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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The Most Shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
Speaker 6: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. On
Speaker 7: January twenty third, two thousand, already battered by an ice storm,
Speaker 7: the rural Obama resort town A mentone was about to
Speaker 7: be struck by an even more terrifying freak catastrophe. Hurtling
Speaker 7: down the highway in a Lincoln Town car was Heyward Bissele,
Speaker 7: a four hundred pound madman on a murder rampage. Ramming
Speaker 7: the pickup truck of Don and Rhea Perch, Bistle lured
Speaker 7: Don Perch onto the road, running him down with his car.
Speaker 7: Bissiles next targeted the home of James and Sue Pumphrey.
Speaker 7: After stabbing James Pumfrey in the stomach, Bissele was thwarted
Speaker 7: by two family dogs who gave their lives to protect
Speaker 7: their owners. Their sacrifice bought the Pumphreys enough time to
Speaker 7: get a gun and scare off Bissele, who didn't know
Speaker 7: the weapon was actually inoperable. When Bessel was finally stopped,
Speaker 7: police discovered that he wasn't alone. Occupying the passenger seat
Speaker 7: beside him was the mutilated, partially dismembered body of his
Speaker 7: pregnant girlfriend, Patricia Ann Booher. In February two thousand and two,
Speaker 7: Missile pled guilty but in sine and was sent to
Speaker 7: prison for life. Was he really crazy? Or was he
Speaker 7: crazy like a fox turning it on and off to
Speaker 7: try to beat a death sentence for Boor's murder. The
Speaker 7: subject of our program this evening is a book called
Speaker 7: Blood Highway. With my guest, a journalist and author Sheila Johnson.
Speaker 7: Welcome back to the program, and thank you to agreeing
Speaker 7: to this interview. Sheila Johnson, Well, thank you.
Speaker 5: It's a pleasure to be back with you again.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a pleasure for our audience. And this is
Speaker 7: one wild, wild story, if I must admit, of many
Speaker 7: wild stories, this one really is really up there. I'm
Speaker 7: telling you this is a great one. Anyway, Let's talk
Speaker 7: a little bit about the resort town and Mentone and
Speaker 7: Alabama really set the stage for this incredible story. Tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about Mentone, pardon me, where it's
Speaker 7: located geographically to the big center that we might be
Speaker 7: more familiar with, and tell us what it is that
Speaker 7: uh makes it a resort town as well.
Speaker 5: Well. It's up in the far northeast corner of this state,
Speaker 5: and it's a little mountain resort town. It's in the
Speaker 5: on the highest point in that area, and it's pretty
Speaker 5: close to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it's also close to fairly
Speaker 5: close to Atlanta, you know, Birmingham. It's sort of centrally
Speaker 5: located there. But it's been a resort town since way
Speaker 5: back in the eighteen hundreds and trains would come and
Speaker 5: bring people down for the summer to spend the summer
Speaker 5: in the mountains up there. And it's it's very quaint.
Speaker 5: It has all sorts of really neat cabins and little
Speaker 5: stores and it's just a super place. It's got a huge, big,
Speaker 5: old fashioned hotel, the Menton Springs Hotel is up there,
Speaker 5: and and several other which is really nice things, and uh,
Speaker 5: no one in that area was prepared for anything like
Speaker 5: this to ever happen. The police, that very small police
Speaker 5: force up there. There's three small towns kind of clustered
Speaker 5: together menton, Hammondville and Valley Head, and they're all extremely small,
Speaker 5: and the police forces from those three towns all, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of more or less work together and they depend
Speaker 5: on the County Alabama police to help them, to the
Speaker 5: county sheriff and people like that when they need help.
Speaker 5: They're very seldom need help though, because things like this
Speaker 5: just don't happen in places like that. But on that
Speaker 5: particular night, it happened wide open and nobody was ready
Speaker 5: for it.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us a little bit about this other storm
Speaker 7: that we talked about, this free catastrophe. Tell us about
Speaker 7: the storm itself and what it actually entailed in terms
Speaker 7: of the difficulty for the citizens. What what all was
Speaker 7: involved in this storm.
Speaker 5: Well, it was an ice storm, which we have down
Speaker 5: in this part of the country every so often, and
Speaker 5: there was a layer of ice all over everything, on
Speaker 5: the trees, on the power lines, on the on the roadways,
Speaker 5: and it made travel just extremely difficult. There were people
Speaker 5: off on the sides of the road that had spun
Speaker 5: out and gone off into the ditch. All over the county.
Speaker 5: Power lines were down everywhere, and trees were across the
Speaker 5: the highways, and in one of those little towns they
Speaker 5: had a tree on top of a patrol car, so
Speaker 5: that that left them a car short that night. And
Speaker 5: it's it's the kind of thing that just you know,
Speaker 5: totally snarls services and travel everything makes it very dangerous.
Speaker 5: And I've not figured out to this day how Hayward
Speaker 5: Best will manage to drive all the way down from
Speaker 5: Ohio into this part of the country where the ice
Speaker 5: storm caught up with him and not have a wreck
Speaker 5: somewhere along the way. But in that huge Lincoln, he
Speaker 5: managed to just barrel on through and didn't ever run
Speaker 5: out of the road. He finally got stopped, but he
Speaker 5: never had a wreck, and I still don't understand how
Speaker 5: he managed to avoid.
Speaker 7: That right now, unlike your book, which I really like
Speaker 7: the way you set it up, and many books are
Speaker 7: written different ways in terms of contacts, in terms of
Speaker 7: when things occur and when do you reveal them in
Speaker 7: the book, so fund it very interesting. But unlike that,
Speaker 7: let's try to create some character, put a face on
Speaker 7: the characters here before we get to the incredible rampage
Speaker 7: that this Hayward Bistle went on this one day, Let's
Speaker 7: talk about first Patricia Anne Boer. Maybe you can even
Speaker 7: describe her size, because we're going to be talking about
Speaker 7: Hayward Bissel and at the time, on January twenty thirty,
Speaker 7: two thousand, he was a four hundred pound, huge hulk
Speaker 7: of a man. And tell us about Patricia Anne Boer
Speaker 7: a little bit about her background and who she was.
Speaker 7: Did she have any history of mental illness? Tell us
Speaker 7: a little bit what really what Patricia Anne Bour was
Speaker 7: like and where she came from.
Speaker 5: Well, Patricia was a tiny, tiny little girl. She was well,
Speaker 5: she was a grown woman, but she was just, you know,
Speaker 5: slightly over five feet tall, which made it really ironic
Speaker 5: that she ended up as the girlfriend of somebody like
Speaker 5: Hayward Vessel, because the size of difference was just incredible,
Speaker 5: you know when you saw pictures of them to get there.
Speaker 5: And she had had a pretty rough upbring and she
Speaker 5: was a very well liked girl, but her family situation
Speaker 5: had not been good, and she she was not mentally
Speaker 5: ill herself, but she was a special education student. I
Speaker 5: think she was more slow than anything else. But she
Speaker 5: always did her best, and she tried to you know,
Speaker 5: work and do anything she could find to do, and
Speaker 5: tried to please everybody around her. And I think a
Speaker 5: lot of the time she felt like that was all
Speaker 5: she really did, was try to please other people, and
Speaker 5: that nobody cared much for her. So whenever Bissel came
Speaker 5: along and showed her just a little bit of attention
Speaker 5: that it was terribly flattering to her, and she fell
Speaker 5: right for him, you know, right away. But I think
Speaker 5: by the time they left up there on the trip
Speaker 5: down here, which was to see his parents in Florida supposedly,
Speaker 5: but they never got that far. But I think by
Speaker 5: that time she was beginning to pull away from him
Speaker 5: just a little bit. And ironically, she had learned that
Speaker 5: she was pregnant just a few days before this happened.
Speaker 5: And nobody has ever known whether she got around to
Speaker 5: telling him about it or not. We don't really know,
Speaker 5: and I would suspect that she might not have told
Speaker 5: him yet.
Speaker 7: Now it's an interesting story about Patricia Anne. Like you say,
Speaker 7: we can't really you know, some of these terms aren't
Speaker 7: so good anymore. But say, for a better lack of
Speaker 7: better term, she was kind of slow, she was kind
Speaker 7: of naive. It was a small woman that looked very
Speaker 7: very young, very young despite her age, and I guess
Speaker 7: it seemed that she was fairly inexperience at least, not
Speaker 7: a very confident woman that successful in life, will say.
Speaker 7: But anyway, at the time that she met bissel Or
Speaker 7: shortly after, she was making relationships. She was making some progress.
Speaker 7: She was with sort of a friendship club through the church.
Speaker 7: So that's important. Later when you say that she became
Speaker 7: to a realization, it would seem by the time she
Speaker 7: was pregnant and the supposed trip. So tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about what she was doing at this church
Speaker 7: and what she was getting from that sort of new
Speaker 7: community and new sort of new people in her life.
Speaker 5: Well, she had started making friends and the name of
Speaker 5: the club was the Friendship Club, and she was well
Speaker 5: liked there, and she wasn't there to chance she could.
Speaker 5: She enjoyed the church suppers and things like that in particular,
Speaker 5: and the pastor commented at her funeral on how much
Speaker 5: she enjoyed that and how she could really put the
Speaker 5: food away. Tiny little girl her size, but she was
Speaker 5: just beginning to make friends, and I think she was
Speaker 5: beginning to get some support from the people at the
Speaker 5: church and the other people around her that was given
Speaker 5: her maybe enough confidence to feel like she might be
Speaker 5: able to break things off with him. I think she
Speaker 5: was really dependent on him for so much, and she
Speaker 5: was beginning to maybe work her way past that and
Speaker 5: feel a little more worthwhile and self confident. But I
Speaker 5: don't think that really had anything to do with what
Speaker 5: eventually happened to her. But that may be, you know,
Speaker 5: that might account for my belief that she had not
Speaker 5: yet told him that she was pregnant.
Speaker 7: Right now, tell us about Whistle. Tell us about his life.
Speaker 7: You did a great job of uncovering a lot of
Speaker 7: information about Heyward. He was in the military, So tell
Speaker 7: us go back as far as you can to paint
Speaker 7: a picture of this because it's very very important to
Speaker 7: this story, as people listeners will attest to once they
Speaker 7: heard this whole story, and essential to the book. So
Speaker 7: tell us about Hayward Bistle in his early life, and
Speaker 7: just continue with giving us a background on Heyward Bistile.
Speaker 5: Well, like Patricia, he he had a rough time sometimes
Speaker 5: in his youth. His father, I think was really strict,
Speaker 5: and he had a head injury when he was young,
Speaker 5: and then I think he claimed that he had seen
Speaker 5: visions a time or two after that. But uh, the
Speaker 5: military was really a good thing for him that he
Speaker 5: really cared a lot about because like a lot of
Speaker 5: people that have paranoid schizophrenic tendencies, he was extremely neat
Speaker 5: and tidy, and that military way of life just agreed
Speaker 5: with him right to the his degree, and he enjoyed
Speaker 5: the work that he did in the military. He I
Speaker 5: think was a truck driver, vehicle maintenance, something of that nature.
Speaker 5: It's been a long time and I remember a lot
Speaker 5: of thanks about him that there's a lot more impressive
Speaker 5: than that. But after he got out of the military,
Speaker 5: he began having some mental and emotional issues and started
Speaker 5: seeking treatment at the different VA clinics and just ended
Speaker 5: up going from one to the other to the other,
Speaker 5: and none of the doctors appeared to have ever compared notes.
Speaker 5: And I think that a lot of over medication part
Speaker 5: of the time, and then having his medication taken away
Speaker 5: from him later is what tipped him on over the edge.
Speaker 5: But uh, his life, you know, never really was very
Speaker 5: successful after he left the military, so that was kind
Speaker 5: of the height of his accomplishment.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about because I think this is important
Speaker 7: to the defense of insanity that we talked about in
Speaker 7: the introduction. You say that there was a concussion or
Speaker 7: head injury when he was young, and then you talk
Speaker 7: about visions. So was he properly and officially diagnosed with
Speaker 7: say hallucinations or that he had a head injury that
Speaker 7: might produce some sort of side effects or symptoms. Was
Speaker 7: that or was this later that they talked about this
Speaker 7: was this confirmed? And what exactly was the diagnosis at
Speaker 7: that time from that head injury.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't think he really had much medical treatment
Speaker 5: at the time from the head injury. I think they
Speaker 5: just looked at it as a childhood accident and didn't
Speaker 5: seek treatment of any kind. And I don't know if
Speaker 5: that contributed to his condition later on or not, But
Speaker 5: I don't believe that he really started getting worse until,
Speaker 5: you know, a few years before this murder. I think
Speaker 5: he gradually worked up to it and didn't show that
Speaker 5: many symptoms of anything as long as he was in
Speaker 5: the military, and then afterward, you know, he he just
Speaker 5: increasingly got gradually worse, and because he was seeing so
Speaker 5: many different doctors and going to so many different clinics.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, like I said that it was
Speaker 5: it's more a case of mental illness developing and then
Speaker 5: slipping through the cracks as far as being correctly treated.
Speaker 7: Right, well, well, you know that is a source of debate,
Speaker 7: and that's the debate that goes on in the book
Speaker 7: and and the trial itself too, is whether he really
Speaker 7: wasn't saying was he faking insanity? Did he have mental illness?
Speaker 7: And and learned the ropes as so that when he
Speaker 7: went on his rampage he could then fall back on
Speaker 7: like certainly he had some form of mental illness, but
Speaker 7: the question will be was he mentally ill during the
Speaker 7: commission of this crime spree here?
Speaker 5: So I think that I think that he learned to
Speaker 5: tell the psychiatrist what they wanted to hear, to the
Speaker 5: point that he would get whatever medication he wanted. But
Speaker 5: he very much learned to tell them what they wanted
Speaker 5: to hear. But then he was also going downhill pretty
Speaker 5: fast at the same time. So you know, fiction may
Speaker 5: have turned into truth right right now?
Speaker 7: Tell us what the relationship between Patricia and Bour and
Speaker 7: Hayward Bistle was like. I mean we talked about that
Speaker 7: maybe a couple of years later. But tell us what
Speaker 7: it was characterized by. What was Hayward bistile like in
Speaker 7: a relationship with a woman, in this case Patricia anboer Well.
Speaker 5: I think he wanted somebody that he could just totally
Speaker 5: control and dominate, and he would very often make her
Speaker 5: think that she wasn't good enough, for smart enough, for
Speaker 5: pretty enough. And it was just pretty much a case
Speaker 5: of of him wanting somebody that would, I I guess,
Speaker 5: feed his ego and make him feel superior. He had
Speaker 5: been married, and he and his wife had broken up
Speaker 5: because he was just so dissatisfied with her housekeeping and
Speaker 5: things like that. He wanted everything just so all the time.
Speaker 5: And and I think his wife was a very normal
Speaker 5: person who was was not a hundred percent perfect all
Speaker 5: the time. And then he wanted Patricia to you know, sort.
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Speaker 5: Be there to give him somebody that he could criticize,
Speaker 5: and somebody that would do what he said, and somebody
Speaker 5: he could control.
Speaker 7: In other words, Okay, so he's a controlling person. Was
Speaker 7: he a violent person? Is there any confirmed cases of
Speaker 7: violence against his girlfriend?
Speaker 5: Well, there's nothing that was definitely confirmed, but some of
Speaker 5: her church friends had strongly suspected that he might have
Speaker 5: been slapping her around a little bit occasionally, to the
Speaker 5: point that they tried to talk to her about it
Speaker 5: and she was acted really fearful to say much of
Speaker 5: anything to them, but they believed that he was maybe
Speaker 5: abusing or some.
Speaker 7: Now during this period of time that he has a
Speaker 7: relationship with her, does he is he on uh prescription
Speaker 7: from a a psychiatrist and what kind of I if
Speaker 7: he is, what kind of drugs is he being prescribed?
Speaker 7: And for what I we talked about paranoid schizophrenia depression?
Speaker 7: Is is that uh? Was he being treated in that
Speaker 7: two two year in that relationship W for with those medications?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was. He was under several different courses of
Speaker 5: treatment during that time because he was going from clinic
Speaker 5: to clinic and getting different medications, and they were never
Speaker 5: sure exactly how many different things that he had taken,
Speaker 5: but he he had a whole raft of of medication,
Speaker 5: different types, and his behavior would sort of depend on
Speaker 5: what he was having and whether it was what he
Speaker 5: really needed or what he had just made somebody believe
Speaker 5: that he might benefit from and the the thing that
Speaker 5: tipped everything off was a trip to the doctor and
Speaker 5: he got pronounced well enough that she took him off
Speaker 5: his medication and it was like a week later that
Speaker 5: things went wrong.
Speaker 7: Well, there was something that I read, it's a little
Speaker 7: bit later in the trial. It talked about that he
Speaker 7: was dealing with an outpatient doctor treatment and they discontinued
Speaker 7: or recommended he could discontinue his antipsychotic medication. But he
Speaker 7: was receiving antidepressants prozac and another one or maybe anti
Speaker 7: anxiety and depression, which is much different than an antipsychotic drug.
Speaker 5: I would say, Well, it was an antipsychotic drug being
Speaker 5: discontinued that tripped him over.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's what happened, right, It.
Speaker 5: Was his outpatient clinic doctor.
Speaker 7: Right. So, so really to add something to your your
Speaker 7: argument and belief, he really was. He successfully went through
Speaker 7: the military, was honorably discharged. He had really fit well
Speaker 7: with him. They had nothing but good reports for him
Speaker 7: about him. He really had no history of violence up
Speaker 7: to this point. Well, there was certainly no serious violence.
Speaker 5: Right right, Yeah, Yeah, he had not really ever done
Speaker 5: anything until this point. And after he got taken off
Speaker 5: that antipsychotic medication. He started hearing voices and all sorts
Speaker 5: of things that would make him suspicious paranoid, and the
Speaker 5: voices would tell him to do the things that he
Speaker 5: ended up doing. And it's just I think that he
Speaker 5: was genuinely mentally ill at the time he committed the crime,
Speaker 5: and apparently he still is to this day. He may
Speaker 5: have gotten some better, But I looked up a picture
Speaker 5: of him on the Georgia Board of Corrections website, which
Speaker 5: any of the listeners can can do that if they'd
Speaker 5: like to see, and and he had that same old
Speaker 5: stare right into the camera that he had the first
Speaker 5: time I ever saw him. So he looks very much
Speaker 5: like he has, you know, in the past.
Speaker 7: Now we'll get into your participation in this one, which
Speaker 7: I had set to you in our correspondence. I said,
Speaker 7: what I found very interesting and I always find interesting,
Speaker 7: is when the journalist enters into the story, he just
Speaker 7: adds that more personal personal touch to it, and a
Speaker 7: little more even more interesting too, when the author enters
Speaker 7: in and has a role in this. So we'll talk
Speaker 7: about that as well. But let's talk about the actual
Speaker 7: January twenty third, two thousand, Like you say, you find
Speaker 7: it hard to believe that this guy could even drive
Speaker 7: down these icy street because the trees were falling, and
Speaker 7: the police and everyone else was just working overtime just
Speaker 7: to help stranded people on these roads. Even though they
Speaker 7: were experienced residents of this area, they still were stranded
Speaker 7: and in need of help. And this Hayward Abistle like
Speaker 7: you say, is hurtling down the highway in the Lincoln
Speaker 7: Town car. Tell us what start at the beginning of
Speaker 7: the day, if we can, or when we know about
Speaker 7: the very beginning of this journey and who he encounters.
Speaker 7: We talk about Down and reapperch and James and Sue Pumphrey.
Speaker 7: So give us the order of events and take us
Speaker 7: back to that fateful day January twenty third, two.
Speaker 5: Thousand, Okay, into Mintown started whenever he crossed over the
Speaker 5: Georgia line, and at that point no one really realized
Speaker 5: what was going on with him. They couldn't see Patricia
Speaker 5: in the car when he came in contact there first
Speaker 5: with Don and reapproached because she was so far down
Speaker 5: in the car. They thought there might have been someone
Speaker 5: in there. They couldn't really tell. But they were coming
Speaker 5: home and trying to get home up there on the
Speaker 5: mountain on those icy roads, and they saw him come
Speaker 5: up behind him, and then he bumped into the back
Speaker 5: of their pickup truck, and they thought he had slid
Speaker 5: into him. And when Don got out to check and
Speaker 5: see about things, he leaned back over and told Ria
Speaker 5: to get the insurance paperwork out of the glove compartment
Speaker 5: and hand to him, and he was going to walk
Speaker 5: back there. And as he came around the truck, thisstl
Speaker 5: just gunned it and ran him down, or tried to
Speaker 5: run him down. Don ended up on the hood of
Speaker 5: the car going for quite some distance down the highway
Speaker 5: there before he managed to fall off, and he was
Speaker 5: he was fairly seriously hurt. He didn't have any any
Speaker 5: you know, like life threatening injuries, but but he was hurt.
Speaker 5: Mistle threw him off end of the ditch, and then
Speaker 5: he kept going on down the road to James and
Speaker 5: Sue Humphrey's house and they saw him at the pond
Speaker 5: uh inside the gate across the road from their trailer,
Speaker 5: and then he started walking up the road and up
Speaker 5: the driveway towards their house and the dogs started barking
Speaker 5: at at him. Those two dogs were they were great dogs.
Speaker 5: They were just just really wonderful dogs that never had
Speaker 5: bitten anybody, never had really barked at anybody, you know,
Speaker 5: in anything but a friendly manner. And they'd always go
Speaker 5: out and greet people that were walking up and down
Speaker 5: the road. And Vittel came walking up the driveway and
Speaker 5: the demeanor of those dogs just completely changed. They they
Speaker 5: went into defensive mode and started barking at him, and
Speaker 5: I believe they smelled blood on him. It's I think
Speaker 5: that's what started the dogs, right, And he was coming
Speaker 5: up on the porch of the trailer and the dogs
Speaker 5: were trying to bite him, and he was stabbing that
Speaker 5: the dogs with a big knife, and James came out
Speaker 5: and Bissell stabbed him, and James managed to get back
Speaker 5: in because the dogs were still attacking. If those dogs
Speaker 5: hadn't been there, James and Sue both would have just
Speaker 5: been murdered right where they were, right But if they
Speaker 5: managed to get back in and shut the door, then
Speaker 5: they went and got their shotgun down off the wall,
Speaker 5: and James was having to hold his intern organ's in
Speaker 5: with his hand because he had been stabbed in the stomach.
Speaker 5: And they were literally coming out and Sue helped him
Speaker 5: hold up the shotgun Wow and Biscile came around to
Speaker 5: the back door and they attempted to fire, and the
Speaker 5: gun was jammed, but Bistle didn't know that he saw
Speaker 5: the shotgun and took back off, had got in his
Speaker 5: car and left. And then as soon as that happened,
Speaker 5: James and Sue got in their pick up and they
Speaker 5: drove down the road to where a group of people
Speaker 5: had come there. Rescue personnel and police were down there
Speaker 5: sitting about donning rear perch and they drove up and
Speaker 5: the ambulances ended up having to transport a lot more
Speaker 5: than they expected to, and they realized that the the
Speaker 5: same person had done this, because Biscle had turned around
Speaker 5: and come back down the road road and rammed the
Speaker 5: tractor there close to where the rescue people were and
Speaker 5: went on about his business. And he was headed down
Speaker 5: the hill on a very very steep mountain there at Mentown,
Speaker 5: towards the valley below, and he got stopped at the
Speaker 5: foot of the mountain. They compared notes enough to know
Speaker 5: they needed to stop that town car. When they did that,
Speaker 5: that's the first time they really discovered Patricia in the car,
Speaker 5: and it It was a total shock to everyone.
Speaker 7: Right now, what was this state? I mean it, it
Speaker 7: is a gory state that the police officers of the
Speaker 7: unfortunate task of finding this woman. But tell us the
Speaker 7: state of this woman because it is important and it
Speaker 7: is an incredible crime scene.
Speaker 5: Well it was. It was really about as bad as
Speaker 5: anybody on the scene had ever come up against. She
Speaker 5: had been stabbed repeatedly, her throat was cut, her eyes
Speaker 5: at first they thought had been gouged out. That couple
Speaker 5: days later we learned that they had just been pushed
Speaker 5: back into her head so far.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 5: And she had several internal organs that had been taken out,
Speaker 5: and one of her hands and one of her legs
Speaker 5: had been cut off and tossed over into the back seat,
Speaker 5: and she was sitting strapped in the passenger's seat, all
Speaker 5: seat belted in in that condition. And he had been
Speaker 5: riding with her in the passenger seat all the way
Speaker 5: from just on the other side of the Georgia Line,
Speaker 5: all the way over through mentone and that in blood, yeah,
Speaker 5: covered in blood, the whole inside of the car, blood
Speaker 5: all over him. It was it was just an absolute
Speaker 5: scene of float. And at first they thought that she
Speaker 5: was a child. She was so little and tiny. They
Speaker 5: thought that he had done that to a probably twelve
Speaker 5: thirteen year old because of the size that she was, right,
Speaker 5: And then you know later that her id was there
Speaker 5: in the car and they discovered who she was and
Speaker 5: what age she was, and everybody was really shocked because
Speaker 5: of her size.
Speaker 7: Now the police are shocked, and this is, like you said,
Speaker 7: this a little police force. They and they're not accustomed
Speaker 7: to homicide, and this is in the big city, and
Speaker 7: who could ever be prepared for what they did find
Speaker 7: with his dismembered, mutilated bride beside him in the car.
Speaker 7: Now this, now, what we didn't mention was is that
Speaker 7: the James really got to see James Pumphrey, Oh no,
Speaker 7: pardon me, don Perch, pardon me. Really, and James and
Speaker 7: Sue Pumphrey, they really got to see the eyes of
Speaker 7: this killer, the what he really looked like, the rage
Speaker 7: that was seemed to be evident in his face, but
Speaker 7: he was. What you captured in the book is that
Speaker 7: James was on top of that car before he threw
Speaker 7: him off, and he was hanging on for dear life,
Speaker 7: and Thistle gave him the finger and they were staring
Speaker 7: eye to eye, and James Humphrey and Sue obviously saw them.
Speaker 7: And now the police officers see this person, and this
Speaker 7: man is such a hulk of a man that he
Speaker 7: can't even fit regulation size handcuffs, so they're using lay garns.
Speaker 7: So tell us about the capture and also and really
Speaker 7: the radios are going, and you are a journalist reporter,
Speaker 7: tell us about what your role is in this in
Speaker 7: terms of what you were doing at that time and
Speaker 7: your and your occupation and how you came to hear
Speaker 7: about this information and what you saw this information and
Speaker 7: this story as well.
Speaker 5: At that time, I was working as a reporter for
Speaker 5: the major little newspaper there, the only one in the
Speaker 5: county seat, and it was my job to cover all
Speaker 5: of the county police activity and all the towns other
Speaker 5: than the county seat, and and the sheriff and anything
Speaker 5: that went on of that sort. And this happened in
Speaker 5: the late afternoon and early evening of that day when
Speaker 5: the ice storm was hitting and I was stuck at
Speaker 5: my house. I stand on a hill with one of
Speaker 5: my trees had fallen over a power line and our
Speaker 5: power went out. But right before that happened, I was
Speaker 5: in the back room working on some riding, and at
Speaker 5: that time we we lived with my mother and she
Speaker 5: was sitting in the front room there with a scanner going,
Speaker 5: and she called me and she said, I think something's happening.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, what do you mean, And she said, well,
Speaker 5: I keep hearing among here talking about a car and
Speaker 5: trying to stop it. And she said, uh, I heard
Speaker 5: one guy saying how many body parts did you find
Speaker 5: in the car? And I'd had just set me on fire,
Speaker 5: and nothing I could do about it. I was stuck.
Speaker 5: And it pretty soon the battery ran out on the
Speaker 5: scanner and I couldn't find out anything else till the
Speaker 5: next morning, and that was terribly frustrating. But a friend
Speaker 5: of mine, as it turned out, who worked for one
Speaker 5: of the Huntsville, Alabama television stations, had managed to get
Speaker 5: down the mountain from the opposite side of the county
Speaker 5: and he made his way up the interstated four wheel
Speaker 5: drive and he actually got up there to the scene,
Speaker 5: and he saw everything that went on, and and saw
Speaker 5: Bissel and and pretty much you know, talked to the
Speaker 5: people on the scene and I I managed to get
Speaker 5: a lot from him. But then the next day, I
Speaker 5: was back up at work again, and I went up
Speaker 5: to the Sheriff's office, and the sheriff pulled me aside
Speaker 5: just as soon as I went in. The place was
Speaker 5: just jam packed with television reporters and cameramen from I
Speaker 5: guess five or six TV stations in Chattanooga and Huntsville,
Speaker 5: and he was ushering them all into his office. He
Speaker 5: was gonna have a news conference. He was getting everybody
Speaker 5: in there, and when I came in, he kind of
Speaker 5: took me aside by the elbow and he said, hurry up,
Speaker 5: go back and get your camera. They're fixing to bring
Speaker 5: him downstairs. He said, I'll I'll tell you everything afterwards,
Speaker 5: but you need to get a picture. And I was
Speaker 5: so grateful for that. He my sheriff, always took care
Speaker 5: of me. He was a fabulous person to work with.
Speaker 5: And I ran and got my camera and got in
Speaker 5: the stairwell kind of backed up out of the way
Speaker 5: where nobody would see me, and I heard people coming
Speaker 5: downstairs from the detective's offices, and I looked and there
Speaker 5: were the two most enormous deputies that worked for the county.
Speaker 5: They were just huge guys, and Bissell dwarfed all them.
Speaker 5: He just totally dwarfed 'em. He was such a a
Speaker 5: big guy. And I felled up my camera and before
Speaker 5: I could get a picture, he looked down toward me,
Speaker 5: and then he looked away, and I took my picture
Speaker 5: and the flash got his attention and he turned back around.
Speaker 5: He looked at me and he said, who is that?
Speaker 5: And the chief investigator said, they's just a reporter go
Speaker 5: on and kind of gave them a little nudge, and
Speaker 5: they were coming straight down the stairs toward me. So
Speaker 5: there was a back door right opposite from where I
Speaker 5: was standing, and I got out of dodge and hurry.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, I got out that back door, and I
Speaker 5: had not heard the end of that.
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Speaker 5: Every details say, every deputy up there has ragged me
Speaker 5: to death about that. Oh he ran and you saw him.
Speaker 5: I may have run, but I got the first picture
Speaker 5: of it that anybody got, thanks to the sheriff, and
Speaker 5: the associated press picked it up and it went all
Speaker 5: over the country, and I was I was very proud
Speaker 5: of dance. It was my first time to accomplish anything
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's great too that a lot of books that
Speaker 7: don't have the the uh, the ability to have a
Speaker 7: good photo of the perpetrator, and some don't have a
Speaker 7: photo of them at all, even even inside. Really great.
Speaker 7: But this is good because the photo of Thistles right
Speaker 7: on the cover, along with the car and with the
Speaker 7: victim to shan Bor. But it's see, he's a menacing
Speaker 7: he looks like a menacing figure. He's quite big, Yeah
Speaker 7: he was.
Speaker 5: And that picture on the cover was when he was
Speaker 5: coming back from his stretch down at the statemental facility
Speaker 5: getting evacuated, and he came back in a lot better
Speaker 5: condition than he left in.
Speaker 6: Yeah he was.
Speaker 5: He was bad off when they took him down there.
Speaker 5: And he came back a lot better off. He'd been
Speaker 5: medicated properly while he was down there, and that that
Speaker 5: helped him quite a bit. But he was a he
Speaker 5: was something else while they had him up here in jail.
Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about the arrest itself. Like I've spoken,
Speaker 7: he's put legard on the guy and and they do
Speaker 7: some makeshift handcuffs so that they can actually bring this
Speaker 7: guy in. There's a lot of media attention. What about
Speaker 7: the police interview. Tell us about the police interview. What
Speaker 7: he says to police. He doesn't lawyer up right away,
Speaker 7: doesn't ask for an attorney right away, but this is
Speaker 7: an unusual interview with police. Tell us some details of
Speaker 7: that interview.
Speaker 5: Well, on his way into the station, they discovered that
Speaker 5: he had right an esophagus in his shirt pocket, which
Speaker 5: they thought at first belonged to Patricia, but they did
Speaker 5: later determine that it probably had belonged to one of
Speaker 5: the two dogs. And he was cuffed at the time,
Speaker 5: was zippytized. That's all they had that they could do
Speaker 5: his handcuffed with, because you know, or if his feet,
Speaker 5: you know, had zip ties and he had the leg
Speaker 5: irons on his hands. Sorry, about that, and he was
Speaker 5: leaning over kind of knowledge towards his shirt pocket, like
Speaker 5: he was trying to pull that out, and I think
Speaker 5: he did get hold of it an attempt to chew
Speaker 5: on it before they took it away from him, and
Speaker 5: of course that flipped everybody out. And then when they
Speaker 5: got him to the station, he claimed that he was
Speaker 5: a Secret Service agent that was on a mission. And
Speaker 5: he was so insistent that he was a part of
Speaker 5: the Secret Service that they actually called in two Secret
Speaker 5: Service agents to interview him. And he was claiming during
Speaker 5: these times when they were talking to him, that he
Speaker 5: was receiving transmissions from what he called a secret source
Speaker 5: that were coming into a device that had been implanted
Speaker 5: behind his ear, and they had told him that Patricia
Speaker 5: was a witch and that he had to kill her,
Speaker 5: and that's what he claimed, you know, there's his reason
Speaker 5: for killing her was because he had received instructions behind
Speaker 5: his ear from his secret source to do that. And
Speaker 5: the interview that he had with those two Secret Service
Speaker 5: agents was pretty you know, it's about the same as
Speaker 5: what he had been telling the officers. You know, he
Speaker 5: was claiming all sorts of things, and and they talked
Speaker 5: about his military service and how he was. He was
Speaker 5: there on a mission, and he was getting all these
Speaker 5: instructions on his transmissions. And then they when they went
Speaker 5: to have him in court for his arraignment, they couldn't
Speaker 5: take him out of his cell because he had proceeded
Speaker 5: to take off all his clothes. I had to go
Speaker 5: buy special clothes for him, big enough to fit him,
Speaker 5: but he had taken all of them off. He was
Speaker 5: naked in his jail cell. He had d torn up
Speaker 5: all his plumbing, ripped it off the walls, and used
Speaker 5: the bathroom all over the cell and screamed and yelled
Speaker 5: and banged and just demolished the place. And that was
Speaker 5: disturbing all the other inmates pretty much, And so they
Speaker 5: decided it was unsafe to try to take him upstairs
Speaker 5: to the court room for a hearing. So the judge said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, we'll just go down and have his hearing
Speaker 5: there in the hallway in front of his cell. His
Speaker 5: arraignment here, Well, Judge Clyde Traylor, who was just totally
Speaker 5: the most unflappable person I've ever met. He took all
Speaker 5: his court personnel and several law inforcement officers and a
Speaker 5: couple of other newspaper reporters downstairs for the arraignment, and
Speaker 5: Bissell was waiting for him. He screamed and he cursed
Speaker 5: and he I guess the most polite way to put
Speaker 5: it would be to say he stood in front of
Speaker 5: him and stimulated himself while the judge was I was
Speaker 5: sh reading his charges to him. Judge Traylor never blinked,
Speaker 5: he never moved a muscle. I mean, nothing disturbed him.
Speaker 5: Everybody else was was totally flipped out. I had I
Speaker 5: had missed that little episode because I was off on
Speaker 5: another assignment and by the time I got back it
Speaker 5: was over with. But my friend who worked for another paper,
Speaker 5: told me that, uh, if she never saw another four
Speaker 5: hundred pound naked man, it'd be too soon. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 5: she was so appalled. She got around the corner where
Speaker 5: she didn't have to look anymore. But he he did
Speaker 5: that for a couple of days, just totally kept the jail.
Speaker 7: In an uproar.
Speaker 5: The sheriff had to cancel visitation and I can tell
Speaker 5: you that we'll put everybody in and uproar right there.
Speaker 5: They depend on those visits. And when nobody could come
Speaker 5: into the jail at all, they all got upset then.
Speaker 7: So what was the So how did the county, uh,
Speaker 7: the calb County proceed with this? Now that he's ripped
Speaker 7: out the plumbing, they have to do a hearing down there,
Speaker 7: and he of course performs for everyone so clearly trying,
Speaker 7: clearly showing his mental illness. So how does they how
Speaker 7: do they proceed with a uh A psychiatric evaluation of him.
Speaker 5: Well, they got the judge to just as quickly as
Speaker 5: possible write up in order to send him for evaluation,
Speaker 5: and they had to borrow a vehicle and a couple
Speaker 5: of guys in a shock shield from the joint adjacent
Speaker 5: county to transport him in. And when he was due
Speaker 5: to be leaving for Tuscaloosa, which is where the mental
Speaker 5: facility is in the state, they went down to get
Speaker 5: him out of the sale and he decided he wasn't
Speaker 5: going to cooperate, but the officers had the shock shield
Speaker 5: bumped him a time or two and he he got
Speaker 5: a little more cooperative mood, and they they shackled him
Speaker 5: up again and and led him out, And I believe
Speaker 5: there's a picture of of that as they came out
Speaker 5: of the building with him, and he just looked on
Speaker 5: his face, and that picture tells an awful lot about
Speaker 5: his state of mind at that time.
Speaker 7: Sure, but he was.
Speaker 5: He was not. I was there at that time too,
Speaker 5: that he was. He was not uncooperative. But when they
Speaker 5: got him in this special transport vehicle, he just sort
Speaker 5: of flopped over on his back and laid there staring
Speaker 5: up at the ceiling of this vehicle. And everybody was
Speaker 5: looking at in the windows at him, like you know,
Speaker 5: for somebody looking in at the goldfish bowl. And at
Speaker 5: that time he was ignoring everybody. But when they pulled
Speaker 5: out with him and started out of the sheriff's parking lot,
Speaker 5: one of the jailers that had had to deal with
Speaker 5: him during all that chaos was standing there and he said,
Speaker 5: good riddance. He was happy to see him go.
Speaker 7: Now, what was the evaluation by psychiatrists at that time?
Speaker 7: And this is for those that may not know. Most
Speaker 7: of this is first to determine whether the person can
Speaker 7: stand trial, he can understand the charges and is confident
Speaker 7: to stand trial. Tell us what their evaluation was in
Speaker 7: terms of diagnosis. What did they think after seeing him
Speaker 7: and interviewing him in the hospital.
Speaker 5: Well after they had kept him there for a while
Speaker 5: and regulated his medication. Uh, the doctor in charge of
Speaker 5: his case said that he believed he would be able
Speaker 5: to assist his attorney in his defense, so they were,
Speaker 5: you know, they were backing him to be sufficiently in control.
Speaker 5: Told himself that he would have any more episodes like that,
Speaker 5: but it took him a while to get him that way,
Speaker 5: because when he first got down there, he was imagining
Speaker 5: that Patricia was coming to him in his cell there
Speaker 5: at the institution and seeing him, and he was still
Speaker 5: having trouble like that, and they had to keep him
Speaker 5: medicated for a while before he straightened out enough to
Speaker 5: come back. And they were, you know, pretty much in
Speaker 5: line with the paranoid schizophrenia. But they they thought that
Speaker 5: he was able to assist his lawyer in his defense,
Speaker 5: which is the term that they you know, it's kind
Speaker 5: of the standard judgment on whether somebody can stand trial
Speaker 5: or not around here is whether they're able to assist
Speaker 5: in their defense. And when he came back, he could
Speaker 5: tell a tremendous difference in his demeanor and his looks
Speaker 5: and everything about him. But uh, he's still uh, go.
Speaker 7: Ahead, Sorry, he had lost some weight because there's an
Speaker 7: we'll talk about the other evaluation, because in the end
Speaker 7: he by the second evaluation, the one in Georgia, he
Speaker 7: ends up being one hundred and sixty pounds loss from
Speaker 7: his four hundred pounds frame. So that's quite a dramatic
Speaker 7: weight loss. And there's changes in his appearance as well,
Speaker 7: and obviously as demeanor. Did the psychiatrists during that evaluation
Speaker 7: make any kind of allusions to or conclusions regarding because
Speaker 7: they saw him reinstated with medication and it seemed to
Speaker 7: be such a dramatic change to his behavior, did they
Speaker 7: make Did they document any of that in their evaluation?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they documented quite a bit of it. And I
Speaker 5: think that the doctor that he had down there in
Speaker 5: Tuscalosa was interested in him as a case study as
Speaker 5: much as anything else, because you know, he was looking
Speaker 5: to him as an example of what had happened from
Speaker 5: his getting improperly treated medically before. And at that time,
Speaker 5: there were a lot of people up there in the county,
Speaker 5: you know, our county that suspected that he wasn't nearly
Speaker 5: as crazy as as he appeared to be. But I
Speaker 5: think a lot of that was because of the things
Speaker 5: that he would tell them were just so incredibly far
Speaker 5: fetched that they would feel like he was making up
Speaker 5: some of the things he claimed he was hearing and seeing,
Speaker 5: And I must admit I did too at first, until
Speaker 5: I started digging into the fact that he had bounced
Speaker 5: around from clinic to clinic and then got taken off
Speaker 5: of the medication that he obviously needed to the extreme,
Speaker 5: and I I reached the point where I didn't feel
Speaker 5: like he was faking anything, you know, at the time
Speaker 5: that happened. I think that he really was in that
Speaker 5: bad metal condition.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, we're going to talk about that real soon,
Speaker 7: because you know that he's going to get to trial eventually.
Speaker 7: But we got to make this one. We have to
Speaker 7: clarify this one thing. The police took a little bit
Speaker 7: of time to determine in their minds where the actual
Speaker 7: crime occurred. He ended up in Alabama, but they believed
Speaker 7: that the murder actually occurred in Georgia. So as a result,
Speaker 7: in Alabama he had assault and attempted was attempted robbery
Speaker 7: charges only, And in Georgia they took a little while,
Speaker 7: but they finally did lad murder charges. And the reason
Speaker 7: why is because they wanted to see how Alabama was
Speaker 7: handling this case. In terms of the insanity defense. Is
Speaker 7: that is that why they waited so long to file
Speaker 7: charges for murder? What was well? Right?
Speaker 5: I think they were trying to determine just exactly where
Speaker 5: it was that he had actually committed the murder, because
Speaker 5: it was so close to the Alabama state line. And
Speaker 5: it took him a while to a lot of some
Speaker 5: really good police work in Georgia and they're in Alabama
Speaker 5: to finally determine exactly where this had happened. There was
Speaker 5: a long time there they didn't know because it was
Speaker 5: so close to the state line. But then they finally
Speaker 5: decided that since it they had determined that it happened
Speaker 5: in Georgia, that he would have to be tried for
Speaker 5: the murder in Georgia. And it he had killed her
Speaker 5: at a little convenience store close to Somerville, Georgia, and
Speaker 5: it was during the ice storm and there were very
Speaker 5: few people out, and he managed to sit parked in
Speaker 5: front of that convenience store, which was you know, just
Speaker 5: barely over been under emergency conditions, and he sat there
Speaker 5: and evidently just butchered her right there and then drove off.
Speaker 5: But they didn't know for sure where it had happened,
Speaker 5: and that's why he was tried in Georgia. And it
Speaker 5: could not have worked out better because there was a
Speaker 5: chance in Alabama that he might have possibly been able
Speaker 5: to get an insanity play. That doesn't happen very often,
Speaker 5: but he might have been able to, and then, according
Speaker 5: to the loss, he would have been in a treatment
Speaker 5: facility for a short time, and then he would have
Speaker 5: just eventually walked free as soon as some academic type
Speaker 5: decided he was well enough, he would have just been released.
Speaker 5: But in Georgia there's this charge over there. It's called
Speaker 5: guilty but insane, And in that situation, you are found guilty,
Speaker 5: but instead of being just sent immediately to a prison,
Speaker 5: you stay in a secure mental facility as long as
Speaker 5: you're in need of that, and if you do improve enough,
Speaker 5: you're not just let go. You're sent to a regular prison.
Speaker 7: Yes, I see, that's a huge difference.
Speaker 5: It's an enormous difference, and it's one that worked out
Speaker 5: a lot better for him to have been tried over there.
Speaker 5: And when I checked on him the other day and
Speaker 5: saw his picture and saw he had that old look
Speaker 5: back in his eyes again, I noticed that he is
Speaker 5: still being held in the secure mental facility. So apparently
Speaker 5: he has not made any drastic improvements to the point
Speaker 5: that they feel like they can put him in with
Speaker 5: a general prison population.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's see, that's interesting because, like I said, here
Speaker 7: in Canada, we clearly have quite a few cases. Like
Speaker 7: in America, I don't see the insanity defense working very often,
Speaker 7: and the definition in most states is well he knew
Speaker 7: right from wrong regardless, and so but here there is
Speaker 7: quite a bit of there's quite a few insanity pleas
Speaker 7: here and that are accepted, and defense of insanity works,
Speaker 7: and they're not criminally responsible. They go to a mental hospital,
Speaker 7: they go to a mental facility, but they can be
Speaker 7: let out whenever, you know, a team of psychiatrists says, yeah,
Speaker 7: I think they can let this person out. We have
Speaker 7: an incredible case of a beheading and a cannibalism on
Speaker 7: on board a greyhound bus. It's very controversial, very very controversial.
Speaker 7: And this, uh, the psychiatrist in this case is telling
Speaker 7: the mother of the victim that you know, he's this
Speaker 7: perpetrator is really responding to medication and he could be
Speaker 7: walking the streets in as little as five years. So
Speaker 7: I understand what you're saying and that, but in America,
Speaker 7: really to be fair for the audience to know that
Speaker 7: people usually aren't let out very soon from something like this,
Speaker 7: given all the publicity and maybe even attention. And of course,
Speaker 7: when we talk about Don and Rhea Perch and James
Speaker 7: and Sue Humphrey, they did get the attention of their
Speaker 7: either congressman I believe, or someone a politician that went
Speaker 7: to bat for them and got them kind of compensation
Speaker 7: for their injuries. And so they did have the ear
Speaker 7: of some people because they were very, very sympathetic victims.
Speaker 5: So true, and both of them have both families have
Speaker 5: left the area now, and I'm not sure where James
Speaker 5: and Sue were living at this time, but Don and
Speaker 5: Rhea went back to I think they were originally from Colorado,
Speaker 5: and the last I heard from them, they were running
Speaker 5: just a really nice bed and breaks there and enjoying themselves,
Speaker 5: and they managed to get away from the disaster that
Speaker 5: overtook their lives here right now.
Speaker 7: Did they both the couples attend the trial in Alabama,
Speaker 7: and and did they attend in Georgia or just Alabama?
Speaker 5: Well, they didn't really even attend the trial in Alabama.
Speaker 5: They just you know, the charges I believed were dropped.
Speaker 5: I can't I can't really recall. It's been so long,
Speaker 5: but out of there was never a real trial anywhere,
Speaker 5: you know, there was just the pleas and plea entries
Speaker 5: and sentence.
Speaker 7: And now the trial was in Georgia because of the
Speaker 7: more serious charge of murder. Yes, and he did, Heyward
Speaker 7: Bissell did get a pretty decent and hard working defense
Speaker 7: lawyer named Baal, That's how I pronounce it. But the
Speaker 7: prosecutor was real tough guy named Mike O'Dell. And what
Speaker 7: I found very very interesting, and the readers will find
Speaker 7: this when they read the book, just incredible how they
Speaker 7: take apart the insanity defense from Hayward Bissel. Like you,
Speaker 7: the author, you a journalist that was there. You were
Speaker 7: there and you were privy to all this information. You
Speaker 7: really do believe that this person was insane. But the
Speaker 7: prosecutor really was trying to counter that defense with maybe
Speaker 7: you can explain some of the ways that he tried
Speaker 7: to dispel that notion. We talk about a young man
Speaker 7: who was in prison at the same time and was
Speaker 7: a trustee, So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 7: Because they just don't go to trial with they do
Speaker 7: some real legwork here and try to And that's why
Speaker 7: it's very for anyone who's going to read this book.
Speaker 7: It's really up in the air. It really is a
Speaker 7: decision of somebody that reads the book whether you believe
Speaker 7: this person really wasn't saying or were they faking it.
Speaker 5: Yes, he was at when he was brought back from
Speaker 5: his evaluation, Bissell was a lot different. You know, he
Speaker 5: was able to talk to some of the other inmates,
Speaker 5: and he he made friends with this one guy that
Speaker 5: was the trustee there in the jail, and he brought
Speaker 5: his meals around to him and they talked and Bisil
Speaker 5: talked to him about knives that he had had, and
Speaker 5: and wondered about where his car was and and set
Speaker 5: of you know a lot of things that that led
Speaker 5: them to believe that he was a lot more aware
Speaker 5: of what he had done than than what he had
Speaker 5: first appeared to be, and that what he had claimed
Speaker 5: to be and uh, things like that happening pretty much
Speaker 5: convinced the process the Keuters that, you know, that he
Speaker 5: had faked some of it and that he knew what
Speaker 5: he was doing. But looking back, I'm beginning to think
Speaker 5: that one reason they pushed as hard as they did
Speaker 5: and thought they were going to have a trial there
Speaker 5: and were prepared for a trial just in case Georgia
Speaker 5: didn't end up with it. I think some of that
Speaker 5: was their efforts to make sure that he didn't get
Speaker 5: out on the insanity play, because they were so much
Speaker 5: in fear of him, you know, being found not guilty
Speaker 5: for that reason and then being able to get back
Speaker 5: out on the streets in maybe five or six years.
Speaker 7: Right. Yeah. The what I found was that they I think,
Speaker 7: I think you're absolutely right that obviously with Georgia, because
Speaker 7: they they really didn't need to fight that insanity defense.
Speaker 7: They just really needed to, you know, they had that
Speaker 7: as they had guilty, but in so it didn't matter
Speaker 7: to them. But Alabama, really, without that provision, really had
Speaker 7: to dispel this notion that the Hayward bistole was insane.
Speaker 7: And what they tried to do, through a couple of
Speaker 7: these inmates at the prison was to say he was
Speaker 7: a lot more alert, but also his lawyer was going
Speaker 7: to go to court was prepared to say that now
Speaker 7: somehow Bistle didn't quite remember things and it was blocked out.
Speaker 7: And there was some of that that was part of
Speaker 7: his defense and Odell, Michae Odell tried to dispel that
Speaker 7: with certain things that he did, Like for example, when
Speaker 7: he attacked James and Sue Pumphrey and they ran after
Speaker 7: he had stabbed James and they grabbed a gun he
Speaker 7: was he said to them, oh, please don't shoot me.
Speaker 7: I'm leaving.
Speaker 5: Yeah, after he had already practically good at Jenames, please don't.
Speaker 7: Shoot me, right, And so this whole thing that he
Speaker 7: was under orders to kill, Michael Dell said, well, if
Speaker 7: you were on orders to kill and the threat of
Speaker 7: being killed yourself if you didn't fulfill your orders, seems
Speaker 7: kind of a little weak when these people with a
Speaker 7: gun pointed at you and you go, hey, listen, I'm
Speaker 7: leaving the take it easy, and he goes.
Speaker 5: I've always felt like it was a tremendous relief to
Speaker 5: all of the Decab County people when they determined beyond
Speaker 5: any doubt that Patricia was killed in Georgia, because they
Speaker 5: leave then that you know the right kind of justice
Speaker 5: could prevail in that particular case.
Speaker 7: Absolutely yes. And like you say, tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about don and reapproach and James and Sue Pumphrey
Speaker 7: it's sort of we didn't go into their character too much,
Speaker 7: but they were definitely negatively affected, but they're very strong
Speaker 7: willed people. So tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 7: fate of Don and reapproach and James and Sue Pumphrey.
Speaker 5: Well, James and Sue had a had a pretty rough
Speaker 5: time for a long time. James was injured to the
Speaker 5: extent that he had to have a lot of very
Speaker 5: complicated surgery and he couldn't work after that. He tried
Speaker 5: and couldn't last but just a few days, and you know,
Speaker 5: he saw that he was just not gonna be able
Speaker 5: to work anymore. So that put them in a lot
Speaker 5: of hardship for quite some time, and they were very
Speaker 5: you know, psychologically traumatized because of what had happened. Sure,
Speaker 5: and Don and Rehea, they were a a younger couple.
Speaker 5: James and Sue were later middle aged, and Don and
Speaker 5: Rea were in there, i'd say in their thirties. And
Speaker 5: they went to the hospital and got Don treated, and
Speaker 5: then he got discharged from the emergency room and had
Speaker 5: to go home, and he was, you know, he was
Speaker 5: in a pretty bad shape. He was in a lot
Speaker 5: of past and they couldn't get home because of the
Speaker 5: ice storm, and they finally got one of the deputies
Speaker 5: to get 'em up there in an emergency vehicle. They
Speaker 5: got home, they had no power. Their yard was just
Speaker 5: totally full of trees l it. I saw it, and
Speaker 5: it looked like a tornado had struck up there. And
Speaker 5: Don had to stay there by himself, and for several days,
Speaker 5: Rhea had to go back to work because she couldn't
Speaker 5: afford to miss work, and Don would be there by
Speaker 5: himself all day in an unheeded house and you know
Speaker 5: that kind of pain, barely able to get around, and
Speaker 5: that was really rough on them. They they both couples,
Speaker 5: had a had a hard time and had a lot
Speaker 5: of things that they had to deal with for a
Speaker 5: long time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was interesting the financial stress and trauma to
Speaker 7: these people too, because it it wasn't just the physical
Speaker 7: true a psychological trauma was it was it was down
Speaker 7: to dollars and cents. These people really suffered financially because
Speaker 7: of Hayward Bissel and his crimes. Free that day.
Speaker 5: Well, both men were left unable to work for for
Speaker 5: a long time. And Sue Humphrey had been working as
Speaker 5: a cook at a restaurant that had burned down just
Speaker 5: a few days before, so she was out of work
Speaker 5: from that. And Ria was working at Walmart and had
Speaker 5: to had to stay working as many hours as possible
Speaker 5: because don you know, he done had had a good
Speaker 5: job and then he was unable to work, and that
Speaker 5: just left everybody in really bad shape.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's just it's a very very sad story. And
Speaker 7: what I thought was very very interesting too, right out
Speaker 7: of a Hollywood movie, is that he said this, you know,
Speaker 7: it's not it's not out of the extreme ordinary that
Speaker 7: a storm would happen in the in the mountains of
Speaker 7: Alabama here, but it still was very unusual and quite
Speaker 7: a dramatic storm. And they said, what are the odds
Speaker 7: that almost the same storm that they had originally during
Speaker 7: his crime spree occurred when they were transporting him out
Speaker 7: to the Georgia murder trial.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. That was that was ironic. Yeah, that was
Speaker 5: that was really that was something that you wouldn't expect
Speaker 5: to happen like that in a million years. But the
Speaker 5: difference in him after after they tried him in Georgia,
Speaker 5: they brought him back to Alabama for a while until
Speaker 5: all the paperwork, I guess was completed, and then they
Speaker 5: transferred him back to Georgia to start serving his sentence.
Speaker 5: And when he came out at that point, I was
Speaker 5: waiting when he came out from jail, and he had
Speaker 5: lost more than half of his body weight or right
Speaker 5: at you know, half of his total body weight. And
Speaker 5: he was very pale. His skin looked very dry, and
Speaker 5: his hair had gone real dry and and brittle, and
Speaker 5: it was a much much lighter color than it had
Speaker 5: been before. And now when you look at his picture
Speaker 5: on the website, his hair is dark again, and he's
Speaker 5: got that that stare that just looks right through you.
Speaker 5: And I hope the listeners will go to the Georgia
Speaker 5: Department of Correction's website. You can find it on Google
Speaker 5: real easily and you can see a full screen size
Speaker 5: mugshot of him. That's will just tell you everything you
Speaker 5: would ever wanna know about Hayward Bissell just by looking
Speaker 5: in his eyes.
Speaker 7: Now you s you said uh, or you do say
Speaker 7: that you believe that he was mentally ill, now in
Speaker 7: in your mind despite that, should he ever get out
Speaker 7: of a mental facility.
Speaker 5: Well, if he does get out of the mental facility,
Speaker 5: he'll just be getting transferred straight to the regular prison,
Speaker 5: so he will be incarcerated for the rest of his life,
Speaker 5: one place or the other.
Speaker 7: And you think, and you're fine with that because in
Speaker 7: this country, in Canada, we believe, because the person didn't
Speaker 7: have the intent to kill, because they weren't of their
Speaker 7: right state of mind, right frame of mind, that they
Speaker 7: are not the same as a killer, despite the actions
Speaker 7: being the then result being the same. So you just
Speaker 7: believe that this person deserves to be in an insane
Speaker 7: asylum because he really is insane. But we can't let
Speaker 7: this person out, well.
Speaker 5: I believe I studied him pretty closely for a long time,
Speaker 5: and I don't believe that he could be let out
Speaker 5: without always there being some risks that he might possibly
Speaker 5: come off as mention again and just flip right back
Speaker 5: over to this same mode of hearing the instructions from
Speaker 5: his secret source again. I don't think there's any way
Speaker 5: to guarantee the safety of the public under those circumstances.
Speaker 5: I just don't believe he can ever be because if
Speaker 5: he was going to improve that much, and it's been
Speaker 5: so long since this happened, he wouldn't still be in
Speaker 5: that facility, and he wouldn't be staring down the camera
Speaker 5: like that if he had improved any at all.
Speaker 7: I see, And I just.
Speaker 5: Think that I don't believe he can ever be, you know,
Speaker 5: guaranteed not to revert back to that incredibly dangerous state.
Speaker 7: Yes, oh, I tend to agree with you. I think
Speaker 7: that we can't as a society, and I think the
Speaker 7: authorities cannot take a chance. I mean, once you've committed
Speaker 7: atrocities like this, I just think that it's too much
Speaker 7: of a risk.
Speaker 5: Well that's what I think.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely. Now, well, what are there any interesting projects
Speaker 7: you're working on for a new book that might tell
Speaker 7: our audience? Because I know how many officially how many
Speaker 7: true crime books do you? Are you the author of?
Speaker 5: By the way, well, I have written for I finished
Speaker 5: another book for a gentleman who got too ill to
Speaker 5: complete it. It's called At the Hands of a Stranger,
Speaker 5: and it's coming out I think in May. I believe
Speaker 5: people will enjoy that quite a bit. It's the Gary
Speaker 5: Hilton story and the woman that he beheaded. And I
Speaker 5: finished that book, and I'm in the process of preparing
Speaker 5: an update for an old Pinnacle book called Slow Death.
Speaker 5: It was by Jim Fielder, right, and it's the darker
Speaker 5: Ray story. And there's been so many recent developments in that.
Speaker 5: I'm going to have about a third two page update
Speaker 5: in the back of the book when they reissue that
Speaker 5: coming out.
Speaker 7: Wow, that's a great book that's been been a bestseller
Speaker 7: for years. And Jim was good enough to come on
Speaker 7: the program and talk about that book. That was one
Speaker 7: of the one of the first guests that I had
Speaker 7: and was a It's an incredible story. I mean, wow,
Speaker 7: what a what a guy. David Parker, you know, David A. Parker,
Speaker 7: And that Gary Hilton. We had Fred Rosen come on
Speaker 7: Trails of Death talk about Gary Hilton, another fascinating killer. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so good work. I'll be please contact me about that.
Speaker 7: We'll have to have you back on and talk about
Speaker 7: those incredible stories.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'd be glad that there have been so many
Speaker 5: developments just since this past October in the David Parker
Speaker 5: Ray story that I think people are going to be
Speaker 5: amazed that that has continued on like it has. And
Speaker 5: there have been several little side stories that have come
Speaker 5: up off that are just incredible.
Speaker 7: Wow. Yeah, I can't even imagine. Don't don't give it
Speaker 7: away because I won't, oh man, because that's for our audience.
Speaker 7: That's one story that that's why it's consistent, consistently sold
Speaker 7: for years. It is an incredible This guy's an incredible, fascinating,
Speaker 7: blow your mind killer and he has accomplices, so it's incredible.
Speaker 5: That's the first true crime book of Pinnacles that I
Speaker 5: ever read. Now I'm getting to updated.
Speaker 7: Wow, that's very interesting. Yeah, the first the first Pinnacle
Speaker 7: book that I had read was Killer Clown about John
Speaker 7: Wayne Gacy. Yeah, quite a while ago. And and I've
Speaker 7: seen Pinnacle over the last bunch of years really rise
Speaker 7: in prominence in the true crime business to be basically
Speaker 7: I think the number one. I mean, I can't see
Speaker 7: any competition. They handle all the great stories, they have
Speaker 7: all the great authors so well.
Speaker 5: They've certainly been good to me.
Speaker 7: Oh, it's good. MICHAELA. Hamilton is help me gain access
Speaker 7: to a lot of authors, because what are the authors
Speaker 7: are kind of somewhat hard to gain access to. So
Speaker 7: she's been very, very cooperative. And again, Pinnacle is just
Speaker 7: the leading source for true crime stories. It's just and
Speaker 7: they really don't hold anything back. Pinnacle doesn't shy away
Speaker 7: from certain types of stories. I mean, you really want
Speaker 7: to get a story like this one, Blood Highway. Most
Speaker 7: other companies are not so interested, you know, and Pinnacle goes, yes, yes,
Speaker 7: we can handle that. So good work. Well, I want
Speaker 7: to thank you Sheila for coming on the program and
Speaker 7: talking about Blood Highway. That's an amazing book, and thank
Speaker 7: you for a great interview.
Speaker 5: Well, I appreciate it. I'm always glad to talk about
Speaker 5: these books and Bissell there's one character that's going to
Speaker 5: be with me forever because that wasn't really an experience
Speaker 5: working in that case.
Speaker 7: Yes, absolutely, I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, anyway,
Speaker 7: tell our audience. I've been listening to Sheila Johnson. She
Speaker 7: is the author of Blood Highway, A twisted killer on
Speaker 7: a rampage makes a country road, a highway to Hell,
Speaker 7: and look for other titles why Sheila Johnson on Kensington Press,
Speaker 7: which is Pinnacle is the true crime imprint. Thank you
Speaker 7: very much, Sheila, have yourself a good night.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Talk to you again soon, I hope, hope.
Speaker 5: So bye bye bye bye