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 Devor 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 Trialt. So start by bragging 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 their reviews, Kate, people really talk
about how much they were drawn into Julian Lawley's store 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 Heartdale Maps, and she does a
really brilliant job of interpreting not just data but also stories in order to tell
something. And she and I work together to create a series of maps for
the book, and she did a really great job to quietly evoking the style
of the National Park Service maps and guide boots 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 applied some of my very favorite photos of them. And obviously Lollly 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 photographs? 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 backcountry permits, allows us to recreate their time in the park
in really good detail. There was also a young couple at the time who
were vacationing in the park and they had run into 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 relatives, certain we know they were at X
place or why place, and at least be able to approximate when you brought
up the FBI already, So I guess let's go ahead and dive into talking
about their response and really not just the FBI, though, Let's talk about
the response from law enforcement National Park Service as well. What has their response
been in relation to the book. It has been hugely varied. Recently,
an attorney for the Department of Justice recently reached out to me and told me
he had read the book, and he asked me if I would be willing
to come talk to the DOJ to ensure that this kind of investigation 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 reexamine 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 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 attested, the number of
DNA that we've never loaded to codis. 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 Rebeccadowski 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 Lollie 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
A. Vonet'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 Lollie 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
liked 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
beholden upon us to take all of them seriously. Yeah, Over the years,
both Kristen 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 being 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's scene, there's very similar. I don't know
the brand because they're just butts, but cigarette butts as well too. What
does it take then to cross test those like does 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 Avonans In particular? The
most I think significant work that's happening on the Avonnans 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 rememb
And in the book I outline just a few of the leads we have about
ways in which he was for dating 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 Ivanitz'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 months 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
Kotus. 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 confirm that they're alive. We haven't been able to
make contact with all of them. We also know that he had a cousin
that shared his name who lived in Chicago, and that he spent a lot
of time there acting as the cousin. And one of the things that Deirdre
and I are also starting to do is really 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 Marks. Is that right to see? And I'm
did too. Is he had a definite emo and he would bind the women
in a particular way. He would kindetrate 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 m 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 his 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 around 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 Kolesh, 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 Kolsh. I'm not exactly sure about that C, but that'll get
close enough for sure. We'll look that up. Boy, it'd be interesting
if any of our listeners know anyone that ever served aboard the US KOLs we'd
love to talk to you. And I know that many Navy ships, including
the Y Spear that the ship that my sister served aboard, there are groups
that are kind of alumni groups of service personnel who had served on ships.
If anyone knows anyone that has ever served aboard the Kolch, 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 NAI officer. He had mentioned to me that when ships
are in dry dock, as Avonnans'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 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 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 Vonts 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 attent and
not feel panicked. My brain just draws this immediate connection. And so while
I know that statistically speaking, backpacking and camping somewhere like Maine, I'm extremely
safe, it's not a psychologically pleasant experience for me. So I haven't done
that, but I do spend a lot of time in the wilderness. I'm
an avid trail runner, I'm a hiker, and I'd like to joke right
now that at this point I'm so angry about all of this that God help
the serial killer or serial rapist who attempts to approach me in the wilderness,
because that prop person is probably going to be going to the police claiming that
they we 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 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 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
grabbed 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, answer. 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
Christen Dilley, 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, it was a lot
of people who had a very personal connection to these stories. And for me,
as a journalist, it's incredibly poignant to hear those stories and to remind
myself not only how deeply personal it is for the immediate friends and family of
victims, but the way in which these kinds of acts of violence really do
start to serve as hate crimes in the sense that they take entire demographics and
radically change their relationship to play. And for so many of the people that
I met at this library event, this event radically altered and negatively altered their
relationship not only with Shenandoah but with the wilderness. Writ large in the book
Trail, do you talk about this quite a bit, how meaningful the outdoors
have been for you as a woman and as an outdoors woman, and for
so many other people that you've befriended yet here we are again. You're speaking
about the book. The book's been out for a year, it's had a
tremendous impact, but you're hearing from people who are talking about the ripple effect
of this nineteen ninety six double homicide. Yeah, And when I was working
on the book, I interviewed Claudia Brunner. 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 a hate crime, because Lollie and Julie's legal case very famously became the
first official federal hate crime case in the United States. So there's a lot
of really significant historical resonance there. People are very divided about whether or not
this was 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 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 there 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,
and that as well too, the number of black people and bipoc people who
don't feel safe in the wilderness, not only because of current events, but
also this kind of epigenetic generational memory of centuries of really terrible things that have
happened to people of color in the wilderness as well too. And so one
of the things I definitely wanted to try to highlight in the book is this
question of who gets to feel safe in our parks and our forests and our
deserts 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. You're 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 tour. 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 to like
folks who were setting fastest known time attempts on the trails and some of the
silliness of the Appalachian trail culture as well too. It was really a very
sort of immersive experience for me to do that work, and I really loved
it. Yeah, just from a total fangirl perspective, Here did you I
saw you wrote two pieces about Scott 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 loved 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, Kate,
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, whereas 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,
I 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 repay to Bill Thomas, 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 Kay after your talk. But afterwards,
I stumbled back to my hotel room and I think I was a 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