Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and.
Speaker 3: We're joined today by legendary podcaster and author em William
Phalps to talk to us about his new podcast series,
Paper Ghosts and Crossing the Line. Matt, thank you so
much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: It's great to be here finally getting on Bill and
Kristen Schow Mine Over Murder. It's been how long you
guys been in this.
Speaker 3: Now four years?
Speaker 2: Four years, four years, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Paid four paper ghosts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Paper ghost start around the same time. Yeah, so it's
great to be on.
Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed. I don't know how we went four years
with that asking you to be on the show.
Speaker 5: I'm offended.
Speaker 2: Actually, let's get off to a good start. And now
we live in the same state. We're both in Connecticut
where I was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and calf and look, I've known you for twelve
years now something like that, Yeah, a dozen years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we may even though we do not video this,
I would like everyone to know that Matt and Bill
are dressed exactly the same in wonderful matching plaid shirts,
and that was totally a coincidence.
Speaker 2: We're doing the hardy New Englander thing today and it's
still cold and rainy here in Connecticut.
Speaker 5: Spring hasn't sprung yet, that's for sure, and I'm ready
for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. All this promises promises. It's not been
a horrible winter. But at the same time, it would
be nice if it started acting like April.
Speaker 5: How it goes here in New England. All of a
sudden you wake up and it's seventy degrees out and
you're on your way I'm looking forward to it, but
I have a lot of cleanup to do in my
art after the winter we had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, instant summer. It'll be April fifteenth and it'll suddenly
be seventy five degrees and the Red Sox are already struggling,
and you're off to the races for another spring in
New England.
Speaker 3: We are already highly pollinated down here in Virginia. So
at least you guys are missing that part of it.
Speaker 2: We are. They're tearing up the road in front of
my house with incredibly noisy, dusty, dirty equipment the size
of a two story house, but no no polling yet.
Speaker 3: We asked Matt to come on to talk to us
about his new podcasts, but we also wanted to start
by asking you, Matt, tell us how you originally got
involved in true crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, take us back twenty five years and walk us
through everything that happened since then.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll give you the condensed version of it. I
get asked that question a lot, and it's funny because
it's like the day before I got into true crime,
I didn't know I was getting into true crime. My
passion in life is writing. I get up in the
morning to write. That's what I love to do, and
that makes my soul complete when I'm able to write.
I was a journalist and had a column about music,
and I wrote about politics. I wrote about everything anything
I could write about. And then I met an agent
and he's listen, if you want to really make money,
you need to come up with a book subject. You
need to write a book. I live close to Springfield, Massachusetts,
and there was a trial going on in Springfield that
I just found all these people involved in this trial
very interesting. There was a beautiful young woman, thirty three blonde,
who was on trial for killing seven people and there
was whispers that she killed many more. In Northampton, the
leads Medical Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and so I just
started following this trial and I just thought it was
an interesting story about people, victims, the town, the response
to the crime, and this woman. So I started following it.
I sold the book about it. I wrote the book,
and I didn't know really I was writing a true
crime book, but I was. So that book came out
and it was very successful. Perfect Poison. The serial killer
is Kristin Gilbert. Before that, I had met this guy,
William Acosta, who is a Columbian guy and they call
him the Equalizer because he worked for the CID, he
worked for the CIA, he worked for Customs FBI, and
he was a mole. He did all sorts of investigatory things.
And I met him. I was going to write about him.
We became friends, and he taught me how to investigate people. Basically,
I spent a couple of years with him and he
taught me my investigative skills. I was getting into the
crime then I just didn't know it. I didn't look
at I hope this is not long winded, but we
look at things today with labels. We have to label everything,
and for me, I was writing a book about people.
I was writing a book about victims of a woman
who had murdered them and their families and what they've
gone through. So if that's labeled true crime, that's what
I do. And that's what I ended up doing because
my publisher wanted more books, so I wanted to write
more books. That's what I did. And then I just
TV came from that and I fell into it all
and just ran with it.
Speaker 2: What year did your first book come out? Perfect Poison?
Speaker 5: I think perfect Poison came out in two thousand and two,
twenty two years ago. I had a contract for a
book in ninety nine called The Blue Mafia, Racism and
Corruption Inside the NYPD. I had been working on that
for many years with William Acosta. He was a detective
and he had rooted out all this racism and corruption
and we were doing a book together, and then nine
to eleven hit and it was like, I was in
the middle of doing this, and my editors, there's no
way that we can say and why PD cops are bad?
Look at the front page of every paper. So I
abandoned that and then I moved on to the Christen
Gilbert story Perfect Poison.
Speaker 3: So Matt as an English teacher, I'm always interested in
asking other writers to talk a little bit about their
writing style, their process. Can you tell us just a
little bit about your process. I'd love to hear.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. My process is that, for the
past twenty something years, I get up about four thirty
five o'clock in the morning and I begin my day writing,
whether I'm writing a book or a podcast, or a
TV script or a treatment or whatever I'm doing. And
when I'm working on a book I write. First of all.
With the book, they're all nonfiction. So I go out
and I do all the investigating, I do all the interviews,
et cetera, et cetera. Same with Paper Ghosts the podcast.
I go out, I spend a couple of months doing
all my interviews with people who are going to tell
this story. And then I come back and then I
sit down and I get up every morning I start
to write out everything and go through the interviews. And
it's the same process for a book. Generally, when I'm
writing a book, I don't start on page one. It's
a dark and stormy night. Sometimes I start at the end.
It all depends on the information and how I need
to understand it. The process is I work on ten, twelve, fifteen,
sometimes twenty pages in a day, and the next day
I edit them, and then I work on the next
twenty and then I edit those, and it's a process
that I just keep going over and over, and then
when I'm done with the manuscript, I probably rewrite a
book probably twenty times before I'm happy with it. I
just love that process, I really do. It really makes me.
I think. One of the things I love most about
writing is that it takes me. It's almost like I'm
not in the world, out of the world. The world
world we live in today is a good world to
get out of sometimes, and writing does that for me.
I just I'm in the moment. I'm zeroed in on
what I'm doing completely. I'm in, as they call the flow.
There's a book called The Flow. I'm in the flow
time and space is gone. And I like that. I
like that world.
Speaker 2: So when you start early in the morning, Matt, then
is there a time of day you'll end or do
you write until you collapsed from exhaustion.
Speaker 5: That's a good question, Bill. You can be creative for
probably four or five hours a day tops. So I
work that creative time and then I take a break
or whatever, and then I go into editing mode or
I do TV stuff. I meet I have a lot
of meetings with producers, etc. Production companies. I work on treatments.
I'm working on a sizzle reel right now for a
show that I'm getting ready to pitch. So I switch
gears from the writer to the TV slash, a podcast producer,
et cetera. In the afternoon and work stuff out with
podcasting more than books, especially with paper Ghosts. Paper ghost
takes me over a year to do, and I have
about four other people working on it with me. For
a lot of that time, there's a lot of miscellaneous
stuff you have to do for a limited series, podcast
and promotion, et cetera. So yeah, my five hours are writing,
four hours of writing, and then it's another five, six, seven,
sometimes eight hours of whatever TV podcasting work.
Speaker 3: Since you started telling us a little bit about paper ghosts,
let's carry that through. Tell us a little bit about
how you got started with paper ghosts and what is
the main concepts behind paper ghosts.
Speaker 5: So a paper ghost is a missing person poster on
a telephone poll. It's a paper ghost because we don't
know where that person is. So I met a producer
on Doctor Oz, Lauren Bright Pacio and Doctor Oz and
Happy Face's daughter, Melissa Moore, she also worked on the show.
I had this big interview schedule they were going to
do almost the complete hour on my book that was
coming out, and the day before the interview, the day before,
they pulled the plug on it. And it was because
of Melissa. She's the one responsible for that. So the
plug got pulled on that. My publisher had even gone
out I think with an additional five thousand copies of
the book because of Doctor Oz. Because at the time
Doctor Oz was four o'clock in the afternoon. It was
a big show, and at the time you could sell
books on TV. You can anymore, but at the time
you could. So I met Lauren, she was a producer
on that show. She felt really bad for me. She
was out of her hands. So we became friends, and
she goes, listen, I know these people at iHeart they're
starting a podcast division. You'd be perfect, So I want
to make an introduction. So Lauren introduced me to Will Pearson,
He's the president at iHeart podcasting division, and I had
a meeting with them, and Paper ghost was born. I
certainly had the material, as I do now, I have
more material than it will ever use in my lifetime.
And there was no other case that was going to
be the first season of paper Ghosts than the four
missing girls from the town that I lived in a
neighboring town, and all the families I knew very well.
One of the girls I even had gone to school with.
And so I had been investigating those cases for twelve
years and I had a lot of information and so
there was never going to be any other case but
that for season one, and so that's how that was born.
When crossing the Line with em William Phelps just came
out of that. They wanted me to do a weekly
and ongoing as your show is, but just came from that.
And also I have White Eagle. White Eagle is a
sixth part limited series about the largest cash heist in
the US at the time, which took place in West Harford,
Connecticut in nineteen eighty three. Victor Herrena, he spent the
longest time on the FBI's top ten Most Wanted. Very
proud of that White Eagle. That's a really great six
part limited series.
Speaker 3: We would definitely be remiss if we didn't mention Dark
Minds because we do have such a strong connection to
Dark Minds. You guys did decide to cover the Colonial
Parkway murders, which we're very thankful for. So can you
tell us a little bit about Dark Minds for anybody
who may not be familiar with it, And then how
did Colonial Parkway murders come onto your radar and what
made you go, you know what, let's do this on
Dark Minds. It sounds great.
Speaker 5: Dark Minds, I think was a show before its time
on Investigation Discovery. The timing was off. We did three seasons.
I did twenty four episodes of the show. Colonial Parkway
was one, but pitch that show as as Silence of
the Lambs meets Catch Me if you Can. That show
was me out in the field investigating a new unsolved
serial killer case each week. And it was on, as
I said, Investigation Discovery, and I had a forensic psychologist,
John Kelly, and I also had a serial killer, an
anonymous serial killer on the phone who would give me
direction his insight a quarterback does at an NFL game
the next quarterback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an interesting conceit. I remember enjoying it.
Speaker 5: And for the three seasons that Dark Minds was on,
he was anonymous, his voice was disguised, and he had
a nickname on the show, Raven, which I did not
give him. The president of ID did. Many people thought
he was fake. He was a trumped up reality TV
thing and everything like that. When the show ended, I
wrote a book, Dangerous Ground my friendship in quotes with
a serial killer, and the entire time it was Keith
Jesperson happy face killer. He was Raven. He was the
guy on the show, and we locked onto the Colonial
Parkway murders. To be perfectly frank and honest with you,
because at the time, there were probably thirty or forty
unsolved serial killer cases in the country that were connected,
that felt connected, like these are cases that you are connected,
there's probably a serial killer working here, and Colonial Parkway
showed up on my radar because I had done research
on these cases for many years and I knew that
there was probably a serial killer, might be a serial
killer working on the Colonial Parkway. I wasn't convinced and
I still am not convinced today that all these cases
are connected, the ones we covered on the show. I'm
just not convinced to that. And yeah, that's how I
met Bill, That's how I ended up doing the Colonial Parkway.
It was one of my I think it was one
of my if I can have a favorite out there
filming this stuff, it was one of the ones I
remember most. I remember It's funny. Every once in a
while it hit me those president's heads in Williams Park, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, and exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 5: What was bizarre about them was it they were the
weeds were overgrown, it was closed, yep, and it was
just so eerie. It was park President's Park. It was
park bizarre and that always pops in my mind every
once in a while. Well, no, I was there for
the week filming.
Speaker 2: Now help us out, and remember we have people listening
all over the world. I have no idea what the
two of you were talking about. What is President's Park
in Williamsburg.
Speaker 3: President's Park was a very It's an interesting conceit. I
will give it that. It was this idea that there
would be a park and in the park there would
be busts, huge busts of all of the president's head
and shoulders, bus the presidents, and they were all just
set around this beautiful park land area. Yeah. But unfortunately
the President's Park was not as popular as I think
the planners were hoping it would be. I think they
were picturing it as like a place where people could
go on field trips and you can learn lots of
instructive things about the president. But ultimately what happened is
the park closed and all it was forty three busts
of the president's up to that point. I think Obama
was the last one those crumbling President's heads are sitting
out in a field way out beyond where I live,
and they're just crumbling to dust. I have never understood.
We are all growing up around them.
Speaker 2: In the same location where they were originally placed.
Speaker 3: Now they were moved away from the original location, and
they were just dumped out in this field. And I've
never understood why they couldn't at least decide, okay, let's
take the Abraham Lincoln, hadn't put it the Lincoln Lincoln
sites and things like that. I don't know why JFK's
head didn't go to the JFK President's Library or something
like that. They're just like crumbling to dust out there
in a field with weeds growing up all around them
just like they.
Speaker 2: Are they standing vertically or are they lying on their
sides like a like junked cars.
Speaker 3: I haven't been out there. There is one day a
year or two days a year where you can actually
apply to go out there to look at it and
take photos. I haven't gone. Actually have friends who do.
Speaker 5: When we were filming, they were still in the.
Speaker 3: Park where they were still in the park, okay.
Speaker 5: Because we had to walk through the gate to get
in there, like the turnstile and it was it felt
like when you were there, it felt like Armageddon had
happened really in this place had been one of the places,
and because the weeds and everything, it was just very eerie.
Speaker 3: It was really creepy.
Speaker 2: I've ever been there. This is very and I just recall.
Speaker 5: That about filming because we did a lot of filming
just driving up and down the Colonial Parkway, b roll
that sort of thing. Yeah, that's what I remember. I remember,
and I also remember Steve. Steve've helped me out the
detective Steve he's he now on that that trumped up
show that called Justice Ship. Yeah, that that that that
made up whatever. I won't get into that here. I
won't settle that.
Speaker 2: I think you see, I think he just did. Steve.
Speaker 5: Steve is a great guy guy. Steve was a great guy.
I remember interviewing him at one of the I think
it was where your sister Bill was where they were found.
Steve and I were right there and that's where I
interviewed him. And just a great guy, just a great guy.
He knew a lot about the case and it was
one of my favorite gigs for that series, Colonial Parkway.
On One of the reasons is because I think it
can be solved. A lot of the cases can be solved.
And a lot of times when I would go to
a city that wasn't the case, I'm like, I'd be
there and I'd be like, Yeah, these cases are not
going to be solved. It this is not happening. When
I ran into a case, and I might say that
we did what was called at the time the original Nightstalker,
we did that as well, and which became a Golden
State Killer. Yeah, so we A lot of times I
just say, that's just there's not enough information. But with
Colonial Parkway, there is enough information to put that together ourselves.
Speaker 2: So we've always been saying that, and of course now
we're seeing significant developments. They've identified one offender. We know
he's linked to one of the pairs, Robin Edwards and
David Nobling, and the FBI won't admit this publicly, and
the FBI and the Virginia State Police stumbled all over
themselves January eighth, twenty twenty four announcing the identification of
this suspect, but they failed to mention he's also suspect
number one in the disappearance of Keith coll and Cassandra Haley.
It's just ludicrous that they failed to mention this publicly.
So it's up to the rest of us that know
the case to call them out on their trans questions.
Cover up whatever you want to be doing.
Speaker 5: The FBI has their own way of doing things. They
just I don't like dealing with FBI because there's just
a lot of there's a lot of silence, there's a
lot of misinformation. They don't tell you anything. You got
free reports from them, and it takes forever. I'd rather
deal with the detective who's been on it for twenty years,
ten years. I have this week coming up. I have
a detective from the LAPD Cold case detective Rachel Evans,
who solved two cases that started before she was even
born sixty years those cases were sitting in the cold
case unit the entire time. She comes on board, and
the three men in the cold case unit throw the
case at her and say good luck, and they didn't
even want her there. And what does she do. She
solves them And they could have been solved at any time.
The answers were right there had changed. All she did
was do the work. So my point is, I like
to deal with those types of detectives Laurie Howard. Detective
Laurie Howard, who you've heard throughout season four now of
Paper Ghosts, and you're gonna hear a lot more from
in the final two episodes of The Ozarks. She and
I became great friends. She's just she is just an
incredible investigator.
Speaker 2: I comes across really well in the podcast series, and
she's really smart. And she's also very grounded. And the
two of you clearly very grounded. You too, clearly developed
a very strong rapport, very grounded.
Speaker 5: And here's a woman who kept Shauna Garber's box of
bones under her desk then took them home. Here's someone
who literally extracted Shawna Garber's molars out of the back
of her skull on our kitchen table because the department
didn't have the money to do it, wouldn't give her
the money. Extracted those to get them tested to see
if there was a match anywhere. Here's a woman who
snuck into a hospital in the middle of the night
with Sewa garber skull to take scans of it in
order to send those scans to Canada because she couldn't
cross the border, of course with a box of bones.
So they could get a bust on a lot of
this stuff she did without even getting paid on her
own time. Those are the people I like to deal
with when I'm doing my work, the dedicated people who
care about humanity, who are invested in humanity, and who
are invested in victims' families, getting victims family's answers. That's
my goal now, Kristen Bill. My goal now is to
gather answers for victim's families who just aren't getting them.
Whether the answer, I don't solve cases. I say it
all the time, and whatever I do, I don't solve cases.
I look for information. I dig up information, and I
hand it over to the people who can do something
with it, and I also hand it over to the family.
So that's what I do.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
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mindover Murder.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure we also talk about Crossing
the Line, which is your other podcast among your many projects,
for our listeners who may be unaware. Talk to us
a little bit about crossing the Line and the impetus
for setting up that podcast.
Speaker 5: So crossing the Line with Emilliam Phelps is a weekly
show half hour forty five minute episodes where I go
through a case each week, one case per week. Sometimes
I'll do a two to three parter. Are very rare.
It's Paper Ghosts weekly, but it's more personal. I get
personally invested in it, speak my mind in this. Whereas
Paper goes some more of the journalists, I keep the
journalistic this. I don't hold anything back. If something upsets me.
A guy who did sixteen years for a murder when
he was supposed to do forty, they let him out
and he kills five more people. I get upset about that.
I get really enraged by that. That pisses me off
because we had him, we had him, and we let
him go right. And there's a lot of these guys
out there. And I started this. I took a hiatus,
a year hiatus with Crossing the Line because I wanted
to A. I was busy with Paper Ghosts, very busy,
and B I wanted to think about the show a
little bit more, rebranded a little bit, and begin it
again anew, which I did seven eight weeks ago. The
first episode in this new incarnation, if you will, of
crossing the Line, it's called The Wife the serial Killer
and all the Money, and it's about the Long Island
series killer's wife who was gifted, i'll say, gifted a
seven figures a million dollars from NBC Universal so a
production company could follow her while her husband, the alleged
Long Island's serial killer, Rex Huerman, goes through the process
of trial, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, now I have
a big problem with this bill would have a bigger problem.
He's I'm a victim's family member. Myself, my sister in
law was pregnant and murdered. I don't speak from that here.
I speak as someone who is disgusted by this because
what this does is and look I said in the episode,
I possibly be slitting my own throat to keep it
in the true crime vein for producing TV in the future.
But I don't give a shit. I really don't care,
because you can't take a serial killer's wife and give
that person and a million dollars and throw them up
on TV and say we'll tell us about your life,
because what you're doing is you're giving that serial killer
the stage exactly, and you're saying that we're gonna reward
the people in your life because the son of Sam
Law won't allow us to give you any money. So
we're gonna reward that family members, and we're gonna we're
gonna put them on TV so they can just tell
us they lived with a monster and they didn't know it. Okay,
And my whole thing in this episode is this, they
didn't hand over a million dollars for nothing. I think
the line I used in the show is they didn't
hand her a million dollars to talk about gardening with
him and going out to outback with him. She had
to bring something to the table. I've produced TV, bill
has been involved. You have to bring something to the
table before you get money. Okay, you can't just say
I'm the wife of the serial killer. That doesn't That's
not how that works. So not only not it taints
all the information she might have she might give to
the FBI whatever. So this is so many things wrong
with this. Right, no victims family members will appear on
that show. I guarantee it. They're pissed, and they should.
Speaker 2: Be, Yeah, they should be outraged. The whole thing is
so sleazy, And I don't have any personal agenda with
ASA ellerop is her name, and on some level you
could make a case that she is a victim. But
does she and I.
Speaker 5: Do in the episode, I absolutely do.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't deserve a million dollars. And what they're
paying for is access, and it's I think it's disgusting
what they be.
Speaker 5: But here's the thing. When that case broke, the media,
of course descends upon a Massapequa park and these people
are living on the porch, basically cooking on the porch
because their house has been torn apart, the yard's been
torn apart, and they're shunning the media. She is yelling,
screaming f bombs at the media. Stay away from me,
Stay away, Stay away. Fast forward six months, million dollars
now come on bull Access. And I think someone pointed
out to me that in one of the reviews of
that episode, someone attacked me by saying, how dare you
go after her? She has cancer and she lost everything.
She needs this money. Look, I'm sorry, she has cancer.
Sorry she lost everything. Doesn't change anything for me, doesn't
change my opinion one bit about this is bad for
true crime as a genre, it's bad for victims, it's
bad for future TV programs in the genre. So is
at the bar. Now that's the bar that's set. Now
we have to get as a producer myself, I have
to get a serial killer's family members now to talk
or so. As you can see, I'm heated up again
all over about this. Now it's it's got myself worked
up again.
Speaker 2: It's it is disgusting and all. So they've set the
bar with this ridiculous figure that they're going to pay
her a million dollars to have access to her story.
And as you said, people don't want to just hear
about the fact that she might be an avid gardener.
And as far as I know, you made that up,
it doesn't matter. Yeah, but they that's not what they
really want to hear about.
Speaker 5: No, hell no, hell no. And I'll say this, I
didn't get it in the show because it happened after
I recorded. Recently, she's come out within the past couple
of weeks and said this, I want to wait till
all the facts are out before I make a judgment
against them.
Speaker 3: Oh I saw that quote.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so now the tune is different. Why because
she's going on TV with the story it has to
be so yeah, so crossing the line answer your question.
Speaker 2: Kristen, you mean that wasn't the answer.
Speaker 5: Again, I go through a case and I do talk
about the case from a start to finish, and sometimes
I have guests. This week, I have a detective, and
then I at the end, when we get to the
trial part of it all, or the justice part of
it all, that's when I start to start to I
call people out. Look, I'm calling people out for who
they are. If you're a scumbag, I'm going to call
you a scumbag on the show. But if you're a
piece of shit, I'm going to call you that. If
you if you stalk little boys and you've you've already
molested two and spent time in jail and you almost
killed one and they let you out again, I'm going
to attack the judge. I'm going to attack the parole board.
That's what I'm going to do on that show.
Speaker 2: So you find yourself you're able to remain dispassionate and
keep your remove and emotions in check.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Now, the origin of the name of the show. You
talked about paper Ghosts, which is a very interesting title.
Where does the name crossing the Line come from?
Speaker 5: It's the best titles I think have a double meaning.
So crossing the line is crossing the crime scene line,
you're crossing it into You're going into that Terrea. The
other thing is, I'm going to cross the line and
I'm going to call you a ship bag. If you're
a ship bag, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna call
out a judge. I'm going to name that judge. I'm
going to call out a parole board. I'm going to
name those people on the parole board if they let
a guy out after twenty years when he sentenced to
forty and he kills two more people. I did an
episode where I grew up in verning, Connecticut and as
a middle schooler eighth grade, I had a girlfriend we
weren't dating at the time, who was on my bus.
She didn't get on the bus. One morning, kid at
the bus stop gets on the bus. No one liked
this kid. There was something weird about him. Long story short,
he strangled her in the woods behind the bus stop.
That oh my, oh, my god. I was thinking about
this and talking to somebody, and I've just been around
murder all my life, murder surround.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thirteen, fourteen years old at this, Yeah.
Speaker 3: My god, so what happened to that kid?
Speaker 5: Hold on, they arrest him. He gets twenty five years
because he was seventeen at the time. He gets twenty
five years. He's out. In seventeen, he goes down to
North Carolina, moves down there. He beats his girlfriend the
death down there with one of the spindles from the
baby crib in front of the baby, beats her to death.
He gets like thirty eight years for that. And the
day my show aired. The day it aired, pro board
let him out. He's out again. He killed two women brutally,
and that mother is out walking the street right now.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: So I crossed the line when I start to call
out these parole boards and judges and say, look, man,
we're not asking you to reinvent law. We're not asking
you to go to the Supreme Court and argue something.
We're just saying no, say no.
Speaker 2: And enforce the law that we asked you to enforce.
Speaker 5: That's it, that's all you got to do. All you
got to do is say you killed two women. We're
not letting you out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no rehab for that guy. That guy can't
be put back that on the street. No.
Speaker 5: So this is the thesis of the title, if you will, yeah, yeah,
And those stories need to be told. They need to
be told. I did a two parter called Bumble Death
and Bumble is a is a dating app. If you
don't know bill dating app'.
Speaker 2: Met my partner seventeen years ago on a dating app.
Speaker 5: Okay, so Bumble is a dating app. Then, and so
this woman in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a black woman meets a
guy and they correspond for a couple of weeks, and
long story short, he comes over for a date. She
winds up dead.
Speaker 2: I remember reading about this story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she winds up dead at the same time, the
same night, maybe two miles away, other black women goes
on a date. She winds up dead. The Bridgeport police,
who I am not going to say investigated because they
didn't do any investigation. And I'm not saying these people
were murdered, but there are really strange circumstances around these debts.
Speaker 2: And you have two women dying roughly.
Speaker 5: Two black women dying within two miles of each other.
Speaker 2: It's very strange. Yeah.
Speaker 5: The Bridgeport police, the detectives who look at both cases,
don't even tell the families. The families have no idea
their people have died. Days go by, they have to
investigate themselves, and actually they don't find out until they
call the Medical Examiner's office in Farmington, Connecticut and say,
is my daughter there? This is her name? Yeah, we
got her. The police never told them, never made contact
with the families. There is just so much racism involvend
than this, and there's so much not These people don't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the lack of piring is evident, right, the lack.
Speaker 5: Of humanity and the lack people today place so little
value on human life. It's just astonishing to me. It's
remarkable to me, and some of those people, unfortunately are
in law enforcement and judges and etc. That enrages me.
And I'm going to report on it when I can.
Speaker 3: Matt, you were referenced already that your sister in law
was murdered. You did just mention. Of course, it feels
like you've been around crime your whole entire life. How
much of an impact do you think your sister in
law's murder had on your future in the business? Does
that inform the way that you do things? Now? How
impactful would you say it is?
Speaker 5: That's a good question. It wasn't the impetus for me
to get into this. That wasn't the thing. However, it
did allow me to walk into Bill Thomas's house twelve
years ago with my Dark Minds crew and sit in
front of Bill and have a common bond that I
could relate to him in a way that other people can't.
I know what it's like to lose a family member.
It gave me that kind of common bond that I
could bring to my work, definitely, because I've seen what
it's done to my family. So it helped me in
that respect for sure.
Speaker 2: The most striking thing about working on Dark Minds with
you was how much furniture the crew moved around.
Speaker 5: They removed furniture around Reward, North America.
Speaker 2: Trust me, they wanted certain angles and they wanted certain
light and they ended up like moving every stick of furniture.
Speaker 5: In I remember that took a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, take a while, which gave us plenty of
time to talk and get to know each other even
before the cameras were going.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's definitely helped me in that respect. Sure.
Speaker 3: And was her murder ever solved?
Speaker 5: The call last summer that is basically solved, but there's
problems with the evidence and stuff. So they're hoping they
can get these two people who did it. They're still around.
They're optimistic that they can develop the evidence more. Unfortunately,
some of the evidence was contaminated at the crime scene.
It happens. There's no corruption, there's no nefarious activity. Stuff
happens at crime scenes. Stuff gets contaminated. So that's what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things I've said to the investigators
in the Colonial Parkway murders, my sister's case, is that
I remind the investigators from time to time that family
members are looking for answers. We all understand that we
may not get the perfect answer, which is so and
so has been identified as the offender. They're going to
be indicted, They're going to be tried, they're going to
be convicted. There's going to be appeals, but ultimately this
person is going to be punished. When you're into a
case for as long as we are, and now I'm
thinking about your sister in law's case that stretches back
a number of yours. Now, you're looking for answers more
than anything else. You understand that it might not be
a perfect situation. And this is one of the things
I'm trying to remind our investigators in the Colonial Parkway
case is that we're looking for answers. The offender that's
been identified just recently in the Colonial Parkway murders died
in twenty seventeen. He's never going to be tried, he's
never going to be convicted. But actually having those answers
is incredibly helpful. Do you feel the same way. Would
it be of some comfort to you to know who
the offenders are or in this case, the offenders are
still around.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know who they are. It would be more
comforting to my niece and nephews who lost their mother
and then my brother subsequently died like six years after
her at forty seven. So it would be comforting to
them to just be able to say, Okay, I'm done
with this, now this is done, Now they have the
people whatever. And I meet up with this paper ghosts
a lot, And I say this in a lot of
the seasons that families just want to be heard. They
want to be heard, they want to know that they're
being heard. And there's great police all over this country
who do that job very well. We mentioned Laurie Howard,
we mentioned I mentioned Rachel Evans from the LAPD Detective
Rachel Evans. So I've met scores of detectives and police
who do that very well because they know it's one
of the most important parts of their job is to
make sure that the family is being heard.
Speaker 3: So, Matt, what's next for you? In terms of projects?
It looks like you always have a little something percolating
in the background. Can you tell us any of what
you're currently working on or are we going to keep
that on the dal for now?
Speaker 5: No, I'm working on I have a book project. I
think I haven't written a book in about three years,
and that was the first time in maybe twenty two
years I hadn't worked stopped working on books. So I'm
getting Jones in to work on a book that is
definitely coming. Crossing the Line is going to continue now
for I think the next year. I'm going to do
week to week for the next year, I hope to do.
There's more paper Ghosts will be coming. And I'm working
on a project that has nothing to do with crime
and actually has to do with comedy. It's a television project,
which is I like the idea of that. Every once
in a while, I pop in a different type of
genre with TV when I pitch TV and I'm hoping
that goes somewhere. Actually, I'm going to be filming a
Hulu series this month, a three part Hulu series. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2: On true crime, comedy or an intersection of the two.
Speaker 5: Gardening gardening A gardening show. No, this is true crime.
Build a Hulu thing is true crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are enough gardening shows.
Speaker 5: Although I do I do garden. I do garden, and
no one could do a better gardening show than Monty
Gardener's Gardener's World on BBC fifty eight seasoning that show.
Speaker 2: You'd have to pay me money to watch a gardening show.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I love it. After doing true crime all day, put
on a garden and show at night.
Speaker 2: That just brings you right back down on earth. I
want to watch the take apart and fix vintage cards.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there you go, that's your gardening.
Speaker 3: I was going to say my last question for you,
Matt is how do you step away from true crime
at the end of the day, because like us, you're
immersed in it. If you don't turn on a gardening
show at the end of the day, do you watch
stand up? What do you do to keep yourself from
becoming so mired down in the darkness that is prevalent
in this in the genre.
Speaker 5: The thing I love second beyond writing is reading. So
I read a lot of literature. I read a lot
of literary stuff. I read a lot about religious history.
I just I read about I read a lot of
writer biographies. Actually, I just read a great biography, Larry
mcmurtury biography, and that just takes me out of the world.
Speaker 3: I like that answer. I would love to see your
library at some point or another.
Speaker 2: Said the English teacher of me. You can come up
and stay at the Maple House and then we can
go visit with Matt.
Speaker 5: Do you have there you go? Yeah, you come down
the Coventry farming community. You see the horses and carls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't forget Matt, you have friends here in Norfolk, Connecticut,
so you can always come over for a visit.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I have a friend who has family out in Salisbury.
Is that's out there.
Speaker 2: Right, yes? Yeah, next door.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a good friend of mine. He's a writer as well.
He has family out there. He goes out there a lot.
My kids live out in New Hartford.
Speaker 2: Torrington, that area that's over our way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you got the Root eight serial killer out that way.
The case has been going on for forty years. Yeah, yeah,
body bodies all over the place.
Speaker 2: Fascinating story. And a friend of mine had written a
very good book about that case as well.
Speaker 5: Oh no kidding, since a partnership coming on one. Yeah,
that's an interesting case.
Speaker 3: The books are too many and too numerous to list,
but the podcasts are Paper Ghosts and Crossing the Line.
Matt Phelps, thank you so much for joining us today
on Mind of Murder. We appreciate you taking the time
to talk to us.
Speaker 5: This was great. Thanks thanks for having me. I really
appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Look for m William Phelps wherever books are sold, television
series are produced, or podcasts are listened to.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 3: That is going to do it for this episode of
Mind of Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin mcleoud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with CRAL Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mind Over Murder