1 00:00:01,080 --> 00:00:07,200 You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas. 2 00:00:07,719 --> 00:00:12,039 I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now 3 00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:16,000 trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other 4 00:00:16,079 --> 00:00:20,239 victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway 5 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:24,640 murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together 6 00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:28,440 with Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a 7 00:00:28,519 --> 00:00:32,439 researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social 8 00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:37,759 media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner 9 00:00:37,799 --> 00:00:46,960 in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to the Mind of a Murder. I'm 10 00:00:47,039 --> 00:00:51,799 Kristin Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Liza Rodman and 11 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:57,799 Jennifer Jordan, authors of The Babysitter My Summers with a Serial Killer. Liza 12 00:00:57,880 --> 00:01:00,359 and Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh thanks for 13 00:01:00,399 --> 00:01:04,439 having us. We're really excited about this conversation. Great to be here. 14 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,640 It's too bad that we don't have a video component. Because not only have 15 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:15,760 these two women gotten completely decked out, they're holding tall drinks of some sort 16 00:01:15,879 --> 00:01:19,959 or another. We have not asked them to identify what they're drinking, and 17 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:25,359 maybe we'll just leave that out of the conversation. It would be tequila if 18 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:29,319 I had my druthers. Yeah, mine does not. Mine does not. 19 00:01:30,640 --> 00:01:33,519 Here I am with just playing a bottle of water, me too. Oh 20 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:36,920 we're boring, So why don't you both go ahead and start by telling us 21 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:41,079 a little bit about your educational background, which I know you have a little 22 00:01:41,120 --> 00:01:44,480 bit of overlap with mister Thomas here, and then tell a little bit about 23 00:01:44,519 --> 00:01:47,159 your professional background too. But Liza, we'll goad to start with you. 24 00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:51,319 Okay, good. I went to the University of Massachusetts right out of high 25 00:01:51,319 --> 00:01:55,519 school, where I met my friend Jennifer, and I did not finish. 26 00:01:55,560 --> 00:02:00,319 Then I finished much later worked as a tax accountant for all these years this 27 00:02:00,359 --> 00:02:05,120 book in my back pocket, always wanting to write. I participated for many 28 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:09,400 years in a writer's group and always writing, but never publishing, and Jenna 29 00:02:09,439 --> 00:02:15,280 and I would talk about it on as we went. Finally we ended up 30 00:02:15,319 --> 00:02:19,800 finding a moment in time where we were both able to come together and write 31 00:02:19,800 --> 00:02:23,120 this book. Very cool, Jennifer, how about sharing. I'm trying to 32 00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:30,520 edit it down because my story takes a while. After you, masks, 33 00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:35,000 I ended up taking the first job offered to me, which was typing into 34 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:39,000 radio station in Boston, and within six months I had my own talk show 35 00:02:39,159 --> 00:02:44,000 because my boss at the time was wonderful and said, I know you're not 36 00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,159 here to type, but what can I do to keep you? I said, 37 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:50,680 twenty two years old, I'd like my own talk show because I think 38 00:02:50,719 --> 00:02:54,840 I could do it. That led to writing, taking the radio into writing, 39 00:02:55,039 --> 00:03:00,719 and then the writing into books. Found myself just in love from journalism 40 00:03:00,719 --> 00:03:05,960 into a nonfiction writing. Sitting on the couch one day when I was returning 41 00:03:05,960 --> 00:03:08,319 back to Boston to visit my dear friend Liza, she says to me, 42 00:03:08,560 --> 00:03:12,639 I'm not sure I ever told you, but I was babyset by a serial 43 00:03:12,719 --> 00:03:15,719 killer, and so full stop, I say to her, in these words, 44 00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:19,759 that's your book. I know you've been wanting to write a book. 45 00:03:20,039 --> 00:03:23,400 That's your book, and it's going to be called The Babysitter, which I 46 00:03:23,439 --> 00:03:29,360 said no. For the next two or three years, whenever i'd come back 47 00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:31,759 to Boston to visit, stay with Liza, sit in the couch, drink 48 00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:35,479 our wine, toes curled underneath us, and I'd say, okay, so 49 00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:38,400 how's the babysitter coming, And she'd say, I don't want to talk about 50 00:03:38,439 --> 00:03:42,560 it. It's in adore somewhere. It's up to a thousand damp pages. 51 00:03:42,599 --> 00:03:46,199 Oh no, I don't know, And so I am not four drafts. 52 00:03:47,199 --> 00:03:51,479 I found myself between projects and I called her up and I said, how 53 00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:54,439 about this? Why don't I help you do this? Because I know that 54 00:03:54,439 --> 00:03:59,680 this is a tricky narrative. I know how to do it, so let 55 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:02,879 me help you. And she burst into tears. And here we are now, 56 00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:08,120 Jen, At this point, had you already written your first in a 57 00:04:08,199 --> 00:04:12,599 series of books. Yes, I'd written four books, so you actually were 58 00:04:12,680 --> 00:04:15,439 able to turn to Liza and say, look, can actually help you with 59 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:19,759 this because I've actually birthed some books exactly. And the reason that I was 60 00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:25,000 so confident about it was I had two books under my name and two books 61 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:30,800 that I ghosted, so I knew exactly how to get into another character's voice, 62 00:04:31,199 --> 00:04:36,120 and I also knew how to split those voices because my third book, 63 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:43,000 third book was written with one of the Boston Marathon bombing victims. I knew 64 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:46,040 that I couldn't. I shouldn't just tell it through her story. I should 65 00:04:46,079 --> 00:04:49,079 tell it through the three first responders who saved the life on Barston Street that 66 00:04:49,160 --> 00:04:54,199 day. So I was able to flit from voice to voice in writing that 67 00:04:54,240 --> 00:04:57,800 book, and I knew I could do it. And so when Liza presented 68 00:04:57,839 --> 00:05:00,279 this story to me, and we have to obvious they tell it through the 69 00:05:00,399 --> 00:05:08,879 young Liza's voice also had this serial killers horrific just ghostly, ghastly crimes on 70 00:05:08,920 --> 00:05:11,639 the other side that you can't tell through a ten year old's voice. So 71 00:05:11,759 --> 00:05:17,240 it was that delicate balance of the omniscient narrator and the memoir. And I 72 00:05:17,560 --> 00:05:20,560 remember exactly where I was sitting when she said, Oh, that's no problem, 73 00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:24,279 We're gonna do Liza Tony, Liza, Tony, Liza Tony. The 74 00:05:24,360 --> 00:05:28,079 whole world opened up because the structure of it had been had dogged me for 75 00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:32,360 so long, and she just I call her my literary fairy godmother because that's 76 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:36,519 what she was, and that's what she continues to be by just opening her 77 00:05:36,519 --> 00:05:42,439 world to me and saying, we can do it this way, and let's 78 00:05:42,480 --> 00:05:46,680 do it and that's what we did. Eliza, how much of your original 79 00:05:46,199 --> 00:05:51,279 thousand pages of draft ultimately ended up in the final book? Did you have 80 00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:56,319 to scrap all of it? And I thank you with Jen? Or like, 81 00:05:56,439 --> 00:06:00,560 how did you ultimately make all this work? Sometime we worked independently. 82 00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:05,720 Sometimes we worked, as we've described it before, shoulder to shoulder, word 83 00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:10,680 to word, and then other times I worked on my chapters. Jen worked 84 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,199 on the serial killer chapters. And then we'd get one of us would get 85 00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:18,120 stuck and we'd talk to one another. It was it was all over the 86 00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:23,639 place. Oh my phone, I'm sorry, my watch is talking to me. 87 00:06:24,120 --> 00:06:27,519 So now I'm going to put it down and throw it out the windows, 88 00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:30,519 so I'll be right back. Hang on, I'll have to cut this 89 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:35,000 out. Anyway, we ran the gamut. We ran the gamut, We 90 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:39,160 really did. And so how much of the original draft? All of the 91 00:06:39,199 --> 00:06:42,759 original draft? In terms of the stories, same stories I've been writing for 92 00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:46,319 years. We just made them better, but the stories didn't really change. 93 00:06:46,519 --> 00:06:51,240 And then the Tony part generally took the research. She took the research from 94 00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:55,120 me, and she wrote it. We just went back and forth because I 95 00:06:55,199 --> 00:06:59,319 had all I'd been researching for fifteen years before we came together, because I'd 96 00:06:59,319 --> 00:07:03,040 had a series of dreams about Tony that made me ask the questions to my 97 00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:08,319 mother, why am I what's going on? Why am I dreaming about this 98 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:12,519 man after all this time? And she that's her famous line from my book 99 00:07:12,519 --> 00:07:15,040 of my know he became a serial killer. I know he became a patrician. 100 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:18,560 In thinking back about it, and my mother since passed away, but 101 00:07:18,639 --> 00:07:23,160 in thinking back about it, I really think, even though it sounds so 102 00:07:23,199 --> 00:07:27,720 outrageous, I really think she was like, he became a serial killer, 103 00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:31,480 didn't have anything to do with us. It wasn't the kind of world where 104 00:07:31,560 --> 00:07:35,839 we were all connected like we are now. That really was somebody else's problem. 105 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:40,879 And my mother had enough problems of her own that I think she was 106 00:07:41,079 --> 00:07:44,959 just good at compartmentalizing. And we didn't have a news cycle, we didn't 107 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:48,240 have I don't know how much she actually knew other than he became a serial 108 00:07:48,279 --> 00:07:51,240 killer, and she was quite close to his mother at one time, and 109 00:07:51,279 --> 00:07:55,600 then his mother had passed away. And here's the other thing. We were 110 00:07:55,680 --> 00:08:00,600 summer people. Oh I was wondering about that. Yeah, everything that went 111 00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:05,639 on down there during the winter months we had no window on so that also 112 00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:07,959 made the book a little bit difficult to write, but we work through it. 113 00:08:07,959 --> 00:08:13,240 It's probably worth mentioning about Cape Cod. Can you explain a little bit 114 00:08:13,279 --> 00:08:18,480 for our listeners who are not from the Cape and don't know about the Two 115 00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:22,439 worlds? A little bit about that. Yeah. Sure. The provincetown is 116 00:08:22,519 --> 00:08:26,040 all the way out on the tip of Cape Cod, so it's the very 117 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:31,920 last time you come to before you jump in the Atlantic Ocean, and it 118 00:08:31,039 --> 00:08:35,240 is that sort of it's I wish I had the numbers in front of me, 119 00:08:35,320 --> 00:08:41,159 but it's very sparsely populated except during the summer. Can be twenty five 120 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:43,759 hundred people living there in the summertime, I mean in the winter and year 121 00:08:43,879 --> 00:08:48,080 round, and then thirty thousand in the summer. And that's how intense it 122 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:54,840 is. And everything closes, at least in nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty 123 00:08:54,919 --> 00:08:58,679 nine, hotels closed, the restaurant's close. There is a lot of stuff 124 00:08:58,679 --> 00:09:03,279 in our research about the people talking to one another about whether or not this 125 00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:07,279 place was still open. They were always trying to find a place to be. 126 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:11,039 I think there was one local bar or two local bars. Really was 127 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:15,320 it? Everything else shut down. You could hear the wind whistle through it 128 00:09:15,360 --> 00:09:20,600 down the street. So it was very it was poor, and it was 129 00:09:20,879 --> 00:09:24,600 desolate in the wintertime, and in the summer it just was vibrant. And 130 00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:28,600 I don't know if you guys have been to Provincetown's one of the most beautiful 131 00:09:28,639 --> 00:09:33,480 places I've ever been. It has a certain quality of light there that draws 132 00:09:33,639 --> 00:09:37,840 artists, and it has a vibrant gay community, where when no place else 133 00:09:37,879 --> 00:09:43,320 did in the nineteen sixties it was Provincetown and San Francisco and New York. 134 00:09:43,679 --> 00:09:48,159 It's sheltered. It has a long history of in the fishing industry, and 135 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:52,519 it was the first place the pilgrims came to. But it's very sparse even 136 00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:58,120 now today in the wintertime. And also another thing about this summer versus the 137 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:03,759 local is that the local population, the twenty twelve month population was basically poor 138 00:10:05,159 --> 00:10:09,879 and basically working just menial jobs until the summer when they could beef up there 139 00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:15,720 when they made their money. And that's still true. And the summer people 140 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:22,000 were in their lily pulitzers and their yachts and their clam bakes, and so 141 00:10:22,080 --> 00:10:28,080 there was a really strong divide and animosity between the locals and the summers. 142 00:10:28,960 --> 00:10:33,279 And Tony was considered a summer kid for the first several years of his life 143 00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:39,080 because he did live in Summerville by Boston of Boston and then would go down 144 00:10:39,159 --> 00:10:43,919 to Peatown to stay with his aunt over the summer, So he was a 145 00:10:43,919 --> 00:10:48,559 summer kid. So there was the divide started between him and the locals at 146 00:10:48,600 --> 00:10:52,799 that point. And then when he went down to finish high school after he 147 00:10:52,879 --> 00:10:58,559 was charged and convicted of attempted rape in Summerville, then he had to become 148 00:11:00,320 --> 00:11:05,080 a local and that whole whatever's going on in his head, that couldn't have 149 00:11:05,159 --> 00:11:11,039 helped, shall I say, that couldn't have helped his sense of place and 150 00:11:11,159 --> 00:11:13,639 his sense of who he was in that place, because there was always that 151 00:11:13,759 --> 00:11:18,879 divide of are you one of us or are you one of the Lily Pulitzer 152 00:11:18,919 --> 00:11:24,159 crowd? In your j crew Jackies. Full disclosure, My partner, Pamela 153 00:11:24,519 --> 00:11:31,360 Arnois, is from West Barnstable and so she grew up there and her perceptions 154 00:11:31,360 --> 00:11:35,159 of Cape Cod are so radically different than mine. But I was a young 155 00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:39,679 professional in Boston and we'd go to the Cape on weekends and we'd go to 156 00:11:39,720 --> 00:11:43,320 the Cape in the summertime. Her perception of Cape Cod, and she would 157 00:11:43,360 --> 00:11:46,879 have grown up there in the seventies, it was a place that she couldn't 158 00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:52,080 wait to escape from. Although she recognizes the natural beauty of the place and 159 00:11:52,159 --> 00:11:56,759 has a great fondness for it and the people that lived there, she's never 160 00:11:56,840 --> 00:12:01,360 lived there since she left at age eighteen to go away to college. She 161 00:12:01,399 --> 00:12:05,600 doesn't have a tremendous interest in going back, and she talks a lot when 162 00:12:05,639 --> 00:12:13,519 I asked about the darkness of the offseason and alcohol and drug abuse, and 163 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:18,519 she wasn't necessarily drawn into that, but she saw it, and she said 164 00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:22,919 she talked a lot about one of the things her father first said to her 165 00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:26,480 when she first graduated from college and came back and lived at home for a 166 00:12:26,519 --> 00:12:28,600 couple of months. She was applying for jobs in Boston, and then she 167 00:12:28,639 --> 00:12:31,879 began commuting up there before she had enough money to get her own apartment. 168 00:12:31,960 --> 00:12:35,600 And one of the things her father said, and he was in construction on 169 00:12:35,639 --> 00:12:39,720 the Cape, was you really want off Cape Cod, don't you. That 170 00:12:39,799 --> 00:12:43,399 was like a desperate need on her part to get out, And yet I 171 00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:48,120 think off Cape Cod is this beautiful, fun bucolic summer place, and she's 172 00:12:48,159 --> 00:12:52,080 sure not like that in February. No, it's not like that in February. 173 00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:56,799 And for a while I lived on the Cape for fifteen years before I 174 00:12:56,879 --> 00:13:01,519 moved up to Boston and raised my son youngest son. In fact, raised 175 00:13:01,519 --> 00:13:05,559 all my kids there. I always described it as you drive over the bridge 176 00:13:05,559 --> 00:13:09,080 in winter and it feels like someone threw a wet blanket over your head and 177 00:13:09,120 --> 00:13:13,720 they're not gonna take it off until May. Now jen has a totally different 178 00:13:13,879 --> 00:13:18,799 experience because she came in the summer and it was candy canes and New York 179 00:13:18,799 --> 00:13:24,080 Times crossword puzzles, and her fabulous grandparents and her grandfather looked like Amwar Sadat 180 00:13:24,320 --> 00:13:31,519 and she just does this amazing experience of Cape cod And my grandmother worked at 181 00:13:31,559 --> 00:13:37,279 Lily Pulitzer, so it was Osterville, Jenelle, where the money was. 182 00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:43,080 But there is a darkness to it that remains to this day, and that 183 00:13:43,279 --> 00:13:48,080 darkness is part of we get asked. And maybe I'm fast forwarding too much 184 00:13:48,120 --> 00:13:52,639 for your outline here, but Tony Costa, one of the reasons he got 185 00:13:52,679 --> 00:13:56,720 away with his murders as long as he did was because he was caught up 186 00:13:56,759 --> 00:14:01,559 in that darkness with everybody else in the alcohol and the drug and everybody was 187 00:14:01,639 --> 00:14:05,919 drunk and everybody was high, and everybody was screwed up. He just fit 188 00:14:05,159 --> 00:14:11,600 into this, into a darkness that there had been any sunshine. People said, 189 00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:13,320 WHOA, what's going on over here? This is not all of Tony's 190 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:20,440 girlfriends were disappearing. But because it was part of this nasthma of the twelvemonth 191 00:14:20,559 --> 00:14:26,559 capers and especially the twelve month pe Tounters, that much more removed from West 192 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:33,519 Barnstable and Austerville and Hyannis another hour away enabled him to continue his brain free 193 00:14:33,519 --> 00:14:37,200 reign. Yeah free reign. I don't know if you've heard about the Lady 194 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:43,559 of the Dunes, Yes identity yea, Yeah, we've covered that. Yeah, 195 00:14:43,559 --> 00:14:46,720 Oh have you? Yes? Isn't that an amazing story? It is. 196 00:14:46,919 --> 00:14:50,759 Finally, there was a documentary that got done right this year, and 197 00:14:50,879 --> 00:14:56,159 I think it's because of that documentary that all of a sudden it brought light 198 00:14:56,240 --> 00:15:01,559 to the case that was on the back burner, and sudden these documentary showings 199 00:15:01,559 --> 00:15:05,120 were selling out, and I think that was part of what pushed them to 200 00:15:05,159 --> 00:15:07,399 get back in the game with this DNA, Because there was a lot of 201 00:15:07,440 --> 00:15:11,559 talk about not getting back in the game. So I'm so glad she's identified. 202 00:15:11,600 --> 00:15:16,519 But as part of the conversation about darkness on the Cape Post, that 203 00:15:16,679 --> 00:15:20,759 stayed with Provincetown until right now as we're talking about it, and I think 204 00:15:20,960 --> 00:15:24,799 much more so than the Tony Costa murders and then there were the Christa Worthington 205 00:15:24,919 --> 00:15:30,240 murders. There's something about the desolation down there that allows people to get away 206 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:33,759 with things they might not be able to get away with elsewhere. As beautiful 207 00:15:33,799 --> 00:15:37,559 as it is, I often have felt like Provincetown feels like the end of 208 00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:41,600 the world, and it is, and it is. When you look at 209 00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:45,679 the arm that is Cape Cod It's pretty much as far as you can go. 210 00:15:46,159 --> 00:15:50,399 There's such a contrast between the dark part of the year and that ninety 211 00:15:50,519 --> 00:15:56,759 day or so summertime, fun time. Once you hit Labor Day, it's 212 00:15:56,759 --> 00:16:00,440 over, yeah, And that darkness doesn't go away in the summertime. Though 213 00:16:00,720 --> 00:16:03,480 it lays really low. There's an undercurrent of it everywhere. It's in the 214 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:08,120 particularly in the bars, because it's one big problence down one big bar, 215 00:16:08,879 --> 00:16:11,679 and one big party scene. At least it was for my mother and it 216 00:16:11,759 --> 00:16:15,960 is now for a lot of people. I think that as the two things 217 00:16:15,039 --> 00:16:18,279 rub up against one another. It was a hangout for the Boulger gang, 218 00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:23,360 for Whitey Bulger's gang at the Crown and Anchor, And the more you read, 219 00:16:23,399 --> 00:16:26,360 the more you find out it was a good place to get away, 220 00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:30,399 where nobody helped you accountable, a good place to hide. So for our 221 00:16:30,399 --> 00:16:34,440 listeners who may not be aware of the particulars of the Tony A. Coste 222 00:16:34,519 --> 00:16:38,440 case, and we did cover this in our episode with Casey Sherman, but 223 00:16:38,519 --> 00:16:42,919 I definitely want to get it from your perspective, How did you eventually learn, 224 00:16:44,279 --> 00:16:47,440 oh my god, this guy who was looking after me was a serial 225 00:16:47,519 --> 00:16:49,720 killer. How did you come to that realization and what did that do to 226 00:16:49,759 --> 00:16:53,399 you to learn it? I carried memories with me into my adulthood. I 227 00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:59,519 had no idea that they were memories that wrapped around Tony and to so I 228 00:16:59,559 --> 00:17:03,879 always knew that there were murders that happened, but I wasn't clear on the 229 00:17:03,879 --> 00:17:06,799 who, what, when, where, why. So I didn't find out 230 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:11,920 until I went back to college in two thousand and three to finish my bachelor's 231 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:17,000 degree that I had abandoned all those years ago in field dormitory, and I 232 00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:22,480 started having these dreams. And because they went to a hippie dippie Vermont College, 233 00:17:22,519 --> 00:17:26,440 what do we want to call it? Distance learning program? They encourage 234 00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:30,759 you to journal my favorite thing. Right, I'm definitely going to do this. 235 00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:33,440 There, I am journaling. These dreams started to get more and more 236 00:17:33,519 --> 00:17:37,119 violent, and I was always being chased, and there was always this man 237 00:17:37,799 --> 00:17:42,400 with no face, and I was always in fear of my life always. 238 00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:47,079 So I started journaling them. I started writing them down, trying to figure 239 00:17:47,079 --> 00:17:49,759 out what the common elements were. And then one night I had this absolute 240 00:17:49,880 --> 00:17:56,640 nightmare of Tony Costa following me down the hotel. I'm getting ahead of myself, 241 00:17:56,640 --> 00:18:00,759 but both my mother and her best friend owned motels as the street from 242 00:18:00,799 --> 00:18:03,440 one another in promence down. So the dream was that I was in the 243 00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:07,880 hallway of the motel. I was about ten years old, and he came 244 00:18:07,960 --> 00:18:10,279 up to me and he put a gun to my head and he told me 245 00:18:10,359 --> 00:18:14,720 to count to foreign Italian and I said I didn't know Italian, and then 246 00:18:14,759 --> 00:18:18,559 when I opened my eyes, he was gone. So I went to my 247 00:18:18,599 --> 00:18:22,640 mother at that point because these dreams had the same theme and had really haunt 248 00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:26,160 started to haunt me to worry about myself. So I went to my mother 249 00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:30,839 and I said, why am I hat did something happen to me that you're 250 00:18:30,839 --> 00:18:33,480 not telling me? Because there was a lot she never told me. That's 251 00:18:33,519 --> 00:18:36,680 when she said. I said, I don't understand why I'm dreaming about Tony 252 00:18:36,720 --> 00:18:40,279 Costa and she said, I know he became a serial killer. Oh my 253 00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:42,920 god. So that was really how I learned that he was a serial killer. 254 00:18:44,279 --> 00:18:48,039 I walked him to describe it as a moment of when I don't know 255 00:18:48,279 --> 00:18:52,000 who amongst us has ever had I once had somebody give me this horrible hash 256 00:18:52,039 --> 00:18:56,720 oil and my whole world slowed down. That's what it was like. Everything 257 00:18:56,839 --> 00:19:00,799 slowed way down. And I was like, it was just a bizarre moment, 258 00:19:00,920 --> 00:19:04,799 was like a reckoning, and I knew that all of my fears and 259 00:19:04,960 --> 00:19:08,880 so many of the things I was dealing with emotionally they have to do with 260 00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,559 this time period. And so I went back and started researching, and there 261 00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:17,880 was really not much of a Google at that point. Google but not much. 262 00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:22,200 So I went to Kent State and I started researching a book, the 263 00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:26,519 Papers of a Guy who had written a book Leo Dumour wrote in his garden. 264 00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:29,079 I don't know if you're familiar with that book. It was a big 265 00:19:29,119 --> 00:19:33,519 book on the case. Leo had passed away and sent his papers to Kent 266 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:37,920 State. So I went to the Special Collections and started paging through and found 267 00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:45,119 it was a treasure trove. It was Tony's glasses and his bracelets, and 268 00:19:45,359 --> 00:19:49,799 the trial transcript from Massachusetts, and hundreds of hours of audiotape of those interviews 269 00:19:49,799 --> 00:19:56,480 in jail, and just ten thousand pieces of paper that I went through over 270 00:19:56,519 --> 00:20:00,960 the fifteen years. And you say you actually they were able to listen to 271 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:07,200 Tony Costa. It must have been is nerve wracking even close to what that 272 00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:11,640 was for both of you to listen to that. It was at one point 273 00:20:11,799 --> 00:20:15,359 so familiar and so foreign, all at the same time, because you hear 274 00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:18,839 it. We wrote a lot, Jena and I wrote a lot about his 275 00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:22,680 accent, how he would flip, and you really hear it in those audio 276 00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:26,279 tapes, don't you. Jenn did one minute he's British and the next minute 277 00:20:26,319 --> 00:20:33,799 he's hardcore Boston. Some Ofville he just flips around. So it was quite 278 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:37,599 It was pretty much it's hard to listen to. And I have a great 279 00:20:37,640 --> 00:20:41,839 transcriber out here in Utah that who's a student of mine in film school at 280 00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:45,359 one point in her career, and so we sent all the tapes to her 281 00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:49,039 to transcribe for us so that we could get quotes, and poor thing, 282 00:20:49,319 --> 00:20:56,079 it's too little Mormon girl. And she called me at one point and I'm 283 00:20:56,119 --> 00:21:00,160 not sure I can finish this. Oh wow. And I got to tell 284 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:03,680 you, she's heard more of it than I have, because even though I'm 285 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:11,480 a hardened journalist, I was like, whoa ingles while we were writing singles 286 00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:15,839 from my level of stress and this poor young twenty something going through and having 287 00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:18,359 to transcribe. So she had to go back and forth and back and forth 288 00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:22,640 and back and forth, and she finally said, I finished it, but 289 00:21:22,319 --> 00:21:26,359 it finished me. That felt so bad for her, because yeah, there's 290 00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:33,880 just nothing like getting that deep as the transcriber has to into the words to 291 00:21:33,960 --> 00:21:38,279 get them verbatim, because we said we're gonna be verbatim quotes. And so 292 00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:42,319 yeah, she's listened to more of it than either Liza or I have because 293 00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:47,640 she had to end the poor thing and to probably forever scarred it. Does 294 00:21:47,680 --> 00:21:51,400 it sticks with you? And I imagine too, you've taken the time to 295 00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:55,599 look through the crime scene photos and all of those things are awful. I 296 00:21:55,599 --> 00:21:59,680 wouldn't do the crime scene photos. I know. I know Casey talked smart 297 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:03,400 out those crime scene photos, and I remember Jen saying to me, do 298 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:07,640 not do it, because you can't undo it exactly exactly. We don't need 299 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:11,519 them to write it. I went to a doctor friend of ours here in 300 00:22:11,559 --> 00:22:15,720 Salt Lake to go through the autopsy reports with me so that I can understand 301 00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:18,680 the medical jargon. Wow. Even he another sweet Mormon, looks up at 302 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:23,400 one point and goes, oh my god, this is a very angry man 303 00:22:23,559 --> 00:22:29,079 who did this. They tried having just to describe to me exactly what the 304 00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:33,680 autopsy reports are indicating. He's I've been a doctor for fifty years and I've 305 00:22:33,799 --> 00:22:38,640 never ever Yeah, wow, how could you? Why would you ever read 306 00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:44,519 an autopsy report of a deranged serial killer? And yet even after we didn't 307 00:22:44,519 --> 00:22:47,720 see him, we those victims stay with us. They stay with us. 308 00:22:48,119 --> 00:22:52,119 Yeah, because we've in order to write the scenes that we did, particularly 309 00:22:52,119 --> 00:23:00,200 the murder scenes, we had to envision exactly what happened, what was done 310 00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,400 to those bodies. We also had Tony's what do you want to call it? 311 00:23:03,519 --> 00:23:08,680 Jen? His diary manuscript is not his man not his prison diary, 312 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:15,119 but his manuscript. He had a manuscript that never got published and there were 313 00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:19,599 some pretty vivid descriptions in that. He basically had another unpublished manuscript from the 314 00:23:19,839 --> 00:23:26,599 US. And so these were books by Costa and by this journalist that described 315 00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:32,039 Costa's crimes but were never published. So how do you how do you gain 316 00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:34,759 access to something like that? They're in the archives, they're there for the 317 00:23:34,839 --> 00:23:38,119 taking. They were all there. They were. It was such a shock 318 00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:41,000 when I came upon them, Remember Jen, I was like, you can't 319 00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:48,200 believe what I'm holding in my hand. Because Tony's lawyer when Tony was arraigned, 320 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:51,839 the day he was arraigned, the lawyer or just days afterwards, took 321 00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:56,920 Tony and his wife into the conference room at Bridgewater State Prison and had them 322 00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,440 sign away their life rights so that Ink wasn't even ry on the arrangement before 323 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:06,079 he was exploiting these people. They were indigen they had no money for a 324 00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:10,440 defense. The lawyer knew it. The lawyer was a friend of Tony's uncle 325 00:24:10,599 --> 00:24:14,039 and a landowner. So he knew right from the beginning he was going to 326 00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:17,519 exploit those stories. Now I'm not making a judgment. I'm just saying that's 327 00:24:17,519 --> 00:24:21,000 how it worked. It wouldn't work that way today. It would never fly 328 00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:25,440 with that Leo D. Moore Aunt, No, that was before leaved Moore. 329 00:24:25,599 --> 00:24:27,920 Oh No, it was Jeff what's his name? No, the guy 330 00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:33,799 who sat at the table and with the journalist who wrote the book and never 331 00:24:33,839 --> 00:24:37,640 published it. He was an old newspaperman, Lester Allen was his name. 332 00:24:38,039 --> 00:24:42,359 So Goldman tried to sell the book. He tried to sell it first to 333 00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:47,880 Kurt Vonnegut, and Kurt Vonnigut said, I don't want anything to do with 334 00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,480 this, even I can't clean up Tony Costa. That's a direct point. 335 00:24:51,519 --> 00:24:55,279 So Vonnegut turned it down. And it was over money, because the lawyers 336 00:24:55,319 --> 00:24:59,000 wanted to get paid and Vonnegut wanted more than the lawyers could give him. 337 00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,559 He was approached first and walked away. And that's how I know Vonneguet didn't 338 00:25:03,599 --> 00:25:07,119 he didn't want anything to do with it. After a while he tried to 339 00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,359 peddle it to some other writers and they all turned him down except for this 340 00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:17,839 one newspaperman in Hyannis named Lester Allen, who sat at the defense table and 341 00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:22,440 listened to every word and then wrote this unpublished manuscript that exists in the archives 342 00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:30,440 and special Collections at Kent State, and had spent untold hours interviewing Tony and 343 00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:34,160 Davis before the defense before, way before a defense table, when Tony was 344 00:25:34,559 --> 00:25:40,519 being held in the Barnstable jail. And then he's the interviewer on all those 345 00:25:40,559 --> 00:25:45,599 audiotapes, all those audiotapes, and it's remarkable to listen to those tapes or 346 00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:53,640 well read through the transcripts because again and just how much what's the word lies 347 00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:59,559 it? Any attorney or any journalist conducted that kind of interview today with the 348 00:25:59,599 --> 00:26:03,519 Me Too movement, because Tony's wife was involved in all of this, and 349 00:26:03,559 --> 00:26:07,400 the way they trassed there was craftsman, and they totally abused her on these 350 00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:11,000 tapes. Tell me about your sex with Tony, Tell me about then, 351 00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:15,720 tell me again, tell me again, and did he do this to you? 352 00:26:15,799 --> 00:26:18,839 And did he like to do this? Team and this poor girl she 353 00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,279 was still she was nineteen with three babies at that point. So all by 354 00:26:22,319 --> 00:26:26,960 way of saying what happened fifty years ago with Tony, with his wife, 355 00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:33,440 with his attorneys, which just it's it would never happened today. Not that 356 00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,680 he wasn't guilty, I'm not defending Tony cost but the way he was treated, 357 00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,839 the way his wife was treated, the way the defense took total advantage 358 00:26:41,839 --> 00:26:48,799 of their destitution. It's yeah, it's just mind boggling. And it's part 359 00:26:48,799 --> 00:26:52,839 of the reason that he was able to continue is killing because there was so 360 00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:59,720 much ineptness Keystone cops here and there, and oh, everybody looking out for 361 00:26:59,759 --> 00:27:03,400 them selves and nobody looking out looking back on it. And I'm sure that 362 00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:07,799 in real time it was the best they could do. It was the best 363 00:27:07,839 --> 00:27:11,559 they could do, but it wasn't good enough, and it cost a lot 364 00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:15,519 of women their lives. You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right 365 00:27:15,519 --> 00:27:27,359 back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind over Murder. 366 00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:33,640 And so the reason that all this material ended up at Kent State is 367 00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:40,640 because of Leo Damore's or Leo Leo Dumour was best buddies with Bernie Flynn, 368 00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:45,119 who was the state police investigator on this case. He was cracked the case. 369 00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:51,680 They were best budds and so in that archive at Kent State. He 370 00:27:51,759 --> 00:27:56,480 gave Leo everything. George Killen too, also from the state Police released evidence 371 00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:03,519 into Leo's hands from the trial. Boxes and boxes of evidence now that would 372 00:28:03,599 --> 00:28:07,640 never happen today either. And Leo sum tells me that there's even more boxes 373 00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:12,160 of evidence from the cost of trial in his mother's garage that she won't let 374 00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:17,440 him touchow. So somewhere there's the gun. We don't know what happened to 375 00:28:17,519 --> 00:28:21,559 the gun because we never came across that. Yeah, it was really it 376 00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:26,559 was the wild West of everything. You never knew him as a distic, 377 00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,559 horrible serial killer. For you, he was just your babysitner. What are 378 00:28:30,599 --> 00:28:34,480 some of the positive What are the positive memories that you have? That's the 379 00:28:34,519 --> 00:28:40,119 tough part of this conversation for me, because I had to reconcile, and 380 00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:44,200 it was tough in the writing process too, of that person, that cool 381 00:28:44,279 --> 00:28:47,279 cousin, which is the way I looked at him, and who taught me 382 00:28:47,319 --> 00:28:49,960 how to blow smoke rings, and the man I was researching. I could 383 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,039 not, I still can't and I probably never will be able to meld the 384 00:28:55,119 --> 00:28:57,680 two to make a human being. So to me, they're two different people, 385 00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:03,599 because for us, there are actually four of us that this happened too. 386 00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,039 But I did not put everybody else in the book for privacy reasons, 387 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,200 and so I just made it about my experience, and I was the oldest 388 00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,079 and I had the most memories, so it made sense for me to do 389 00:29:14,119 --> 00:29:17,559 it. But to answer your question, everyone just thought he was a great 390 00:29:17,599 --> 00:29:22,400 guy. That was the refrain that we heard over and over again. No 391 00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,039 one suspected him, no one imagined this could be true. Although I think 392 00:29:26,079 --> 00:29:30,400 Avis when he was arrested, I think she must have known. Yeah, 393 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,240 his wife. We just remembered him as it was just one big good time. 394 00:29:33,559 --> 00:29:37,160 He was driving from dump to dump. He was the handyman at the 395 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,720 Royal Coachman Mote was driving from dump to dump and somehow he got roped into 396 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,319 taking the four of us with him, and so we were in this really 397 00:29:45,359 --> 00:29:49,079 cool old truck. I still so many memories, even the smell of the 398 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:53,680 floor in that truck, the sand, I can still see it all. 399 00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:57,160 That's how real it is. And I have a kind of a creepy memory. 400 00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,759 I remember things I wish I could forget. Some of those are some 401 00:30:00,839 --> 00:30:06,039 of my fondest memories being in the sand and the sun, and the music, 402 00:30:06,119 --> 00:30:08,920 which was huge both in the book, in My Life and hopefully in 403 00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:15,240 the docuseries. It's the music. Was you remember that static on the AM 404 00:30:15,359 --> 00:30:19,400 radio because you couldn't get another station except w RKO out of Boston. Yes, 405 00:30:21,119 --> 00:30:26,920 and we're always fiddling with just so many things, tactile things about being 406 00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,960 in that truck, being with him, and he was nice to us, 407 00:30:30,039 --> 00:30:33,240 and that was unusual because not too many people were. Everybody was always trying 408 00:30:33,279 --> 00:30:36,960 to get rid of us, and we really didn't feel that way with him, 409 00:30:37,079 --> 00:30:38,640 or at least I should say I didn't feel that way with him. 410 00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:44,559 So it was a totally positive, for the most part experience. There are 411 00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:48,920 some shadows that Jen feels very specifically that I've blocked some stuff out, and 412 00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:55,000 we've had this conversation a billion times. I'm not sure I would remember him 413 00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:57,799 so fondly. But don't forget, I was dealing with this crazy mother, 414 00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:03,200 so there was a much bigger monster than Tony Costa. She was feeding the 415 00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:07,200 hotdogs every night. That's really where my fear was with her. So when 416 00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:11,319 you guys were talking about the division of work in the book, Janet sounds 417 00:31:11,359 --> 00:31:17,200 like you spent a lot of your time writing the Tony Costa centric chapters. 418 00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,359 Writing about a serial killer is not easy. But was it easier for you 419 00:31:21,519 --> 00:31:26,160 to handle it than asking Liza to handle it? It was never. I 420 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:30,839 don't think it was ever a question that in the division of labor I would 421 00:31:30,839 --> 00:31:37,119 tackle the omniscient narrator of Tony, because, as Liza said, one fifteen 422 00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:41,039 years worth of amazing research, you just handed me these boxes, which for 423 00:31:41,079 --> 00:31:45,160 me was like Mamana from heaven. And yeah, there was never. We 424 00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:49,680 never had a debate about that. Liza had enough to do with really figuring 425 00:31:49,799 --> 00:31:57,319 out her narrative and how much of her very troubled, very painful, very 426 00:31:57,319 --> 00:32:02,599 revelatory childhood she was going to put on the page. And in fact, 427 00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:08,160 one of our toughest moments as co writers was when she said to me, 428 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:13,359 I don't want to use the word abusive referring to my mother, And I 429 00:32:13,359 --> 00:32:15,319 said, sweetheart, this is a mother that made you eat the cold hot 430 00:32:15,319 --> 00:32:19,720 dog for breakfast if you couldn't choke it down at dinner. This is a 431 00:32:19,799 --> 00:32:22,319 mother who threw you across the room for sitting on a cushion. This is 432 00:32:22,319 --> 00:32:30,000 the mother who we had to at least have the reader acknowledge. And so 433 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:37,759 for me it was just gently, lovingly bring my dear friend along the process 434 00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,039 of memoir. As I said to her early in the process, this is 435 00:32:40,079 --> 00:32:44,160 the bravest thing you're ever going to do in your life, because you have 436 00:32:44,279 --> 00:32:47,799 got to unzip your soul and reveal it to the world, and it is 437 00:32:47,839 --> 00:32:55,319 going to be excruciating. And she came along with more grit and more bravery 438 00:32:55,599 --> 00:33:01,839 and more like all right, then any of my ghost projects any had been 439 00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:06,519 able to do. To answer your question, Kristen, I was very Yes, 440 00:33:06,559 --> 00:33:08,880 I was busy with the tony chapters and putting on my journalistic hats, 441 00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:14,839 so beyond the shingles, I didn't invade my life anymore. But it was 442 00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:20,359 also in helping Liza realize that her bravery was going to be rewarded, that 443 00:33:20,519 --> 00:33:27,480 in really telling the truth of this very abusive mother, that she would show 444 00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:32,880 the amazing contradiction that she was more afraid of her mother than she was of 445 00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:37,240 a serial killer, and that would make the book the powerful tool it is. 446 00:33:37,279 --> 00:33:42,920 Today, part of me thinks that a lot of the key people in 447 00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:47,240 your life, Liza, let you down on very profound levels. In other 448 00:33:47,279 --> 00:33:52,519 words, we may all love our flawed, imperfect human beings that came. 449 00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:58,920 We still do, but at the same time, we're talking about really profoundly 450 00:33:59,079 --> 00:34:02,599 letting you down. This isn't just I'm disappointed because I don't know my parents 451 00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:06,480 didn't let me go to the college I wanted to go to, or wouldn't 452 00:34:06,559 --> 00:34:08,760 let me go to the high school dance or that camping trip I wanted to 453 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:13,400 go on. This is much more fundamental than that. And then we have 454 00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:19,599 Tony Costa, who was by all accounts an incredibly charming, charismatic, sick 455 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:27,079 guy, but he managed to attract a crowd, and yet he's doing horrific 456 00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:30,400 stuff while you guys are following behind him, like the pie piper. It's 457 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:36,159 interesting that you recount that because the pie piper thing is something Jed and I 458 00:34:36,199 --> 00:34:39,960 struggled with in the book, because I had one interview which I was unable 459 00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:45,079 to use because she threatened to sue me after she sat with me for four 460 00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:47,400 hours, and so I just said forget it. There was one story that 461 00:34:47,519 --> 00:34:52,800 she told about the Sire you remember in the book they called him Sire. 462 00:34:53,079 --> 00:34:58,960 Yes, she told me that was a joke that they were all sitting around 463 00:34:59,039 --> 00:35:01,679 and he was shooting pe out of his nose or some crazy shit, and 464 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:07,000 they were all doing drugs and it was a white rabbit time Grace Slick and 465 00:35:07,079 --> 00:35:12,639 Jefferson airplane. He was pontificating about something in his kitchen. There were all 466 00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:16,199 these much younger people sitting around, because of course Avis was so much younger 467 00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:19,719 than him, and so he was this and you have to remember that, 468 00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,440 I think that's a central factor here, is that he was so much older 469 00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:27,639 than her that if he had a posse, and we believe he did, 470 00:35:28,119 --> 00:35:30,960 it was more an age thing and he can sell, he can give me 471 00:35:31,079 --> 00:35:36,760 drugs thing than it was that he was a spiritual leader, if you will. 472 00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:40,119 The sire idea was a joke, and they called him that because he 473 00:35:40,199 --> 00:35:44,440 was pontificating. He was high and he was pontificating and they were like, 474 00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,000 all right, sire, yeah, okay, shut up now. And it 475 00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:52,559 stuck and we're talking about it today. He's presented in Casey's book as almost 476 00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:59,800 being like an East Coast Charlie Manson, And I'm interested if the two of 477 00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:04,440 you were at this material for quite a while, do you see him as 478 00:36:04,599 --> 00:36:08,639 having that same sort of Charles Manson like mystique or maybe not so much. 479 00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:14,159 No, yeah, I don't either. I see Charles Manson is much more 480 00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:22,079 sophisticated, smarter way smarter rumor smarter, much more in tuned with his posse 481 00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:25,079 as Eliza was saying, with his acolytes, and he had no interest in 482 00:36:25,079 --> 00:36:30,239 the acolytes. He had no interest in anyone around him but himself. The 483 00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:36,360 teenagers that hung around him had interest in Marlin's on his robes that he didn't. 484 00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:38,639 I doubt he could even name them. Yeah, Charles Manson made it, 485 00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:43,920 made a study out of people, and it would never give Tony the 486 00:36:44,159 --> 00:36:46,719 if you will the I know, I was thinking the same thing or the 487 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:52,480 title of a Charles Manson Tony. It's almost like Tony killed by accident. 488 00:36:52,639 --> 00:36:55,039 Yeah, he couldn't help himself. Yeah, it was just for Charles Manson. 489 00:36:55,079 --> 00:37:00,280 It was a design. He had something in mind with a Sharon hate 490 00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:05,039 killings and the fact that he evaded prosecution for a while, whereas Tony devated 491 00:37:05,039 --> 00:37:07,719 it because of the Keystone cops in Peatown and Tony went into the police station. 492 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:10,920 He went into the police station. I am innocent. I didn't do 493 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:15,239 it. What are you talking about? You and parting what Baston would have 494 00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:17,119 never done that. I see them as very different. I want to push 495 00:37:17,119 --> 00:37:22,480 back lightly in that Tony Costa did get away for a time. He got 496 00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:28,000 away with multiple murders, not because of his intelligence. He got away with 497 00:37:28,119 --> 00:37:34,199 multiple murders because of the absolute because of the times. I can't come up 498 00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:38,480 where the incompetence of the Pea Town, the Truro, the provincetown, and 499 00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:44,320 the Boston police, four police departments, all of whom were not talking to 500 00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:46,679 each other, all of whom had cited him, and they didn't tell each 501 00:37:46,679 --> 00:37:52,599 other. So Tony was able to drive to Boston in the last victim's car. 502 00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:54,840 I have the car to Burlington, Vermont, drive around, get on 503 00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:59,679 a bus, go. It was not Tony's intelligence, it was the cops 504 00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,760 in competence. I don't know the particulars of the Charles Manson and how he 505 00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:07,360 was finally caught and Bob, but believe me, they are very two separate. 506 00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:14,159 And am I wrong in remembering that Charles Misson never actually killed, wasn't 507 00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:22,000 his He never said he followers. Ye for smart enough to anyone put the 508 00:38:22,119 --> 00:38:25,920 knife in their hand is a big difference, huge difference. Tony was the 509 00:38:27,039 --> 00:38:30,880 killer, Charles Manson was not, and Tony's victims came to him. Charles 510 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:37,920 Manson went looking for his victims, and then people execute victims came to him. 511 00:38:37,079 --> 00:38:42,599 So I think there even though the similarities, I can't it feels I 512 00:38:42,639 --> 00:38:45,840 can't get the image of that Hollywood film out of my head, of him 513 00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:51,119 on the farm with all those women who were serving him, and he was 514 00:38:51,159 --> 00:38:54,880 like a spiritual leader of Manson when he was just sick and full of it. 515 00:38:54,880 --> 00:39:00,239 It's a good tagline to sell a book, Charles Manson of peach Own 516 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:02,760 Killers for You wasn't post. I do want to get you guys to talk 517 00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:07,519 to us a little bit about the I guess harassment is probably the best term 518 00:39:07,519 --> 00:39:12,480 that I can come up with that both you and Casey Sherman were subjected to 519 00:39:12,599 --> 00:39:15,880 during your various book events on the cape. Can you tell us a little 520 00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:22,000 bit about what happened there and whether that has continued since? I can It 521 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,360 has not continued since because I had to shut down access, which as an 522 00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:30,519 author I was really disappointed to have to do, but I had to stop 523 00:39:30,639 --> 00:39:36,360 putting my email on my website. People can still find me if they want 524 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,119 to, but I've had to shut down a lot of access, and that's 525 00:39:39,119 --> 00:39:44,760 too god, because readers had access to me and sent me some wonderful notes. 526 00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:50,199 And but what happened was the bookstore owner the day before the event got 527 00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:53,320 an email that was brutal, and so he sent it to me and I 528 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:55,880 said, what do you want to do? And he said, no, 529 00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,559 I think we should go forward. So because of the brutal nature that all 530 00:40:00,599 --> 00:40:04,480 of a sudden the next morning and that night, that same night, so 531 00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,760 it's now the night before the event, and comments are starting to crop up 532 00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:13,719 on the Provincetown community space page from all of these townies. Is such a 533 00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:17,159 derogatory term somehow, because I wanted to be a towny. It was locals 534 00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:21,559 who had been there and spent their lives in Provincetown, and we're friends of 535 00:40:21,599 --> 00:40:25,960 Avis's and really felt that this was rubbing Avis's nose in what had happened, 536 00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,760 and that her children were still there, and I can see their perspective, 537 00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:35,480 I just don't share it and can see it. But the comments were ruthless, 538 00:40:36,039 --> 00:40:37,760 and they got worse and worse, and there were hundreds of them, 539 00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:42,800 and so The next morning, I called the Provincetown Belite Police and I got 540 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,960 Sergeant Enos on the line. Now Enos is an old time Provincetown name, 541 00:40:46,159 --> 00:40:49,920 and I said, do you know what's going on at the bookstore tonight? 542 00:40:50,039 --> 00:40:53,079 And he said, I know the story, but a backtrack, so I 543 00:40:53,119 --> 00:40:55,440 knew he knew exactly what was going on. And I said, look, 544 00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:59,880 I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt because there's a lot of vitriol online. 545 00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:02,920 And he said, I don't have anybody on tonight. I only got one 546 00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:07,719 guy on, which is what they had on the night Tony Costa killed those 547 00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,599 women, by the way, But I'll send a guy by a couple of 548 00:41:10,639 --> 00:41:15,199 times. And I wasn't really happy with the response, but I knew it 549 00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:19,119 was the response I was going to get. And then it got so intense 550 00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:23,440 that the bookstore owner's friends started calling him and saying so at two o'clock he 551 00:41:23,559 --> 00:41:28,360 canceled. We talked and we agreed to cancel the event. And honestly, 552 00:41:29,079 --> 00:41:34,719 I was so upset by that point in time and so stressed out about what 553 00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,199 was going to happen that night. It was afraid. We live in a 554 00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:42,119 world where people walk into movie theaters and blow people away for no reason. 555 00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:45,400 These people had a reason, so I was afraid, and some of Avis's 556 00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:50,800 sons got in on the conversation online, so I said, grate, let's 557 00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:54,360 cancel. I'm done. He then, because I guess, in an effort 558 00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:59,320 to be fair, canceled Casey's event. At the same time, Casey had 559 00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:01,400 a very different reaction that I had. I went home and pulled the covers 560 00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:06,400 over my head and said, get me out of Provincetown. Casey went after 561 00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:09,960 them. So that's what happened, and I still don't support it. I 562 00:42:10,039 --> 00:42:15,039 think that we should be able to talk about our work, but they shot 563 00:42:15,079 --> 00:42:17,639 Salmon rushdie on the stage in New York, so I just don't want to 564 00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:22,960 screw around with it. It's not important enough to me to put myself or 565 00:42:23,039 --> 00:42:27,480 my family members who were going to be there and my friends in jeopardy, 566 00:42:27,599 --> 00:42:30,679 let alone the people that I didn't know that we're going to be there. 567 00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:35,599 We just didn't need another one of those. So would that preclude you having 568 00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:42,920 a book signing or an event in New York or Boston or San Francisco or 569 00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:46,400 you know. I think it was very particularly Petown. It was proximity to 570 00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:53,960 Avis, his former wife and his children and grandchildren. That sparked that local's 571 00:42:54,119 --> 00:42:59,639 towny fervor as and I call it the Peetown mafia that we ran into writing 572 00:42:59,679 --> 00:43:02,480 the book. I think they closed ranks and circled the wagons. And no, 573 00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,639 we wouldn't have an issue anywhere else but in p Town. We could 574 00:43:07,639 --> 00:43:12,760 do it in West Barnstable, we could do it in Chathams. Just the 575 00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:17,679 Petown locals that were that still knew that, the ones that knew Tony and 576 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:22,000 the ones that still defended not defended him, but really circled their wagons around 577 00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:27,559 him. They some of them defended him. That that was the problem. 578 00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:30,840 That was the problem, Bill. It had nothing to do with the book, 579 00:43:30,039 --> 00:43:34,119 a book signing, per se. It was just it was in Petown 580 00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:37,920 where the murders happened, and that there were still people alive that new Tony 581 00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:43,960 and knew too much and knew too much because we got a lot of the 582 00:43:44,039 --> 00:43:47,760 circling of the wagons around some of our sources started in the writing. In 583 00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:52,400 the research process, we were told by numerous people. I was told not 584 00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,880 to talk to you, and not only that, but I was told not 585 00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:59,679 to talk to you and if you talk, I can't tell you what's going 586 00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:01,719 to call down on your head. That's what they were told. You will 587 00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:07,360 be sorry if you do over and over again. Don't contact me again. 588 00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:12,719 And we knew that kind of bullying was a lot of hot air. But 589 00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,760 as far as gathering people in a room in this day and age, as 590 00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:22,920 Eliza was saying, nutcases doing all its evil because they can. It's it's 591 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:29,360 miss adds place in our society that you really have to think twice about exposing 592 00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:34,239 yourself and exposing the people you love and the people you respect to crazies. 593 00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:37,480 And this is a problem. Stolen story. This is a Provincetown story. 594 00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,840 It's a local story. It's a Barnstable story, it's an east Ham story. 595 00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:45,119 One of the victims was from east Ham. So it's a local story. 596 00:44:45,199 --> 00:44:49,599 It's not that it's absolutely relevant there and the people who live a lot 597 00:44:49,639 --> 00:44:52,920 of the people that live there don't even know the story. I had a 598 00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,760 client on my tax practice who lives in Provincetown. They said, oh, 599 00:44:55,760 --> 00:45:00,159 do you know the Tony Costa story. Don't know the Tony Costa story. 600 00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:05,360 People have a right to know what happened there, but it wasn't worth it 601 00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,039 for me to take the risk with the lives of other people. It just 602 00:45:08,199 --> 00:45:13,159 wasn't. And I had gotten myself to a place where I felt brave enough 603 00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:16,360 to stand up and talk about censorship before the event, but it just I 604 00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:21,440 just what if I just couldn't take a chance. Yeah, as you pointed 605 00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,960 out, Solomon Rushdi was stabbed on a stage in New York for how many 606 00:45:25,079 --> 00:45:30,000 years later? Right? So many years later? Yeah, like almost three 607 00:45:30,039 --> 00:45:34,480 decades. Yeah, And it's really important to remember that during as this was 608 00:45:34,519 --> 00:45:36,760 going down, I was saying, this isn't going to happen to me. 609 00:45:37,119 --> 00:45:40,719 You almost have magical thinking when you're threatened like that. Yeah, it'sn't really 610 00:45:42,039 --> 00:45:45,559 A just can't really happen, but you know what, it can. It 611 00:45:45,599 --> 00:45:49,480 took me, I think, and it took Jeff Peters some time to put 612 00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:52,880 that together and say, yeah, we're not going to be jeopardizing, We're 613 00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:54,159 not going to be doing this, We're not going to be doing it. 614 00:45:54,639 --> 00:46:00,320 And they felt emboldened by the fact that we backed off and that he act 615 00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:02,519 off. I can imagine it. Yeah, they were emboldened by that, 616 00:46:02,679 --> 00:46:06,760 which is a shame. But I can't control that. Either, and yet 617 00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:10,119 they were emboldened and yet frustrated because our book number, our book sales number 618 00:46:10,159 --> 00:46:14,960 is shot through the roof. And the minute that they did that, because 619 00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,840 we hit the New York Post, we hit Fox News, we hit a 620 00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:23,039 couple of other national outlets that were like, what censorship to pet down after 621 00:46:23,079 --> 00:46:28,679 all these years, all classes. I remember seeing the New York Post article 622 00:46:28,679 --> 00:46:32,119 and going whoa, Like, that's because we had just arranged to interview Casey. 623 00:46:32,199 --> 00:46:35,320 I had read your book, I had read his book. We were 624 00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,440 arranging to interview Casey. And I saw that and I said, oh my 625 00:46:37,679 --> 00:46:43,719 god, this is crazy. It's an interesting thing about that Post interview because 626 00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:49,559 the same guy interviewed me that interviewed Casey's his name. But when he published 627 00:46:49,679 --> 00:46:53,000 that article in the Post, it was full of inaccuracies. Really, I 628 00:46:53,079 --> 00:46:58,679 got right on it on the line and said, before you published mine, 629 00:46:59,039 --> 00:47:01,519 let's clear something up. And you know what, I never heard from him 630 00:47:01,519 --> 00:47:07,639 again. Oh wow, it is the New York Post. It is the 631 00:47:07,639 --> 00:47:12,239 New York Post. After all. What's in the future for the two of 632 00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,639 you? Are you collaborating again on anything, or are you doing separate projects 633 00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:23,039 and collaborate, which we totally are. It's unusual if we don't talk during 634 00:47:23,039 --> 00:47:28,599 the day because we got so used to it during the writing costss. She's, 635 00:47:28,679 --> 00:47:30,960 you know what I love about this because I'm not a phone person, 636 00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:32,800 So she's I love the fact that you have to pick up the phone now 637 00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:37,920 because you're writing together. Forty years you'd never take quite call, but now 638 00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:42,679 she knows she has to not Right now, I'm just focusing. I'm working 639 00:47:42,679 --> 00:47:45,840 on a ghost project with somebody in Salt Lake. The thing I love about 640 00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:50,480 ghostwriting is I don't have to talk about it. Also, Lies and I 641 00:47:50,519 --> 00:47:58,119 are negotiations for the film option for the Docusent. This would be amazing because 642 00:47:58,119 --> 00:48:01,159 it's still in the process. I've spent too many years talking about my work 643 00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:05,320 rather than just working, So I love saying can't talk about it, but 644 00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:12,159 thanks for asking nice. I'm doing the same. I'm working on another project 645 00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:16,000 inan Hampton about this story of the contracance that has been swept under the rug. 646 00:48:16,119 --> 00:48:21,719 We have Williamsburg is yeah, I have what Jamestown but Hampton because it's 647 00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:25,480 African American history and forgotten to talk. Yes, and it literally was the 648 00:48:25,519 --> 00:48:30,480 beginning of all of it. Oh, I hope to get that story out 649 00:48:30,559 --> 00:48:37,079 before too long. Yes, that's fantastic and you are right, definitely overdue. 650 00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:42,400 We look forward to hearing all about your future projects, the ones you 651 00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:45,559 can talk about and the ones you can't. And we just can't thank you 652 00:48:45,679 --> 00:48:47,679 enough for spending time with us here on Mind of a Murder today. I've 653 00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:52,239 enjoyed it so much. Thank you guys very much. Thanks for the work 654 00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,360 you do, and thanks for your help with writers and books. That's going 655 00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:59,800 to do it for this episode of Mind of a Murder. We'll see you 656 00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:14,480 next time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog 657 00:49:14,599 --> 00:49:20,320 Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art 658 00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:24,599 is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over 659 00:49:24,679 --> 00:49:30,880 Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow us on 660 00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,840 Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also follow our page on the 661 00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,800 Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on 662 00:49:38,840 --> 00:50:02,920 Twitter at Bill Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder. My d