school, I got my first professional job at
WYCRFM in Hanover, Pennsylvania, was a top forty station, and so I
did the news and I did some djaying, and then I went home for
a year, went on a backpacking trip to Europe, and then I came
home and my dad kicked me out of the house. He said, go
down to Washington, DC. Moveing with your sister. He says, she's
got an open room. Go find a job. And it was so fortuitous,
and the timing was just serendipitous. I get down there and there's a
little company called Metro Traffic Control that was starting up and they were they were
looking for mobile reporters that would go out in the rush hours and report on
traffic. And I'm a young guy and I'm like, oh, this is
pretty cool. And it didn't pay anything, but it got my start in
broadcasting. And my claim to fame in that job was that I was giving
binoculars in a two way radio and told to go to the top of the
Washington Monument and report from the top of the Washington Monument on all the bridges
across the Potomac River. So I did that for a few years, and
then I really clamped down on myself and I said, if I'm going to
be a newsman, I got to find a news job. And I started
at a news station here and I'm sorry, it was an oldie station here
in Washington, DUC and I did the news there for a couple of years.
Then I landed a job at the Associated Press. And then I'd been
after WTOP News Radio for a job because it was a union job and I
needed a union job because I wasn't getting paid anything. And one day,
just out of the blue, Top called me and said, hey, we
got a job for you. Would you like to come to work here.
I say all that to say. I spent eleven years at WTOP Radio,
and then I jumped over to television and went to Fox five DC and I
was a reporter there for twenty one years, and then I took a buy
out and while I was producing podcasts for WTOP, WRC called and said we
could really use another reporter and can you come and help us out. So
I'm now working there part time, and then I'm producing the podcast, the
American Nightmare Podcast for WTOP. So let's it in a nutshell. One of
the questions that Kristen and I wanted to ask you. You're very unique in
that you've worn these different broadcaster hats. You start out in radio, then
you go over to television for a twenty one year run, which is amazing
that you were at one station for twenty one years. Then you're doing podcasting
and radio, and now you're back into television. What's your take on the
various platforms radio, television, and now podcasting. What's similar and it's different
about those three types of transmissions, if you will. Very good question.
So with radio, I was compartmentalized to thirty five seconds a story, and
it just can't tell a story in thirty five seconds, and that frustrated me.
Fortunately, I had been developing sources while I was at WTOP, and
I started breaking a lot of stories, and there was a news director at
Fox five that found out and was listening to my stories and decided, let's
give this radio guy a try and took a chance on me. And what
I really enjoyed doing by going over there was that I was going to get
a lot more time to tell the story. And so I was going to
get two maybe three minutes if I'm really lucky to tell a story, and
I think you can tell a good TV story in about two minutes. When
I started seeing what podcasting was doing, I was just enthralled by it because
I was like, wait a minute, you can really get into a story
with podcasts and there's no time limit and you can add and subtract and nobody's
going to tell you sorry, you can't have that amount of time. And
our series have some of them have gone forty five minutes, gone an hour,
but based on what I had and what I thought was interesting, and
so I think the podcast format is my favorite at this point because of the
ability to be able to just add everything and not leave anything out, because
in TV you're always leaving something out. Yeah, that's what I love about
it, and that's definitely something that we like to being able to depend as
much time as we need to a subject so that you can really get all
of the information out there exactly for anybody who's not familiar with American Nightmare,
go ahead and give us a summary and a breakdown about American Nightmare. So
what happened was Fox five offered me a buyout. And I was at that
time in my early sixties, and the buyout was a nice chunk of change.
And I went to my wife and I said, what do you think?
And she said, you got to take the money because I was coming
up on being able to take my pension. And then I had this story
that I really wanted to tell in a podcast, and I'd already done one
podcast for Fox five. I did it on a notorious murder here in the
City, which is soon going to be a Peacock documentary that I'm part of.
I did a podcast for Fox five, and so that gave me the
taste was like of what podcasts can do and how fun they are to put
together. And so I took the buy out and I had this story and
I started writing it. I took a summer and I wrote the story,
and I had to get the three children of the murder victim to agree to
tell their stories. It wasn't easy. They were a little apprehensive, but
I was able to talk them into it, and fortunately their stories came out
and were just so touching to hear what happened to them and their mother,
and so that was called murder in a Safe Place. It was Sherry Crandall
was her name. She was a nurse and she was murdered inside her office
at a hospital in Prince George's County, Maryland in nineteen ninety eight, and
so that's why we called it murder in a Safe Place. At the end
of that summer, I talked to several good friends who frequently give me advice,
and I said, what do you think I should do with this?
And they said, why don't you take it to a news organization, because
you're going to need a backer. You're going to need somebody to support you.
And so I approached the Washington Post. They weren't interested, but I
went to Wtop and they jumped on it immediately and they wanted it. And
part of the reason they wanted is because they have a steak Hubbor Broadcasting is
a stake in a server called podcast one, and they were looking for stories.
And I went trying to contract with them to get this thing going and
off the ground. And fortunately they had a really good editor there who helped
me, and we basically rewrote the whole podcast and then yeah, I know,
but it turned out so much better because I can write, but having
an editor is a good thing. So that's how it came together. And
it's an open end to deal with WTOP and then I came up with the
second one called Unknown Subject, which is out now, which has got nine
episodes, and now I'm looking for a new subject. One of questions was,
so you've done several seasons, how do you choose the cases you want
to cover. That's a very good question. So the twenty one years I
was at Fox five, I got to know a lot of cops, and
I got to know a lot of cold case cops, and I was fascinated
with cold cases. And the boss at Fox five then gave me what we
call at the time of franchise, and so every Saturday night I'd feature a
cold case and it was usually an extended story, something that was like five
minutes long, and that's long for w for television. I got to know
a lot of cops, and so I got to know and hear about a
lot of these cold cases. And with Sherry Crandell, I got to know
the detective many years ago, and I featured her murder on Channel five and
then I stayed in touch with the detective, and I stayed in touch with
Sherry's daughter, Tiffany. So after I took the buyout, I approached Tiffany
and I said, what would you think about me telling your mother's story in
a podcast. It took a little bit of persuasion because she wasn't really clear
on what a podcast really was. Her brother, excuse me, her brother,
Darren, as a cop. He was a little apprehensive, but he
came around. And so once they had agreed to it, and then I
called the detective and I said, look, I got the kids on board,
will you do it? He said he would, and then wtop when
I went to them, they said, all right, if they're all on
board, you need to go to the police and tell them you need an
open book on this case because can't do this story and say sources say this,
and sources say that. We need to be able to say what we
know about this case. And I fortunately knew the former commander of homicide who
also agreed to take part, and so that's how it all came together.
Yeah, one of the things that I was very curious about, is is
the level of cooperation from law enforcement, because we know from personal experience that
there are times when law enforcement is a little leary of getting involved in media
and podcasts and various other things. It seems pretty clear that your relationships with
lawn forcemen have helped you. Oh, there's no question. Fortunately, he
built a good reputation here in town. And because I had so many cop
friends, so they all talk to each other, and I knew that they
were talking to each other about can you really trust Wagner? And can you
tell them things and tell him it's off the record and he's going to trust
you. And I'm sure some of them tested me on that. But yeah,
that And the other part to this too is that although the detective in
Murder in a Safe Place is still the lead detective and he still works for
the Prince George's County Police, most of the others were already retired. It's
easier to get a detective to open up if they've been retired, because they
feel they feel like they can speak more freely, rather than having the Public
Information Office breathing down their neck saying you have to be careful in what you're
going to say, So that's that's part of it and an unknown subject.
A lot of the people that I talked to were retired and that helped as
well. So talk to us a little bit about the case that is at
the heart of unknown subject. Just give us a little brief overview of that
if you would. Wow. I know, but it's possible. I let
me tas let me try and explain it this way. When I was at
Fox five, I covered Christiemer's Ion's murder. She was a brilliant doctoral candidate
scientist and she was walking home from a party one night in Georgetown and she
got pulled into a wooded area and just brutally murdered. I stayed on that
story for years, and I stayed in touch with the detectives who were covering
it. I broke several stories about it, including the link. At one
time, it was seven years later, a detective pulled me aside and told
me that there's a DNA link between Christine's murder and a series of rapes in
Montgomery County, Maryland that had never been reported before. I broke that angle
of the story and then just kept at it. Once I had finished murder
in a safe place. I figured this was a good one to do because
they had made an arrest in the case. So I guess the short version
of this story is that this was a man named Giles Warwick who worked in
construction in Montgomery County, Maryland, and he was accused of going out at
night and committing these awful, vicious rapes and then he stopped because the cops
couldn't find DNA after a certain period of time, so after nineteen ninety eight,
So from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninety eight, they knew they had
a DNA trail from this guy. They knew they had the same guy,
they just didn't know who it was. So years go by, and then
the FBI gets involved, and then they dubbed him the Potomac River rapist and
that got national attention, and then the case just went cold again. It
didn't go anywhere. They had the DNA, of course in codis, but
it wasn't hitting on anything. And it's just this guy went off the grid
in two eighteen into nineteen. The police decided to try genetic genealogy and that's
how they found him. The story is just so involved it's hard to just
encapsulate it. But yeah, the thrilling part about the story is that I
got a lot of people to talk to me. I got a lot of
people to tell me their views on the case and what they did on the
case. And then the timing worked out perfectly for us because he was going
to trial, and as he was going to trial, the US Attorney's Office
here in the District of Columbia was releasing more and more information. And so
as I was writing the final versions of the podcast, we were getting all
these new documents and all this new information. And so I was on the
phone with a producer at WTOP and we're talking about what we should add,
what we should leave out, and then we got the gift of a lifetime.
Anybody in TV news or RAYU news will tell you that getting something like
this is just a gift that you just don't get all the time. And
that is the US Attorney's office. The prosecutors were trying to convince the judge
to allow them to introduce certain evidence, and they introduced the two interviews that
Giles Warwick did with the police in his house before they arrested him. Then
the next day, after they arrested him. Once they introduced it into evidence
in the courthouse, it's public record. So I went to the judge and
said, we're requesting copies of these interviews, and the judge turned them over,
and so we were able to include them in the podcast, which just
I thought made the last episode eight just really I just think it's sounded fantastic
having that guy in there that seems so unusual, and listening to the podcast,
and then to have the interview with the suspect at his home and they're
having this kind of quiet conversation but it's about critical information. They're easing into
it. I remember when they're asking him if you ever lived in Maryland,
and you can picture them probably at this guy's kitchen table or something, just
easing into it, and the guy is allowing himself to begin to tell the
story. But I don't remember ever hearing interviews like that before. I mean,
that sounds exceptionally rare. That's what's so exciting about genetic genealogy is they
went on November seventh, twenty nineteen, to talk with relatives that they thought
were connected to the unknown subject. Okay, and so they had narrowed it
down a one family tree and on the same day, several detectives went out
and interviewed family members to see about a missing link. They knew that it
was the killer was in this family tree, they just didn't know where he
fit. The detectives get this one person, this family members sits down and
the family member says, well, there's a part to our family that we
don't really talk about, and that is my father had an affair with a
woman, mother and a child, and so I have a half brother.
Wow. The bells went off, and the detectives got his name, and
they started running his name, and he had a criminal record, and he
lived in Montgomery County at the times that rapes were taking place in areas where
the rapes were happening. They had a real good feeling that this was the
guy they wanted. So they went to a judge and they got a warrant
for his DNA. But they realized that he was in South Carolina. So
if they got down to South Carolina with the warrant, there's an affidavit attached
to the warrant, and according to South Carolina law, if you carry out
and execute a search warrant, you have to give that person the affidavit,
which would then explain all of their evidence. So they said, that's not
what we're gonna do. We're gonna go and knock on his door, surprise
him. We're gonna record it with a little tape recorder, and we're gonna
sit there and just chat with him. Tell him this is what we're doing.
We're trying to eliminate people. There were a series of rapes in Montgomery
County back in the nineties and a woman was murdered, and that's what they
did. And they knew they had the search warrant in their back pocket if
he wouldn't give up his DNA. But as they were talking to him,
sitting on his couch in his living room at six thirty in the morning,
he agrees to give up his DNA. He just said okay. And at
least we're astonished. And the detective, Todd Williams, he looked at him.
He says, look, I just want you to know you can say
no. Okay, you can say no, but if you're giving up your
DNA now, you're giving it up voluntarily. And he just said okay,
and he did. And then they take the DNA and they have detectives outside
the house. They run outside with the swab, the buckle swab from the
DNA. They give it to the detective and then he and another detective race
back to Montgomery County, Maryland with the buckle swab and take it to the
lab and by about eleven o'clock that night, same night, they had a
direct match and they knew they had their guy. Wow. Yeah, in
a podcast that's full of twists and turns, and there's so much about the
way you put the store together that's so compelling. But I remember sitting there
literally on the edge of my seat when we got to the place where they're
interviewing him and he agrees to give up this DNA, and yet they explained
to him, you don't have to do this. So it isn't like they
lied to the guy. Yeah, he's since passed on. But what made
you think that Charles Warwick just decided to give up his DNA. I think
that he knew he was cornered. In fact, I talked to Alison Depoye
about this, So, the detective from Montgomery County who made the arrest along
with Todd Williams. She thinks that he had a plan in his mind all
along on what was going to happen and what he was going to do if
police ever knocked on his door, and that he had a getaway plan.
And so he figured because the police told him, and of course they allowed
to lie, and they told him it would take six to eight weeks to
get their results back. Whether he ate that or not, I'm not sure,
but we do know that right after the police left, he started to
get his plan in place to take off. I don't know where he was
going to go, other than in the middle of the night, lights start
coming on inside his house. The police have the house under surveillance. They
realized he's on the move. They were waiting and waiting for the confirmation that
it was a direct match. As soon as they got that that it was
a direct match, the police officers were watching the house. They called Todd
and Allison, who were nearby at a motel, and said, we got
movement at this house. We need to go. They all went back to
the house, knocked on the door. He answers the door, and they
took him into custody and charged him. But he had laid out on his
kitchen counter his plan. He'd left a letter which we call the Consciousness of
Guilt letter where he apologizes to the woman he was living with, and he
signed over titles to certain things, whether it was a house or he had
he owned a house in Frederick County, Maryland, so he signed over some
titles. He left some cash, and he left this note, and then
he was going to go, and we don't know where he was going to
go, but the cops were watching the house and sorry, pal, we're
gonna lock you up. Are they planning on conducting a raid on the house
the next morning at six thirty am. Yes, that is correct. So
their plan was to go and arrest him the next morning at six thirty in
the morning. But that's why they had the house under surveillance. They just
had no idea what this guy had planned. They got a sense that he
knew the jig was up, that he was done, because he's not a
dummy. He knew by giving up his DNA that was probably going to be
the end. But they had also lied and said it was going to take
six to eight weeks to get results, so he probably thought he had time
to get away. Tell us a little bit about it, and I love
this name for the record, tell Us about Steve Smugs smugger Ski. He's
the bike cop who worked on this case. Talk to us a little bit
about him. That is just the best name I have ever heard in my
life. It's fantastic. Steve is a revelation as far as being a bike
cop who was curious about ancestry, knew how to do searches on computers,
and made himself available to the police to do some of this work. This
was before genetic genealogy really started to grab hold. And so he was a
bike cop working downtown in Silver Spring, Maryland. Yeah, he goes by
Smugs. Everybody calls him Smugs. His name is Steve smugg Oreski and just
a lovely guy. I've interviewed him a couple of times now. He solved
the unsolvable. He solved the unsolvable. Yeah, that's what's just so fascinating
about it. And so the backstory to Steve very quickly. The police at
one point wanted to hold ceremony, hold a ceremony for all of the family
members of fallen officers, okay, and they couldn't find a family member from
their first fallen officer back in nineteen twenty something like that. The police went
to Steve and said, hey, do you think you might be able to
dig into this. You liked this kind of stuff. He said, sure,
let me try, and so he did, and he found a relative
that the police never knew about. And now they come to the ceremony every
year and they honor this officer who had died back in nineteen twenty one.
So the cold case guys are going, wait a minute, smugs, I
think you need to come up here and help us out. Yeah, some
new cases. He then solved two or three very quickly, stuff via DNA
that they'd had for years that they had no idea who it was, and
they sent it out to Parabon Nanola. I don't know if your listeners know
about Parabond. Yeah. Yeah, So Parabon they put this DNA into jet
Match, and before you know it, they've given Steve these leads to follow.
And it's a case involved in a shopkeeper who was murdered inside his store
in Comas, Maryland, back in the early nineties. The cops could just
not solve this case. The DNA just was not hitting anywhere. They didn't
have any suspects. But suddenly Steve starts working on it. And he finds
a family tree that seems to be working. And a long story short,
they zeroed in on the killer's brother. First, they went and talked to
him, determined that he wasn't the killer, and then they went down to
Virginia Beach and they got DNA from his brother and it was a direct match.
And he was married to a retired DC police officer, and he was
working as a mechanic. And from what we can tell, he had never
committed another crime where he was caught for or prosecuted for. So it was
as if he had committed this one horrible crime, killing the shopkeeper, and
then never did anything again. That case was such a mystery too, because
do we ever figure out like a motive for that particular homicide. I remember
when that case broke a couple of years ago. I'm trying to think of
his name right now. Right now, I'm drawn a blank on the victim's
name, but I interviewed his daughter. Lovely, lovely person. Basically,
it was a robbery on bad He had gone into the shop, the shopkeeper
was working by himself. He went to buy a bottle of wine, and
then he smashed the bottle and used it as a weapon to get money,
and in the course of stabbing the shopkeeper, he cut himself right and then
as he was leaving the shop, his blood was dripping out the door.
The police knew that this was the killer's blood, They knew it was his
DNA, but they couldn't get anywhere right, nothing in code is now and
then Steve solves the unsolvable. It's really incredible. Yeah, and he's done
it with a few other cases too. Yeah. I've actually spoken to Steve
over the phone. A super nice guy and incredibly modest about solves in his
own capability. And the guy's actually a rock star. Yeah, Oh,
he totally is. In fact, when I interviewed him for murder in the
safe place, he got emotional. He said he thought he was getting help
from upstairs. And I said, and he started to get choked up,
and I said, so you think a higher being is helping you, Steve?
He goes, I do. Yeah, pretty incredible, it really is.
Maybe he's right very well. Could pay you're listening to Mind over Murder.
We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here
at Mind over Murder. You've been in the journalism business for good amount of
time now, and I know that you've seen the technology for solving crimes just
explode, especially over the last couple of years with forensic genetic genealogy. Do
you foresee yourself continuing to do crime podcasting and crime reporting and what do you
foresee continuing to happen with the way that we solve and report on crimes.
I can't wait to get another one going. I just gotta get the right
one because I need six episodes for a series. You can't just do it
with the one or two. You really need to have a story that will
get people to jump from one episode to the next one. So I have
some ideas, but nothing SOLIDI just yet. When I interviewed Todd Williams for
episode nine of Unknown Subject, Todd said that he's telling everybody in the DC
Police Department that will listen to him that genetic genealogy is the future. Yeah,
and that this is how we're going to solve the coldest of crimes.
And I can't agree with them more. I'm fascinated by it, and the
fact that my first two podcasts for WTOP involved genetic genealogy just to thrill from
me to be able to explain to people how it works, why it works,
why it's not an infringement on people's privacy. That's what I love being
able to do is these podcasts allow you to get down into the nitty gritty
and explain things. There's no cut off, there's no Paul, you can't
go longer than that. We've got it. And so I interviewed this guy,
John Fitzgerald, who is a former topic with the Montgomery County Police.
He's now the chief of police and the Chevy Chase Police Department. He took
an interest in genetic genealogy because he saw a few years ago there were these
Maryland at least one Maryland state legislator who wanted to legislate it out. Yeah,
they moved it. There are people in Annapolis that have completely moved in
the wrong direction. Yeah. And he saw that and he was like,
oh boy, I gotta jump in here. And he did, and he
was able to convince this legislator that his position on this was wrong because he
wanted an outlaw it completely to remember that. So so they there is there
is a law now in place that detectives have to follow if they want to
use genetic genealogy to solve a crime, they have to get an approval from
a judge, and so it's it's just another step for these detectives who are
trying to solve goal cases. Anyway, John, I was able to take
my interview with John and let him explain from beginning to end why it's important
and why it's not an infringement on privacy, and it just fit perfectly into
the podcast. Do you think those decisions made by some of the Maryland legislature
will impact solving cases using investigative genetic genealogy in a negative way. I stay
in touch with detectives who are trying to use genetic genealogy, and I think
if this was a barrier at this point, I'd be hearing about it,
and I'm not. I know that there's detectives who have a stack of cases,
and my understanding of it, at least the initial approach to it is
that they have to go to a judge with I've described it as an affidavit,
but they have not described it that way. They've described it as just
an explanation of what they want to do and then they just have to have
a judge sign it. It's not like a search warrant where you're looking for
probable cause. At this point, I haven't heard any kind of adverse moves
by legislators in Annapolis to put a damper on this kind of investigator work.
But I'll tell you this, the more that you can highlight the successes of
it, I think the less these legislators are going to have any kind of
backing. Is there a case that you're particularly familiar with that you would like
to see genetic genealogy used on that hasn't had the treatment done to it yet,
Kristen, that's a loaded question. She's good at though. I know
that they're working on cases right now with genetic genealogy. But let me tell
you about one case that I did back in October. I have a good
friend who's a retired assistant US attorney here in the District of Columbia. We
have to use the US Attorney's office because we're not a state and so we
don't have an elected prosecutor. Her name is Deb Signs, and Deb told
me, she goes, I really want you to shine a light on this
case. She put me in touch with the brother of one of the victims,
and then she gave me some other information that was public record. She
wasn't doing anything on tour, she was just steering me in the right direction.
It was two women who were murdered inside the same apartment building, on
the same floor, two or three doors apart, three years apart, both
killed in the both killed in the same manner. Now. One of the
women, her name was Flo Esselene. She was a Harvard graduate and she'd
come down to DC to work for a law firm. And then there was
another woman named Greta Rainey, and Greta was killed after flow. I started
talking to Bernard, FLOE's brother, and he really wanted to do a story
and we talked for weeks about it and how we could put it together because
it was just going to be there is DNA, but it hasn't gotten anywhere.
And then it was serendipitous. Bernard, as we're talking, gets a
phone call from a cold case detective in the DC Police Department and he goes,
look, I've got some information. We want to tell a story.
We want to get this information out. I know they knew that I was
talking to Bernard, because sure exactly how I think. I emailed questions about
it and so the cops in the cold case and it knew that I was
looking into the case. Turns they took the DNA from both of these cases,
which that's a whole another story that goes down a rabbit hole. But
it was very hard to get the DNA because they were on slides from the
Medical Examiner's office from years ago. How far back in these cases go,
Yeah, some mid to early eighties. The fascinating thing was, and Sara
serendipitous, as I say, is that while I was talking to Bernard about
doing a story, the cold case detective calls Bernard and says, hey,
I've got some news. We not only have gotten profiles from the DNA,
which we hadn't had before, but we put it into codis and they linked.
So we now know the same man killed Greta and killed Flow and they
don't know who it is. It's another unknown subject. Yeah, and there
that's another that's one of those genetic genealogy cases. It's a perfect case for
genetic genealogy. Yeah, but like I said, it goes just goes down
to rabbit hole if I try to explain it. But it was DNA that
they never had put into profiles. For years and years and years because they
were on slides and they were afraid to open the slides. That's my slides
from the Medical Examiner's office back when they were doing rape kids, before anybody
knew that you could get DNA. So when the cold case detectives started looking
into these cases and realized they had these slides, they finally opened them and
then linked the cases, and they had workable DNA samples from those slides cases
stretching back into the nineteen eighties. We've reminded our listeners when we talk about
the Colonial Parkway murders and my sister Kathy and her girlfriend Rebeccadowski's murders, as
well as the other murders in the Colonial Parkway cases. Those cases stretched from
eighty six to eighty nine, and even then DNA was barely making it out
of the lab at that point. Those of us that are living now in
twenty twenty three, you hear about these things and I think they've always been
around, but we're here to remind them, Yes, these things have not
been around that long. We're talking about science that's only thirty or so years
old. Any case like these two related cases for flow and Greta's murder.
Very strange to have two women killed in the same apartment building a couple of
years aparted. There's a linkedge right there, even before they had the codis
hit. Very strong chance, even before they linked them scientifically, that those
two assaults were somehow related. Well, it might be your next podcast right
there. You may have hit on something, you know. I can't find
Gretta Rainey's family. We don't know where they are. She's oh, I
haven't been able to get that. And as when you're doing these stories,
you gotta have a family, but you gotta have Yeah, it's somebody that
can put the emotion into it. And Bernard is a wonderful guy and flows
brother flos brother, right, yeah, and so yeah, he had been
in touch with several people over the years asking about his sister's case, and
it talked to lots of people like who are constantly wondering what's happened to my
case, to my sister's case, mother's case, mother's case, And occasionally
they come to me and then I make calls and try and help them out
and see what there is out there. And with Bernard, because Deb signs
the AUSA, she's retired now. Because she told me to look into it
and put me in touch with Bernard. That's how we were able to put
it all together. So we did that story, I think back in October,
and so you can google it and look it up. Rainey sounds like
an unusual enough name that you might be able to find some relatives somewhere.
I talked to the cold case detective about it. His name is Dan Whale,
and he's been there a long time. He said that they found they
think they found a brother in law living somewhere down in the Norfolk area,
but they haven't been able to make a connection. And that was back in
October when I was talking to him about that. So it could be that
they've made some connection. Yea, until you can get a family member halfway
there with Bernard at least able to speak for Flo's family. Oh yeah,
definitely. Yeah. She was a really young woman. She graduated from Harvard
and came down to work for a law firm. She was working as a
paralegal, and she just she's one of these young ladies they just wanted to
go off on her own. She grew up in New York. Now here's
a little twist of the story that I'll throw at you. One of the
reasons why this case got so much attention at the time is because three other
women from the same law firm all ended up being murdered. Is this in
Virginia or in No. Two here in DC and one in Prince George's County.
But they are not related and we know that for a fact, because
yeah, so we know now because of DNA that the same person killed Floe
and Greta Rainey. This other person, her name was Katherine Schilling. There
was a man named Donald Gates who was railroaded by prosecutors using junk science to
prosecute him send him to prison for over twenty years for killing Katherine Shilling.
And they found DNA in that case and tested it and determined that he was
not the killer who was let out of present and he wanted a lawsuit.
Because of the lawsuit, the US Attorney's office decided to see if they could
find the real killer in Codis And this was a little complicated that the prosecutor
told me he had to do a keyboard search, and I'm not sure what
that is. But in any event, they found the real killer of Katherine
Schilling. But he's dead. So they know that a different man killed Katherine
Schilling, and they know a different man killed Flow. And then there's a
third woman. They believed that she was killed during a robbery outside an apartment
in Prince George's county. So the three are not related. But for years
it was the talk of chatter amongst people about how three women who all worked
for the same law firm ended up getting murdered. It does seem awfully strange.
I would imagine that sometimes you do have detectives, current or retired detectives
that would like you to explore in cases that have stuck. Oh definitely,
Oh absolutely, that was the case with Flow for sure. Dan Whalen,
when the commander in charge of cold case found out that I was looking into
the murder, he told the cold case detective and then for weeks Bernard and
I were just chatting and we hadn't come up with an idea on how we
were going to tell the story. And then when they got the connection with
the DNA through CODIS and linking those two murders, Dan Whalen said to Bernard.
He called Bernard and he said, this case needs to have some light,
and I know Paul is working on this case with you, would you
do a story? And Bernard was of course, so he came down in
October and I interviewed him, and I interviewed the commander of homicide, and
then we put the story together. So was this a radio story or a
television story? Oh? Is it television story for Channel four? Yeah,
we'd love to see that. Boy, this sounds fascinating and I was not
familiar with this case until you started telling us the story. Yeah, I'll
send you a link if you just type a flow name. It's it's a
Haitian name, so it's hard to spell, but it's pronounced Florence Esslin.
And in fact, if you just if you think, if you google Florence
Esseln and Queta Rainey and Paul Wagner, it'll come out. It'll come up.
Will include that in the show notes for this interview as well. This
is fascinating. Yeah, it's amazing that these two women could be connected in
death. And this sounds like this would be perfect for genetic genealogy. Oh.
Absolutely, Like I said, the genetic genealogy is solving the unsolvable cases
that the detectives have been beaten their heads against a wall over for years and
sudden and suddenly this new technique comes along, and wow, it's just fascinating.
Of all of the cases that you've covered, and you've given us quite
a few at this point, is there one in particular that has such a
stranglehold on you that you're never going to be able to forget it, that
you'll always have a place in your heart for it. There are a number
of them. Some have been solved, and it's mainly because of the connections
that I made with family members. But there's a murder mystery here in DC
that fascinates everyone. As I mentioned off the top here, it's about to
become a peacock documentary, and it's about the murder of a young lawyer named
Robert Juan. And it's spelled wo Any Robert Juan. And Robert was murdered
inside a home in the DuPont Circle area back in two thousand and six.
I believe it was he was stabbed to death and there were three people inside
the home at the time that he was stabbed. No one has been charged
with Robert's murder, but the three men who lived in the house, who
were all a polyamorous family. They were charged with obstruction of justice and a
charge with conspiracy and tampering with evidence. I believe too. Anyway, it
was a sensational trial, sensational trial. It was just one of those trials
I covered the Chandra Levy trial. This one was just off the charts with
people's interest in it. And anyway, they chose a bench trial rather than
a jury trial, and they were they were acquitted. The story is so
involved, it's just it's so involved. I can't even encapsulate it for you.
There is a podcast out there that I did called The Mystery on Swan
Street, and then I am also the narrator of this upcoming documentary now I
don't know if they've named it yet, but I recently did some more work
on it and it's coming from Peacock. That case is when you talk with
fellow reporters who've been around forever, and the Robert wien Cost case always comes
up, and people just are fascinated with tossing ideas around on what happened.
In fact, there was an audible podcast done on it back I think two
years ago. So yeah, there's a different one than you did, a
different one than I did. I took part in it. I was interviewed.
I was interviewed for it, and I don't remember the name of it,
to be honest with you, but I'm sure we could find that case.
The prosecutor that had that case, he feels like the judge in the
case, Lynn Leibowitz, was her name. She wrote a seventeen page opinion
on why she couldn't convict the men, and he feels as if that she
could have convicted them, but she said that she couldn't get past the reasonable
doubt and so she acquitted them. And there have been several stories examining it.
It's been all over the newspapers, magazines, and I guess probably the
most intriguing aspect of the case is that the police believed that the knife that
was used and found on a table night table next to Robert was a plant
knife. And that was the big fight in this case, was whether or
not that knife was a plant knife. But prosecutors couldn't convince Judge Leebowitz was
the case. So these guys walked and nobody knows what happened in that house
that night. How strange. Oh, it's a very strange case, very
strange case. It's also thinking how often do murder cases end up as bench
trials? As I can tell you a little bit about that. So these
men, these three men, were gay men, and they lived a pally
polyamorous life. They were into bondage, some stuff that church ladies may not
have found to be too. Yeah, it's okay, Yeah, so a
hard time getting a fair trial. Yeah, So the defense said we want
a bench trial, and the prosecutors they could have challenged it, but they
also thought about it and said, you know what, it's probably true that
DC is filled with these Baptist women who would sit there in the jury box
and maybe have a tough time with that. Very interesting, what a strange
story though, And it appears that this poor man was murdered and no one
was ever held to account. No, but there's no double jeopardy here because
they weren't charged with murder. And Glenn Kirshner is his name. I'm sure
you've seen him on MSNBC. Glenn was a prosecutor in that case. So
he feels that after this documentary airs that maybe something will loosen up, will
finally be able to find out what happened. But here's the key part.
Of the story. Robert is a straight man and he was married. He
worked for Radio Free was a Radio Radio Free Asia. He and Joe Price,
who lived in the house, were good friends from William and Mary.
He had a late night interview with people at Radio Free Asia. He had
just taken a job there as a general counsel. So he asked Joe if
he could stay over at the house. And because he wanted to go to
this meeting, and then he had another one very early the next morning,
so rather than go home to his house in Oakton, Virginia, he asked
Joe if he could stay there. And so that's the twist in this case.
And that was straight and the three men living in the house are gay.
Robert, according to prosecutors and police, was sexually assaulted before he was
stabbed. Strange. Oh yeah, it's crazy case. Well, it's probably
the most fascinating murder cases in DC that hasn't been solved. Amazing, And
so this will ultimately be a peacock Will this be a multi part true criming?
My understanding is it's a two part hour long documentary where all these people
are interviewed. I'm the narrator because I was the reporter they asked to help
them with the case. So I sat for a whole day being interviewed,
and then I did some more work on it recently, doing some voiceovers.
It's a true true crime mystery, but they stick to the facts. It's
not. One of the understanding is they're not sensationalizing it at all all.
They're sticking to the facts about everything in the case. It's two hours and
I'm not exactly sure when it's coming out, because I think it was already
it was supposed to be out back in September or something like that. Does
Glenn Kirshner participate as the former He does? He does, yeah, Oh
yeah, it's funny. I see him now doing political commentary and that sort
of thing. I know he was a prosecutor though, because he does reference
it. He's interviewed in this documentary. And I interviewed him for the original
podcast that I did on the story the Mystery on swan On Street that it
did for Fox five. So I in fact, that was the first time
Glenn ever sat down to talk about the case because he had just retired,
and I called him up and asked him if he would take part, and
he agreed. So it was the first time anybody had interviewed him, because
when you're working for the u Asttorney's Office, you're not allowed to do interviews.
But once he retired, he was a fair game, Paul. For
anybody who wants to locate all of your various podcast endeavors, where can they
find all of your podcasts? You can find him on any platform anywhere you
get a podcast. It's called American Nightmare Series. And then there are three
podcasts in the series. The first one is called twenty two Hours that was
done by another reporter, and then I did Murder in a Safe Place,
and the most recent one Unknown Subject, which is nine episodes long, and
so you can binge on it if you like. So, Yeah, any
anywhere you get podcasts, just type in You can either just type in wtop
or American Nightmare Series. You'll find it. Thank you so much for us
today, Paul. We really appreciate it, and we look forward to having
you back to talk about the next iteration of American Nightmare. That was fascinating
discussions. Thank you for having me. That's going to do it for 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
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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.