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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about him. Gasey Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening from a teen vampire cult that killed one
Speaker 5: member's parents. The naked people who tell cops nothing to
Speaker 5: see here. Frank Stanfield has seen it all in thirty
Speaker 5: years as a newspaper editor and reporter, mostly in Florida. Vampire's,
Speaker 5: gaiters and wackos. A newspapers Man's Life recalls rustlers hiding ranchers,
Speaker 5: bodies in a bottomless pit, and a Jane Doe so
Speaker 5: maol people believe it was a bear attack, and exposes
Speaker 5: cops who bungle murder cases and praises those who are heroes.
Speaker 5: There are tales of bears, sharks, snakes, alligators, and pot
Speaker 5: bellied pigs. There is the teacher who is too pretty
Speaker 5: to go to jail despite having sex with a middle
Speaker 5: school male student. Hurricanes lash out, tornadoes spin a blender
Speaker 5: of death and sinkhole swallow homes, roads and people. All
Speaker 5: of this takes place while newspapers with their own zany
Speaker 5: characters are fighting for their survival. The book that were
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Vampires, Gators and Wackos, A newspaper
Speaker 5: Man's Life with my special guest, journalist and author Frank Stanfield.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much
Speaker 5: for this interview. Frank Stanfield, Thank you, Dan appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, and congratulations on this book. It's
Speaker 5: pretty well a good slice of your life as a
Speaker 5: journalist and the incredible stories that you covered as a
Speaker 5: reporter and journalist. Let's talk about your background first and
Speaker 5: how you got started in journalism and your first assignments,
Speaker 5: before we talk about one of the more spectacular cases
Speaker 5: that you turned into a book, Cold Blooded, that we
Speaker 5: discussed May twenty twenty one, Cold Blooded. But before that,
Speaker 5: tell us about your background and how you became a journalist.
Speaker 2: Well, I grew up in the Midwest before we came
Speaker 2: to Florida, and so I came from a family of storytellers,
Speaker 2: you know, oral storytellers, and I always wanted to write.
Speaker 2: So when I have a chance to go to college,
Speaker 2: and I took political science and journalism classes and I
Speaker 2: got my first job was at the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia,
Speaker 2: and it was like a real eye opener. I said,
Speaker 2: this is what I've got to do. This absolutely has
Speaker 2: my aim on it. So that's the way it started.
Speaker 2: And they let me cover the cops quite a bit,
Speaker 2: so that was my favorite. My favorite thing.
Speaker 5: Well, you talk about your early experience at a KKK rally.
Speaker 5: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Oh, brother, Yeah, this is when this goes way back
Speaker 2: to when Jimmy Carter was president and some idiot drove
Speaker 2: his car through a KKK rally over in Plains, Georgia,
Speaker 2: where the Jimmy Carter is from. So they had another
Speaker 2: one of these rallies. This is ugly, ugly stuff, these people,
Speaker 2: and they had a rally in Augusta. So my editor says, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to go, but we're not going to write
Speaker 2: about it. We're not going to give any ink to
Speaker 2: these people. But you I want you there just in
Speaker 2: case something happened. So I went and I introduced myself
Speaker 2: and that the guard runs off to get the grand
Speaker 2: poobah or an interview, thinking I want to interview him
Speaker 2: or something, and I kind of wander around and I
Speaker 2: get this. I get a sick feeling looking at these
Speaker 2: people and listening to their rants and burning the cross,
Speaker 2: and it was a real sickening thing. But nothing happened.
Speaker 2: So I went back to my office and the next
Speaker 2: day the folks call and says, well, hey, what about
Speaker 2: this reporter. He didn't write anything, And I said, the
Speaker 2: editor had the wheremouthal at least to say, well, she
Speaker 2: didn't give me her give them my phone number, address,
Speaker 2: what time I left work, and all that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: So at least she didn't do that, so that was good.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about this case and I just mentioned it,
Speaker 5: the one that you turned into a book in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one, Cold Blooded, the case of Rod Ferrell, sixteen
Speaker 5: year old vampire. We could go into this case and
Speaker 5: take the entire hour to talk about that, but this
Speaker 5: case you became part of it largely. You mentioned that
Speaker 5: after some very fine reporting on behalf of the fellow
Speaker 5: journalist you became. This became largely your case. Just tell
Speaker 5: us about the most incredible part of this most incredible tale.
Speaker 2: Well, Rod Perrat was only sixteen years old, but he
Speaker 2: had the charisma and the drive to form a cult,
Speaker 2: a vampire cult. And these guys were drinking each other's
Speaker 2: blood and doing all these odd things. And so they
Speaker 2: come down to Florida to pick up one of their
Speaker 2: cult members. He had gone to school here at one point,
Speaker 2: came back, picked her up and killed her parents, and
Speaker 2: she left with them, and they were all caught three
Speaker 2: days later, but she was not indicted. The rest of
Speaker 2: them are indicted. So the sheriff was like, this ain't right,
Speaker 2: you know, And what role did she have in all this?
Speaker 2: I mean, that was kind of the mystery of the
Speaker 2: whole thing. And it was an outrageous case. Of course,
Speaker 2: it made international headlines. It was just so outrageous.
Speaker 5: You talk about another case, and it's the Missing Millionaire,
Speaker 5: the title of that I believe in the chapter. But
Speaker 5: this Robert W. Ford, and you had it that a
Speaker 5: person got away with murder. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about this incredible story that you've included.
Speaker 2: This was wild. This is back in the early eighties.
Speaker 2: This fellow by the name of Neil Haber who was
Speaker 2: a builder developer here and lived in Leesburg, Florida, and
Speaker 2: he had come back from Mexico and went home, and
Speaker 2: then about a day or two later he was reported
Speaker 2: missing and in his car, he had some fancy car,
Speaker 2: and so where was he? You know? And the step son,
Speaker 2: this Robert Ford, told this really messed up story, like
Speaker 2: he heard something, but he didn't really see the people,
Speaker 2: and he saw there was blood in the garage, so
Speaker 2: he just kind of wiped it down and he found
Speaker 2: blood on a tarp, so he threw that in a dumpster.
Speaker 2: And the cops messed this up every way you can
Speaker 2: mess it up, and they basically just this Robbie Ford,
Speaker 2: who was a stepson, just got away with murder. And
Speaker 2: the cops, in their effort to try to solve this thing,
Speaker 2: got real cozy and friendly with the widow and with
Speaker 2: her suddenly brand new business partner who had just been
Speaker 2: a gopher before. So the whole thing made headlines every
Speaker 2: every day, and the family took out a full page
Speaker 2: out of the newspaper a reward for return of the car,
Speaker 2: not for him, they wanted the car. Then they next
Speaker 2: day said, oh no, we want him to of course,
Speaker 2: Well they found him in the in the car in
Speaker 2: an orange grove after he'd been in there for several days,
Speaker 2: and in Florida, that's not a good thing. So nobody
Speaker 2: wanted the car after that. Yeah, But basically the man
Speaker 2: had possible mafia tize business dealings. He had some very
Speaker 2: odd accounting system, a lot of liquid cash. So there
Speaker 2: was like several different possible motive suspects. So it was
Speaker 2: very interesting.
Speaker 5: You have a chapter called Cases that Keep Cops Awake
Speaker 5: at Night and that's an understatement. And one Trenton Ducket
Speaker 5: in August two thousand and six, and a woman named
Speaker 5: Melinda calls nine one one, tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about this Trenton Ducket.
Speaker 2: Trenton was about two years old, and she calls the
Speaker 2: cops and she reports and missing. She says, oh, I
Speaker 2: went to check on him, and then I went to
Speaker 2: had some friends over watching TV, and I went back
Speaker 2: to check on him again and the window screen was
Speaker 2: cut open. This was an apartment complex. He was gone.
Speaker 2: So the next day Nancy Grace calls and asks her, well,
Speaker 2: what was he wearing? What were you doing? And she
Speaker 2: the mom says, you know, she was very vague. She said,
Speaker 2: we were just running around whatever. And when she called
Speaker 2: the nine one one operator, the nine one operator said, well,
Speaker 2: what was he wearing? And she says, I don't, you know, basically,
Speaker 2: I don't know whatever, I don't remember or something like that,
Speaker 2: And the whole thing was fishy from the beginning. Well then,
Speaker 2: so after Nancy Grace interviews her and gets no answers,
Speaker 2: she before the interview airs, she goes over to her
Speaker 2: grandparent's house and kills herself. So now nobody knows where
Speaker 2: he is if he was killed, where's the body? If
Speaker 2: she handed him off, which some police officers thought, where
Speaker 2: is he? And another twist of this whole thing is
Speaker 2: this kid's grandfather is on death row for killing a
Speaker 2: kid gave as a cop too, So that's another whole twist. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And keeping in that theme, you have another chapter
Speaker 5: called Killer Cop and you have Teresa May mccabee, which
Speaker 5: is eleven year old. This is May nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 5: She's out for an errand to buy a pencil, and
Speaker 5: she bumps into the last person that last witness anyway,
Speaker 5: Caesar with a sixteen year old Mexican boy. But that
Speaker 5: person that witnesses it is a police officer. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit more about this tale.
Speaker 2: Right, and that's the grandfather of this Trenton, who was
Speaker 2: born years years later. Of course, he's a rookie cop
Speaker 2: a little town, a little bittytown in South Lake County,
Speaker 2: which is outside of Orange County where Disney World is
Speaker 2: and all that. But yeah, he doesn't make a lot
Speaker 2: of sense either. He's not. The police chief tells him,
Speaker 2: is you get out there, you hunt this kid, you know,
Speaker 2: no matter what else is going on. But the next
Speaker 2: morning he's out there doing traffic stops and whatnot. He's
Speaker 2: not doing what he's supposed to do. He didn't put
Speaker 2: flyers out like he was supposed to do, and he
Speaker 2: had They found tire tracks by this lake where they
Speaker 2: found the little girl's body, and the tire tracks matched
Speaker 2: the patrol car. So he gets arrested. He swears he
Speaker 2: didn't do it and all this, and there's been a
Speaker 2: whole years of controversy about DNA. They found hair on her,
Speaker 2: well that is it his or not? And for a
Speaker 2: long time they couldn't. The technology didn't allow him to
Speaker 2: test it. Now they can test it, but he doesn't
Speaker 2: want it tested because he says that it will destroy
Speaker 2: the only stample. Well, okay, whatever, so he's on death roat. Still.
Speaker 5: You have a chapter called Mother Nature runs a much
Speaker 5: and you also include stories of hurricanes and talk about
Speaker 5: I believe it's Tampa is the lightning capital of the world.
Speaker 2: I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Tell us about some of these incredible stories and why
Speaker 5: you included in a story in a book that's about
Speaker 5: murder and death and some killing.
Speaker 2: Well, mother Nature can be a pretty wicked killer too.
Speaker 2: I talk in this book about what happened on Groundhog Day.
Speaker 2: There was a tornado that came through a little town
Speaker 2: outside the village's retirement community called Lady Lake and Lake
Speaker 2: Mac and it killed twenty one people. But I mean
Speaker 2: it was devastating the whole landscape. It picked up these
Speaker 2: old double wide trailers of the older folks lived in
Speaker 2: some of them, and just rolled them across the landscape.
Speaker 2: Has killed them and snapped trees off. It suck people
Speaker 2: out of their house. One of the things that I
Speaker 2: saw the first thing was a man sitting where his
Speaker 2: brick house was. He's just sitting there in a chair.
Speaker 2: The house is completely gone. He was asleep on the mattress.
Speaker 2: He heard his wife's scream in the other room. He said,
Speaker 2: the next thing I know, I'm floating in the air
Speaker 2: and I'm looking up at the stars because there's no
Speaker 2: root in the house. That kind of thing. And then
Speaker 2: the hurricanes. There was two thousand and four, there was
Speaker 2: like five hurricanes back to back to back to back
Speaker 2: to back. And you know, when you cover those things,
Speaker 2: there's two ways to do it. You can sit in
Speaker 2: the emergency shelter and just wait for the thing to
Speaker 2: be over with, or you can pick your moments and
Speaker 2: get out and try to cover it like you should
Speaker 2: be covering it. And that's what my photographer and I did.
Speaker 2: And those things are so dangerous. We tried to get
Speaker 2: back every night before it got dark because you can't
Speaker 2: see tree limbs and road signs flying around the dark.
Speaker 2: But at the last day of the last storm, she
Speaker 2: went back to the car to get something out of
Speaker 2: the car and a tree limb snapped, big tree limb
Speaker 2: and just missed her. So they're very deadly, and we
Speaker 2: saw a lot of a lot of destruction, a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of property damage. A lot of people
Speaker 2: is scared to death by those things. With good reason absolutely.
Speaker 5: You include a story Jane Doe, Bottomless Pit nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: one in Rock Springs Run Reserve and a body's found,
Speaker 5: and we mentioned this in the introduction that it was
Speaker 5: brutalized so badly that people the rumor was that you'd
Speaker 5: been mauled by a bear. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about this bottomless pit and Jane Doe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's actually two stories there. The Bottomless Pit is
Speaker 2: one story and the Jane does the other. Kind of
Speaker 2: put them together one chapter with Jane Doe. After the
Speaker 2: crime scene, people get to looking at the body, which
Speaker 2: was buried under some limbs and things. That's what people,
Speaker 2: I think, initially thought she had been killed by a bear.
Speaker 2: They realized the body had been posed, that she had
Speaker 2: been someone had I don't know how to say this,
Speaker 2: had placed a bottle, a broken bottle where something like
Speaker 2: that should not be, and had posed her hand pointing
Speaker 2: to it, and she had been bitten and torn up,
Speaker 2: just torn up. And so years later, a few years later,
Speaker 2: and again this is all when DNA stuff was pretty new,
Speaker 2: a analyst, crime scene analyst is feeding the mail DNA
Speaker 2: found on her body through a computer, a crime computer,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden there was a hit and
Speaker 2: it was on a convicted rapist. So wow, that was
Speaker 2: like a big right there, because the police hadn't gone
Speaker 2: everywhere done everything they could. They even went to all
Speaker 2: these topless bars in Orlando thing think that she was
Speaker 2: maybe a dancer or something to see, you know, to
Speaker 2: try to identify her. They never did identify her, but
Speaker 2: they identified the killer. They had a trial. They brought
Speaker 2: in this bitemark expert who helped put ted Bundy away.
Speaker 2: He testified, so that was a big deal. The bottomless
Speaker 2: pit thing. Lake County, where I do my work, is
Speaker 2: outside of Orlando, and it used to be especially very rural.
Speaker 2: So Florida at one time still does have not had
Speaker 2: more cattle than Texas. So there's a lot of ranches
Speaker 2: and stuff. And so these two ranch owner and a
Speaker 2: foreman were out there because they were looking for missing cows.
Speaker 2: They were missing some cows. So it turns out that
Speaker 2: a couple of these ranch hands shot them and threw
Speaker 2: them in this so called bottomless pit. They have these
Speaker 2: sinkholes in Florida that are full of water. Nobody knows
Speaker 2: how deep they are, but they weighted their bodies down
Speaker 2: with concrete blocks and threw them in there, and then
Speaker 2: they figured out, you know who these guys were, and
Speaker 2: of course one of them had a conscious because he
Speaker 2: says the cop says, well, you know what happens to
Speaker 2: a body in the water, meaning alligators, And so the
Speaker 2: guy broke down and confessed and that got the bodies.
Speaker 2: When they pulled the bodies out, they also found an
Speaker 2: old duson Berg that had been used in a bank
Speaker 2: robbery in the nineteen twenties in this place. So this
Speaker 2: is a kind of a place that criminals used to
Speaker 2: dump all their their stuff. So that was a very
Speaker 2: interesting case too.
Speaker 5: You also include a case of a six year old
Speaker 5: girl named Kayla missing. Kayla McKean, tell us what's important
Speaker 5: about this story and whine you included it.
Speaker 2: Well, Kayla, I think she was five or six, I
Speaker 2: can't remember. I think she was five and her dad
Speaker 2: reports are missing on Thanksgiving and hundreds of people show
Speaker 2: up to look for her and all this sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 2: this goes on for like three days, people looking, and
Speaker 2: the cops suspect that he did it all along. This
Speaker 2: is a kid that he didn't even know he had.
Speaker 2: This girl until is a strange girlfriend tried to get
Speaker 2: child support. Yeah, well he'd killed her. But here's the thing,
Speaker 2: this case was messed up every way you can mess
Speaker 2: up as far as the child welfare system goes. You
Speaker 2: had DCF people going out there and saying that they
Speaker 2: investigated this or that and they didn't. You had every
Speaker 2: kind of breakdown of the system you could think of.
Speaker 2: The only people that were doing it right was the
Speaker 2: school where the little girl went to school, and they
Speaker 2: were reporting things like, Okay, she comes to school and
Speaker 2: makeup on to hide a black eye and that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. So the school was the only one that
Speaker 2: did it. And so basically because of this case, they
Speaker 2: had to redo the entire child welfare laws, the way
Speaker 2: things were done, how investigations are done, and so on.
Speaker 2: So that was a major, major thing.
Speaker 5: Just like in the introduction, this chapter is called Gators
Speaker 5: and Other Monsters. Tell us about some of the stories
Speaker 5: that are included in this Gators and Other Monsters chapter.
Speaker 2: One of the things I talk about I interview the Spella.
Speaker 2: He's a shark expert at the University of Florida, and
Speaker 2: they talk about, well, there's a lot of shark attacks.
Speaker 2: Most of them are not fatal, but some of them are.
Speaker 2: And also some of them are so hideous tiger sharks
Speaker 2: on the west coast that people are like damaged for
Speaker 2: life because of it. But he talks about he had
Speaker 2: an injergy spent on this. He says, well, people are
Speaker 2: catching these sharks now, cutting their fins off and you know,
Speaker 2: throwing the rest of the shark back. So he says, well,
Speaker 2: who is who's hunting who here? And so you've got
Speaker 2: people worried about the shark population now all things. But
Speaker 2: what we had several instances in Florida over the years
Speaker 2: of people being killed by alligators. These things are monsters.
Speaker 2: They're huge, twelve thirteen feet long. They can get to
Speaker 2: be several hundred pounds. So there was one little boy
Speaker 2: over in Belusia County who was standing on the edge
Speaker 2: of a lake with his parents and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: just the water ripples, the snap and he's gone. So
Speaker 2: we did a story. We had a cable show the
Speaker 2: Orlando where I worked at the time, and we went
Speaker 2: out with a game and fish guy on this airboat
Speaker 2: and we were talking about alligators and this is a
Speaker 2: big habitat and so on, and a three footer swims
Speaker 2: up to the boat, and so the game and fish
Speaker 2: guy says, do you want me to catch him? And
Speaker 2: we said sure, you know. So he's holding it and
Speaker 2: the gator little gators making these noises like Mama helped me,
Speaker 2: you know that kind of thing. So the wind is
Speaker 2: blowing us out to the middle of the lake, and
Speaker 2: so we're done, and he said, well, I can't let
Speaker 2: him out here because you know, he'll just be food
Speaker 2: for other alligators, bigger alligators. So he says, here, you
Speaker 2: hold him. How I get back to the shore. I'm
Speaker 2: going like, say what now? Because he's wiggling around and
Speaker 2: carrying on, and my photographer was laughing so hard I
Speaker 2: thought she was gonna fall over. So they're out there.
Speaker 2: They're very common, but people don't have any sense. If
Speaker 2: you ever feed an alligator, get in the habit of
Speaker 2: an alligator's in the habit of being around people, they
Speaker 2: lose their fear of people. They're very, very dangerous.
Speaker 5: And you talk about as well, people should know and
Speaker 5: before they go out swimming at night is not a
Speaker 5: good idea. That's when they come out.
Speaker 2: No, that's when they come out. There's certain feeding times.
Speaker 2: And I just talk about a teenage boy that was
Speaker 2: killed by an alligator too, and an elderly woman because
Speaker 2: they were just swimming in a place that they're full
Speaker 2: of alligators. And somebody in a couple of cases anyway,
Speaker 2: have been feeding these alligators, which just encourages them to
Speaker 2: come around. They're just they're big, and they've got a
Speaker 2: brain the size of a walnut. I think they're not
Speaker 2: real smart. They're just they're just made for killing, that's
Speaker 2: what they are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you have a chapter called Cops and Sarah Heckerman
Speaker 5: is a Lake County Sheriff dispatcher on February two thousand
Speaker 5: and five, and it's in balls of Jason Wheeler who's
Speaker 5: twenty nine years old, and friend had hog tied her
Speaker 5: and raped her and threatened to kill her. And she
Speaker 5: called if she called nine one one, tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit more about this incredible story involving cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Henckerman, she wasn't a dispatcher, but she called the cops.
Speaker 2: She was living in the woods, in the forest, I
Speaker 2: should say, with the sky Wheeler. They have some children
Speaker 2: together between them, So she calls the cops says, well,
Speaker 2: now he tog tied me. If you come with lights
Speaker 2: and Simons and all, he'll kill you. So she says,
Speaker 2: I'm leaving the house. I'm going to go down to
Speaker 2: a friend's house, walk down the road or whatever. So
Speaker 2: the cops get there and they send three deputies and
Speaker 2: so they pick her up. They go to the house
Speaker 2: and they're looking for him. He basically they're living in
Speaker 2: a camper while they're fixing up their house, which was
Speaker 2: damaged in a hurricane. He ambushes the whole lot of
Speaker 2: them and kills one deputy and injures two others. There's
Speaker 2: a big gun battle. He somehow escapes on a motorcycle
Speaker 2: and then goes out and hides in the woods. And
Speaker 2: that now there's a massive man hunt for the sky
Speaker 2: and he stands up on this little island in a
Speaker 2: lake and a deputy shoots him and he ends up
Speaker 2: being paralyzed for life. Well, so he goes to trial,
Speaker 2: and now he's repented. He says, I was sinful, I
Speaker 2: was doing all these terrible things and I'm sorry and
Speaker 2: all that, but the judge and the jury recommended death. Film. Well,
Speaker 2: here's the interesting thing about these cases Florida. Now, I
Speaker 2: guess everywhere the jury toold member jury has to be
Speaker 2: unanimous in their recommendation for death sentence. So he's coming
Speaker 2: back for sentencing, just like some of these So many
Speaker 2: of these other people are coming back, so he gets
Speaker 2: another shot. Is he going to get off death row
Speaker 2: or not? But people will have a pretty dim view
Speaker 2: of people that ambush and kill police officers around here.
Speaker 5: So absolutely, let's use this Frank as an opportunity to
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Speaker 5: have another chapter and you describe it as ruthless or
Speaker 5: you name it, title it as ruthless featuring certainly a
Speaker 5: ruthless killer Fred Anderson Junior. And in this particular story especially,
Speaker 5: you talk about that you got the call. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about this call that you got and
Speaker 5: this assignment and the Fred Anderson Junior and ruthless.
Speaker 2: Right, it was on Saturday morning. I wasn't feeling that great,
Speaker 2: you know, nothing serious, but just sort of like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I'm not feeling great. So my editor, of
Speaker 2: course calls, and she says, I think there's like a
Speaker 2: couple of people murdered in a store. I think in
Speaker 2: another town. So she's let me call you right back.
Speaker 2: So then she says, well, there's been a shooting at
Speaker 2: a bank over Mount Dora, which is a beautiful little town,
Speaker 2: and so maybe one of them is dead, maybe one
Speaker 2: of them still alive. I'm not sure. So I jump
Speaker 2: in the car and go. That's the last time I
Speaker 2: thought about not feeling great, because you get focused, you know.
Speaker 2: So I get over there and the helicopter's taking off
Speaker 2: with air rescue, and there's one fella is holding his
Speaker 2: head and screaming and says she just was trying to
Speaker 2: make a living and people are freaking out and the
Speaker 2: cops are everywhere. So it turns out and I asked
Speaker 2: the leading police officer over there. I says, Okay, tell
Speaker 2: me what's going on. He said, well, one of them
Speaker 2: is dead. The bank teller is dead. And we arrested
Speaker 2: the suspect inside the bank, and one of them. Then
Speaker 2: he says, now the other one's dead. So I go
Speaker 2: back to the office and start writing the story which
Speaker 2: is nearby. Start writing the story, and then I send
Speaker 2: the story in and then somebody from Orlando calls says, well,
Speaker 2: she's not dead. The second person's not dead. What this
Speaker 2: guy had done he pretended to be a college student
Speaker 2: doing research on the banking business. He goes in there,
Speaker 2: hangs around on Friday afternoon, the scope the place out
Speaker 2: comes back on Saturday, and basically Rob's of this bank
Speaker 2: tells the tellers to go back and open the vault
Speaker 2: and everything, which they do. They do everything that he's
Speaker 2: supposed to that they he had asked them to do.
Speaker 2: Then he shoots him, shoots him anyway. He says, which
Speaker 2: one of you guys want to die first? And then
Speaker 2: to start shooting well. Then he tries to get the
Speaker 2: security camera video out of the out of the machine,
Speaker 2: and when the cops come in, he's standing next to
Speaker 2: a garbage candle. Cash, I mean a lot of cash.
Speaker 2: I forget how much it was, seventy thousand dollars or
Speaker 2: something like that, maybe more. And then but his mistake
Speaker 2: was that one of the ladies lived. She was paralyzed
Speaker 2: for life. But when she testified in the trial, she
Speaker 2: comes down middle aisle there in the courthouse, in the
Speaker 2: courtroom in a motorized wheelchair, you could hear a pin drop. Sure,
Speaker 2: and she says, and she tells the story which one
Speaker 2: of you guys want to want to die first. So
Speaker 2: now his defense, he was, this is so messed up.
Speaker 2: His defense. He had gone to he's sang in church choir.
Speaker 2: So his defense is he sings a song on the
Speaker 2: witness stand about mercy. And the prosecutor says, this man
Speaker 2: doesn't deserve any mercy because he didn't give these ladies
Speaker 2: any mercy. And the jury agreed and that was it
Speaker 2: for him. That was a terrible crime.
Speaker 5: Well, you talk about a case where a dug dealer
Speaker 5: who was twenty two years old, Elloy Bennettez or Benavetez,
Speaker 5: and this huge person named Ron Ridgeway, five hundred and
Speaker 5: fifteen pound bodyguard for this gang leader named Diaz. Right,
Speaker 5: tell us why this story and what's so fascinating about
Speaker 5: this case?
Speaker 2: And this was a good chance to take a look
Speaker 2: at a big international drug game. They were and they
Speaker 2: were living in the forest and living large too. They
Speaker 2: were taking their own product and smoking it and snorting
Speaker 2: it too. And but what happened here was this drug
Speaker 2: dealer of benavite. This goes out to this drug stash
Speaker 2: house because they owe money. They owe about half a
Speaker 2: million dollars I believe it was, I can't remember, and
Speaker 2: he's there to collect. And so what they do instead
Speaker 2: is they have a guy on the roof of the
Speaker 2: rifle and they shoot him and then they bury him,
Speaker 2: and then they make a concrete pad over him and
Speaker 2: make a dog pin out of it. These guys are
Speaker 2: just ruthless. I mean they're they're leaving bodies everywhere. They're
Speaker 2: shooting each other and in the forest and everything else.
Speaker 2: So Ron Ridgeway is one of the enforcers, bodyguard whatever.
Speaker 2: He's five hundred and five pounds and his lawyer says, well, Ron,
Speaker 2: are you losing any weight in the jail. He says, no,
Speaker 2: I'm gaining weight. And his baby brother was four hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty five pounds. So, but these guys are just
Speaker 2: absolutely ruthless. And they's they're making They're they're shipping money
Speaker 2: rather drugs. They're bringing it in. They're they're bribing inspection
Speaker 2: people at the airport in Texas, and then they're shipping
Speaker 2: it all over the country. And then they're bringing in
Speaker 2: cocaine from Puerto Rico, so this whole thing, you know
Speaker 2: how this goes. Once they started making arrest, people start
Speaker 2: flipping on each other. And one guy, this Puerto Rican hitman,
Speaker 2: he gets scared and in a pre trial hearing and
Speaker 2: he's gray. He's going to get the death sentence. So
Speaker 2: he just without any negotiation or anything else, please guilty
Speaker 2: straight up to first degree murder. And it happens so fast.
Speaker 2: Everybody in the courtroom wasn't sure that the court reporder
Speaker 2: got it. So they had they were going to They
Speaker 2: did subpoena my notes, and I said, well, good luck
Speaker 2: reading them first of all, but I had a you know,
Speaker 2: I had him down as doing it. So but these
Speaker 2: guys were just they would just kill each other at
Speaker 2: the drop of a hat. It was just incredible.
Speaker 5: You include a chapter called Jessica and February twenty fourth,
Speaker 5: two thousand and five. My father Mark Lunsford comes home
Speaker 5: and his nine year old daughter, Jessica is missing from
Speaker 5: her room. He lives with his He's staying with his parents,
Speaker 5: right or his parents, her grandparents, and there's no sign
Speaker 5: of forced entry. Tell us about this remarkable case and
Speaker 5: how it winds up in the end regarding a law.
Speaker 2: This is a horrible case too. She was actually six. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the dad had gone spent the night with his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: He leaves Jessica with her his parents, which are nice,
Speaker 2: nice people. And this is a small area. This is
Speaker 2: home Asasses Springs over Citrus County. Nice area. But so
Speaker 2: what happened was they didn't know. They searched and search
Speaker 2: and searched for a long time, and finally they have
Speaker 2: an idea that this convicted, already convicted sex defender was
Speaker 2: staying in a mobile home where he was supposed to
Speaker 2: be staying, staying with a sister nearby. It turns out
Speaker 2: this guy had broken in at night the house apparently
Speaker 2: was not locked, brought her over to the trailer, his storias,
Speaker 2: he got scared, and basically buried her alive. Just horrible.
Speaker 2: And so this is one of those And again the
Speaker 2: cops kind of messed it up because they forget to
Speaker 2: mirandize him, or they questioning him without telling the lawyer
Speaker 2: they're going to do, and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So there's a big controversy about it, and then because
Speaker 2: they would have a hard time finding a jury that
Speaker 2: wasn't familiar with this case in this small area, they
Speaker 2: moved the trial to Miami. That's another whole thing. But
Speaker 2: this guy, James Cooey, who he is his last name,
Speaker 2: just I wanna you look at him and you go
Speaker 2: just how disgusting and how awful. And so they come
Speaker 2: up with new legislation making all this kind of least
Speaker 2: kinds of child abduction and by convicted sex offenders, harder
Speaker 2: sentencing and all that sort of thing. So again it
Speaker 2: changes the law. But it was just a heartbreaking case
Speaker 2: because she was just a beautiful girl that was just
Speaker 2: being compliant that he says, come with me, so she
Speaker 2: being an obedient little girl, she follows him. And it's
Speaker 2: just awful. This is heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: And and the confession, as you say, it's disgusting, but
Speaker 5: it is one of the most disgusting yet detailed, unfortunately confessions.
Speaker 5: It's heart wrenching even read it. It's it's so disgusting
Speaker 5: and so brutal and senseless. And you also write that
Speaker 5: Bill O'Reilly, the conservative pundit was outraged over this case,
Speaker 5: wasn't he he was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What Bill was talking about was they didn't charge
Speaker 2: the sister. They said, surely she knew that something was
Speaker 2: going on or whatever. And her roommates, I mean, they
Speaker 2: had to. Why didn't they prosecute shoot them? You know,
Speaker 2: they worked as accessories or something. Well, the prosecutor, Bill
Speaker 2: brad King rather at the time, he says, look, I
Speaker 2: can't there's no evidence to show that they were aware
Speaker 2: of it. Couy such a messed up character. He says, oh,
Speaker 2: I had her locked up in the closet for days
Speaker 2: and all that, and the prosecutors said that's impossible. So basically,
Speaker 2: they didn't charge the roommate the sister. So that's what
Speaker 2: upset Bill O'Reilly. But the prosecutor says, look, she gave
Speaker 2: permission to search the house, and because the confession was
Speaker 2: thrown out, if she hadn't agreed to verbally allow them
Speaker 2: to search the house, they wouldn't have had a case anyway.
Speaker 2: So it turns out it ended up being okay. But yeah, Bill,
Speaker 2: Bill O'Riley was, he was hot. So it was just
Speaker 2: another one of those terrible cases. So much of that
Speaker 2: stuff goes on in Florida, I think because people come
Speaker 2: to Florida. There they don't have a family structure here.
Speaker 2: They their family somewhere else, and they're just at loose ends.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of drugs going on, and it's
Speaker 2: just I don't know. People just kind of lose their
Speaker 2: minds down here sometimes crazy. Wow.
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Speaker 5: Now you talk about people losing their mind in Florida,
Speaker 5: and appropriately you have a chapter called crazy, and you
Speaker 5: feature a woman named Diane Evers in January first, nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty bathing her two twin daughters and her two year old.
Speaker 2: What happens. She her family's in the living room, she's
Speaker 2: bathing these ends, and so the girl girl and they
Speaker 2: got to check on her, and then, to their horror,
Speaker 2: realize that she's drowned the children in the bathroom. She
Speaker 2: says she's the virgin Mary, and that she has all
Speaker 2: these delusions about doctors saying this or that, to her
Speaker 2: nurses saying this or that. And she pleads not guilty
Speaker 2: by reason of insanity. It's one of those rare cases.
Speaker 2: That's a rare defense anyway, because Harry's don't like it,
Speaker 2: they don't buy it. But in this case it worked.
Speaker 2: She was institutionalized until just a few years ago, and
Speaker 2: now she's graduated to a halfway house or you know,
Speaker 2: kind of step down facility. But the judge, the monitoring
Speaker 2: this whole thing for years, that what what happened is
Speaker 2: under the law, you get a right to you know,
Speaker 2: if if the mental housettle says, oh she's better now,
Speaker 2: you get a hearing, and then the judge decides, well,
Speaker 2: every time they were about to have a hearing, she
Speaker 2: would what they call decompensate, and one time she tried
Speaker 2: to sell her arm off with a saw and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, so they needless to say that they
Speaker 2: canceled that hearing. But it's like, that's that is true craziness.
Speaker 2: But there's other cases in this book where people act crazy,
Speaker 2: stay crazy things, do crazy things, but it's not the
Speaker 2: judge or whatever decides no, that's that's not crazy. That's
Speaker 2: just it's not that crazy. There's crazy, then there's crazy.
Speaker 2: You know that kind of thing. So, so sorry about
Speaker 2: your luck here, you go on to jail. So and
Speaker 2: then I've covered other cases where that's actually been the defense.
Speaker 2: But like I say, it's rare. It rarely works. The
Speaker 2: jury just doesn't go.
Speaker 5: You say, one of the strangest cases you help cover
Speaker 5: was in two thousand and two, a nationally publicized case
Speaker 5: of a woman diagnosed with twelve different personalities disassociated identity disorder.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about why you think this
Speaker 5: is one of the strangest cases other than the obvious.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so rare that some psychologists don't even believe
Speaker 2: it's real. Rod Ferrell, the vampire, he claimed the habit,
Speaker 2: of course he didn't. But this woman, her deal was
Speaker 2: she said that she was sexually abused by her psychiatrist,
Speaker 2: that she would. She had these different personalities. One of
Speaker 2: them was a promiscuous young woman who she would be
Speaker 2: having sex with his doctor, and then she would and
Speaker 2: she was a come to and then realized that she
Speaker 2: was being abused. Yes, and you know, you know that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And during the testimony of this case,
Speaker 2: she slipped from one identity to another in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: And so because the fence attorney was asking questions and
Speaker 2: she goes, how are you, how are you doing? You
Speaker 2: know that kind of thing, and he says, who am
Speaker 2: I talking to now? And then she snapped out of
Speaker 2: it and went back to her main persona or whatever.
Speaker 2: So the end result was that it was very odd
Speaker 2: to see. But the end result was that the psychiatrists
Speaker 2: was acquitted, but the state yanked his license anyway, so
Speaker 2: that was interesting. But to see something like that happened
Speaker 2: right in front of your eyes. It's like weirds like
Speaker 2: Sybil and three faces of Eve and those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Very odd. Yes.
Speaker 5: Indeed, you have a chapter called baby Faced Killers, and
Speaker 5: you have a middle school troubled kid with a nine
Speaker 5: milli meter semi automatic hand about to confront his tormentor
Speaker 5: or at least that's what he says. Tell us about
Speaker 5: this controversial case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Keith Johnson. He says this, he's being bullied or
Speaker 2: you know, tormented or whatever by this other kid. And
Speaker 2: so he's fifteen. Maybe he's fourteen at the time of
Speaker 2: the crime. I can't remember, but yeah, I think he's fifteen.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: He goes to trial, So he shows up, he's staying,
Speaker 2: he's got all kinds of problems. Here's the thing, all
Speaker 2: these cases, you can look at their home and say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: I get it. I actually taught middle school for one year,
Speaker 2: and I would see these kids going off the walk
Speaker 2: and what's going on here? And then I get the
Speaker 2: parents in there. I say, okay, I get it now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this kid, he got kicked out of his house
Speaker 2: because he stole was his mother's car and drove to
Speaker 2: New York with his girlfriend. So he's having to stay
Speaker 2: with some family friend. Well, the family friend had a gun,
Speaker 2: and he got hold of the gun, took it to
Speaker 2: school and shot this kid. Joey Summerland shot him several times.
Speaker 2: And the controversy was he says, I was in fear
Speaker 2: of my life. I thought he was gonna kill me. Blah,
Speaker 2: blah blah. Other people said, well, no, he was just
Speaker 2: a run in his mouth and that kind of thing. So,
Speaker 2: but the thing of it is the only sentence that
Speaker 2: and the jury found him guilty. The only sentence you
Speaker 2: can have for something like that was mandatory life. He
Speaker 2: was fifteen years old. Well, now the Supreme Court, the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court keeps moving the ball, okay, And so now
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court says, no, you if you're a juvenile
Speaker 2: when you commit murder, you don't automatically be sentenced to life.
Speaker 2: Do you have you know, you're entitled to a new
Speaker 2: sentence and all that jazz. So so he is coming
Speaker 2: back for another sentencing hearing. I don't know when exactly.
Speaker 2: It keeps. They keep putting it off because the COVID
Speaker 2: has pushed everything back so much. Right, we're just now
Speaker 2: having trials on cases from twenty seventeen, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But so was he justified in doing what I did
Speaker 2: in his mind? You know, that's that's a question. But
Speaker 2: it you know, even though it's horrible and you're thinking
Speaker 2: fifteen years old and you'll spend the rest of your
Speaker 2: life in prison, that's that's a big one to chew
Speaker 2: a off, you know absolutely. So there's other cases too
Speaker 2: where it was an accidental shooting and the kid gets
Speaker 2: sentenced under juvenile law, which of course is a lot different. Okay,
Speaker 2: you can be sentenced to confinement, but by the time
Speaker 2: you're twenty one or whatever, you're out of Another case
Speaker 2: where a kid shot his sister, and the legal system
Speaker 2: found a way to kind of hit some kind of
Speaker 2: happy medium with a lot of counseling and so on
Speaker 2: that one, because basically the parents we're going to lose
Speaker 2: both of their children, you know, So it's I think
Speaker 2: you're going to see a lot of more handwringing and
Speaker 2: people trying to figure out some way of dealing with
Speaker 2: these kids because they're out there and they're killing and
Speaker 2: the what are you doing? You know?
Speaker 5: Absolutely. You have another chapter called Love Hurts and this
Speaker 5: is a twenty one year old Joline Fisher and her
Speaker 5: ex Tony Fisher, and that she's at her grandparents house.
Speaker 5: She's afraid of Tony. Tell us what happens in this
Speaker 5: chapter Love Hurts and this Joline Fisher and Tony X.
Speaker 2: She comes home, I guess from a date, comes home
Speaker 2: with a friend. Anyway, I'll call her a date. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So he's walking her to the door. She gets in
Speaker 2: the door and the door slams behind her, and it's
Speaker 2: her husband in there, and he's got a knife and
Speaker 2: some guns and she's trying he's trying to cut her throat,
Speaker 2: so she's putting her hands up to try it between
Speaker 2: the blade and her throat to keep getting her throat cut.
Speaker 2: And they're wrestling around and the friend runs next door
Speaker 2: to get some help. He comes and smashes the door
Speaker 2: in and gets in there, and then the cops come. Well,
Speaker 2: she has such severe cuts all in her hand that
Speaker 2: it takes a special surgeon hours and hours and hours
Speaker 2: to try to reattach the nervedings, to try to attach
Speaker 2: all the tendons all that were cut. It was just terrific.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing was in the trial she looks
Speaker 2: at him square in the eye and says, you know,
Speaker 2: she says, I know that I'm supposed to be a victim,
Speaker 2: but I'm not going to be a victim. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do it, you know, And you're going to
Speaker 2: go away to jail and I'm going to get all
Speaker 2: my life basically, So kudos to her. She had a
Speaker 2: lot of guts and she was bound or determined to
Speaker 2: keep healing and to go on to their line. So
Speaker 2: that was a that was quite a story.
Speaker 5: You have other shocking examples of similar cases. And you
Speaker 5: have a Corey Brown claiming was an accident, but her
Speaker 5: head was bashed against with a brick or against a
Speaker 5: brick wall. You have other cases as well. You have
Speaker 5: another chapter called dead Men Talking. Tell us what story
Speaker 5: might be involved or is included in dead Men Talking.
Speaker 2: That's one I'm really proud of because I got a tip.
Speaker 2: There was the city of Mount Door, which I say
Speaker 2: is a beautiful little town. It's kind of a tourist place.
Speaker 2: It looks like an MGM set for the Whole Musical
Speaker 2: or something beautiful place. Well, there had been a series
Speaker 2: of stabbings and robberies and assaults and one murder of
Speaker 2: an old man, so I got a call. There was
Speaker 2: another a man found dead in his house. So the
Speaker 2: cops are calling it a natural death. So I got
Speaker 2: a tip though from somebody. He says, this is not natural,
Speaker 2: it's homicide. So I get to looking into it. I
Speaker 2: talked to the man's girlfriend. There were obvious signs that
Speaker 2: the house had been broken into, the circumstances. The crime
Speaker 2: scene looked really fishy. He was on his knees, and
Speaker 2: there was a pillow nearby, and then there was a
Speaker 2: knife nearby, and then the cops come and they moved
Speaker 2: the knife to take crime scene pictures, and I'm going,
Speaker 2: what's going on here? So I kept doing these stories,
Speaker 2: investigative stories, and got a lot of pressure on the
Speaker 2: prosecutor's office, and they got to the point where they
Speaker 2: got a court order exhumed the body and found out
Speaker 2: that yes, he had been murdered, and the guy confessed
Speaker 2: to the murder. He got convicted or second degree murder.
Speaker 2: There's a gang of teenagers out there and they just
Speaker 2: wanted to rob and one of them is, we just
Speaker 2: want to do old people, and so just ruthless, terrible people. Yes.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you have a chapter called Senseless, and certainly it
Speaker 5: chronicles a senseless murder that.
Speaker 2: The name is an understatement.
Speaker 5: But you also have a couple chapters, the last two
Speaker 5: chapters Deathnell for Newspapers and Dreams. So tell us about
Speaker 5: a little bit about death Nell for Newspapers, question Mark
Speaker 5: and your dreams.
Speaker 2: Regarding that, Well, I've been in this business actually now
Speaker 2: forty years and I go. I mean from the days
Speaker 2: when it was like the newspaper was extremely powerful and
Speaker 2: influential to now the massive layoffs, the newsaper business was
Speaker 2: not fast and getting up to speed with the Internet
Speaker 2: and all that lost so much. So they're they're sort
Speaker 2: of hanging on. They're doing the best they can. But
Speaker 2: I mean, there's only a few people here in Lake County.
Speaker 2: I'm one of them, and I'm not full time, but
Speaker 2: I'm working on covered trials and so on. But my dream,
Speaker 2: I have this recurring dream where I'm at trying to
Speaker 2: I'm on the copy desk and I'm trying to put
Speaker 2: out the paper, but I don't have a list of
Speaker 2: the stories. I don't know what pages are supposed to
Speaker 2: go on. It's all confused, and there's but there's people
Speaker 2: in there from different papers, you know, like from the
Speaker 2: Sentinel and from the Oca Star Banner and that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. I'm going like, well, what does this mean? Well,
Speaker 2: it just means that I've left a lot of friends
Speaker 2: behind over the years, and a lot of people have
Speaker 2: moved on, And so that's kind of what I'm thinking
Speaker 2: that it's your subconscious tries to put all these things together.
Speaker 2: The thing of it is, and you put your heart
Speaker 2: and soul in something like I have a journalism, then
Speaker 2: it's really hard and disturbing to see, you know, these
Speaker 2: things fall apart. So that's what that's what it's about.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And you do talk about and I agree, you know,
Speaker 5: the face of journalism has changed and uh and maybe
Speaker 5: they were late getting you know, a digital version of
Speaker 5: what they were doing, but it's essential that they do.
Speaker 5: And regardless of whether that change has is dramatic and
Speaker 5: not to be ever the same in terms of newspapers
Speaker 5: and their their readers readership, but that it's necessary and
Speaker 5: the same the same honored art of journalism is necessary
Speaker 5: today and will be in the future. So you'll just
Speaker 5: have to reinvent itself somewhat, won't it. Yes, well, I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much Frank for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about uh, Vampires, gators and wackos. A new
Speaker 5: newspapers Man's Life, Frank Staffy. For those they might want
Speaker 5: to take a look at this book and other work,
Speaker 5: can you tell us about a web page or Amazon
Speaker 5: page that they might take a look at.
Speaker 2: Frankie Stanfield at Frankie Stanfield dot com. And I'm on
Speaker 2: Facebook and Twitter on my name. Thank you very much, Frank.
Speaker 5: Vampires, gators and wackos A newspaper man's life. Thank you
Speaker 5: very much. Frank Stanfield, you have a great evening.
Speaker 2: Good night, thank you,