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 Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and
I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by legendary podcaster and author em William
Phalps to talk to us about his new podcast series, Paper Ghosts and Crossing
the Line. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. It's
great to be here finally getting on Bill and Kristen Schow Mine Over Murder.
It's been how long you guys been in this now four years? Four years,
four years, Yeah, paid four paper ghosts. Yeah. Paper ghost
start around the same time. Yeah, so it's great to be on.
I'm embarrassed. I don't know how we went four years with that asking you
to be on the show. I'm offended. Actually, let's get off to
a good start. And now we live in the same state. We're both
in Connecticut where I was. Yeah, and calf and look, I've known
you for twelve years now something like that, Yeah, a dozen years.
Yeah, so we may even though we do not video this, I would
like everyone to know that Matt and Bill are dressed exactly the same in wonderful
matching plaid shirts, and that was totally a coincidence. We're doing the hardy
New Englander thing today and it's still cold and rainy here in Connecticut. Spring
hasn't sprung yet, that's for sure, and I'm ready for it. Yeah,
me too. All this promises promises. It's not been a horrible winter.
But at the same time, it would be nice if it started acting
like April. How it goes here in New England. All of a sudden
you wake up and it's seventy degrees out and you're on your way I'm looking
forward to it, but I have a lot of cleanup to do in my
art after the winter we had, Yeah, instant summer. It'll be April
fifteenth and it'll suddenly be seventy five degrees and the Red Sox are already struggling,
and you're off to the races for another spring in New England. We
are already highly pollinated down here in Virginia. So at least you guys are
missing that part of it. We are. They're tearing up the road in
front of my house with incredibly noisy, dusty, dirty equipment the size of
a two story house, but no no polling yet. We asked Matt to
come on to talk to us about his new podcasts, but we also wanted
to start by asking you, Matt, tell us how you originally got involved
in true crime. Yeah, take us back twenty five years and walk us
through everything that happened since then. Okay, I'll give you the condensed version
of it. I get asked that question a lot, and it's funny because
it's like the day before I got into true crime, I didn't know I
was getting into true crime. My passion in life is writing. I get
up in the morning to write. That's what I love to do, and
that makes my soul complete when I'm able to write. I was a journalist
and had a column about music, and I wrote about politics. I wrote
about everything anything I could write about. And then I met an agent and
he's listen, if you want to really make money, you need to come
up with a book subject. You need to write a book. I live
close to Springfield, Massachusetts, and there was a trial going on in Springfield
that I just found all these people involved in this trial very interesting. There
was a beautiful young woman, thirty three blonde, who was on trial for
killing seven people and there was whispers that she killed many more. In Northampton,
the leads Medical Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and so I just started following
this trial and I just thought it was an interesting story about people, victims,
the town, the response to the crime, and this woman. So
I started following it. I sold the book about it. I wrote the
book, and I didn't know really I was writing a true crime book,
but I was. So that book came out and it was very successful.
Perfect Poison. The serial killer is Kristin Gilbert. Before that, I had
met this guy, William Acosta, who is a Columbian guy and they call
him the Equalizer because he worked for the CID, he worked for the CIA,
he worked for Customs FBI, and he was a mole. He did
all sorts of investigatory things. And I met him. I was going to
write about him. We became friends, and he taught me how to investigate
people. Basically, I spent a couple of years with him and he taught
me my investigative skills. I was getting into the crime then I just didn't
know it. I didn't look at I hope this is not long winded,
but we look at things today with labels. We have to label everything,
and for me, I was writing a book about people. I was writing
a book about victims of a woman who had murdered them and their families and
what they've gone through. So if that's labeled true crime, that's what I
do. And that's what I ended up doing because my publisher wanted more books,
so I wanted to write more books. That's what I did. And
then I just TV came from that and I fell into it all and just
ran with it. What year did your first book come out? Perfect Poison?
I think perfect Poison came out in two thousand and two, twenty two
years ago. I had a contract for a book in ninety nine called The
Blue Mafia, Racism and Corruption Inside the NYPD. I had been working on
that for many years with William Acosta. He was a detective and he had
rooted out all this racism and corruption and we were doing a book together,
and then nine to eleven hit and it was like, I was in the
middle of doing this, and my editors, there's no way that we can
say and why PD cops are bad? Look at the front page of every
paper. So I abandoned that and then I moved on to the Christen Gilbert
story Perfect Poison. So Matt as an English teacher, I'm always interested in
asking other writers to talk a little bit about their writing style, their process.
Can you tell us just a little bit about your process. I'd love
to hear. That's a great question. My process is that, for the
past twenty something years, I get up about four thirty five o'clock in the
morning and I begin my day writing, whether I'm writing a book or a
podcast, or a TV script or a treatment or whatever I'm doing. And
when I'm working on a book I write. First of all. With the
book, they're all nonfiction. So I go out and I do all the
investigating, I do all the interviews, et cetera, et cetera. Same
with Paper Ghosts the podcast. I go out, I spend a couple of
months doing all my interviews with people who are going to tell this story.
And then I come back and then I sit down and I get up every
morning I start to write out everything and go through the interviews. And it's
the same process for a book. Generally, when I'm writing a book,
I don't start on page one. It's a dark and stormy night. Sometimes
I start at the end. It all depends on the information and how I
need to understand it. The process is I work on ten, twelve,
fifteen, sometimes twenty pages in a day, and the next day I edit
them, and then I work on the next twenty and then I edit those,
and it's a process that I just keep going over and over, and
then when I'm done with the manuscript, I probably rewrite a book probably twenty
times before I'm happy with it. I just love that process, I really
do. It really makes me. I think. One of the things I
love most about writing is that it takes me. It's almost like I'm not
in the world, out of the world. The world world we live in
today is a good world to get out of sometimes, and writing does that
for me. I just I'm in the moment. I'm zeroed in on what
I'm doing completely. I'm in, as they call the flow. There's a
book called The Flow. I'm in the flow time and space is gone.
And I like that. I like that world. So when you start early
in the morning, Matt, then is there a time of day you'll end
or do you write until you collapsed from exhaustion. That's a good question,
Bill. You can be creative for probably four or five hours a day tops.
So I work that creative time and then I take a break or whatever,
and then I go into editing mode or I do TV stuff. I
meet I have a lot of meetings with producers, etc. Production companies.
I work on treatments. I'm working on a sizzle reel right now for a
show that I'm getting ready to pitch. So I switch gears from the writer
to the TV slash, a podcast producer, et cetera. In the afternoon
and work stuff out with podcasting more than books, especially with paper Ghosts.
Paper ghost takes me over a year to do, and I have about four
other people working on it with me. For a lot of that time,
there's a lot of miscellaneous stuff you have to do for a limited series,
podcast and promotion, et cetera. So yeah, my five hours are writing,
four hours of writing, and then it's another five, six, seven,
sometimes eight hours of whatever TV podcasting work. Since you started telling us
a little bit about paper ghosts, let's carry that through. Tell us a
little bit about how you got started with paper ghosts and what is the main
concepts behind paper ghosts. So a paper ghost is a missing person poster on
a telephone poll. It's a paper ghost because we don't know where that person
is. So I met a producer on Doctor Oz, Lauren Bright Pacio and
Doctor Oz and Happy Face's daughter, Melissa Moore, she also worked on the
show. I had this big interview schedule they were going to do almost the
complete hour on my book that was coming out, and the day before the
interview, the day before, they pulled the plug on it. And it
was because of Melissa. She's the one responsible for that. So the plug
got pulled on that. My publisher had even gone out I think with an
additional five thousand copies of the book because of Doctor Oz. Because at the
time Doctor Oz was four o'clock in the afternoon. It was a big show,
and at the time you could sell books on TV. You can anymore,
but at the time you could. So I met Lauren, she was
a producer on that show. She felt really bad for me. She was
out of her hands. So we became friends, and she goes, listen,
I know these people at iHeart they're starting a podcast division. You'd be
perfect, So I want to make an introduction. So Lauren introduced me to
Will Pearson, He's the president at iHeart podcasting division, and I had a
meeting with them, and Paper ghost was born. I certainly had the material,
as I do now, I have more material than it will ever use
in my lifetime. And there was no other case that was going to be
the first season of paper Ghosts than the four missing girls from the town that
I lived in a neighboring town, and all the families I knew very well.
One of the girls I even had gone to school with. And so
I had been investigating those cases for twelve years and I had a lot of
information and so there was never going to be any other case but that for
season one, and so that's how that was born. When crossing the Line
with em William Phelps just came out of that. They wanted me to do
a weekly and ongoing as your show is, but just came from that.
And also I have White Eagle. White Eagle is a sixth part limited series
about the largest cash heist in the US at the time, which took place
in West Harford, Connecticut in nineteen eighty three. Victor Herrena, he spent
the longest time on the FBI's top ten Most Wanted. Very proud of that
White Eagle. That's a really great six part limited series. We would definitely
be remiss if we didn't mention Dark Minds because we do have such a strong
connection to Dark Minds. You guys did decide to cover the Colonial Parkway murders,
which we're very thankful for. So can you tell us a little bit
about Dark Minds for anybody who may not be familiar with it, And then
how did Colonial Parkway murders come onto your radar and what made you go,
you know what, let's do this on Dark Minds. It sounds great.
Dark Minds, I think was a show before its time on Investigation Discovery.
The timing was off. We did three seasons. I did twenty four episodes
of the show. Colonial Parkway was one, but pitch that show as as
Silence of the Lambs meets Catch Me if you Can. That show was me
out in the field investigating a new unsolved serial killer case each week. And
it was on, as I said, Investigation Discovery, and I had a
forensic psychologist, John Kelly, and I also had a serial killer, an
anonymous serial killer on the phone who would give me direction his insight a quarterback
does at an NFL game the next quarterback. Yeah, it was an interesting
conceit. I remember enjoying it. And for the three seasons that Dark Minds
was on, he was anonymous, his voice was disguised, and he had
a nickname on the show, Raven, which I did not give him.
The president of ID did. Many people thought he was fake. He was
a trumped up reality TV thing and everything like that. When the show ended,
I wrote a book, Dangerous Ground my friendship in quotes with a serial
killer, and the entire time it was Keith Jesperson happy face killer. He
was Raven. He was the guy on the show, and we locked onto
the Colonial Parkway murders. To be perfectly frank and honest with you, because
at the time, there were probably thirty or forty unsolved serial killer cases in
the country that were connected, that felt connected, like these are cases that
you are connected, there's probably a serial killer working here, and Colonial Parkway
showed up on my radar because I had done research on these cases for many
years and I knew that there was probably a serial killer, might be a
serial killer working on the Colonial Parkway. I wasn't convinced and I still am
not convinced today that all these cases are connected, the ones we covered on
the show. I'm just not convinced to that. And yeah, that's how
I met Bill, That's how I ended up doing the Colonial Parkway. It
was one of my I think it was one of my if I can have
a favorite out there filming this stuff, it was one of the ones I
remember most. I remember It's funny. Every once in a while it hit
me those president's heads in Williams Park, right, Yes, and exactly what
you're talking about. What was bizarre about them was it they were the weeds
were overgrown, it was closed, yep, and it was just so eerie.
It was park President's Park. It was park bizarre and that always pops
in my mind every once in a while. Well, no, I was
there for the week filming. Now help us out, and remember we have
people listening all over the world. I have no idea what the two of
you were talking about. What is President's Park in Williamsburg. President's Park was
a very It's an interesting conceit. I will give it that. It was
this idea that there would be a park and in the park there would be
busts, huge busts of all of the president's head and shoulders, bus the
presidents, and they were all just set around this beautiful park land area.
Yeah. But unfortunately the President's Park was not as popular as I think the
planners were hoping it would be. I think they were picturing it as like
a place where people could go on field trips and you can learn lots of
instructive things about the president. But ultimately what happened is the park closed and
all it was forty three busts of the president's up to that point. I
think Obama was the last one those crumbling President's heads are sitting out in a
field way out beyond where I live, and they're just crumbling to dust.
I have never understood. We are all growing up around them in the same
location where they were originally placed. Now they were moved away from the original
location, and they were just dumped out in this field. And I've never
understood why they couldn't at least decide, okay, let's take the Abraham Lincoln,
hadn't put it the Lincoln Lincoln sites and things like that. I don't
know why JFK's head didn't go to the JFK President's Library or something like that.
They're just like crumbling to dust out there in a field with weeds growing
up all around them just like they. Are they standing vertically or are they
lying on their sides like a like junked cars. I haven't been out there.
There is one day a year or two days a year where you can
actually apply to go out there to look at it and take photos. I
haven't gone. Actually have friends who do. When we were filming, they
were still in the park where they were still in the park, okay,
because we had to walk through the gate to get in there, like the
turnstile and it was it felt like when you were there, it felt like
Armageddon had happened really in this place had been one of the places, and
because the weeds and everything, it was just very eerie. It was really
creepy. I've ever been there. This is very and I just recall that
about filming because we did a lot of filming just driving up and down the
Colonial Parkway, b roll that sort of thing. Yeah, that's what I
remember. I remember, and I also remember Steve. Steve've helped me out
the detective Steve he's he now on that that trumped up show that called Justice
Ship. Yeah, that that that that made up whatever. I won't get
into that here. I won't settle that. I think you see, I
think he just did. Steve. Steve is a great guy guy. Steve
was a great guy. I remember interviewing him at one of the I think
it was where your sister Bill was where they were found. Steve and I
were right there and that's where I interviewed him. And just a great guy,
just a great guy. He knew a lot about the case and it
was one of my favorite gigs for that series, Colonial Parkway. On One
of the reasons is because I think it can be solved. A lot of
the cases can be solved. And a lot of times when I would go
to a city that wasn't the case, I'm like, I'd be there and
I'd be like, Yeah, these cases are not going to be solved.
It's this is not happening. When I ran into a case, and I
might say that we did what was called at the time the original Nightstalker,
we did that as well, and which became a Golden State Killer. Yeah,
so we A lot of times I just say, that's just there's not
enough information. But with Colonial Parkway, there is enough information to put that
together ourselves. So we've always been saying that, and of course now we're
seeing significant developments. They've identified one offender. We know he's linked to one
of the pairs, Robin Edwards and David Nobling, and the FBI won't admit
this publicly, and the FBI and the Virginia State Police stumbled all over themselves
January eighth, twenty twenty four announcing the identification of this suspect, but they
failed to mention he's also suspect number one in the disappearance of Keith coll and
Cassandra Haley. It's just ludicrous that they failed to mention this publicly. So
it's up to the rest of us that know the case to call them out
on their trans questions. Cover up whatever you want to be doing. The
FBI has their own way of doing things. They just I don't like dealing
with FBI because there's just a lot of there's a lot of silence, there's
a lot of misinformation. They don't tell you anything. You got free reports
from them, and it takes forever. I'd rather deal with the detective who's
been on it for twenty years, ten years. I have this week coming
up. I have a detective from the LAPD Cold case detective Rachel Evans,
who solved two cases that started before she was even born. Sixty years those
cases were sitting in the cold case unit the entire time. She comes on
board, and the three men in the cold case unit throw the case at
her and say good luck, and they didn't even want her there. And
what does she do. She solves them And they could have been solved at
any time. The answers were right there had changed. All she did was
do the work. So my point is, I like to deal with those
types of detectives Laurie Howard. Detective Laurie Howard, who you've heard throughout season
four now of Paper Ghosts, and you're gonna hear a lot more from in
the final two episodes of The Ozarks. She and I became great friends.
She's just she is just an incredible investigator. I comes across really well in
the podcast series, and she's really smart. And she's also very grounded.
And the two of you clearly very grounded. You too, clearly developed a
very strong rapport, very grounded. And here's a woman who kept Shauna Garber's
box of bones under her desk then took them home. Here's someone who literally
extracted Shawna Garber's molars out of the back of her skull on our kitchen table
because the department didn't have the money to do it, wouldn't give her the
money. Extracted those to get them tested to see if there was a match
anywhere. Here's a woman who snuck into a hospital in the middle of the
night with Sewa garber skull to take scans of it in order to send those
scans to Canada because she couldn't cross the border, of course with a box
of bones. So they could get a bust on a lot of this stuff
she did without even getting paid on her own time. Those are the people
I like to deal with when I'm doing my work, the dedicated people who
care about humanity, who are invested in humanity, and who are invested in
victims' families, getting victims family's answers. That's my goal now, Kristen Bill.
My goal now is to gather answers for victim's families who just aren't getting
them. Whether the answer, I don't solve cases. I say it all
the time, and whatever I do, I don't solve cases. I look
for information. I dig up information, and I hand it over to the
people who can do something with it, and I also hand it over to
the family. So that's what I do. 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. I want to make sure we also talk about Crossing the
Line, which is your other podcast among your many projects, for our listeners
who may be unaware. Talk to us a little bit about crossing the Line
and the impetus for setting up that podcast. So crossing the Line with em
William Phelps is a weekly show half hour forty five minute episodes where I go
through a case each week, one case per week. Sometimes I'll do a
two to three parter. Are very rare. It's Paper Ghosts weekly, but
it's more personal. I get personally invested in it. Speak my mind in
this. Whereas Paper goes some more of the journalists, I keep the journalistic
this. I don't hold anything back. If something upsets me. A guy
who did sixteen years for a murder when he was supposed to do forty,
they let him out and he kills five more people. I get upset about
that. I get really enraged by that. That pisses me off because we
had him, we had him, and we let him go right. And
there's a lot of these guys out there. And I started this. I
took a hiatus, a year hiatus with Crossing the Line because I wanted to
A. I was busy with Paper Ghosts, very busy, and B I
wanted to think about the show a little bit more, rebranded a little bit,
and begin it again anew, which I did seven eight weeks ago.
The first episode in this new incarnation, if you will, of Crossing the
Line, it's called The Wife the serial Killer and all the Money, and
it's about the Long Island series killer's wife who was gifted, i'll say,
gifted a seven figures a million dollars from NBC Universal so a production company could
follow her while her husband, the alleged Long Island's serial killer, Rex Huerman,
goes through the process of trial, et cetera, et cetera. Okay,
now I have a big problem with this bill would have a bigger problem.
He's I'm a victim's family member. Myself, my sister in law was
pregnant and murdered. I don't speak from that here. I speak as someone
who is disgusted by this because what this does is and look I said in
the episode, I possibly be slitting my own throat to keep it in the
true crime vein for producing TV in the future. But I don't give a
shit. I really don't care, because you can't take a serial killer's wife
and give that person and a million dollars and throw them up on TV and
say we'll tell us about your life, because what you're doing is you're giving
that serial killer the stage exactly, and you're saying that we're gonna reward the
people in your life because the son of Sam Law won't allow us to give
you any money. So we're gonna reward that family members, and we're gonna
we're gonna put them on TV so they can just tell us they lived with
a monster and they didn't know it. Okay, And my whole thing in
this episode is this, they didn't hand over a million dollars for nothing.
I think the line I used in the show is they didn't hand her a
million dollars to talk about gardening with him and going out to outback with him.
She had to bring something to the table. I've produced TV, bill
has been involved. You have to bring something to the table before you get
money. Okay, you can't just say I'm the wife of the serial killer.
That doesn't That's not how that works. So not only not it taints
all the information she might have she might give to the FBI whatever. So
this is so many things wrong with this. Right, no victims family members
will appear on that show. I guarantee it. They're pissed, and they
should be, Yeah, they should be outraged. The whole thing is so
sleazy, And I don't have any personal agenda with ASA ellerop is her name,
and on some level you could make a case that she is a victim.
But does she and I do in the episode, I absolutely do,
But she doesn't deserve a million dollars. And what they're paying for is access,
and it's I think it's disgusting what they be. But here's the thing.
When that case broke, the media, of course descends upon a Massapequa
park and these people are living on the porch, basically cooking on the porch
because their house has been torn apart, the yard's been torn apart, and
they're shunning the media. She is yelling, screaming f bombs at the media.
Stay away from me, Stay away, Stay away. Fast forward six
months, million dollars now come on bull Access. And I think someone pointed
out to me that in one of the reviews of that episode, someone attacked
me by saying, how dare you go after her? She has cancer and
she lost everything. She needs this money. Look, I'm sorry, she
has cancer. Sorry she lost everything. Doesn't change anything for me, doesn't
change my opinion one bit about this is bad for true crime as a genre,
it's bad for victims, it's bad for future TV programs in the genre.
So is at the bar. Now that's the bar that's set. Now
we have to get as a producer myself, I have to get a serial
killer's family members now to talk or so. As you can see, I'm
heated up again all over about this. Now it's it's got myself worked up
again. It's it is disgusting and all. So they've set the bar with
this ridiculous figure that they're going to pay her a million dollars to have access
to her story. And as you said, people don't want to just hear
about the fact that she might be an avid gardener. And as far as
I know, you made that up, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but
they that's not what they really want to hear about. No, hell no,
hell no. And I'll say this, I didn't get it in the
show because it happened after I recorded. Recently, she's come out within the
past couple of weeks and said this, I want to wait till all the
facts are out before I make a judgment against them. Oh I saw that
quote. Oh yeah, so now the tune is different. Why because she's
going on TV with the story it has to be so yeah, so crossing
the line answer your question, Kristen, you mean that wasn't the answer.
Again, I go through a case and I do talk about the case from
a start to finish, and sometimes I have guests. This week, I
have a detective, and then I at the end, when we get to
the trial part of it all, or the justice part of it all,
that's when I start to start to I call people out. Look, I'm
calling people out for who they are. If you're a scumbag, I'm going
to call you a scumbag on the show. But if you're a piece of
shit, I'm going to call you that. If you if you stalk little
boys and you've you've already molested two and spent time in jail and you almost
killed one and they let you out again, I'm going to attack the judge.
I'm going to attack the parole board. That's what I'm going to do
on that show. So you find yourself you're able to remain dispassionate and keep
your remove and emotions in check. Absolutely. Now, the origin of the
name of the show. You talked about paper Ghosts, which is a very
interesting title. Where does the name crossing the Line come from? It's the
best titles I think have a double meaning. So crossing the line is crossing
the crime scene line, you're crossing it into You're going into that Terrea.
The other thing is, I'm going to cross the line and I'm going to
call you a ship bag. If you're a ship bag, I'm gonna I'm
gonna I'm gonna call out a judge. I'm going to name that judge.
I'm going to call out a parole board. I'm going to name those people
on the parole board if they let a guy out after twenty years when he
sentenced to forty and he kills two more people. I did an episode where
I grew up in verning, Connecticut and as a middle schooler eighth grade,
I had a girlfriend we weren't dating at the time, who was on my
bus. She didn't get on the bus. One morning, kid at the
bus stop gets on the bus. No one liked this kid. There was
something weird about him. Long story short, he strangled her in the woods
behind the bus stop. That oh my, oh, my god. I
was thinking about this and talking to somebody, and I've just been around murder
all my life, murder surround. Yeah, yeah, thirteen, fourteen years
old at this, Yeah, my god, so what happened to that kid?
Hold on, they arrest him. He gets twenty five years because he
was seventeen at the time. He gets twenty five years. He's out.
In seventeen, he goes down to North Carolina, moves down there. He
beats his girlfriend the death down there with one of the spindles from the baby
crib in front of the baby, beats her to death. He gets like
thirty eight years for that. And the day my show aired. The day
it aired, pro board let him out. He's out again. He killed
two women brutally, and that mother is out walking the street right now.
Wow. So I crossed the line when I start to call out these parole
boards and judges and say, look, man, we're not asking you to
reinvent law. We're not asking you to go to the Supreme Court and argue
something. We're just saying no, say no, and enforce the law that
we asked you to enforce. That's it, that's all you got to do.
All you got to do is say you killed two women. We're not
letting you out. Yeah, there's no rehab for that guy. That guy
can't be put back that on the street. No. So this is the
thesis of the title, if you will, yeah, yeah, And those
stories need to be told. They need to be told. I did a
two parter called Bumble Death and Bumble is a is a dating app. If
you don't know bill dating app' met my partner seventeen years ago on a dating
app. Okay, so Bumble is a dating app. Then, and so
this woman in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a black woman meets a guy and they
correspond for a couple of weeks, and long story short, he comes over
for a date. She winds up dead. I remember reading about this story.
Yeah, she winds up dead at the same time, the same night,
maybe two miles away, other black women goes on a date. She
winds up dead. The Bridgeport police, who I am not going to say
investigated because they didn't do any investigation. And I'm not saying these people were
murdered, but there are really strange circumstances around these debts. And you have
two women dying roughly, two black women dying within two miles of each other.
It's very strange. Yeah. The Bridgeport police, the detectives who look
at both cases, don't even tell the families. The families have no idea
their people have died. Days go by, they have to investigate themselves,
and actually they don't find out until they call the Medical Examiner's office in Farmington,
Connecticut and say, is my daughter there? This is her name?
Yeah, we got her. The police never told them, never made contact
with the families. There is just so much racism involvend than this, and
there's so much not These people don't matter. Yeah, the lack of piring
is evident, right, the lack of humanity and the lack people today place
so little value on human life. It's just astonishing to me. It's remarkable
to me, and some of those people, unfortunately are in law enforcement and
judges and etc. That enrages me. And I'm going to report on it
when I can. Matt, you were referenced already that your sister in law
was murdered. You did just mention. Of course, it feels like you've
been around crime your whole entire life. How much of an impact do you
think your sister in law's murder had on your future in the business? Does
that inform the way that you do things? Now? How impactful would you
say it is? That's a good question. It wasn't the impetus for me
to get into this. That wasn't the thing. However, it did allow
me to walk into Bill Thomas's house twelve years ago with my Dark Minds crew
and sit in front of Bill and have a common bond that I could relate
to him in a way that other people can't. I know what it's like
to lose a family member. It gave me that kind of common bond that
I could bring to my work, definitely, because I've seen what it's done
to my family. So it helped me in that respect for sure. The
most striking thing about working on Dark Minds with you was how much furniture the
crew moved around. They removed furniture around Reward, North America. Trust me,
they wanted certain angles and they wanted certain light and they ended up like
moving every stick of furniture in I remember that took a while. Yeah,
wow, take a while, which gave us plenty of time to talk and
get to know each other even before the cameras were going. So yeah,
it's definitely helped me in that respect. Sure. And was her murder ever
solved? The call last summer that is basically solved, but there's problems with
the evidence and stuff. So they're hoping they can get these two people who
did it. They're still around. They're optimistic that they can develop the evidence
more. Unfortunately, some of the evidence was contaminated at the crime scene.
It happens. There's no corruption, there's no nefarious activity. Stuff happens at
crime scenes. Stuff gets contaminated. So that's what happened. Yeah. One
of the things I've said to the investigators in the Colonial Parkway murders, my
sister's case, is that I remind the investigators from time to time that family
members are looking for answers. We all understand that we may not get the
perfect answer, which is so and so has been identified as the offender.
They're going to be indicted, They're going to be tried, they're going to
be convicted. There's going to be appeals, but ultimately this person is going
to be punished. When you're into a case for as long as we are,
and now I'm thinking about your sister in law's case that stretches back a
number of yours. Now, you're looking for answers more than anything else.
You understand that it might not be a perfect situation. And this is one
of the things I'm trying to remind our investigators in the Colonial Parkway case is
that we're looking for answers. The offender that's been identified just recently in the
Colonial Parkway murders died in twenty seventeen. He's never going to be tried,
he's never going to be convicted. But actually having those answers is incredibly helpful.
Do you feel the same way. Would it be of some comfort to
you to know who the offenders are or in this case, the offenders are
still around. Yeah, I know who they are. It would be more
comforting to my niece and nephews who lost their mother and then my brother subsequently
died like six years after her at forty seven. So it would be comforting
to them to just be able to say, Okay, I'm done with this,
now this is done, Now they have the people whatever. And I
meet up with this paper ghosts a lot, And I say this in a
lot of the seasons that families just want to be heard. They want to
be heard, they want to know that they're being heard. And there's great
police all over this country who do that job very well. We mentioned Laurie
Howard, we mentioned I mentioned Rachel Evans from the LAPD Detective Rachel Evans.
So I've met scores of detectives and police who do that very well because they
know it's one of the most important parts of their job is to make sure
that the family is being heard. So, Matt, what's next for you?
In terms of projects? It looks like you always have a little something
percolating in the background. Can you tell us any of what you're currently working
on or are we going to keep that on the dal for now? No,
I'm working on I have a book project. I think I haven't written
a book in about three years, and that was the first time in maybe
twenty two years I hadn't worked stopped working on books. So I'm getting Jones
in to work on a book that is definitely coming. Crossing the Line is
going to continue now for I think the next year. I'm going to do
week to week for the next year, I hope to do. There's more
paper Ghosts will be coming. And I'm working on a project that has nothing
to do with crime and actually has to do with comedy. It's a television
project, which is I like the idea of that. Every once in a
while, I pop in a different type of genre with TV when I pitch
TV and I'm hoping that goes somewhere. Actually, I'm going to be filming
a Hulu series this month, a three part Hulu series. Yeah, that's
right on true crime, comedy or an intersection of the two gardening gardening A
gardening show. No, this is true crime. Build a Hulu thing is
true crime. Yeah, there are enough gardening shows. Although I do I
do garden. I do garden, and no one could do a better gardening
show than Monty Gardener's Gardener's World on BBC fifty eight seasoning that show. You'd
have to pay me money to watch a gardening show. I'm sorry. I
love it. After doing true crime all day, put on a garden and
show at night. That just brings you right back down on earth. I
want to watch the take apart and fix vintage cards. Yeah, there you
go, that's your gardening. I was going to say my last question for
you, Matt is how do you step away from true crime at the end
of the day, because like us, you're immersed in it. If you
don't turn on a gardening show at the end of the day, do you
watch stand up? What do you do to keep yourself from becoming so mired
down in the darkness that is prevalent in this in the genre. The thing
I love second beyond writing is reading. So I read a lot of literature.
I read a lot of literary stuff. I read a lot about religious
history. I just I read about I read a lot of writer biographies.
Actually, I just read a great biography, Larry mcmurtury biography, and that
just takes me out of the world. I like that answer. I would
love to see your library at some point or another, said the English teacher
of me. You can come up and stay at the Maple House and then
we can go visit with Matt. Do you have there you go? Yeah,
you come down the Coventry farming community. You see the horses and carls.
Yeah, and don't forget Matt, you have friends here in Norfolk,
Connecticut, so you can always come over for a visit. Yeah. I
have a friend who has family out in Salisbury. Is that's out there right,
yes? Yeah, next door. Yeah, a good friend of mine.
He's a writer as well. He has family out there. He goes
out there a lot. My kids live out in New Hartford, Torrington,
that area that's over our way. Yeah, you got the Root eight serial
killer out that way. The case has been going on for forty years.
Yeah, yeah, body bodies all over the place. Fascinating story. And
a friend of mine had written a very good book about that case as well.
Oh no kidding, since a partnership coming on one. Yeah, that's
an interesting case. The books are too many and too numerous to list,
but the podcasts are Paper Ghosts and Crossing the Line. Matt Phelps, thank
you so much for joining us today on Mind of Murder. We appreciate you
taking the time to talk to us. This was great. Thanks thanks for
having me. I really appreciate it. Look for m William Phelps wherever books
are sold, television series are produced, or podcasts are listened to. There
you go. That is going to do it for this episode of Mind of
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 mcleoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed
in partnership with crawl 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