You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murderer. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas, and we are joined today by author John Glatt here
to talk to us about his book The Doomsday Mother, Lori Vallo, Chad
day Bell, and the of an American Family. John, thank you so
much for joining us today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me go ahead
and start by telling our listeners a little bit about your educational and professional background.
How did you get into writing true crime. My backgrounds in journalism Back
in England, I dropped out. I was a dropout. I dropped out
of school and worked for a music publisher. You might be able to see
this build. Oh interesting, that's my first job. I worked for a
music publisher. I did tea and coffee and runs the post office. And
I decided that I wanted to get into writing. So I managed to get
into a local newspaper in South London and went from there and then I used
that as a stepping stone to come over to America in eighty two and been
here ever since. Was the writing thing something that you were always interested in
as a young man, Oh? Yes, yeah, and I love writing
something I enjoyed doing. I liked I'm very curious. I liked asking a
lot of questions and finding things out, and journalistm to me, was the
perfect occupation. Absolutely it was. So what then attracted you to the field
of true crime, because it really does take a very special type of person
to be able to deal with the depravity that comes with the true crime field.
What happened for you? Well, I actually starting My first book was
on rock and Roll as an unauthorized biography of Bill Graham, in fact,
the Fillmore East and West and that whole concert promotion business. That was my
first book, and then I did a couple of other books. I did
one on River Phoenix, I did one on the Raw Family of Monaco.
And then I had a friend, a very good friend, who was writing
true crime books for Saint Martin's in New York, and he kind of husbaned
me into it and they gave me a try out. It's twenty five years
ago and my first book was an anthology of priests that killed. The second
book was an anthology of It's put Evil Twins, about cases of twins,
either one killing the other or killing other people or whatever. And I went
from there really was, and after that I was I pretty well been doing
true crime since. But I have to stop you for a second, John,
that's quite a turn. In other words, I also worked in the
music business for a number of years. But that's quite a turn from Bill
Graham to priests who killed. And I know I'm skipping a step or two
there. That's a pretty dark left turn. Don't you think some kind of
segue, isn't it? Yeah, it isn't to say that Bill Graham couldn't
be evil, but he also did a lot of good things as well.
Yeah, for those obviously very different subjects, but both interest me. Really,
it's finding out the story. I love just finding out the real story,
and that's what rat me about it, especially about Bill Graham, because
I interviewed a lot of people that knew him or rock bands from the times
and the sixties and whatever to get to know him, as try and get
him to know of this person, because unfortunately he died by the time I
started, and I'm just very curious and I wanted to explore more. And
it's the kind of same formula I use in true crime books. I try
to speak to as many people as possible and trying to get different views on
what happened, what the person was like, and put them all together.
And that actually does speak to my next question, which is, other than
telling the facts of the case and the story of the crime, what other
goals do you have in mind when you set out to write a book about
a case. And it sounds like one of them is get to know who
these people were, But do you have other goals that you set out to
do? Yeah, I obviously want to write an interesting book which will keep
the readers finishing towards the end that would be If I didn't do that,
it wouldn't really work. But I just want to find out. I like
to find out what made people do it, and not as I can't.
I don't pretend to be, you know, to explain why people do what
they do. I just want to present as much facts as possible and let
the reader make up their own mind about what happened. And so then how
do you pick the cases? There? These days, there's so much interest
in true crime, and you've had a great deal of success. How do
you choose the cases you choose to write about. I think they have to
interest me, and obviously they have to interest the publisher. If the publisher
don't think the book will do well, they're not going to hire me to
do it. I mean, that's a two prong sword day. But there's
a lot of things that really interest me. For instance, the doesday Mother.
I live up in the Catskills and I was at a local bart talking
to some friends. I never heard about this story, by the way,
and a friend of mine started telling me about it, and so all these
people they're just disappearing off the face of the earth. It's like very weird
Mormon based murder that seems to be going on. And I went straight home
and started researching it. And this was right at the beginning. Basically,
it's where are the children? And Laurie and Chad was still in Hawaii fending
off dateline reporters and the local east side of home. So I've been there
at the beginning and went from there and I published to light the idea and
told me to go ahead. I felt like the book came out. And
I think it's just because it's been on everybody's radar for so long, but
I felt like the book came out really quickly. I was like, Oh
my gosh, how was there a book about this already? I'm so excited.
It was great. I was so psyched when I saw it. And
I know you're very much on top of the most recent cases. I'm in
the true crime section at Barnes and Noble all the time, and you can't
go into that section without seeing at least a couple of your books. So
I'm always excited every time I see anyone. No. I worked on this
for about eighteen months actually, and obviously with the trial, New stuff coming
out every day. I'm riveted to listening to the audio because I couldn't afford
to go to the trial for two months, however long it's going to be.
But there's a lot of new stuff coming out for the trial, which
I wish I could have added to them, and maybe I can do an
update to do that. I'd like to. But I got very lucky in
that I had Chad Dabell's preliminary hearing, So a lot of the testimony from
the FBI and the detectives about when they found the children's bodies in Dave Bell's
garden came out at the preliminary hearing, and it started made a lot of
sense, and I can see there were things that I hypothesized when I was
writing that now with the trial, I can see that I was definitely on
the right line. Are there things now that are coming out, John that
you're shocked by? Because when I read summaries of what has transpired, and
you're obviously a lot closer to the details than most people would be. But
as more information comes out, I just find myself rocked back in my chair.
These people are sick, especially with Vlex Cox, Laura Laurie Vella's brother,
Yes, yesterday. I was just spent today listening to the cell phone.
They trapped his cell phone GPS wi Fi and they marked him on the
days that Tiley disappeared to his last known sighting and JJ and you can see
he's moving from his apartment next door to Laurie's in Rexburg, Igaho, and
then to Chad to bury the body. And it all makes perfect sense now.
And it amazed me just how much they could find out about him.
And it's really been for me, having done the book, really riveting to
listen to this testimony. What would you say are some of the most surprising
things that you learned about Laurie and Chad and these sort of weird shared beliefs
that they had in common as you completed research for the book. What were
some of the shockers? And amazed me how many people were under their spell.
Really they had a There were a lot of people that believe Chad Davel
was a prophet and they followed everything he did. They read the books,
the podcasts and everything, and they really believed he was for real. And
the one hundred and forty four thousand that he told Laurie they were going to
lead see for the Second Coming. It just blew my mind that people really
believe this, and it's incredible this day and age that they didn't ask more
questions, but they went along with it, and it made like past lives,
reincarnations and ever they believed in all that. But that to me was
a real shocker. I think, you know, it does sound like though,
in reading about the Mormon Church, that there is a history of people
within the Mormon Church kind of self declaring as profits, in other words,
naming themselves as prophets. Yeah. I mean, there's been some pretty horrendous
murders I think involving the Mormon Church, and I think they're very embarrassed about
this because they've distanced themselves as much as possible from this case because it's very
bad publicity for them, I think. So there's that fascage of it,
the part that I'm always the whole thing. I'm fascinated by the whole thing.
So I guess I can't really say the part that I'm most fascinated with.
But I was so curious how Alex Cox ended up as involved as he
was in the case. Is it because he was so weirdly and maybe a
little italy attached to his sister. Or was it a predilection for violence or
was it something else. What do you think caused him to get as involved
as he was. I think I don't know. If you heard the testimony
by Laura's younger sister, Summer Shiflet. She talks about I think Alex had
some kind of accidents as a teenager and it did something to his brain.
And she said he never really grew up after that. He was just a
teenager and when he became a man, he still processed thoughts like a teenager.
I think that had something to do with it. And I think one
of the interesting things in my book was I got although I couldn't name her,
Laurie's best friend at Eisenhower High School in California. She gave me an
interview where you know, they they were inseparable, and she said in twelfth
grade, they were having a sleepover and Nauri became very emotional, flung her
arms around her and said, Alex, who was like, I think four
or five years older at the time, Alex was trying to have sex with
her and she didn't know what to do, and her friend didn't know what
to do or what to tell her, So then it was never mentioned again.
But the friend told me, because her mother was a teacher, that
if she just wishes that she could have told the grown ups what was going
on, because maybe it may it might have changed everything. That's just hypothesis,
but that was my theory that they had a very close relationship. And
do you think that Alex became essentially a follower of Chad. We believed everything
Chad told him. Chad and Laurie Melanie Gives says that in her testimony,
Alex believed everything he believed in past lives and Chadd had told him that he'd
been particularly selected for this life to be the protector of Lourie, that he
had to protect her from evil, and that's what Alex thought. He was
a warrior in this way. I mean, look at Joe Ryan, the
third husband Tyler is when he tasted him, basically Alex tasted him while Laurie
looked on with where they had a visitation. Alex was always getting He was
a violent person, I think too, so that part of the book was
absolutely insane to me. I was sitting there shaking my head. Oh and
it came out that Lorrie and Tidy was sitting in a car watching it all
happen. Pretty scary, there really is. And I spoke to Joe Ryan's
lawyer, very interesting, and he told me that it affected Joe and did
something to him. He has began he developed heart problems and everything, became
an alcoholic and died pretty pretty young. And the lawyer thought it was a
direct result of being tasered like that. Yeah, I was going to ask
your thoughts on that. Could we can't technically one hundred percent lay his death
at Chad in Laurie's hands, but it sounds like we can indirectly put it
there via Alex exactly. Yeah, the taser. But there's a lot There's
been a lot of talk about whether Laurie could have been involved in his death,
which he definitely gave talks where she said that he was he was a
candidate to be murdered for what he'd done to the kids. And then at
the same time, I'm very suspicious that Alex's death, which seems awfully convenient.
He's effectively acted as an enforcer or Laurie and has been directly involved in
the deaths of two of her husband, and then Alex conveniently dies. Yeah,
I'm very suspicious there. I wonder if it was suicide because he died.
I think after hearing that they were about to exume Tammy Dabell's body,
and I think two days before he driven all the way to Mexico to buy
some drugs and things. I'm not sure what pharmaceutic called drugs there were,
but he brought them back to Zulemma and he had the same kind of think
stuff coming out of his mouth Tammy did. In fact, they were talking
about that yesterday at the trial asphyxiation. But I don't know. I personally
wonder if Alex his heart gave way because he knew it was going it was
going to come down on him, and I think at that time he also
didn't know where Laurie was. Laurie and Chaddy just disappeared to Why without telling
anyone, and I think Zulema said that they were worried that they were the
fall guys and they were going to take the heat for what Chad and Laurie
had done. I think it was all coming back to Alex. But my
god, if he hadn't died, it would that would be really interesting.
How did Laurie and Chad's beliefs differ from those that are espoused by the Preparing
of People and the LDS Church. If you had to categorize where they differed,
what would you say is the biggest point of difference. I'm not a
Mormon. I don't really know the church. But when I'm talking to some
of people that followed Chad in the beginning and then got they separated because they
couldn't. But he was just out there and they didn't believe in the one
hundred and forty four thousand. The Church of the Firstborn was something that's against
the Mormon religion. And then he did things about how he and Laurie were
sealed in a Mormon is it a chapel or whatever. But that's what they
would never do is heresy. So I think that the Mormon Church, any
believers, didn't want anything to do with Chad and Laurie at that point.
One of the things that we talked about on Mind over Murder recently is that
how strange I thought it was that they went off to Hawaii, as if
that was on the other side of the world. Now, I lived in
Hawaii when I was a kid. My dad was a naval officer, and
it was further away then than it is now, because when we were kids
there were no satellites and Hawaii felt like a very isolated place. This is
back in the nineteen sixties. But I couldn't quite figure out if that was
their version of running away. They didn't even leave the Fifty States. It
wasn't like they went somewhere where there was no opportunity to be forced to come
back to the US to face trial or whatever, someplace without extradition. But
they end up on a beach in Hawaii, months after the disappearance of her
children, weeks after the death of his wife. If I'm not mistaken,
doesn't it seem incredibly naive that they thought that going to Hawaii would be enough
to move them off the radar in Idaho and Nevada. Naive definitely. My
theory is Laurie's parents always went to Hawaii. They loved Kwai. Laurie spent
as a child, she was taken to Hawaii, she fell in love with
it, and obviously she moved to Hawaii with Charles Valo, DJ and Tylee
for I think fore or four years, So there was always something about Hawaii
that Laurie laughed, And I think it was part of her romantic dream with
Chad to get married on the beach in Hawaii. And I understand in fact,
I think she'd married Joe Ryan on a beach in Hawaii. That's when
I was his lawyer. In fact, so I think that there was naivety,
but that's where she felt that she needed to be with Chad. And
of course the wedding was exactly two weeks that, two weeks after Tammy died
November the fifth, twenty nineteen. I interviewed the I would say priest,
but the clergyman that married them, very interesting take on it, Yah,
And he couldn't believe it. He said, they couldn't wait usual league couples
are getting married. They want to take they want to get their full hours
worth of the marriage. He said, they couldn't wait to leave. They
were out of there about forty minutes later. Wow. He was quite pleased,
I think. And the photographer interview said they were very strange. Yeah,
my gosh, in what way were they strange from the like, From
the photographer's point of view, they were behaving like teenagers. And he's in
his early fifties. She's late forties then, I think, and they're all
over each other. And I know, if you've seen the pictures, he's
the not the guitar, but the Hawaiian instrument is the ukulele h. That
was all faked obviously, and the champagne wasn't real champagne. When we were
preparing for today's interview, Kristen said something funny, which is they describe Laurie
as being very trap, you know, with the long blonde hair and so
on. Chad Daybill is at an average looking guy. He's not a movie
star, handsome or anything like that. Right. Is it the charisma that
puts him across and connects him with so many people? What do you think
it is? John? Yeah, I think he was charismatic. People told
me he was. He could give these talks with the visuals of North Korea
and nuclear forces Kim Jong un and talk about the end of the world,
and he had this kind of charisma. And I think for Laurie she had
very low self esteem. I think it fed into telling her she was a
goddess and he was going to say they were going to save the world together.
I think he knew how to feed into her ego in that way,
and I think to Chad he was a womanizer. He'd be married to Tammy.
I heard from their friends, in fact, that there was They didn't
really have much of a sex life. He was always complaining about it,
and he had a couple of relationships with the followers of his book by telephone,
these affairs by I think he saw Laurie falling over him, and it
was this attractive blonde and just thought, this is who I want to be
with this. He just fell in love with the way she looked and what
was interesting with him. He was vastly overweight, very dumpy, double chim
but a few months of Laurie she gave him a total makeover. He must
have lost a lot of weight when you see the pictures later that I think
she gave him a makeover. But they were obviously an odd couple. But
I think they fed into each other the sort of gasoline and oil they ignited
in this horrible, disgusting way. You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at mindover
Murder. You characterize him in the book as almost been like a cult leader.
Do you feel like that's the correct term for him? Yeah, definitely.
I spoke to a guy called Rick Ross who is a cult expert.
I've interviewed him for a few of my other books. He's very helpful,
and he talked about it as being a cult of too basically Chad and Laurie,
And he said, it's definitely a cult, you know, and is
that mentality? And there were more people obviously there was Melanie Gibb, Melanie
budrou Zulemma, Alex. There was a whole group around them, and more
names I heard during the trial which I've never heard of before, So it
was obviously bigger than just two. But it was definitely a cult that he
was leading. Are they delusional in that they think that beyond the cult leadership
and focus that seems to come mostly from Chad and his writings, did they
really think they were going to be able to leave a trail of dead bodies
everywhere they went and get away with it? I presume they did. They
did. They got away with Charles Valo and Arizona. The police did investigate,
and they called it they thought it was a self defense, which was
ridiculous and that's one of the things we watched. The videos of them,
Alex, Laurie, and Tyley being interviewed by the police there. It's pretty
really interesting, especially Tiley. In fact, I don't know. I don't
think she bought what her mother was selling at all. She was very sassy
what everybody said. She would call her mother out a lot. But they
supported that Charles Vallo had come with a baseball bat and everything, and as
far as I see, Charles Vallo was a great husband. He couldn't believe
what Laurie had turned into, and there was going to be an intervention.
I think Charles Vallo and Laurie's brother Adam, they were going to do an
intervention with the parents, and that's when Laurie discovered what was happening with emails,
and Charles had even sent an email to Tammy talking about it, and
that's when he had to die. I think I think they obviously thought they
would get away with it, and they did for a while. I think
they would have gone away with it to a certain extent if Chad hadn't sent
that email to Tammy when they were obviously burying Tily and and he said there's
raccoon. So I've been burning limbs of that email of the smoking talking about
it the trial yesterday, and that's what obviously said them. That's where they
found the kids. Otherwise and I think they would have found them. Do
you think that either of them would have resorted to this type of violence without
the other? Good question. I really don't know, I said at the
beginning, impossible to know. If they hadn't met each other, maybe they
just he would have gone writing, carrying on writing his books and she would
have been just going through more husbands and a lot more people would be alive
today. So it's really hard to know. I think. Do you think
that darkest impulse to actually kill people that are standing in the way do you
think that comes more from Chad or from Lourie. I think Chad. I
mean they were in his way, didn't the kids there? He didn't want
them around. Laurie wanted Laurie to himself. They had to get away,
you had to. I think they had to kill their spouses for insurance.
That's what they were looking at. A million dollars for Charles Valow and Laurie
didn't know that he'd actually changed the beneficiary to kay Woodcock his sister to aust
earlier until after they killed Charles, and then with Temmy. I was reading
today he got like about I think three hundred and eighty thousand dollars aout from
insurance they paid him. This is what he was spending in Hawaii, So
I think that was a motivation to the money. I mean for the others,
I think Laurie and maybe Alex, it was like when they introduced the
concept of zombies, and these people are turned it being inhabited by zombies,
and the only way you could written was to kill the body and that would
free them spiritually, so you were doing the best thing you can for them,
and I think that's probably what Alex believed. He probably believed that he
was freeing JJ and Tyly by killing their bodies so their spirits could escape.
It's bizarre to me. It really is horrific the Chad books. Does this
zombie thing show up in any of his earlier writing or was this a newer
creation that he came up with as an excuse to kill off all of these
people that were standing in their way. Let's be honest. I read one
of his books, and I don't read anymore he has done badly written.
Oh wowch I wouldn't recommend him as an author, but I understand the zombie
thing was quite late. He introduced that later on, and that was his
way. I think of getting rid of Tidy and JJ because they were in
his way. He didn't want them around. It's a flexible set of beliefs.
What you're saying changes all the time. With him, I think I
just love the way that he had a definite date for the end of the
world. I think it was by the some twentieth was it twenty twenty or
he was sitting in jail when that happened and the world's at an end.
I just would have loved to have seen his face that day. There definitely
would have been something I would have wanted to be a fly on the wall
for it. Definitely. Okay. So, as an English teacher, I
am always interested in the writing process for any author that we interview. So
can you tell me a little bit about your process. I've been trying to
convince my students all year that they need to outline before they write a book.
So they're either going to prove me right or you're going to prove me
wrong, which is it going to be? I prove you. I've spent
two or three months doing a complete timeline of everything. I can run to
two or three hundred pages single space. I didn't get incredibly aim along this,
but the timeline is the way it works, and I can write through
that and you can see things that you wouldn't see ordinarily. The coincide.
My early books, I didn't really use a timeline except for maybe there was
some event that I really wanted to get into detail. But for the last
few years I do a complete timeline of everything, and it's really paid off,
I think because you can see things much more clearly because I had so
much research for this. I had this whole room was just full of files
and everything, and to have to remember where everything was without a timeline will
be impossible. I'm just going to say it really pays off for this book,
just in terms of very so much to this case that I remember when
we first started hearing about it, we were like, who died when and
where and under what circumstances. It was so helpful to get your book and
to finally see it laid out in order. I was like, oh,
that's the order. It happened, it very much helped. Yeah, it's
hard to get your mind around it. My new book, which is about
the Murdochs in South Carolina, is more complicated. I think really I have
probably had a lot more than I had on Lori Valo for that one research
it really was confusing. Timeline would be the only way you understand that.
And we do want to talk to you about that very much because we are
so interested in the Murdoch case. As you put together the timeline, and
I know you're very research driven, does it come to mind that there's even
more research required? Do you see gaps in the people that you've talked to
and the people that you'd like to talk to? Absolutely, I see a
timeline. I'm going through it. I think I've got to find I've got
more questions I want to ask things. So our timeline is very good for
that. And I try and get as many people as I can to talk
and that's very important. But the timeline is invaluable in getting seeing things from
different perspectives and getting the right questions. How many different levels of agreement will
you have? You mentioned a moment ago that there was a friend of Lori's
that obviously you interviewed but didn't want to be cited by name. So how
do you? So you work that in but under the pseudonym, but you
provide the information without clearly stating who it is. Yeah, I use a
pseudonym and then I put in parentheses not her real name. When you're reading
the book, you know that it's not. I don't like using a source,
said, I liked to real person, but she was obviously I connected
with a lot of people on social media and they they did not want their
names coming out as being close to them. So you have to go along
with that and understandable too. I think are you able to obscure enough detail
though, so that we can't figure out who or why happened to be?
I think people in this school friend, I think her friends probably could work
it out actually, but for the reader probably less of a chance of figuring
out, oh, that's actually who went to high school with Laurie. Unless
you had a class photograph or something. You went through everybody, but no,
I expect their privacy. They talked to me on the understanding that I
wouldn't get their real names. How many people did you end up interviewing for
this book do you think, Oh, God, probably fifty or sixty.
Wow, I'd have to look through a lot. Yeah, we're so excited
about your upcoming book on the Rodoco murders because we have been covering it a
lot here on mind Over Murder. That too, is such a super complex
case, like you were saying a few minutes ago, tell us a little
bit about it. Go ahead and give us the elevator, pitch on it
and tell us when it's coming out. You give us all the details,
and we're so excited to hear about it. I'm not going to give you
too many of the details, of course, I want to say I've got
a lot of new stuff in there. There had a lot of good interviews,
and I don't want that to come out before the book comes out.
Sure, of course, it was lucky because I finished the book and then
the publisher left two I have two chapters at the end for the trial,
which I you know, so I covered the trial totally in that. So
that was a good ending. That was a very complicated book, and there's
so many different facets of it. And it's not just Alex Murdoch, it's
the whole history of the Murdoch family goad years in the fourteenth District in South
Carolina, and they really ruled it, you know, like medieval kings in
a way, and they gore around themselves. And I spent three weeks down
there last year again talking to people and everything and getting the real fuel of
it. And it's just very fascinating case, I think, totally different than
this one. In fact, they're both fascinating, but very different. It
sounds like there's just so much to the murder case, and there are decades
upon decades of corruption and political influence peddling, and it's unbelievable how much has
gone on with that family and that law firm. Yeah, there were a
law onto themselves and they got away with it for years. If it really
hadn't been for Pool and that the boating accident dream was drunk, he crashed
the boat and killed Malory Beach, this never would have come out or anything.
That was what really sparked everything, and they couldn't really hide it any
longer. Had you submitted the manuscript for the book, by the time it
came out that Stephen Smith was being exhumed, how did you feel about that?
No, I think the book had gone suppressed by then, I didn't
meet Sandy his mud. I went to a benefit to raise money for the
headstone in Columbia. That's when I first went in there. So I met
his mother, Sandy, I met his sister, who's really sweet. And
then it meant a lot to them to find out what really happened, because
they know that Stephen was murdered, and yet they couldn't get anybody to take
it seriously. It was all pushed under the carpet and hushed up. So
at long last there's a chance of finding out. You know what really happened.
Now. The Doomsday Mother, Your Lori Valo Chad Dabile book came out
on Saint Martin's Press. Is your next book, Tangled Vines coming out under
Saint Martin's as well? Yes, it is all my true crime books.
I'm proud to say I've come under Sat Martin's Press. I've been with them
for over twenty five years now, so I'm very proud of that. How
does that happen? By the way, most authors we know move around,
Yet you've been with the same house for all of these years. Absolutely,
because they said I have very good relationship with my editor Charles Spicer and his
staff, and it works really well. I think I like working for them
and they seem to like me, so it's good. As I said,
I'm in the true crime section of Barnstoneable most every weekend, and your books
are never out of print, They're always there, so I'm always excited when
a new one comes out. And so when I was paging through and I
saw, oh, John Glat's got another new book coming out in August,
I was like, Okay, we absolutely have to see if we can get
him to come on, and we do want to have you back when Tangled
Vine's releases. This has really being great talking to you. I do want
to ask one more thing with regard to the Murdoch case. Do you think
Gloria Sadderfield's case should be given another look? Absolutely? I just read Obviously
the murder case is now being resolved, but on a Sadderfield case, I
just read this afternoon. I think he's through his lawyer, he's given a
reply to the Nausialus was the insurance company, and he's now admitting that the
dogs didn't push Glorious out of Field down the stairs, he made that up,
and that she was you can't remember if she wasn't if she was there
to work or not, which would invalid the whole insurance thing that just came
out. I just read that today. In fact, there's all these financial
cases. I think there's like a hundred different things against him there. There's
a lot more coming out, and the same judge, the same prosecutor,
and everything is going to be a lot to watch. Such an amazing case
and the level of corruption, it just goes deeper and deeper, and it's
quite amazing. Yeah, it's taking the whole of Hampton down anyway. I
think the lawyers and the police are under investigation. It's just a very corrupt
system that's been like that for so many years. It is nice to finally
see some of that dirt coming up finally say now that tangled vines is about
to go to us, What are you working on now? Are you able
to share any of that? Are you going to keep it under wraps for
a little bit. I'm taking the summer off. I haven't ready non stop
books for a while, so I think I need a few months off,
get a fresh air, and everything come up for are I picture a whiteboard
somewhere John where You've got all these ideas for your next book after the summer
and your well deserved time off. Right, it's right there. I'll let
the record show that John is turning the camera and showing us his whiteboard appears
to be more of a bulletin board with ideas pictures. I noticed you didn't
zoom in, though, so we couldn't tell quite what you were working on.
So what are you going to do this summer while you have the time
off? I don't know. Look for different ideas, and I'm doing something
for Grayton car who's the editor of Vanity Fair. His website air mail.
They commissioned me. I've written a piece about a murder that happened in Swinging
London in nineteen sixty seven. That's coming out in a couple of weeks.
I think that's something I've been working on when I'm looking around for other ideas.
It's a fun background, although once again you're working on a murder.
You said you're up in the Catskills. Whereabouts? Do you know? Woodstock
is thirty five miles west of Woodstock Bells Ski Center live in That nearest town
is Margaretville. I don't know if you where are you based. I'm in
Virginia and Bill is in Connecticut, right. Yeah. The book is The
Doomsday Mother Lori Vello, Chad Day Bell and the End of an American Family
by John Blatt, currently out in stores, available on Amazon and wherever you
get your books. And we're looking forward to having John back to talk to
us about Tangled Vines when that releases in August. That's gonna do it for
this episode of mind Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our
logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media. You can follow
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on the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill
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Over Murder.