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 mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas. We are joined today by author Casey Sherman to talk about
his New York Times bestselling book Helltown, The Untold Story of a serial Killer
on Cape Cod Casey, thank you so much for joining us. Oh,
thanks for having guys. I loved the book. It was truly fantastic,
but it sounds leased on the sales. Everybody has loved your book. So
far, we are thrilled that you're taking the time to talk to us about
it. Oh, my pleasure. I'm very happy to be here. Do
you pay attention to stuff like, oh, where are we on the New
York Times bestseller charts? And sure, yeah, I think afternoon. I'm
competitive by nature, and I wrote this book with an idea that I wanted
to elevate the genre of true crime, So I didn't know how that was
going to be received by traditional true crime readers. I'm glad that they took
this journey and really followed my lead on it, and so far the response
has been overwhelming. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your
professional and educational background before we go down the Tony cost A rabbit hole?
Sure? I caught myself the accidental author. Guys and ever believed to be
writing books of any kind until I was thrust into the spotlight because of my
work on one criminal case, one of the biggest cases in American history,
the case of the Boston Strangler. And for me it was a personal journey
because my aunt, nineteen year old Mary Sullivan, was the youngest and final
victim in this notorious nineteen sixties murders free. So I grew up with true
crime, and there were questions about the guilt or innocence of the self confessed
Boston strangler, and those questions led me to journalism school at Boston University.
Those questions led me to a twenty five year career as an investigative journalist.
The first book I ever wrote was a memoir about my reinvestigation of my aunt's
murder called A Rose from Mary, and I thought there was an overwhelming response
to that book. It was a surprise bestseller, and I thought, Okay,
I can do this. There are other stories that need to be told,
and Halltown is now my fifteenth book. Quite frankly, guys, I
wasn't planning on ever or going down the path of a serial killer story again
until this story really grabbed me by the shirt and would to go. You've
covered all sorts of other stuff. There's sports and there's some crime, and
you've written Hunting Whitey about Whitey Bulger, one of my favorite mobsters. What
was it about Helltown and this Tony Costa mystery? As Kristen mentioned, that
sort of put that on your to do list where you thought, I really
have to write about that the inspiration came during the height of the pandemic.
I just wanted to get the hell out of the house, like we all
did, and I just picked up my brother one day on the Cape and
we drove the length of the cave, just having a great day amongst ourselves.
We end up in Provincetown and we've been there so many times before growing
up on the Cave. It was the height of tourist season. All of
the businesses were shuttered, and so we began to talk about the ghosts real
and imagined in Provincetown, and ultimately we landed on the Tony cost A murder
case because we were driving past a lot of the different landmarks and milestones in
that murder case, and we both knew the cost of murder case, but
didn't know it in detail. How we learned about Tony Costa we were children
of the nineteen seventies growing up on Cape Cod and he was really looked at,
or at least talked about as the boogeyman. So if we were going
out on Halloween and it would be watch out for Tony Costa or Tony Chupp
as the people called him, because he'll take you away he was really folklore
and myth until I went back to my writing office here and I'd get a
deep dive on the cases, and I could not believe how barbaric this murder
case was. That I've covered up to fifty homicides and my career as an
investigative journalist. Concluding Jack the Ripper, I've never seen anything this bad and
this brutal and this vicious before, and I was shocked that the story was
lost to history. They explained why it was lost in the book Helltown,
But that ultimately became my challenge to take a look at this case with a
fresh set of eyes and implore some unique check by bringing into work and iconic
writers and following their journey into darkness with this case as law. The English
teacher in me was absolutely thrilled to see both of my loves combined in one
book. It's true crime and its American literature. I was hooked from the
minute that I started reading it. Before we do a deep dive, can
you just walk our listeners who may be unaware of Tony Costa through what he
did. Just give us Tony Costa and a nutshell. Sure, Tony Costa
is the real life epitome of Norman Bates in Psycho. He was a serial
killer who had mother love hate issues. He was an amateur taxidermist, but
he was also incredibly charming, and he was a hippie like messiah who drew
young beautiful women into the dark woods around Provincetown, specifically at a town called
Truro Beautiful Landscape on Cape Cod and drew them to their murders. Tony Costa
stabbed, shot, murdered these women and then just membered them and buried them
in shallow grapes. Again, this was a shocking crime that went unsolved for
many months. And during the public awareness of this case, two writers,
Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, become darkly obsessed with this case. And I
think they wanted to explore the darkness and evil within themselves and die write about
that journey in this story. And there are a lot of comparisons, Kristen,
between Tony Costa and Charles Manson, and those are legitimate comparisons because both
were very charismatic. They were operating in nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine,
nineteen sixty nine, and that whole Er Guys was a landscape on which
I wanted to paint for this book because I look at it, what we're
dealing with here in twenty twenty two, in nineteen sixty nine and the Summer
of Love as a distant memory right America and the world is still reeling from
the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy of Martin Luther King. Then you've got
a very bloody of Democratic National Convention and the protests in Chicago. You've got
the Nickson inauguration, You've got chap acquitted, You've got Woodstock, the moon
landing, and ultimately thea coda to the story. The Manson murders in la
and my characters in Helltown touch upon all of these major historical events, and
I wanted to really bring that into focus. The comparisons between Tony Costa and
Charles Manson are just chilling, and even down to the fact that they did
share a follower, Linda Kasabian, because you've done plenty of research on Costa
at this point, Why do you think that Charles Manson became so well known
and Tony Costan never quite reached that same level of notoriety. I think it's
pretty simple. Manson and his followers murdered famous people. They murdered chair and
take, and it was a story that unfolded in real time in Hollywood.
But as I said, I have a lot of authenticity and authority in the
true crime space having covered all the homicides that are covered. The Tony Costa
case is right up there with the most brutal sero murder cases in American history.
And I never wanted to glorify his work, his murderous work. Person
is reading. The book is dedicated to the women, to the victims in
this case, and I wanted to really make them less and bone again and
really talk about them as young women with all the hopes and dreams that young
women had at that time. And these women should all be grandmothers right now,
they should be enjoying their grandchildren. But for the most part, they
were frozen in time and at nineteen years old or at twenty two years old.
And one of the things I wanted to talk about in this book at
the conversation I wanted to have was some asset I wanted to explore against women
back in nineteen sixty nine, and I think a lot of that still exists
today, especially with the Me Too movement, women were disposable in nineteen sixty
nine. When women go missing in Provincetown, nobody care. Some of their
family members don't care, ye friends don't care. They just disappear, and
nobody is racking focus to what happened to these women. And I've just thought
that was a very tragic part of this whole story. You talk about it
in the book. There's this idea of the transient nature of people coming and
going, and especially in a place like Provincetown in nineteen sixty nine, and
there's visitors, and there's people that are there and gone every single week.
The way that these kind of hippie girls, young women are referred to is
really pretty disparaging. They don't seem valued, and a lot of people don't
seem terribly concerned that there actually could be something going on involving a series of
serial murders. It seems like that's right, nobody can. And I also
think that they were looked at as opportunities. They were exploited by not only
obviously the killer, but by the people around them. The district attorney in
the case. It became a story where let's use these young women to elevate
our careers. As I said, I wanted to rack focus on them.
And again it goes back to my nineteen year old On Sullivan. I always
focus on the victims first in their journeys and what they went through and what
their families must be going through. Even to this, By the way,
we didn't mean to move too quickly past what happened with your aunt Mary Sullivan.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that? That's sure covered
in your first book, A Rose for Mary. Yeah. Rose from Mary
was my first book, published in the early two thousands, and this was
the culmination of a reinvestigation I had done on her murder and on all the
Boston strangl and murders. Mary Sullivan was a nineteen year old and nineteen sixty
two graduate of Barnstaple High School on Cape Cod. She had just moved to
Boston four days before she was murdered on January fourth, nineteen sixty four,
and an apartment right in the heart of Beacon Hill, which is that's postcard
Boston, one of the safest areas in the city. She turned out to
be the youngest and final victim of this murders. Free and my investigation,
Bill and Kristen focused on the fact that there wasn't just one Boston strangler.
There was and Jack the ripperre resurrected to stalk the women of Boston. That
didn't happen. There were several killers murdering these women for their own purposes,
and they hade a blueprint for how to do it because the grizzly details were
printed in the newspapers at the time. But the police knew that it wasn't
just the work of one mate. And I have gone through all of the
police reports and the records so much like I didn't help him, and you
find a thread and interview the original Task Force Boston Strangler Task Force investigators who
had at least six suspects in these eleven homicides. I was listening the other
day to a podcast that I had listened to and enjoyed before Stranglers, and
I was listening to the first episode and was like, Oh, it's Casey,
Oh my gosh or Ryan, and I've never listened to it. Yes,
you were YEA. I didn't sit down with them. They probably gleaned
audio that I had given in many of the interviews that I've done in this
case. Oh that's interesting. I thought that you'd actually worked with them on
it. You were, you were in the first and the last episode they
were talking about your reinvestigation into Mary's case. It's the first thing I wasn't
against the project. I'm certainly happy that people are talking about this case now,
sixty years after the murders, which is I think a great opportunity to
talk about the murders that occurred in nineteen sixty nine in province down Again.
These murders were lost to history, buried by history, but they deserved to
be discussed. These victims deserved to be remembered, and that was part of
the mission that I had writing this book. Now, I knew that as
a professional journalist, it's probably pretty hard to phase you. But you mentioned
earlier the crimes are absolutely gruesome. How did you deal with the horror of
reading looking at the crime scenes and having to deal with all of that.
It is stomach turning, it is, And I had the benefit of three
thousand primary source documents in this case, court transcripts, all of the trial
transcripts, plus the crime scene reports and witness interviews. But what really brought
it home for me, Bill and Kristen was the autopsy photos. In the
crime scene photo of these women, they're the most and I've seen many,
They're the most vicious I've ever seen. It didn't look like these women were
actually stabbed. It looked like they had been mauled by a great white shark.
And the frenzied attacks on these women show something that is beyond disturbing.
This alter ego that you talk about in the book, how much of that
were you able to draw from or are you taking some artistic license there?
Casey, this other being that seems to take over part of it was taking
a little step into the literary nonfiction field and recreating scenes. But all of
those scenes in the book are based on the Killers unpublished manuscript called Resurrection.
I had actually had access to that, so for the first time, I
can bring you into every single crime scene through Tony cost his eye while he
is trying to blame these vicious murders on that somebody else. So it was
an alter ego that he claimed. It was a young man living in Provincetown
named Corey Debreau. He who Tony Costa blamed the murders on. But there
was another Corey Devereaux, meaning Costas alter Rigo that was buried deep inside him.
Like I said, one of the things you have to do, guys,
is just when you write a book like this, you go back into
the history of a killer. So realizing that he was a son of a
single mother, his father was killed during World War Two. He was a
World War two hero, actually saved the life of a fellow sailor or Tony
Costa never met him, grew up with this woman who he really loved,
and by the time he's five or six years old, she realizes that she
can't support him on her own. So if he meets a guy and they
get married, and they have a son of their own, and now Tony
Costa has got to share his love with them, and then that is the
moment where he begins to split, I think mentally, and he starts to
and many the serio killers have done this. He starts to take his aggressions
out on birds and small animals than the household pets. He had a toy
total in his neighborhood when he was fifteen years old. Good luck ever finding
that thing again, because it was probably stuffed and put under his bed,
and he was arrested for assaulting a young girl sixteen years old when he was
a teenager, and instead of getting the help that he sorely needed at that
time, getting him the psychiatric help he needed, his family protected him.
His mother protected him and pleaded with the judge be leanient on my son.
I will send him away to live with family on Cape cod which is what
she did. Never addressed his issues. He moves to the cape. She
followed him, and then his prey begins to get a little larger. He
starts to hunt down the wild animals on the outer cape, and eventually he
graduates, if you will, to human beings. So he had a total
of how many victims. Remind me on that he was convicted of two murders.
We know that he killed at least five women. I would probably double
that number. Okay, he did travel a lot. We talked about a
little bit of the comparisons between he and Charles Manson. It's interesting to note
that both Tony cost and Charles Manson lived in the same neighborhood in hate Ashbury
and San Francisco. In nineteen sixty seven, they attended the same party as
they were in the same rooms together and I have eye witnesses that have put
them in the same rooms. They've had conversations. I don't know what they
said to each other. I don't know if there was any cross pollination going
on. But you've got two killers evolving into monsters breathing the same error,
which I thought was pretty frightening ulcast. Wow, it's amazing. What a
strange coincidence. The other victims potential victims Casey that you're thinking of, even
if you can't confirm, are there other unsolved cases in that area or the
areas where he traveled That would be cases in San Francisco they're unsolved cases in
New York City obviously, were also unsolved cases in New England. There were
upwards to three hundred young women who had gone missing in nineteen sixty eight nineteen
sixty nine in New England alone. How many of them made it home to
their families, I can't tell, but I know that just based on his
killing methods, this isn't something that he did just four or five times.
He had to grow into the killer he became when he murdered Pat Walsh and
Mary and Waisaki in January of nineteen sixty nine and then buried them in shallow
graves in Truro. See. You posit right at the end of the book
that the Lady in the Dunes case may be attributable to one of Tony Costs
followers, the one you describe Strawberry Blonde. Can you tell us a little
bit about the Lady in the Dunes case? Sure? That's obviously a notorious
unsolved mystery on the Cape, and there have been many theories over the past
thirty years to who this woman was and who killed us. Some of those
theories focused on Whitey Bulger, the crime boss from Boston. Now, I
wrote the book Hunting Whitey Bulger, which was about his sixteen years as a
fugitive. I also, I'm the only one, including my co author for
that project. We're the only one who ever interviewed Whitey Bulger's killer, who
was just indicted last week. Yeah, so we got very deep into the
Bulger case. Foulger did not do this. Vulger did not kill any woman
in Provincetown, even though he traveled there. It wasn't his m Stephen King's
kid Joe Hill positive death. The Lady in the Dunes was an extra in
the movie Jaws in nineteen seventy YEA, yeah, people love that completely ridiculousness.
A great story. It would have been a great story if it was
true. It was. Tony Costa was considered a suspect in this unsolved murder
right from the get go, but he couldn't have done it because he was
killed in prison in nineteen seventy four, and it was the summer of seventy
four and that happened. And then a month later a woman has found dismant
embered in the Provincetown Dunes. Her identity has never been discovered, her killer
has never been discovered. But I've had access to the crime team photos in
that case, and I look at cutloads and I see a lot of similarities
there. And I go back to the similarities between Costa and Manson. Both
had families and disciples who are willing to commit crimes and kill in their names.
And my theory is that the follower of Tony Costa committed this murder to
appease Tony Costa's restless spirit. They were heavily into which that at the time.
Enough the Wiccan subculture that's out there that is focused on the sky,
the moon in the land. This was dark art, dark magic that they
were exploring in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies. Have there been
efforts to identify the lady in the Dunes? Do we know where she's buried?
Could she be? She's buried almost in an unmarked grave in the same
the cemetery that Tony Costa is buried in. There have been numerous efforts DNA
analysis, cranial facial reconstruction. They've tried to find out her identity for decades,
and no one has ever come forward to claim her body. There has
been no DNA match for anybody in any database in the United States or abroad.
It's really that this woman is in an unmarked grave. It's very sad
that the victims of Tony Costa were buried in shallow graves that he dug oh
he after he was killed or committed suicide. They received Catholic burial and provincetown.
There's there's no justice in that. No, to put it mildly,
I'm wondering if we could take another crack at the Lady in the Dunes case.
Obviously, we're big supporters of investigative genetic genealogy, it seems if the
support was there, that might be an interesting way to go with trying to
identify her, which might at least give them a new fresh start in terms
of that investigation. I think it's an open case in Provincetown, and certainly
there are people are all around the world that are focused on finding out who
she is before you can find out who killed him. So the more smart
people that get behind a project like that never say never, hopefully that we
will find out who she was, who her family was, and ultimately why,
how and she was killed. You're listening to Mind over Murder. Will
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind
over Murder. So you'd mentioned a couple of minutes ago about Tony Costas followers,
and I hear that when you went onto the Cape to do some book
signings you had some I'm not going to call it issues. I don't think
we justified by calling it an issue, but I did hear that there was
some interesting developments in terms of Tony Costas followers. Maybe hassling you or giving
you a little bit of that kind of comes with the territory when you're an
investigative journalist. But I will say in nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine,
Tony Coat still was protected. He was protected by his family and by his
friends, and they intimidated and harassed witnesses. They intimidated and harassed police officers
and investigators. Had Tony cost have been arrested before he was, maybe pet
Walsh and Mary and Wisaki would be alive today. So now, fifty three
years later, I had a book event scheduled in Provincetown at the only bookstore
in Provincetown, and it was abruptly canceled, and I found out that the
same people friends and family of the serial killer were intimidating the bookseller and threatening
the bookseller. And yeah, I've received some intimidating emails and printing emails,
but I'm not really concerned about it. Oh, you have to always keep
your head on a swivel, especially you're looking at the recent attack of Salmon
Rushdie and artists of being attacked openly. Now it is a concern, but
it's really frightening that you've got these people that are still trying to protect a
serial killer's dark legacy fifty three years after the crime. So about three weeks
ago, I got email from the bookseller, great guy, and I felt
really bad for him. He's just trying to run a business and he said
everybody was trying to come in and looking for the book Helltown and they couldn't
find it because it wasn't for sale. So he bought two boxes and asked
me to drive up the Problemstown and sign them, which I did, and
I thanked them for his coverage in his support. And I'm not going to
cower to any online mob for sure. And the facts in the story stand
up to the story that I wrote. And I'm sorry that the family is
still trying to protect this guy. So is that his ex wife avis that
he's doing so, yeah, I think she's certainly somebody who's been sympathetic to
that online mob there. But there are the people that claim that they're family
and friends of cost Her, And they're the same people that I read about
in police reports of going back to nineteen sixty nine. In nineteen seven,
and you're thinking, oh, this name looks familiar. Jaronstown's a small area
I called the book Helltown because that was the nickname given to the area in
the seventy hundred when it was a pirate community, and it's a town that's
always followed their own rules and made up their own law still to this day
many ways. Did you work at all with Liza Rodman her book The Babysitter
came out about the Costa case. Actually, I was reading Helltown and I
was like, why does this sound so familiar? And I had to think
about it, and I was like, oh, I had read The Babysitter
a couple of months. I didn't know Lizer. I knew she had written
a book, and I took a look at it and I grazed it over.
I don't want to ever follow anybody's tracks sting a book like this.
She had an event in Provincetown Cancel and they really attacked her online a lot
of the community members. So I reached out to her the next day and
I said, I'm going to support you, so this can't stand, and
I'm gonna I'm gonna side with you, and we're gonna have a united front
against some people that are trying to crush free speech and trying to protect the
serial killers. So a lot of respectabliz it. Were you more comfortable,
for example, having book events elsewhere, say on mid Cape. I know
Provincetown it does feel like the end of the world, and it's certainly the
end of the Cape, and it's a really cool place. But if you
felt like the pressure was too much on a local level, would you be
more comfortable mid Cape or elsewhere? I'm comfortable ever or a go Bill.
I would have been comfortable going in the Provincetown for that event. So there
was a film shot here in Massachusetts last year called The Boston Striding stars Karen
Nightley. It's coming out next year, and I could have called the producers
and demanded that they do not shoot in Massachusetts because all the families are still
there. I don't have any right to do that. I have a right
to support the film or not support the film, but I don't have a
right to dictate who can. So I feel the same way with the cost
of Family. They have no rights. They don't own this story. They
have no right to dictate who can read about Tony Costa's murderous exploits and this
dark period in history. So I don't have any qualms about visiting Provincetown,
and I have zero trepidation on any other book event that I do, and
I've been on book tour for forty seven days and talking at bookstores are big
venues all across New England in New York City, and I don't have a
worry about that. Has anyone ever shown up from the Costa family to challenge
anything that you seem to have done your research, You did your homework.
I certainly didn't get the sense except for the areas where we talked about where
there's literary license, where you're sure helping to create for the reader connective tissue,
and that tradition goes back to in Cold Blood with Truman Coody, it
actually goes all the way back to Death in the Afternoon and written by Ernest
Hemingway. I was looking forward to kind of expanding and painting a little rodder
when I wrote That's why I created some of those or recreated some of those
scenes. Well, it's interesting that people have appeared at these events and they
knew cost Many of them knew Costa very intimately, and I've learned a lot
from these exchanges. After these event didn't come at me in a threatening way.
They want to talk and have a quiet moment and share perspective and insight
about him. Which is certainly very helpful to me. They're entitled if they
wanted to have a more positive outlook on Tony Costa. In other words,
you paint him, I think, accurately as the monster that he was.
But if somebody else feels differently for whatever reason, I think they're certainly entitled
to that opinion. With threatening the owner of the bookstore in Provincetown, US
like somebody threatening them for having a positive opinion on one of the most vicious
serial killers in American history. I follow certain social media thread on Facebook,
and I see that he had a Tony Costa had a birthday recently, and
there are people in the community that we're talking about Tony Costa like he had
lost his life saving three people in a five in glowing terms, and not
the vicious, serial killing, absolute monster that he was. I want to
take a minute and pivot back to Kurt vonning It and Norman Mailer, because
that was a whole different side of this story. And I was, like
I said, and I'm an English teacher and I'm a nerd. I was
thrilled to read this. How did you learn that k and Norman Mailer both
had this obsession at the same time in about the same area. I think
you and I are both literature nerds. Krista Bay. I'm a huge fan
of literary biographies, and I've read a lot about Norman, and I've read
a lot about Kurt. And this common team that I found in both their
stories was their obsession with this murder case that was happening in the backyard in
nineteen sixty nine. And then you look at these two iconic writers as people
in in nineteen sixty nine, when we meet Kurt Vonnegut in Helltown, he's
not the Kurt Vonnegut that we remember today. Struggling author, he's been out
of print for years. He's got an automobile dealership on Cape cod that is
failing. He's trying to support his family, and he's got this story in
his head that ultimately will become Slaughterhouse Five, which becomes an anti war anthem
for an entire generation. And he's been running away from horror, meaning the
horror of World War Two since the nineteen forty since he was a pow and
survived the Dresden firebombing, the most deadly firebombing in Europe during the World War
Two. Twenty five to thirty thousand people were killed and burned alive, and
it was his job to bury the dead. How do you come back to
the United States, Christen and get a job and raise a family. So
there's a lot of empathy and sympathy that I have occurred. Norman is on
the other side of the spectrum. He's been a best selling author since Naked
the Dead in the nineteen forties, and he looks at himself as the heir
apparent to Ernest Hemingway, both in his writing in his larger than life kind
of lifestyle. But he's got a lot of darkness in it. And there's
a passage in my book that I remind the readers of that Norman mail Or
shouldn't have been free in nineteen sixty nine. He should have been in jail
for attempted murder because he did try to kill his second wife Adele during a
cocktail party in nineteen sixties, stabbed Or redependent, and he could have would
have gone to jail for it, but she didn't testify against him, and
he was really interested in exploring that darkness. Do you cross that line?
And certainly cost It was somebody that I think he looked at and studied almost
as an anthropology in many ways. I was going to say, though,
who among us hasn't wanted to stab their significant other with a pen? That?
Really I can't talk for my wife, but I'm sure I've driven nercrasy
many times. But Norman was a dark guy, brilliant, as was Kurt,
and both of them approached this story in different fashions. Were their families
willing to help you out on the project. I did have some correspondence with
Edie, and I did speak privately to Michael Mahler, who's Norman's son.
I didn't want to rely heavily because they were young at the time, and
I just wanted to focus on the characters that I had learned about that I
wanted to write about. Who really took upon myself to build or sculpt in
Norman out of my own play. I have said something regarding the Colonial Parkway
murders, my sister's case and Williamsburg and you that I believe that the town
fathers if for Williamsburg, which is a very tourism dependent community, everything they
could to paper over the Colonial Parkway murders. I believe that the National Park
Service did everything they could to cover up those murders, and I believe that
the economic interests of Colonial Williamsburg, etc. Were also one of the reasons
why a lot of people, even several years later, had never heard of
the Colonial Parkway murders. Given the fact that Cape Cod and Provincetown have very
similar economic drivers where it's a tourism related area, do you feel like the
fact that the Costas story never really achieved the same level of visibility as save
Manson do you think that the economic drivers of Cape Cod had anything to do
with that? Yeah, I think Before I answer that question, Bill,
I just want to say, for your loss, what was your sister's man.
My sister's Kathy Thomas. She's a United States Naval Academy graduate, and
she and her girlfriend, Rebecca Dawski are the first two victims in the Colonial
Parkway murders, which we talk about on mind Over. I'm sorry sorry to
hear that. Oh, thank you, and thank you for talking a little
bit about her. I do think that given the fact that you've got two
areas that rely heavily on tourism, I think that does factor into it.
Kid Cod relies on tourist money, and it was interesting that I think the
town fathers were trying to downplay these murders. The first time that one of
the women whose bodies is uncovered in a shallow grave is even reported on I
think it was page twenty seven in the Boston Globe. Now that absolutely insane
that they'd be relegated to the back pages of a major newspaper. Today they
have it splashed on the front page or other bylined articles. But I think
the town fathers tried to keep it quiet. But I do think that people
took advantage of it as well, because there were people trying to sell sam
from the crime scenes right on the highway for six an take. God,
but it reminds me Bill of that scene in Jobs, where you've got the
mayor saying that the beaches are going to be open this weekend. It's got
to be beautiful. And I do think that there was a little of that,
certainly, probably in putting both cases. Oh yes, that's a great
comparison. Absolutely. So. You probably don't want to go into a ton
of detail about your next project, but can you tell us a little bit
about your next projects? Sure, it's a story that unfolded Los Angeles and
the nineteen, very shocking murder that brings in Hollywood glamour and kind of the
golden era of gangsterism. Yes, and that was great already. I'm a
big fan of Valley Confidential, both as a book as a film. My
agent and I have been looking at different projects that might mirror that story a
little bit, and we think we've landed on one, and I'm starting to
work on that project very soon. So this would be a book first,
and then hopefully a book first. Yes, I've been very four it in
my career to have my books adapted into films. A Patriot Stay with Mark
Wahlberg was based on my book Boston Strong and the Finest Hours, which is
another Kate Cod story about coast guard rescue that happened in nineteen fifty two,
became a big Disney movie in twenty sixteen with Chris Pine and Casey Affleck,
and it's very popular on Disney Plus. And that's an inspirational story about Kate
cud And now I'm writing a dark story about Kate Cod in Helltown. But
there is ways to be inspired by Helltown as well, because even though we
talked about some of the people that were exploiting young women in the nineteen sixties.
I also racked focus on two investigators, Bernie Flynn and Tom Gunnery,
who did everything in their power to find this killer and put them behind bars.
And they were very tied into the families of the last two victims,
Pat Walsh and Mary and Ysake, so I look at them as real heroes
in this story. And not to segue further, but I do also include
a chapter chap a Quintic, Yeah, because it was relevant to the case,
and it also spoke to this treatment of young women in nineteen sixty nine.
Yes, and I poured over twenty nine hundred pages of documentation from the
grand jury investigation of chap Aquintic. And I was shot on a rudding and
I grew up on Cape cod Mary Joe Popeckney should be alive today, much
of Susan Perry, Sidney Mons and Mary Nysack. And she was alive in
that oldsmobile for several hours. She affixiated, she didn't drown, And the
culprit was the US Senator named Ted Kennedy. It's such a shame and his
level of irresponsibility is just incredible. I didn't want to move past the finest
hours too quickly. First of all, I loved the film, and then
my girlfriend Pamela grew up on Cape Cod and she had never heard this story.
We ended up seeing the film and really loving it, and she said,
how did I grow up in Barnstable and I never knew about this incredible
rescue? That's what I said to myself. I was doing a book signing
and Chatham for my first book on the Boston Strangler case, and my brother
Todd had stumbled upon a very small memorial to the rescue in nineteen fifty two,
and he raced to my book signing and he said, I have your
next book. Told me what literally knew about it? Really, I went
to a place called Rock Harbor, where that thirty six foot wooden lifeboat stands
today's birth and I said, how did this little lifeboat save so many men
that became this now international maritime phenomenon? Book and film that actually sounds like
something out of a movie. Right there where he comes running in and saying,
I've got your next book. You always after that Bill. I always
anytime somebody says that I have to listen because it pays off. Wow,
that's fantastic. So the book is Helltown and the Untold Story of a serial
Killer on Cape cod and it was fantastic. Oh, thank you, Chris,
and I appreciate that. That's going to wrap it up for this episode
of mind Over Murder. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is
a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill
Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme
music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral
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You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook and finally,
you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas five six. Thank
you for listening to mind Over Murder. M