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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 8: Good evening. As the sun rises over the quiet city
Speaker 8: of Kingston, New York. On July twelfth, nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 8: a local transient discovers the remains of nineteen year old
Speaker 8: Anna Kithcart. She was strangled and beaten to death, with
Speaker 8: the letters KKK carved into her thighs, while her heartbroken
Speaker 8: family mourns and the police work around the clock to
Speaker 8: uncover the truth. The investigation is complicated by the entrance
Speaker 8: of the Reverend Al Sharpton, who insists that a racist
Speaker 8: killer is responsible. As investigators struggle to find evidence, Sharpton
Speaker 8: and his supporters denounced the entire area as a clan
Speaker 8: den and make public pronouncements that a racist cult is
Speaker 8: operating throughout the area. Then, as if things can't get
Speaker 8: any worse, the transient who found the body, confesses to
Speaker 8: an unspeakable sexual act against the corpse. Almost immediately after
Speaker 8: the media reports his alleged depravity, he changes his story
Speaker 8: and accuses the police of making him a patsy and
Speaker 8: a scapegoat. To add to the expanding circus, he tells
Speaker 8: the world he is really an undercover agent for the CIA, FBI,
Speaker 8: and Inner Pool. Only solving the crime can quell the
Speaker 8: chaos that threatens to ignite a powder keg of racial
Speaker 8: tension and get past the rumors to catch the real killer.
Speaker 8: But ken investigators overcome the outside forces that repeatedly sidetrack
Speaker 8: their efforts. Find out in this new great true crime
Speaker 8: book from Richard T. Khill, the author of Hopton's Ladder,
Speaker 8: the book they're featuring the seating is sidetracked the betrayal
Speaker 8: and murder of Anna Kithcart with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 8: and author and attorney Richard T. Cahill. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 8: and thank you very much for a green in this interview.
Speaker 8: Richard T. K. Hill Junior, Hi, it's a pleasure to
Speaker 8: be here. Thank you very much. Very very involved case,
Speaker 8: very unusual. The incredible detail that you bring at the trial,
Speaker 8: and we'll talk about that very very soon. First off,
Speaker 8: what is your give our audience your personal background and
Speaker 8: your personal connection to this case. And finally, how did
Speaker 8: you come to be in a position to write Sidetracked?
Speaker 6: Well as by way of background, I've been an attorney
Speaker 6: for a little over twenty years. I was a prosecutor
Speaker 6: at one time. Shortly thereafter I was a criminal defense attorney,
Speaker 6: and for a number of years since then, I've been
Speaker 6: practicing civil law. As far as how I got to
Speaker 6: write Sidetrack, I had written my first book, which was
Speaker 6: about the Lindberg kidnapping, and it was about a year
Speaker 6: after it was released and I had some people asking me, Oh,
Speaker 6: you're going to write another book. I thought, you know,
Speaker 6: why not? It might be fun, and I started looking
Speaker 6: around and then I suddenly realized there was a case
Speaker 6: right here at home where I live that had a
Speaker 6: lot of things that would really be interesting. It was
Speaker 6: kind of personal to me because Victor Manny Kithgart was
Speaker 6: a year ahead of me in high school. I knew her, and,
Speaker 6: like many people in Kingston, was stunned when she was
Speaker 6: found dead that July morning. I didn't know her that well.
Speaker 6: She was very popular, big surprise. I was a geek, so,
Speaker 6: you know. And I don't know if it's still this
Speaker 6: way in school, but in those days, popular kids didn't
Speaker 6: usually want to be seen with not so popular kids
Speaker 6: unless they were, you know, making fun of them or whatever.
Speaker 6: But Annie wasn't like that. She didn't care about that.
Speaker 6: She was friendly to everybody, and little things like that
Speaker 6: get remembered, especially when, like me, you're a not so
Speaker 6: cool kid, And you know, there were a lot of
Speaker 6: questions that I had that I wanted answered, and it had.
Speaker 6: The case had so many interesting twists and turns, and
Speaker 6: as I started researching it and realized that I could
Speaker 6: not only write an interesting book about it, but I
Speaker 6: could present Annie in the positive light that I always
Speaker 6: felt she should have been presented yet wasn't. That's when
Speaker 6: I made the decision that this would be my second book.
Speaker 8: Now, before we talk about July nineteen eighty eight, New York, Kingston,
Speaker 8: you talk about a case that affects this case dramatically,
Speaker 8: and there's another case that has similarities at least when
Speaker 8: people to look at it initially, and that's the Tauana
Speaker 8: Browley case. So tell us about what happened approximately a
Speaker 8: year before Annie Kithcart was murdered. Before we talk about
Speaker 8: what happened with her, what happened a year before, and
Speaker 8: what was Reverend Sharpton's involvement all right.
Speaker 6: In the latter part of November of the previous year.
Speaker 6: In nineteen eighty seven, Tauana Brawley, sixteen year old African
Speaker 6: American girl, just outside of Poughkeepsie, New York, place actually
Speaker 6: called Wappinger's Falls, New York, which reported missing. She was
Speaker 6: found on the lawn of property a apartment complex where
Speaker 6: she had used to live, in a garbage bag, although
Speaker 6: there were two witnesses who said they saw her climb
Speaker 6: into the bag herself. Nevertheless, she was found in the bag.
Speaker 6: Some of her hair had been cut, she had racial
Speaker 6: slurs of a type that I won't go into detail
Speaker 6: about on the program written on her in what appeared
Speaker 6: to be charcoal, and she had dog feces smeared on him.
Speaker 6: She was taken into the hospital. There were some officers
Speaker 6: and one of the emergency room doctors who immediately suspected
Speaker 6: that something was wrong because they did a test where
Speaker 6: she was unsupposedly unconscious, So they picked up her hand
Speaker 6: and held it over her face. Now, when they let
Speaker 6: go o her hand, being unconscious, her hand should fall
Speaker 6: down and smack herself right in the face, But it
Speaker 6: didn't move to the side of her head, which was
Speaker 6: some indication that she was conscious. After a day or two,
Speaker 6: through a member of her family, she made public her
Speaker 6: allegations as to what had happened. She alleged that I
Speaker 6: believe it was five men in total, all of whom
Speaker 6: were white, had basically kidnapped her, raped her, sodomrster her,
Speaker 6: and treated her in despicable way solely because she existed
Speaker 6: as an African American female. So this of course raised
Speaker 6: tremendous media coverage. Very prominent members of the national African
Speaker 6: American community came out and got involved. Bill Cosby as
Speaker 6: an example. Know, he's had some problems in recent years,
Speaker 6: but back then, you know, he was the you know,
Speaker 6: he was the King of the Mountain. I mean, he was,
Speaker 6: you know, a major Hollywood star. Everybody loved him. He
Speaker 6: came out in support Mike Tyson, who at that time
Speaker 6: was the heavyweight champion of the world. He came out
Speaker 6: and support a then young reverend named Al Sharpton, who
Speaker 6: had come to some prominence over a matter, a couple
Speaker 6: of matters down in the city, the Crown Heights matter
Speaker 6: and a few others. He came into Poughkeepsie and they
Speaker 6: began making all kinds of accusations. Eventually accusations were made
Speaker 6: accusing one of the assistant district attorneys, a man named Pagonus.
Speaker 6: He was accused of being one of the perpetrators, as
Speaker 6: was an officer who had unfortunately become depressed and committed
Speaker 6: suicide named christ They accused him as well. Pagonus would
Speaker 6: later sue them for libel and slander. The difference, of course,
Speaker 6: libral was written, slander was verbal, and there was a
Speaker 6: significant judgment entered against them. But in any instance, so
Speaker 6: this is going on, and there's tremendous media coverage, and
Speaker 6: shortly before the whole thing happened with any Kikart, one
Speaker 6: of Sharpton's inner circle members came out publicly and made
Speaker 6: a statement that Tawana Brawley wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker 8: That.
Speaker 6: Reverend Sharp and his supporters supposedly knew this, didn't care,
Speaker 6: and that they were simply exploiting it for their own
Speaker 6: political and perhaps financial gain. Sharpening supporters vehemently denied that.
Speaker 6: They ended up going on a New York program television
Speaker 6: program that existed then called The Richard Bay Show, and
Speaker 6: they criticized that guy rather significantly and denied vehemently as allegations.
Speaker 6: So you've got a situation now where you've got tremendous
Speaker 6: racial strife that's going on in Poughkeepsie, which is about
Speaker 6: twenty one to twenty two miles south of Kingston. But
Speaker 6: the public is just starting to turn. It's starting to turn,
Speaker 6: and people are starting to think, you know, maybe this
Speaker 6: is not what it appears to be. And now the
Speaker 6: morning of July twelfth, Anny kit Carter has found and
Speaker 6: the body is found with the letters KKK carved into
Speaker 6: her legs and a K into her stomach. And when
Speaker 6: that came out, now suddenly sharpened. His supporters pivoted to
Speaker 6: Kingston and began making accusations that the crimes were related,
Speaker 6: that the area was their words a quote planned in
Speaker 6: close quote, and they said that a racist cult was
Speaker 6: operating in the area and likely had committed both crimes.
Speaker 6: And so the media circus came to Kingston.
Speaker 8: Now, let's talk about how before we talk about the
Speaker 8: crime scene itself and the murder scene and the description
Speaker 8: of Anna's body as she was murdered. There's a central
Speaker 8: character in here named Joseph Kernin and he's forty two
Speaker 8: year old, unemployed person with a history of mental illness
Speaker 8: as you write, and well known to police. Yeah, tell
Speaker 8: us how it comes that he comes to the attention
Speaker 8: of police. And you talk about the two nurses at
Speaker 8: the nearby as you describe the very nearby hospital. So
Speaker 8: maybe you can also tell us the proximity of what
Speaker 8: we're talking about here and what he finds and his
Speaker 8: interaction with the two nurses from the hospital that night
Speaker 8: or the next day, I should se all right.
Speaker 6: Near the center of Kingston, there was a building that
Speaker 6: at that time was called Kingston Hospital. It is still
Speaker 6: today a hospital, but it has a different name, although
Speaker 6: people here still called Kingston Hospital because to life on Kingstonians,
Speaker 6: that's always what it was. Behind Kingston Hospital in the
Speaker 6: nineteen eighties and earlier, there was a wooded area that
Speaker 6: had a large lack of after term. A large trench
Speaker 6: had been dug out because for years there were railroad
Speaker 6: tracks that ran through there. In fact, those tracks were
Speaker 6: used up until nineteen seventy five. At that time, they
Speaker 6: were owned by a company called Conrail, and they made
Speaker 6: the decision no longer to use it and became abandoned.
Speaker 6: I can still remember from the house I grew up
Speaker 6: in the first seven years of my life. I can
Speaker 6: remember early on looking down and seeing those that train
Speaker 6: going by. But then when I was four, it went away.
Speaker 6: But I still remember that train because I remember it
Speaker 6: was to go out in front of my house and look,
Speaker 6: and there it was. But when the train was abanned,
Speaker 6: those train tracks were abandoned. Nobody was maintained that railway bed.
Speaker 6: So although the actual path itself where the tracks were
Speaker 6: was clear, the area around it was overgrown and so forth.
Speaker 6: And so this became a place. It ran right behind
Speaker 6: the hospital, and this became a place during the day
Speaker 6: where you'd see a lot of kids playing hooky from
Speaker 6: school and things like that. Some people use it as
Speaker 6: a shortcut to go places, but after dark it was
Speaker 6: something different. You would see bums or homeless people going
Speaker 6: back there. People would go back there to drink, do drugs,
Speaker 6: engage in other activities, so it was not a place
Speaker 6: you really wanted to be after dark. It was also
Speaker 6: there was a very little light back there. What a
Speaker 6: little light you'd get would be if you brought a
Speaker 6: flashlight or if there was some moonlight. So this was
Speaker 6: a pretty when it got dark, it was a pretty
Speaker 6: spooky thing. In any instance. On the morning of July twelfth,
Speaker 6: two nurses are walking up the road that ran along
Speaker 6: the side of Kingston Hospital was called Foxhall Avenue. Kingston
Speaker 6: Hospital is on the corner of Foxhall on Broadway, and
Speaker 6: you would go down Foxhall Avenue and then on the
Speaker 6: as you went down and on your left hand side
Speaker 6: you could see the entrance into the rail tracks, and
Speaker 6: even in daylight, it was very dark and gloomy on
Speaker 6: There's a picture that I put in the book just
Speaker 6: to try to get people some idea that even in
Speaker 6: the daylight this was a pretty gloomy, spooky looking place
Speaker 6: because of all the overgrown brush overhead. So these two
Speaker 6: women are walking to work nurses as you mentioned that
Speaker 6: he worked at the hospital, and they're on their way
Speaker 6: in and out comes Kiernanan Now Kiernan had the appearance
Speaker 6: of a homeless man or a bump. He wasn't homeless,
Speaker 6: but he had significant mental issues. As you mentioned, he
Speaker 6: had run into the police, never anything serious minor stuff
Speaker 6: that you might expect from someone who has significant mental issues,
Speaker 6: like trespassing and things like that. Nothing ever major. He
Speaker 6: wasn't a violent man by any stretch. He comes out
Speaker 6: of the wooded area, he's clearly upset, about six thirty
Speaker 6: in the morning, and he tells the woman that he's
Speaker 6: found what he described. One moment said he used the
Speaker 6: term love doll, another one said mannequin. He said, it's
Speaker 6: either that or a body. So they told him to
Speaker 6: go to a payphone, which of course was broken, as
Speaker 6: they all were back in those days. But they eventually
Speaker 6: called the police and when they all go back there,
Speaker 6: they find nineteen year old any Kid Card back there.
Speaker 6: She had been strangled, which they would find out later.
Speaker 6: It was obvious she'd been bludgeon because part of her
Speaker 6: face around the orbital socket was basically crushed in. Her
Speaker 6: body had been stripped except for one monthesin and her
Speaker 6: brazier which had been pushed over her breast but was
Speaker 6: still on her and as we mentioned, she had the
Speaker 6: letters KKK carved into her legs and large letter K
Speaker 6: carved into her stomach. It was a gruesome crime scene.
Speaker 6: I can tell you the hardest part about doing this
Speaker 6: book was the day that I had a chance to
Speaker 6: look at the actual crime scene photographs site. I wasn't
Speaker 6: looking forward to it. I didn't enjoy it because I
Speaker 6: knew her, I liked her, but she was a really
Speaker 6: sweet person. And I've worked very hard in many ways
Speaker 6: to push those out of my mind. But I had
Speaker 6: to see them in order to get a fair understanding
Speaker 6: of what the crime scene was. I really didn't think
Speaker 6: I could write a book and give any type of
Speaker 6: analysis if I didn't see them. I didn't want to,
Speaker 6: but I did. They were very disturbing, and I made
Speaker 6: it and I promised to myself I would not use them,
Speaker 6: and I didn't. There are some pictures in my book
Speaker 6: that show the crime scene, but they don't show her
Speaker 6: at the crime scene. I just couldn't do that to
Speaker 6: her family or to her memory. It was just they
Speaker 6: were just horrible.
Speaker 8: Now you also talk about a piece of glass embedded
Speaker 8: in her neck.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they found a piece of grass that was embedded
Speaker 6: in her neck. The belief is that glass was probably
Speaker 6: what was used. They don't know for certain, but the
Speaker 6: belief was that was probably what was used to make
Speaker 6: the scratches or the slice marks in her legs and stomach.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about the detectives and the detective chrome,
Speaker 8: he notices signs of struggle, and you talk about the
Speaker 8: lacerations on her forehead and her face. What else does
Speaker 8: he find in terms of evidence? I mean, there's you say,
Speaker 8: there's so much refuse and things there. The trash is there.
Speaker 8: But what do they assemble in terms of actual evidence?
Speaker 8: Exhibits what they think is evidence and and tell us
Speaker 8: what that see some of the things that they.
Speaker 6: There was a second crime scene. I guess we'll soon,
Speaker 6: but at that particular crime scene, tremendous number of things
Speaker 6: there there was. It was garbage, There was bottles, there
Speaker 6: were there were old clothes and some duffel bags and stuff.
Speaker 6: They took a lot of things. Some had relation to
Speaker 6: the crimes. Son didn't. One of the things they took
Speaker 6: there was an orange plastic basin of the type you
Speaker 6: would see at a hospital, not as an instance, the
Speaker 6: behind one, and it was covered in blood. They took that.
Speaker 6: They took the moccasin that was there. They obviously they
Speaker 6: eventually collected the brassi that they left it on their body,
Speaker 6: and they left the glass in her neck until the
Speaker 6: coroner and the pathologists could do their job. They took
Speaker 6: dirt samples, they took samples of the blood, they took
Speaker 6: they took in leaves that had blood on them. Of course,
Speaker 6: they photographed everything. There's tons and tons of photographs that
Speaker 6: they took, as they're supposed to. No video that wasn't done.
Speaker 6: That's not all that uncommon at that time. Now it's
Speaker 6: standard protocol. Then it was mostly photographs and they took
Speaker 6: a whole variety of different things. I mean they took
Speaker 6: in the neighborhood of like thirty to forty specific items.
Speaker 6: Not all of them really had anything to do with
Speaker 6: the crime, but you know, and that's the case. You
Speaker 6: got to be thorough.
Speaker 8: Now, you also talk about what they could surmise by
Speaker 8: looking at the scene. You talk about that they you
Speaker 8: talk You already mentioned another crime scene. So tell us
Speaker 8: what they could surmise and how they surmised what little
Speaker 8: they could deduce from this initial look at the crime
Speaker 8: scene and her without talking to anybody else, like the
Speaker 8: pathologists or anyone else.
Speaker 6: As of yet, they were pretty sure, as you mentioned,
Speaker 6: that there had been some kind of scuffle, because there
Speaker 6: was some some areas that look like they had been
Speaker 6: freshly moved about. One of the things I didn't mention
Speaker 6: that they took in evidence was they've found two pieces
Speaker 6: of brick that had blood on it, right, which would
Speaker 6: later be suggested was the murder weapon. It was never
Speaker 6: definitively proven, but I think it's more likely than not
Speaker 6: it was, and it was broken in half, likely from
Speaker 6: the impact, and they were suspicious of that, so they
Speaker 6: took that into evidence. You know, they the police in
Speaker 6: their notes, don't really go in a much speculation. They
Speaker 6: kept it pretty much to the facts. I mean, I
Speaker 6: know from interviewing different people that there were some concerns
Speaker 6: right away that this was a racial crime. Annie was
Speaker 6: of mixed parentage. Her father was African American, her mother
Speaker 6: was Caucasian. Interestingly enough, and I mentioned this in the book,
Speaker 6: Annie never considered herself black or white. She considered herself
Speaker 6: both and never in her life that she did anybody
Speaker 6: know of her ever have any trouble with that. But
Speaker 6: there were some thoughts that could be racial. There were
Speaker 6: some that thought, well, maybe this was a cover up.
Speaker 6: You know, for the most part, the police didn't really
Speaker 6: seem to let their reports reflect any type of speculation.
Speaker 6: They kept the reports very professional and very to the point,
Speaker 6: which turned out to be a good thing in light
Speaker 6: of all of the media circus and the wild accusations
Speaker 6: that would eventually be made by Sharpen and his supporters.
Speaker 6: But you know they, you know they at that point,
Speaker 6: they believed at that point, and it would later be
Speaker 6: proven to be so that the killer had taken they
Speaker 6: remainder that close with him, otherwise they would obviously be there.
Speaker 6: They had to have been, although the reports don't discuss
Speaker 6: it in detail, there was some initial thought that maybe
Speaker 6: it had been sexual in nature. They couldn't tell just
Speaker 6: by looking at the body if there had been sexual
Speaker 6: aduced There wasn't they would later determine, but that was
Speaker 6: something that was also on their minds as well. And
Speaker 6: it's important in any type of investigation like that that
Speaker 6: you keep an open mind and allow the evidence in
Speaker 6: the facts to lead you and not try to twist
Speaker 6: the evidence and the facts into what needed to be
Speaker 6: to fit your theory.
Speaker 8: Now, with this gruesome crime scene and this incredible murder,
Speaker 8: with the additional KKK carved on her body, what do
Speaker 8: they do with Joseph Kernan? What does he say tell
Speaker 8: us about what they think, What does he say, What
Speaker 8: does he say in respects to what he found and
Speaker 8: how what's the police response.
Speaker 6: Well, of course they make sure they take him into custody.
Speaker 6: I mean he has to be a suspect from the beginning,
Speaker 6: because he's one of the ones that found the body.
Speaker 6: He told them initially, I just found the body. And
Speaker 6: he told them that he had been sleeping the night
Speaker 6: before out in the woods. Quite some distance away. There's
Speaker 6: a large building. It's been called the Almshouse, has been
Speaker 6: called the Poorhouse. It was actually the first municipal building
Speaker 6: that was built once the city of Kingston was formed,
Speaker 6: and he had slept behind that the night before. And
Speaker 6: then he said that he had walked. When he got
Speaker 6: up at the crack of dawn, he broke camp, which
Speaker 6: for him was basically picking up his bedroll, and he
Speaker 6: walked down the other railroad tracks that go through the city.
Speaker 6: And then once he got into midtown, he turned and
Speaker 6: he was supposedly heading to his mother's house, and the
Speaker 6: direction he was going was system with that, and he
Speaker 6: told him and he found the body and he immediately
Speaker 6: reported it. Well, they were suspicious he knew more than
Speaker 6: he was letting on. They didn't know whether he had
Speaker 6: done it or he knew more, but they were questioning
Speaker 6: him a great deal, and you know, he was he
Speaker 6: was not exactly the overly forthcoming, and they felt he
Speaker 6: was not he was hiding something or that he just
Speaker 6: wasn't willing to talk. Eventually, they brought him to another
Speaker 6: city not too far away, about an hour away called Middletown,
Speaker 6: where the state police had a barracks that had a
Speaker 6: polygraph machine commonly known as a lie detective, which he
Speaker 6: agreed to take. And the person who did the test
Speaker 6: was convinced that he wasn't the killer, that he was
Speaker 6: telling the truth when he said he didn't kill her,
Speaker 6: but they felt that he was hiding something, and they
Speaker 6: pressured him and pressured him, and eventually he made a
Speaker 6: statement contending that he had sexually abused the body after
Speaker 6: he had found it in a most disturbing manner. Although
Speaker 6: it was not released to the public in detail, at
Speaker 6: least not until my book, because it was always just
Speaker 6: reported generically. But he was accused of briefly performing oral
Speaker 6: sex on the body, which is quite repulsive. As to
Speaker 6: whether he really did that or not, that I'm not
Speaker 6: going to reveal that you have to read the book
Speaker 6: to find out. You know the answer to it because
Speaker 6: you've read it, but the listeners are going to have
Speaker 6: to read the book to get the answer to that,
Speaker 6: because I can definitively answer that whether he did or didn't.
Speaker 6: But so now it comes out first you have you know,
Speaker 6: we get news that Annie's been killed, then the news
Speaker 6: comes out a few days afterwards that she had been
Speaker 6: found with the KKK letters on her, and then news
Speaker 6: comes out that this person who founder has been arrested
Speaker 6: in charge with sexual abuse against the corpse. It was
Speaker 6: a strange few days, let me tell you.
Speaker 8: Complicating this as well is that the police ask him
Speaker 8: if he saw the case AKK because they think, well,
Speaker 8: did you carve the KKK? And he said no, But
Speaker 8: he said he also to complicate this, he said he
Speaker 8: didn't see the K and the KKK on both of
Speaker 8: her thighs.
Speaker 6: First he said he didn't see it, and then when
Speaker 6: they pressed him on it, he said, I won't say.
Speaker 6: And you have to understand this. You know, this guy
Speaker 6: is not someone who's thought rationally. This was a guy
Speaker 6: who would tell anybody who would listen that he was
Speaker 6: a member of the Cia, that he was a member
Speaker 6: of Interpol, that he was undercover. Later he would make
Speaker 6: a statement to the media that he had gone too
Speaker 6: far undercover and he let his hair grow too long.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, he was not a well man.
Speaker 6: And you know, I don't know what his actual diagnosis was,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't I can't get access to those
Speaker 6: types of records. Deprive it. I would suspect he was
Speaker 6: probably a paranoid schizophrenic, but I don't know for sure.
Speaker 6: But he had significant mental issues and he could had
Speaker 6: they pressed him hard enough, he might have admitted to
Speaker 6: the Kennedy assassination. I mean, you know, he he just
Speaker 6: was not He was just somebody that would say things
Speaker 6: that were outrageous. From times while he was in the jail,
Speaker 6: the local radio station was able to interview him, and
Speaker 6: that was an interesting experience. And of course by then
Speaker 6: he had recanted his statement and he was saying that
Speaker 6: he was a patsy and they were trying to frame
Speaker 6: him and so forth, and it was, you know, and
Speaker 6: he was claiming that it had something to do with
Speaker 6: to Wanta Brawley, and you know, the police initially were
Speaker 6: suspicious of him, thinking that maybe he had put the
Speaker 6: the KKK letters on it on the body. And that
Speaker 6: was highlighted later because I mentioned the Brawley case earlier.
Speaker 6: There was an ongoing investigation. The governor had appointed Robert Abrams,
Speaker 6: the New York Attorney General at that time, to put
Speaker 6: together a special grand jury to investigate, and he had
Speaker 6: put together a hotline that people could send in information. Well,
Speaker 6: according to the reports from the Attorney General, he let
Speaker 6: them know that Kiernan had actually called that one claiming
Speaker 6: he had some information. It was never disclosed what that
Speaker 6: information was, but whatever it was, they investigated it and
Speaker 6: it came up negative. So here he had somebody who
Speaker 6: had apparently tried to get involved in the Brawley case,
Speaker 6: and then he's involved here for the body that's found
Speaker 6: with those types of marks, and so there was a
Speaker 6: lot of suspicion that he might have been the one
Speaker 6: that put the letters on it. So you know, this
Speaker 6: was a not a well man to say the least.
Speaker 8: Now you add this with other people with agendas and
Speaker 8: again suspicions and ties to the Browllie case, because he
Speaker 8: has claimed that this is connected to the Browlie case,
Speaker 8: not that the Attorney Maddox would necessarily need too much motivation.
Speaker 8: But tell us about he has Initially he has a lawyer,
Speaker 8: but then tell us about the role of attorney Maddox
Speaker 8: in this case representing kernin.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 6: Initially Maddox came into town with Al Sharpton and they
Speaker 6: went right up to the jail and they interviewed him.
Speaker 6: They initially said they were not going to take the case,
Speaker 6: but they were going to investigate. They were going to
Speaker 6: help the Public Defender's office who was assigned to represent
Speaker 6: mister Kiernan. And that's how it went for a while.
Speaker 6: Eventually he became the attorney for mister Kiernan, and he
Speaker 6: he had a remark that I actually when I read it,
Speaker 6: I burst out laughing. After it was announced he had
Speaker 6: taken the case, there was an appearance in court and
Speaker 6: the media didn't know he was going to take the case,
Speaker 6: and all of a sudden, there he was and he
Speaker 6: was representing him. And after Kiernan had left him gone
Speaker 6: back to the jail, they were yelling out questions and asked, well,
Speaker 6: how did how did you come to represent mister Kiernan.
Speaker 6: He said, Wow, I don't know. He must have looked
Speaker 6: me up in the Yellow pages. So he was a man.
Speaker 6: You can say what you want about him, but he
Speaker 6: did have a very sharp wit. He wasn't stupid by
Speaker 6: no mean or any means I should say. But you know,
Speaker 6: he made a lot of statements. He made statements. He
Speaker 6: actually had one statement where he said that only the
Speaker 6: police could have put the body where it was found,
Speaker 6: which is a you know, though he didn't say directly,
Speaker 6: that suggests that he was insinuating that the police had
Speaker 6: something to do with it. He cited a false report
Speaker 6: from a Fox News station. I don't mean, I don't
Speaker 6: mean the modern Fox News, but the Fox network back
Speaker 6: then it was just getting started and it was different
Speaker 6: than Fox News, the modern Fox News. And there was
Speaker 6: a news reporter who said that and he had been
Speaker 6: chased by the police that night, which was incorrect, and
Speaker 6: he harped on that as part of the allegation as well. Uh,
Speaker 6: and he reached an outrageous conclusion and it was reported
Speaker 6: by the local papers and it didn't make the police
Speaker 6: particularly happy, that's for sure.
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Speaker 8: Now you talk about the police going officers not to
Speaker 8: talk to the media because they know that this is
Speaker 8: this is a hot case and there's a like I say,
Speaker 8: a powder cake of tension already going going on. Anyway,
Speaker 8: Sharpton's hanging around or threatening to come around. But the
Speaker 8: police have to do their job and do a canvas
Speaker 8: and find out more about Annie and her whereabouts that day,
Speaker 8: about her background as well, so that they know who
Speaker 8: they can speak to. And then there's an obviously a
Speaker 8: tip line set up as well. So while police are
Speaker 8: canvassing and they're doing their due diligence in terms of
Speaker 8: finding out about Annie, what do they find out about
Speaker 8: her and what do they start getting a picture of
Speaker 8: of maybe how she came to meet her fate that evening.
Speaker 6: Well, as you mentioned, they do a canvas and they
Speaker 6: also were looking into what she had done that day.
Speaker 6: They knew that she they talked to her friend, that
Speaker 6: she'd been with a woman named Denise, and some other
Speaker 6: people she was with throughout the day. She and Denise
Speaker 6: had gone out. Annie was looking for a job that day,
Speaker 6: like a lot of I shouldn't say, kid, because nineteen
Speaker 6: is legally adult, but knowing how I and a lot
Speaker 6: of my friends were at nineteen, I still used the
Speaker 6: word kid, because quite frankly, a lot of us were.
Speaker 6: But she was in a position, like a lot of
Speaker 6: kids at that age who had been parting it up
Speaker 6: and enjoying herself. Ports accuser of being an addict of
Speaker 6: some kind, and that's simply not true. She did drink,
Speaker 6: She liked to party. She was known to smoke a
Speaker 6: joint now and again, and as was very prominent in
Speaker 6: the nineteen eighties, powder cocaine was very much almost like
Speaker 6: marijuana then it was very prominent, and she did recreationally
Speaker 6: use that, not a lot, but occasionally. And in the
Speaker 6: last six months of her life, she had been parting
Speaker 6: enough that her friends had noticed and had said something
Speaker 6: to her. And like a lot of kids who do that,
Speaker 6: they have to make the choice. Are they going to
Speaker 6: continue to do that or are they going to straighten
Speaker 6: things up, finish growing up and maturing and get on
Speaker 6: with their lives. By all accounts, that's what Annie had
Speaker 6: decided to do. She was out looking for a job
Speaker 6: that day. She had told people she was going to
Speaker 6: go back and finish high school and get her ged
Speaker 6: and you know, get things in her life moving. They
Speaker 6: found out that she had met up with some friends.
Speaker 6: They were going to go to a carnival uptown on
Speaker 6: the other side of the city that was there every
Speaker 6: July and is still there in fact every July. And
Speaker 6: on the way there, they stopped at a store called
Speaker 6: Convenient Mark, a little you know, the small was that
Speaker 6: what it sounds like, a small convenience store and they
Speaker 6: went in and it appears that they were looking to
Speaker 6: get some beer. They weren't going to be able to
Speaker 6: buy because they were underage, and Annie ended up taking
Speaker 6: a forty ounce bottle of beer, and the clerk caught them,
Speaker 6: and the one friend that was with her kind of
Speaker 6: betrayed her and turned on her and said, I don't
Speaker 6: know who this person is. She's not with me. And
Speaker 6: Annie panicked and she ran with the bottle across the
Speaker 6: street and hit it, and her friends were stuck around.
Speaker 6: The police came took a statement, and then they left,
Speaker 6: but they went up to the carnival and Annie was
Speaker 6: left on her own for the rest of the evening,
Speaker 6: and she spent the rest of the evening bumping into
Speaker 6: different people she saw, and every person she saw, she
Speaker 6: basically say you want to hang out? Do you want
Speaker 6: to get a drink? You know, she was just looking
Speaker 6: for companionship mostly the whole night, just you know, to
Speaker 6: do something and to have someone to hang out with.
Speaker 6: And she was last seen at approximately two thirty in
Speaker 6: the morning near a bar that she had been in
Speaker 6: and out of all night called the Royal Girl. And
Speaker 6: based on where she was heading, the only place really
Speaker 6: she could have gone was this alley between a store
Speaker 6: called Cheap Charlie's, which was a little place where you
Speaker 6: could buy cigarettes and things like that, and the Royal Grill.
Speaker 6: And that alley led to a street called Jansen Avenue,
Speaker 6: and that Jensen Avenue went right to Foxhall Avenue and
Speaker 6: was directly across the street it actually ended, and you'd
Speaker 6: be facing looking at the entrance to the old railway
Speaker 6: bed where she was eventually found. Ironically, at one point
Speaker 6: she went down the railway bed earlier that evening with
Speaker 6: the man she had knew from school, and they drank
Speaker 6: some of the beer that she had found or that
Speaker 6: she had taken, i should say, and then they went
Speaker 6: back and she went back to the bar and the
Speaker 6: guy went home. So they had a pretty good knowledge
Speaker 6: of where she was. There was one witness that said
Speaker 6: she saw her with a man that was later identified
Speaker 6: as the defendant, Jeff Dawson. She actually, at a different
Speaker 6: point saw another man with the same name. Jeff Dawson
Speaker 6: was actually their cousins, and ironically she had asked him
Speaker 6: do you want to the younger Jeff Dawson, she just
Speaker 6: do you want to hang out? And he said I can't,
Speaker 6: I have to get up. Turns out he was going
Speaker 6: up to the carnival as well. Any his friends were
Speaker 6: planning to meet him. She just didn't know it. Had
Speaker 6: she known, that she might have gotten in the car
Speaker 6: and this might not have happened. But so they knew. Basically,
Speaker 6: Annie was well liked, that she had been partying recently,
Speaker 6: and they knew most of her movements up until shortly
Speaker 6: before she was killed.
Speaker 8: Now I've mentioned the tip line obvious that the police
Speaker 8: would have set up for anyone that might have information
Speaker 8: to make an anonymous call. How many days after this murder,
Speaker 8: and again with all this turmoil and not many leads. Really,
Speaker 8: what the police receive in terms of a tip from
Speaker 8: where they find out later is a person named Penny
Speaker 8: de growth. But let's talk about what that call entails
Speaker 8: and what the police discover from that phone call.
Speaker 6: Well, they got it within the first twenty four within
Speaker 6: the twenty four to forty eight hours, they got a
Speaker 6: phone call, an anonymous call from a woman. It came
Speaker 6: from a hamlet called port Ewan, which is five minutes
Speaker 6: if that from the city of Kingston's right across the
Speaker 6: Rondeau Creek and it's next door. They got a phone call.
Speaker 6: They traced it to a phone booth and all the
Speaker 6: calls was a woman and she just said the girl
Speaker 6: that was found by the hospital, Jeff Dawson did it,
Speaker 6: and she huh. So they had no idea who it was.
Speaker 6: They heard the name, they didn't know if it meant anything,
Speaker 6: but it became They went back to it and lit
Speaker 6: not long air after because when they were doing the canvassing,
Speaker 6: they started hearing from people rumors that there was somebody
Speaker 6: out there who was bragging that he had done it,
Speaker 6: and so they asked around and they eventually traced it
Speaker 6: to a woman who lived right on Jansen Avenue and
Speaker 6: she told them to it. She had to make some
Speaker 6: calls to see if it was okay for her to
Speaker 6: tell the police, and she eventually did. She told them
Speaker 6: that she had heard about it from Penny to Grote
Speaker 6: and her boyfriend Todd Sleet. So the police went out
Speaker 6: to where they lived, which was about ten or fifteen
Speaker 6: mins outside of Kingston, had them come into the station
Speaker 6: and they began to question them, and the story they
Speaker 6: told was quite interesting. They said that they the I
Speaker 6: don't want to say the day after the murder, It
Speaker 6: was the day of but she died early in the morning,
Speaker 6: somewhere bet two thirty am and four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 6: probably around three. But later that day, in the afternoon
Speaker 6: of that day, Todd Sleeve and his girlfriend were driving
Speaker 6: down Broadway and a few maybe two blocks before they
Speaker 6: got to the Kingston Hospital, they saw Jeff Dawson, and
Speaker 6: so they because they were friends, they asked him to
Speaker 6: get in the car, and he got in the back
Speaker 6: and they started driving. So they're talking about this or that,
Speaker 6: and then Sleeve makes the left turn onto Foxhall Avenue. Now,
Speaker 6: as I mentioned before, Foxhall Avenue was the road that
Speaker 6: goes right by the entrance one of the entrances, at
Speaker 6: least to the old railway bed. And as they go
Speaker 6: by the police or the there's cars there. They've got
Speaker 6: the area taped off and the police officers on guard,
Speaker 6: guarding the scene as they should. And as they go by,
Speaker 6: shlid and told the police that Dawson immediately slid sideways
Speaker 6: in the seat and laid down so he couldn't be
Speaker 6: seen in the car, and he said something along the
Speaker 6: lines of I think they're looking for me. So they
Speaker 6: continue driving and eventually they get to Jeff Dawson's home
Speaker 6: and Jeff gets out of the car and so does Todd,
Speaker 6: and Todd says he's talking to him, and he asks him, well,
Speaker 6: why are they looking for you? And he said, well,
Speaker 6: you know that I won't use the word, but you
Speaker 6: know that blank any Kithgart, Well, yeah, I do. I
Speaker 6: murdered her last night. So Todd slid himself. Like Dawson,
Speaker 6: had a significant criminal history. It was all burglaries in
Speaker 6: his case, Unlike Jef Dawson also involved drugs. Dawson's crimes
Speaker 6: really were burglaries of businesses and so forth, which shot
Speaker 6: Shlee did too. But he also had some drug offenses.
Speaker 6: But now, and that was something that was of a
Speaker 6: level of crime above what he was used to in
Speaker 6: company and obviously bothered him, and he immediately told Penny
Speaker 6: about it, and after discussing it, they decided they would
Speaker 6: The way they would sue their conscience was for Penny
Speaker 6: to make the anonymous call, and they figured, you know
Speaker 6: that the police will investigate him now and they'll catch him.
Speaker 6: So what the police decided to do having heard all
Speaker 6: of this, They asked Todd to wear a wire and
Speaker 6: he agreed, and a bunch of police officers and unmarked
Speaker 6: cars went into the neighborhood all around Jeff Dawson's home
Speaker 6: and Shlead and his girlfriend drove their own car over
Speaker 6: and he ended up engaging in a conversation that was
Speaker 6: recorded not the greatest quality, and there was a lot
Speaker 6: of how to be enhanced, at least as best they
Speaker 6: could in those days, but he basically was pushing him
Speaker 6: to make a statement, and he did, although what he
Speaker 6: said was not consistent with the physical evidence. But he
Speaker 6: eventually sit on the tape he said, yeah, I pushed
Speaker 6: her and she hit her head and I made it
Speaker 6: look like a crazy person did And so then of
Speaker 6: course they immediately arrested him and brought him down and
Speaker 6: started and started the interrogation and that's how Jeff Dawson
Speaker 6: became more than a person of interest. He became a
Speaker 6: suspect and I've actually was arrested and charged. And that's
Speaker 6: how it progressed from that simple anonymous phone call.
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Speaker 8: we talked about Richard that the Jeff Dawson has now
Speaker 8: been tape recorded making admissions. You say that there is
Speaker 8: some inconsistencies and what he says. So let's talk about
Speaker 8: what the police do, how they interview him, investigate his background.
Speaker 8: Tell us how that proceeds.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: After he was arrested, he was brought in and he
Speaker 6: was interrogated by two detectives, Detective Spitiliary and Detective Junius Harris.
Speaker 6: And Harris kind of played the good cop, if you will,
Speaker 6: and that he didn't. He wasn't the one really leading
Speaker 6: the interrogation. He kind of sat back and every once
Speaker 6: in a while he'd asked to follow up, and he
Speaker 6: kind of talked about, you know, I've known you since
Speaker 6: you were a little boy, I know your family. I mean,
Speaker 6: you have to understand Kingston's a small city and in
Speaker 6: those days in particular, just about everybody either knew everybody
Speaker 6: or knew of everybody. And you know, you might not
Speaker 6: know let's say John Smith, but you say, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: that's Maggie Smith's boy, and you know, he kind of
Speaker 6: knew somebody, and Junius Harris was one of those guys
Speaker 6: who knew everybody, and so he kind of played that
Speaker 6: angle and did it very well actually, And they began
Speaker 6: questioning and he made a statement right away and he said,
Speaker 6: and I've actually heard the audio, that the audio still exist.
Speaker 6: It's a very interesting listen. He said that he ran
Speaker 6: into Annie he saw the Royal Grill, and he said
Speaker 6: that he left the Royal Grill and then he saw
Speaker 6: her again near the entrance to the rail bed, and
Speaker 6: she was saying, come on, you want to do something.
Speaker 6: Now they knew each other. In fact, Annie's sister was
Speaker 6: in a relationship with somebody who was related to Jeff Dawson,
Speaker 6: so they knew who each other were. They didn't really
Speaker 6: hang in the same circles because Jeff was in his
Speaker 6: upper twenties and end he was nineteen, but they knew
Speaker 6: who each other were. So she was saying, come on,
Speaker 6: let's do something, and he didn't want to. He was
Speaker 6: going somewhere, and eventually he said she was starting to annoying,
Speaker 6: and he eventually said, pushed her away, get away from me,
Speaker 6: and he said, she got angry and came at him again,
Speaker 6: come on, come on, let's do something, And he said
Speaker 6: he pushed her again, and he claimed she fell hit
Speaker 6: the back of her head and she didn't move. Now,
Speaker 6: he said, she thought His exact words were, I thought
Speaker 6: she was playing, meaning I thought she wasn't she was pretending.
Speaker 6: He said. He reached down and when his hand came
Speaker 6: you know, lifted the back of her head. He said.
Speaker 6: When his hand came back, he claimed he panicked. At
Speaker 6: that point that he tried to check her for a pulse,
Speaker 6: but he couldn't tell if she had one because his
Speaker 6: own pulse was racing. And he then took off and
Speaker 6: he went out the other side, which went to a
Speaker 6: street called East O'Reilly, and he circled around up to
Speaker 6: a building that was called Old City Hall. That was
Speaker 6: the original city Hall. It was abandoned in the early
Speaker 6: nineteen seventies, and it had been allowed to sit there
Speaker 6: and decay all those years. It was completely abandoned. The
Speaker 6: year two thousand it was refurbished and became City Hall again,
Speaker 6: which was nice because it's beautiful building, but at that
Speaker 6: time it was abandoned. And he said he just sat
Speaker 6: there on the steps for about two hours, which would
Speaker 6: have made it to about five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 6: He said he went back to check on her, and
Speaker 6: when he got back, he said, somebody else must have
Speaker 6: come along, because she had been stripped and cut, and
Speaker 6: her clothes were sitting there in a pile. He said,
Speaker 6: so he still had the blood on his own hand
Speaker 6: and he had wiped it on his shirt. So he
Speaker 6: took his own shirt off and said, he took the
Speaker 6: clothes and he went off, and he left the clothes
Speaker 6: in an alley where they were later found, and which
Speaker 6: was the second crime scene that I was talking about.
Speaker 6: And he said that, you know, he kept saying, you know,
Speaker 6: when I left her, she was alive, and the police,
Speaker 6: you know, jumped on that and said, you know, that
Speaker 6: can't be true, but he stuck to it. You know,
Speaker 6: they didn't accept it, and I don't either. It just
Speaker 6: is so far fetched to believe that he left her there.
Speaker 6: And then, you know, it was so dark in there
Speaker 6: that if somebody's laying on the ground, you might not
Speaker 6: even see them. If you didn't know she was there,
Speaker 6: you might not have seen her because it was pitch black.
Speaker 6: And to believe that somebody came along saw her and
Speaker 6: just said, hey, I know I'll kill her and strip her.
Speaker 6: It just doesn't make any sense, but that was the
Speaker 6: story he told, and he stuck to it throughout, and
Speaker 6: he told anybody who would listen that she was alive
Speaker 6: when I left. But his admissions were still significant in
Speaker 6: that he put himself in the alley with any in
Speaker 6: the railway I should say, the early bed with any
Speaker 6: kit guard around the time of her death, and he
Speaker 6: admitted he pushed her and caused injury to her, although
Speaker 6: there were no significant cuts in the back of her head,
Speaker 6: so it was inconsistent. There was a cut on her ear,
Speaker 6: and I suppose the blood could have run from her
Speaker 6: ear down to the back of her head. So he
Speaker 6: married very well, I've seen blood and just had been
Speaker 6: wrong about where it came from. But he put himself
Speaker 6: in that place. So it was very strong evidence against
Speaker 6: him because now they had him not only people saying
Speaker 6: that he had bragged about it, but now they had
Speaker 6: him admitting he was in the area with her at
Speaker 6: the time, you know, around the time died. So it
Speaker 6: was pretty significant evidence.
Speaker 8: The idea right away once they have Jeff Dawson and
Speaker 8: he's black and this woman is biracial. Doesn't have much
Speaker 8: credibility to the al Sharpton and Alton Maddock's contention, does
Speaker 8: it at that time?
Speaker 6: No, And in fact, right after he was arrested, the
Speaker 6: district attorney held a press conference and announced that there
Speaker 6: is no racial motive here. Although he was asked, did
Speaker 6: Dawson put the kk kmarks? And at that point they
Speaker 6: still thought Kiernan did, and they said, well, it's possible
Speaker 6: Kiernan did. And this allowed Sharp and Maddie to continue
Speaker 6: to say that Kierenan was a patsy and it was
Speaker 6: part of the reason why Maddix stuck around and represented
Speaker 6: Kiernan at least for a while. And although up until
Speaker 6: the time he was disbarred, he may have tactically still
Speaker 6: represented him. I don't know, but you know, but so
Speaker 6: they weren't, you know, they were quick to get it
Speaker 6: out there that this was not a racial crime, but
Speaker 6: they were by no means sure that Dawson was the
Speaker 6: one of the kk K marks. They thought it might
Speaker 6: have been Kiernan. At that point.
Speaker 8: He did have his wife Rose Dawson did provide an
Speaker 8: alibi for him. Initially didn't see how did police just
Speaker 8: break that alibi?
Speaker 6: What did they do with that before? Okay, I had
Speaker 6: mentioned it in the timeline. I'd mentioned that they got
Speaker 6: the call, anonymous call, and that later within about twenty
Speaker 6: four hours after that, they had heard that there was
Speaker 6: somebody bragging and they confirmed who it was. Well, they
Speaker 6: did send a detective after they got the tip, just
Speaker 6: to talk to him, and he wasn't at home, but
Speaker 6: he and his wife came down to the police station
Speaker 6: and they gave a statement saying, well, he had been
Speaker 6: in the Royal Girl. He had stopped in earlier in
Speaker 6: the evening, played a game at Pacun, but he had
Speaker 6: left gone home and he had stayed at home the
Speaker 6: rest of the night. And his wife said, yeah, that
Speaker 6: was true. So at that point they said okay, and
Speaker 6: they let him go. Then when they got the extra
Speaker 6: piece of information you had the sleeve where the wire,
Speaker 6: and they arrested him. They also brought in his wife,
Speaker 6: and his wife eventually bendia she had not been truthful
Speaker 6: and that she was providing an alibi, but in fact,
Speaker 6: he had gone out himself after he wasn't the Royal Girl.
Speaker 6: They did go home, but he wasn't home all night.
Speaker 6: He had gone back out, and they actually eventually at
Speaker 6: the trial, forced her to testify to that, to not
Speaker 6: only to prove that he had the opportunity, but also
Speaker 6: to get it out there indirectly that Dawson had lied
Speaker 6: to the police and given a fake aliba. Why would
Speaker 6: you give a fake alibi unless you needed to cover
Speaker 6: up something you had done untoured?
Speaker 8: Right now, obviously there's enough to you talk about the
Speaker 8: procedure to be able to get this to trial, to
Speaker 8: be able to prosecute him. Let's just fast forward to really,
Speaker 8: I mean, his contention that he she banged her head accidentally,
Speaker 8: is the contention that she died accidentally. He didn't kill her,
Speaker 8: He didn't have that intent, which complicates this entire, this
Speaker 8: entire thing. So the pathologists and the medical examiner are
Speaker 8: crucial in this. So let's fast forward to this prosecution
Speaker 8: and what do each one of these crucial expert witnesses
Speaker 8: have to say, which well is in contrast to what okay,
Speaker 8: go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 6: They had two doctors that testified. One was a forensic
Speaker 6: pathologist and the other was supporter, and they disagreed about
Speaker 6: something that really was important in my in my thought
Speaker 6: process because as it changed the entire nature of it
Speaker 6: depending what had happened. Both of them agreed that Annie
Speaker 6: died as a result of both the choking and the
Speaker 6: manual strangulation and the blood forced trauma, and both agreed
Speaker 6: that they found was consistent with what could have been
Speaker 6: the murder weapon. They weren't able to say it was,
Speaker 6: but they could say it was consistent. They both agreed
Speaker 6: that the KKK marks were made at least at the
Speaker 6: beginning while she was alive, but the last one on
Speaker 6: one leg was after she had died, so her heart
Speaker 6: they could tell because there was no blood flow, the
Speaker 6: heart had stopped beating. So but where they disagreed was
Speaker 6: whether she was choked first or whether she was bludgeoned first.
Speaker 6: And this becomes important. If she was choked first, then
Speaker 6: you can theorize the scenario where they got into an argument.
Speaker 6: He grabbed her in a chokelock, and many people think
Speaker 6: that a choke that a chokelock will take a long
Speaker 6: time before you go out, and that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 6: I know from personal experiences. I regularly take judo that
Speaker 6: if a choke is hit just right, you can go
Speaker 6: out within a second. If even that and he was
Speaker 6: a strong man, and she wasn't frail by any stretch.
Speaker 6: But she was not a big woman. She was thin,
Speaker 6: and if he caught it just right, that choke was right,
Speaker 6: she would go right out. So you could argue a
Speaker 6: scenario that he choked her, she went unconscious, he panicked,
Speaker 6: and then, according to his words, made it look like
Speaker 6: a crazy person did it. And the real tragedy there
Speaker 6: would be him thinking she was dead and she's not.
Speaker 6: And this occurred within a couple hundred yards of the
Speaker 6: emergency room, so he could have picked her up and
Speaker 6: carried her over there and maybe she survives, which is
Speaker 6: even more said the other scenario. However, if the bludgeoning
Speaker 6: occurred first, there really isn't any way to argue manslaughter.
Speaker 6: You can't exactly argue that it was an unintentional debt.
Speaker 6: If it started with you beating somebody over the head
Speaker 6: with a brick, it just doesn't follow. And then the
Speaker 6: incredible savagery that you're you're thinking of, if after the
Speaker 6: beating with the brick, he then picks her up and
Speaker 6: then chokes her whilst, you know, while the whole head
Speaker 6: is caped in. I mean, it's a it creates a
Speaker 6: very different impression of who this person is. I believe
Speaker 6: that the former is what happened that I think the
Speaker 6: choking occurred first based on you know, Jeff Dawson's background,
Speaker 6: who he was, and a few other things. But if
Speaker 6: it was the reverse, if that other expert was right,
Speaker 6: you're looking at a cold, vicious killer at that point.
Speaker 6: It presents a very different scenario. And yet that the
Speaker 6: experts disagreed about it.
Speaker 8: Now the idea that the pathologists would weigh in to
Speaker 8: to say definitively what happened. Let's let's go to the
Speaker 8: issues that trial that you point out, because there are
Speaker 8: quite a few and he's represented. Dawson has represented my
Speaker 8: capable an attorney, So you have this Kavanaugh and his attorney.
Speaker 8: So tell us sort of the dynamics that's there and
Speaker 8: some of the issues that are being raised during this trial.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the most interesting thing when you start
Speaker 6: looking at it with the two strategies that they had.
Speaker 6: I mentioned that there was the audio recording of the interrogation,
Speaker 6: which was very powerful stuff with Dawson put himself in
Speaker 6: the alley with her Mike. Kavanaugh made the decision not
Speaker 6: to use that in his case in chief. Now, Mike
Speaker 6: Kavanaugh is an excellent prosecutor. I have a tremendous respect
Speaker 6: for him. I've known him for a long time. He
Speaker 6: went on to become a New York State Supreme Court judge,
Speaker 6: and it's now retired. The only logical reason to not
Speaker 6: use that tape in your case in chief was that
Speaker 6: he believed strongly enough that the defendant was going to
Speaker 6: testify that the theory would be to try to argue
Speaker 6: manslaughter and get less of a sentence than murdered, because
Speaker 6: that is going to be the biggest weakness of their case.
Speaker 6: Is if he said, no, I choked her first, it
Speaker 6: was an accident, and he admitted that he did it,
Speaker 6: and the argument was about whether or not he intended it,
Speaker 6: and so forth, there would have been a legitimate chance
Speaker 6: to get a manslaughter conviction as opposed to murder. However,
Speaker 6: what Kavanough didn't know, and he couldn't know because he's
Speaker 6: not privy to it, was Dawson had no intention of
Speaker 6: pleading to anything, and their strategy from the beginning was
Speaker 6: to go for an acquittal. So once he finished his case,
Speaker 6: Dawson didn't testify. In fact, he only called one defense witness,
Speaker 6: and it was a police officer, and it was just
Speaker 6: designed to get some information to try to preclude some things,
Speaker 6: and it was to try to shore up something on
Speaker 6: an appeal because the judge had denied certain things and
Speaker 6: that was it. He didn't really present a defense. He
Speaker 6: was just going to argue that the evidence was insufficient
Speaker 6: and they didn't have a lot of evidence. Now, if
Speaker 6: this case occurred today, a very different scenario, because the
Speaker 6: forensics are so much better today than they were in
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty eight. And during the trial in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 6: there was a lot of blood and yet more often
Speaker 6: than not, they couldn't even type it. The only blood
Speaker 6: they were able to actually get a typing for was
Speaker 6: the blood that was found in the orange basin I
Speaker 6: mentioned before, and it was covered in blood. Nowadays you
Speaker 6: can not only get typing, but you can get DNA
Speaker 6: from a drop. DNA was in its absolute infancy. It
Speaker 6: was rarely used at that point, and they didn't even
Speaker 6: try it, and they probably wouldn't except for the one basin.
Speaker 6: They may not even had enough base in the way
Speaker 6: it was done back then to do DNA, So without that,
Speaker 6: the only blood that they typed was consistent with Annie's
Speaker 6: blood and not consistent with the defendant, so they really
Speaker 6: didn't have a lot of blood evidence to go with.
Speaker 6: There was a bite mark that they bruise that was
Speaker 6: believed to be be a bite, and they brought in
Speaker 6: a dentist, doctor Mobson, who testified that he felt that
Speaker 6: the defendant caused the bite. Although I thought Littman probably
Speaker 6: his best cross examination was the cross examination of the defendant.
Speaker 6: The dentist, I should say, in that he really assailed
Speaker 6: the bite, and he got the witness to say, well,
Speaker 6: if he only bit a bitter once, it's not consistent.
Speaker 6: And he tried to come up with this theory that
Speaker 6: he had bitten her, that she had moved during the bite,
Speaker 6: and that doesn't really make any sense because if he
Speaker 6: beat her over the head first, she's unconscious, but both
Speaker 6: doctors admit that. And if he choked her first, it's
Speaker 6: unlo You know, that might come for the bite, but
Speaker 6: why are you going to bite while you're choking. That
Speaker 6: doesn't make any sense. So I didn't wasn't overly impressed
Speaker 6: with it, but that was the only physical scientific evidence
Speaker 6: that they tried to connect Dawson to it. Was that
Speaker 6: bite mark. And considering the time period, there was another
Speaker 6: prompt serial killer that had been convicted largely on white
Speaker 6: mark evidence down in Florida, and so that was in
Speaker 6: the news a lot, and it was difficult to really
Speaker 6: convince the jury that this wasn't great evidence. As I've
Speaker 6: mentioned in the book, as the years worth gone on,
Speaker 6: there have been a number of cases where white mark
Speaker 6: evidence was the basis of a conviction and once they
Speaker 6: could do DNA, they found out the person didn't do it.
Speaker 6: So and in Texas there's been a call for a
Speaker 6: moratorium on it. And Texas is not exactly known as
Speaker 6: a criminal defendant's paradise. It's concerned to be a prosecutor's paradise.
Speaker 6: And yet even there they're talking about a moratorium on
Speaker 6: that type of evidence. So so it would have been
Speaker 6: a different case today. But both sides had some interesting
Speaker 6: arguments to make, and you know, it ended up going
Speaker 6: to the juror with both sides thinking they had a shot.
Speaker 8: When you talk about the pathologist's testimony, though, to a
Speaker 8: discredit the testimony of Dawson to say that there was
Speaker 8: this was an accident that he had found blood on
Speaker 8: the back of the head, explain what those conclusions were
Speaker 8: and how that really discounted what Dawson had said in
Speaker 8: the statement.
Speaker 6: Okay, Actually the jury must have been pretty confused because
Speaker 6: they didn't understand why he kept asking about the back
Speaker 6: of his head, because they never heard Dawson saying that
Speaker 6: he the head, but he did have him stayed over
Speaker 6: and over again. There were no bruises, significant bruises in
Speaker 6: the back of the head that showed a lot of
Speaker 6: blood because in the statement that he likely intended to
Speaker 6: use to impeach Dawson if he testified, Dawston said he
Speaker 6: put his hand under the back of under the back
Speaker 6: of her head, and when he came back to this blood.
Speaker 6: What Lippmann tried to point out was she had a
Speaker 6: significant cut on the side of her ear, and there
Speaker 6: was an argument about whether or not that it could
Speaker 6: have been caused by her falling on a stick. The
Speaker 6: witness kept saying, no, she had to be struck with
Speaker 6: a stick. I didn't find that particularly credible because if
Speaker 6: you're hit by the stick, either by being swung or
Speaker 6: you fall with enough force, there's not a lot of
Speaker 6: difference there. And if you know she was found on
Speaker 6: her back so the blood you know, from the ear
Speaker 6: would easily have rolled rolled back down her neck and
Speaker 6: as he reached under that could have been the blood
Speaker 6: he got on his hand in theory. But there was
Speaker 6: a lot of argument back and forth on that. It
Speaker 6: never really became significant for the jury because, as I said,
Speaker 6: Dawson didn't testify and they never heard the tape.
Speaker 8: Now Lipman is or lipman is is making just strides,
Speaker 8: it seems you you you rate the days of the
Speaker 8: trial even when he makes a significant win, or he
Speaker 8: makes significant points or gains where Kavanaugh maybe misses an
Speaker 8: opportunity or where Litman capitalizes on an opportunity. So you
Speaker 8: talk about that he really is going for this full acquittal,
Speaker 8: which Kavanaugh is not really aware of. So he's really
Speaker 8: just trying to make points where there might be reasonable
Speaker 8: doubt in that jury. That's really all he's trying to do,
Speaker 8: isn't it.
Speaker 6: Yes, And let me just add something. You're right when
Speaker 6: you say that I point out, well, there was a
Speaker 6: mistake here, and why did this one do that? Even
Speaker 6: as attorney myself, I have to recognize it's easy for
Speaker 6: me to look back on a trial, looking at a
Speaker 6: cold record and reading it and be able to do that.
Speaker 6: It is a completely different thing. And I've been there
Speaker 6: as an attorney when you were actually in the heat
Speaker 6: of battle and you're going back and forth, much more
Speaker 6: difficult to make those decisions and those calaus and so forth,
Speaker 6: and even some of the best attorneys out there are
Speaker 6: going to do things that people are going to look
Speaker 6: at say geez, why did you do that? You know,
Speaker 6: the idea of Dawson testifying was a very reasonable conclusion.
Speaker 6: I would have put the you know, I would have
Speaker 6: put the tape in just because I prefer to keep
Speaker 6: the defendant off the standard generally, because you know, the
Speaker 6: jury is always told not to take it into consideration
Speaker 6: that the defendant didn't testify, but they they always do
Speaker 6: even though they're not supposed to. So my preferce would
Speaker 6: have been to put it in. But I understand what
Speaker 6: my Kavanaugh was doing. He was setting a trap for
Speaker 6: the defendant, and uh defendant just decided not to testify.
Speaker 6: The other reason he didn't want to testify is because
Speaker 6: the jury would have found out in some detail about
Speaker 6: his prior record. There was a mistake made by mister
Speaker 6: Lippman that allowed some of that information to get to
Speaker 6: the jury, which by that may have made it easier
Speaker 6: for me to testify. But well, there was there were
Speaker 6: mistakes on both sides. But when you're in the heat
Speaker 6: of battle like that, that can happen. And I don't
Speaker 6: want people to think that I thought. I don't think
Speaker 6: highly of either man. I didn't know mister Lippman. He
Speaker 6: was pretty much retired by the time I started practicing.
Speaker 6: But Mike Cavanugh I've known for a long time and
Speaker 6: I had a great deal of respect for him. So
Speaker 6: I can understand how these things happen in the heat
Speaker 6: of battle because the pressure is on. I mean, here
Speaker 6: you are as a prosecutor's trying to get justice for
Speaker 6: any and her family's there and very much wants to
Speaker 6: see justice done. And on the other hand's defense attorney.
Speaker 6: You've got this guy's life in your hands. He's going
Speaker 6: to spend the rest of his life like lean jail
Speaker 6: if you lose. It's a lot of pressure and it's
Speaker 6: not an easy thing to be in that situation. I've
Speaker 6: been there on both sides. It's difficult.
Speaker 8: No more of it's not again. Mistake is probably too
Speaker 8: big a word because it's more of minor missteps. Again,
Speaker 8: in retrospect, it's easy to say, well, that was done,
Speaker 8: but it's almost a flawless performance by both people, and
Speaker 8: you just point out where there was just that advantage
Speaker 8: that from one attorney to the other and from witness
Speaker 8: to witness.
Speaker 6: Now we talked about one that I thought was a blunder.
Speaker 6: There was one that I thought was particularly bad, and
Speaker 6: that was where the defense attream mister Littman allowed the
Speaker 6: jury to learn through his own mistake that his client
Speaker 6: had a criminal record that was pretty big. Yes, that
Speaker 6: was a blunder. I even called it a blunder in
Speaker 6: the book. That was bad. The others, you know, questions
Speaker 6: of strategy and like I said, minor things in the
Speaker 6: heat of battle, But that one was a blunder.
Speaker 8: What about the what about the decision not to insinuate
Speaker 8: or intimate that Joseph Kiernan could have been the murderer?
Speaker 8: What do you think of Whipman's you know, reluctance to
Speaker 8: do that.
Speaker 6: He has since retired and lives in Mexico. Now, so
Speaker 6: I didn't get a chose to interview him. I would
Speaker 6: have loved to have asked him that because were I
Speaker 6: the defense attorney, I would have been screaming at the
Speaker 6: top of my lungs that you know Kiernan was was
Speaker 6: the suspect, was the murderer. You had a man who
Speaker 6: has clear mental issues. He doesn't have any real alibi
Speaker 6: for the time prior. He says he was sleeping in
Speaker 6: the woods, which there was some support of that, but who,
Speaker 6: even with the support they had, who knew what time
Speaker 6: he actually got up. He had made statements to the
Speaker 6: police at one point where he was he admitted doing
Speaker 6: a perverted thing with the body. There was an article
Speaker 6: in the paper where the police chief had stated that
Speaker 6: Kiernan had actually admitted at one point to cutting the body.
Speaker 6: He then recanted it, So he got a crazy person.
Speaker 6: Who's in this? Who's there? And the only thing that
Speaker 6: was done when Kavanaugh gave his clothing, he said, well,
Speaker 6: you know we have his clothes. There wasn't blood found
Speaker 6: on his clothes. Well, on the pair of jeans that
Speaker 6: they found in mister Dawson's home with the service of
Speaker 6: the warrant, they found basically like a dot of blood
Speaker 6: and that was it. And they tried to say, well
Speaker 6: it was washed away because that night he was he
Speaker 6: swam in a pool and washed it off. Well, even
Speaker 6: then they used luminol, and luminol would have lit it
Speaker 6: up like a tree even if he had swam in
Speaker 6: a pool. So, you know, been screaming from the top
Speaker 6: of my lungs that Kiernan was the suspect, and I
Speaker 6: don't understand why he didn't. There must have been a reason.
Speaker 6: I would have loved to have spoken with him and
Speaker 6: find out. But that's something that should have been argued
Speaker 6: in my opinion. But then again, like I said, it's
Speaker 6: easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.
Speaker 8: Now, one of the most interesting and just dramatic and
Speaker 8: sort of visual things is is Jeff Dawson's wife Rose,
Speaker 8: and her involvement is this whole thing. And you say
Speaker 8: she was there all the time, sitting behind him, supporting him,
Speaker 8: and you tell about her response. But she's a really
Speaker 8: good effective prosecution witness against her husband. So tell us
Speaker 8: a little bit about what she actually says. I found
Speaker 8: an interesting. She even talks about what he looked like,
Speaker 8: what he was wearing. Tell us about her testimony and
Speaker 8: how important it was to this case.
Speaker 6: Well, there were two major parts of her testimony. One
Speaker 6: was and she was a reluctant witness. But the one
Speaker 6: was that he had lied about his initial alibi, that
Speaker 6: he was out and about after they went home and
Speaker 6: he went back out, so he did have means to
Speaker 6: do so so, and it also showed he had lied
Speaker 6: to the police, and it never looks good for her
Speaker 6: defendant when it shown that he lied to the police.
Speaker 6: The second thing was she said that he had been
Speaker 6: wearing a white cap, that evening skull cap type cap.
Speaker 6: And she mentioned that he had been wearing blue pants.
Speaker 6: They had recovered a period of blue jeans and they
Speaker 6: were trying to get her to say a trial that
Speaker 6: he was wearing blue jeans, and she said, no, it
Speaker 6: wasn't blue jeans. It was a different type of blue pants.
Speaker 6: And they argued about that quite a bit. But basically,
Speaker 6: her major part of her testimony was that he lied
Speaker 6: to the police and he was out and about and
Speaker 6: had the opportunity to commit the crime. And you know
Speaker 6: when that's coming from your wife, that doesn't look good
Speaker 6: to the George.
Speaker 8: What was the significance of the T shirt that was
Speaker 8: found within Annie's clothes and then her testimony that he
Speaker 8: came home without a shirt or did I get this wrong.
Speaker 6: That well, as I mentioned, there was a second crime
Speaker 6: scene the day they were out in this all happened.
Speaker 6: They eventually got a call and they went into it
Speaker 6: into the alley. It was the same alley way that
Speaker 6: I had mentioned between Chief Charlie's and Royal Grill, and
Speaker 6: they found a pile of clothes were they were identified
Speaker 6: as any guard's clothes. They were bloody, and there was
Speaker 6: a white man's T shirt that was there that was
Speaker 6: covered in blood. And they did find some hair evidence
Speaker 6: that was consistent with Jeff Dawson on that shirt. And
Speaker 6: you know, it was pretty it was good evidence in
Speaker 6: that protestifying that he came home without a shirt was
Speaker 6: such that that obviously he had lost his shirt somewhere
Speaker 6: he had taken it off, so it supported the idea
Speaker 6: that this was his shirt with the clothes. And you know,
Speaker 6: once the jury hears this and breaches a conclusion that
Speaker 6: his clothes were with the clothes of the person was murdered,
Speaker 6: what other reason would there be for him to get
Speaker 6: rid of his shirt? Then you know, he got blood
Speaker 6: all over it, and the idea that he wiped his
Speaker 6: hands on his shirt really didn't didn't follow the you know,
Speaker 6: the idea was that he had blood on his shirt
Speaker 6: that splashed on him on he was coller, you know,
Speaker 6: beating him with the brick.
Speaker 8: In this trial as well. You talk again, we talked
Speaker 8: about Rose being there. Who are the people that were
Speaker 8: surprisingly absent from this trial in your mind?
Speaker 6: Well, some of Dawson's family didn't, weren't always there, you know,
Speaker 6: members of There were different members of Anty's family that
Speaker 6: were theirs. Her mother testified and that was a very
Speaker 6: difficult day for them. By the end, it was pretty
Speaker 6: much Dawson's wife and Dawson's sister that was there, you know.
Speaker 6: But it isn't easy to see a family member, you know,
Speaker 6: on a trial like that, And there were some that
Speaker 6: were there and some that were not. You know, over
Speaker 6: the years, I've seen different trials where you would think
Speaker 6: certain family members are there and they're not, either because
Speaker 6: they can't handle the idea of hearing about a loved
Speaker 6: one that was killed, or they just can't keep their
Speaker 6: emotions and check while a loved one is on trial.
Speaker 6: So not necessarily shocking that you'll see family members from
Speaker 6: both sides not there from time to time, because the
Speaker 6: emotions on both sides can often be overwhelming.
Speaker 8: Now it was established that she was killed between two
Speaker 8: and four. That was raised in the trial as well.
Speaker 8: What we didn't mention is the attitude that Jeff Dawson
Speaker 8: had towards his attorney Litman. What was what was it?
Speaker 6: He didn't like him?
Speaker 8: Tell us about that?
Speaker 6: Well, Livan was his third attorney. The first attorney he
Speaker 6: had was a man named Jerry Flattery, and he actually
Speaker 6: liked Jerry Flatter and it's not surprising Jerry's a very
Speaker 6: prominent criminal offense attorney. He had to withdraw because he
Speaker 6: said he had a conflict that fired him to withdraw,
Speaker 6: and to this day he's never discussed it, which just
Speaker 6: shows that he's an ethical attorney. But in all likelihood
Speaker 6: through he had a client who told him that he
Speaker 6: and Todd Sleid had committed some robberies and so forth.
Speaker 6: But in order to use that information to try to
Speaker 6: impeach on Sleid, he would have had to give up
Speaker 6: his client. So after that there was another attorney and
Speaker 6: he didn't last very long. He was out relatively quickly,
Speaker 6: and then finally County Court Judge Judge Vote told him,
Speaker 6: this is your last attorney, so if you fire this guy,
Speaker 6: you're on your own. He didn't really get along very well.
Speaker 6: The media was constantly questioning Dawson as he would go
Speaker 6: back to jail. He'd be brought out of the courthouse
Speaker 6: to the waiting policeman, and he'd make comments about how
Speaker 6: bad his attorney was and so forth. They'd ask Lipman
Speaker 6: about it. Until Lipman's credit, he would say things like,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to discuss the case. I'm not going
Speaker 6: to discuss that. He would ignore it, which couldn't have
Speaker 6: been easy. I mean, here you got somebody that's questioning
Speaker 6: your ability, questioning your ethics, which is no fun when
Speaker 6: somebody does that. But you have to be able to
Speaker 6: not respond to that, because if you do that, you're
Speaker 6: attacking your own client, and that's contrary to what you're
Speaker 6: supposed to do. It sounds easy, but let me assure
Speaker 6: you it's not.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about the decision on January nineteenth, nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty nine, and if it looks like a slam dunk,
Speaker 8: the jurors are deliberating and people are awaiting that decision.
Speaker 8: But when they have notes coming from the jury to
Speaker 8: clarify things, people are really get tense about the things
Speaker 8: like that that there might be some reasonable doubt, don't
Speaker 8: they And so what were some of the things that
Speaker 8: they they were asking for clarification during that time.
Speaker 6: Well, the first thing that they came back in is
Speaker 6: they wanted to hear the recordings of the conversation that
Speaker 6: has been done between the defendant and Todd Sleet his
Speaker 6: friend new work the wire, and they it was the
Speaker 6: original tape and then there was the scientifically enhanced one.
Speaker 6: So you know, when that came out and they heard
Speaker 6: it was playing for them, there was you know, there's
Speaker 6: always speculation about what the jurors are thinking and whether
Speaker 6: you know, people always say, oh, that's good for the prosecution,
Speaker 6: that's good for the No one really knows for sure,
Speaker 6: but obviously they were focusing on that, so some people thought, well,
Speaker 6: that's good for the defense, because if they're focusing on that,
Speaker 6: maybe they're looking as they're not considering the other evidence
Speaker 6: that's out there. So in any instance, so they go
Speaker 6: back in. They also requested a chalkboard and chalk that
Speaker 6: was given to them, and they go back, they deliberate,
Speaker 6: then they come out and they're asking for a clarification
Speaker 6: about the law. Now, in this case, the judge charged
Speaker 6: intentional murder being killed with intent. You also charged manslaughter,
Speaker 6: you know, the idea of an accidental death and so forth,
Speaker 6: and they were asking for They also charged what they
Speaker 6: call depraved indifference murder, which is kind of between the two.
Speaker 6: It's the equivalent of intentional murder, but it's a different theory.
Speaker 6: It means you may not have acted with intent to kill,
Speaker 6: but your conduct was so outrageous and so reckless and
Speaker 6: so depraved to human life that it was obvious that
Speaker 6: death could occur and you just didn't care. So that
Speaker 6: they had to go through all of that, so that
Speaker 6: now there's some thought about, well, maybe they're not going
Speaker 6: to go with the intentional murder, maybe they're going to
Speaker 6: come back with man story. And you know, they had
Speaker 6: some more. They came back another time for some testimony
Speaker 6: again about that conversation. They eventually were ordered dinner, and
Speaker 6: then after that they finally came back and they had
Speaker 6: a verdict. But it took quite a while. A lot
Speaker 6: of people were expecting would be over quick, but it wasn't.
Speaker 8: And the verdict was what in the end.
Speaker 6: They found him. Well, the first charge they had to
Speaker 6: talk about was intentional murder. They wouldn't get to the
Speaker 6: other charges unless they found him not guilty, and the
Speaker 6: foreman announced they had found him guilty of murder in
Speaker 6: the second degree the first count, and so there was
Speaker 6: nothing else to ask them other than the traditional polling
Speaker 6: of the jury, which for non attorneys who were listening,
Speaker 6: what that means is in order to confirm that it's unan,
Speaker 6: the defense will ask the judge to question each juror individually,
Speaker 6: what is your verdict, and you'll have each one of
Speaker 6: them say guilty, guilty, guilty, and nine and ninety nine
Speaker 6: hundred thousand times out of a million pep, you're going
Speaker 6: to have all twelve saying guilty. But once in a
Speaker 6: while you get somebody that hedges or says I can't
Speaker 6: do this, So the defense always asks for it, but
Speaker 6: it's very very rare to see it and not happen.
Speaker 6: I've never seen it happen. But I saw one more
Speaker 6: guy hedged a little bit, but he eventually said no,
Speaker 6: and that was it, and there actually was an appeal
Speaker 6: on that, but ampletely different case. So if they asked
Speaker 6: them for the polling, they all confirmed it, and then
Speaker 6: the case was adjourned for sentencing and that was the
Speaker 6: end of the trial, except per sentence in some time.
Speaker 8: Later you write about meanwhile, because people haven't forgotten about
Speaker 8: this Joseph Kernan and and tell us about the charges
Speaker 8: that are laid on him. And then what happened to
Speaker 8: every single one of his hearings with Alton Maddox as
Speaker 8: his attorney, Well.
Speaker 6: They kept coming back to have what they call a
Speaker 6: hauntly hearing. A haunting hearing is a pree child hearing
Speaker 6: to determine whether or not the statement given by the
Speaker 6: defendant to the police was voluntary. You know, although you're
Speaker 6: allowed to trick them into making statements, you can't beat
Speaker 6: it out of them, and the statement has to be voluntary.
Speaker 6: So they were going to have this hearing and they
Speaker 6: kept the Dawson and a Tiernon at this point was
Speaker 6: out unbailed, and he kept showing up every time, but
Speaker 6: Maddox didn't, and each time there was an excuse given
Speaker 6: he was in court on another matter, and they confronted it.
Speaker 6: In fact, one time he was actually representing al Sharpton
Speaker 6: on that and he didn't show. He didn't show. Finally
Speaker 6: he shows up, but Dawson's not keep saying Dawston's he's
Speaker 6: getting tired. T isn't there and he said where is he?
Speaker 6: And Maddix as well, he went to California. Now this
Speaker 6: is in front of Judge Brun in city court, because
Speaker 6: in New York misdemeanors are tried in local court except
Speaker 6: under very rare circumstances. So Judge Brune and city court,
Speaker 6: and now he's kind of annoyed and he says, well,
Speaker 6: why did he go to California? He said, well, he
Speaker 6: says he went on vacation. There was no restrictions on
Speaker 6: his ability to travel, so he went out there and
Speaker 6: he ran out of money. Last I knowed he was
Speaker 6: in Arizona somewhere. But he caused me periodically, and George
Speaker 6: Brune really flushed his fine, he went on vacation, but
Speaker 6: you're not explaining to me during the midst of all this,
Speaker 6: why did he start to suddenly decide to travel? And
Speaker 6: Maddox made one of the best lines of the entire case.
Speaker 6: He looked at Judge Brune without missing and beat me.
Speaker 6: He said, well, he's a man of the world, judge,
Speaker 6: And by all accounts, Brune himself kind of smiled when
Speaker 6: he said that, and the case was adjourned. Eventually there
Speaker 6: was a warrant put out for him, but he never
Speaker 6: returned to Kingston, and so the case never never was,
Speaker 6: never went on trial. And you know whether or not
Speaker 6: he did it, and whether or not they could have
Speaker 6: convicted him, all that is disclosed in the book. But
Speaker 6: that's one thing I'm holding back for the readers. You
Speaker 6: want to learn that when you got to buy the book.
Speaker 6: But absolutely, because that's one of the few things that
Speaker 6: no one ever knew the answer to. And I found
Speaker 6: it so absolutely, but it was Yeah, so when I
Speaker 6: read that when he said he's a man of the world, Judge,
Speaker 6: I said, that's going in the book. It's knowing. That's
Speaker 6: a great line.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So the sentencing was shortly after and
Speaker 8: what are the laws of New York in terms of
Speaker 8: what you could give a defendant sentence to this second
Speaker 8: degree murder.
Speaker 6: At that time the maximum sentence was twenty five to
Speaker 6: life and that's what Judge Books sentenced him too.
Speaker 8: And obviously he did he have appeals? Did he exhaust
Speaker 8: those appeals?
Speaker 6: Do you write about love's appeals? He exhausted them. And
Speaker 6: then twenty nine years later, about a month before my
Speaker 6: book is to come out. He gets parole, and he
Speaker 6: moved back into the era where I live. And I
Speaker 6: never thinking to myself, this is like the ultimate example
Speaker 6: of Murphy's law. I got a book coming out and
Speaker 6: about a month that's going to say he did it,
Speaker 6: and they cut him loose and he lives in the area.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 6: And I'm not concerned about it. Like I said, I don't.
Speaker 6: I concluded that he didn't intend to kill her, And
Speaker 6: I mean he was guilty in my in my by
Speaker 6: my conclusion, I don't think he intended to kill her.
Speaker 6: He did, by my reckoning. He served his time. He's
Speaker 6: out on parole. You know, I'm hoping that he's been reformed.
Speaker 6: We'll see, you know, I don't. I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 6: If I was tied Shleeed, I'd be worried because he's
Speaker 6: the one that really a dropped the dime on him,
Speaker 6: so to speak. But you know, sure, but it was
Speaker 6: just quite than one month before the book there it is.
Speaker 8: You talk a little too that Shleid and Dawson were
Speaker 8: good friends from right from the start. They were friends forever,
Speaker 8: weren't they.
Speaker 6: They've been friends a long time though at the During
Speaker 6: this testimony, Shlee was asked, you know, if they were friends,
Speaker 6: and he said, no, we're associates, and he tried to
Speaker 6: downplay that they were friends. But you know, I mean
Speaker 6: the fact that Dawson confided in him what he had done.
Speaker 6: You know, it's not the type of thing to go
Speaker 6: up to some stranger and say, hey, by the way,
Speaker 6: I just wanted to tell you I killed somebody.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: So they obviously were friends. They had they had been
Speaker 6: known to hang out together quite a bit. But I
Speaker 6: highly doubt they would still consider each other friends anymore.
Speaker 8: Sure, you you do write about what you think happened,
Speaker 8: and so you just mentioned that you think that it
Speaker 8: was an accident. So tell us what your conclusions were
Speaker 8: on what happened that night with Dawson and Annie Kidkard.
Speaker 6: Well, as I had said, I think Annie was looking
Speaker 6: to find somebody to hang out with that evening and
Speaker 6: do something. And I believe they I believe they went
Speaker 6: into the hour together. And I keep saying Ali, but
Speaker 6: the railway bed, I think they got into an argument,
Speaker 6: and you know exactly what it was about. Nobody knows.
Speaker 6: It could have been about It could have been about alcohol.
Speaker 6: It could have been about doing something. I know some people,
Speaker 6: some of the officers thought maybe that it that he
Speaker 6: there was a sexual overture by Dawson, she rejected him.
Speaker 6: Whatever it was, whatever the argument was, I think part
Speaker 6: of what daw since it was true. I think he
Speaker 6: said eventually said get away from me. He pushed her
Speaker 6: and so forth, and I think she got mad when
Speaker 6: he pushed her and probably started yelling at him. Todd
Speaker 6: Sley they said he noted a slight bruise on Duston's eye,
Speaker 6: so it's if that's credible, then perhaps maybe she smacked him.
Speaker 6: I think was and grabbed her in her choke hold,
Speaker 6: not trying to kill her, but the controller and calm
Speaker 6: her down. I think he hit the choke hold just
Speaker 6: correct on the corota artery, and I think with the
Speaker 6: edited adrenaline, the fact that he had done cocaine earlier
Speaker 6: in the day and was drinking vodka earlier in the day,
Speaker 6: that and all the adrenaline and his strength, I think
Speaker 6: he hit it just right. He fractured the horn of
Speaker 6: the larynx and she went unconscious immediately, and I think
Speaker 6: he panicked. I thought she was dead, and I think
Speaker 6: he decided to make it look like a psychopath did it.
Speaker 6: I think he is the one that cut the kk
Speaker 6: cain and her legs. I mean, you know, no one
Speaker 6: would ever suspect man of putting the KKK on somebody.
Speaker 6: You know, they just it's not something they would do.
Speaker 6: So he made it look like a crazy man did
Speaker 6: it to try to cover his tracks. And again, the
Speaker 6: sad thing really is that if he had not panicked
Speaker 6: and he just picked her up after she went unconscious
Speaker 6: and brought her to the hospital, he deserved some time
Speaker 6: in prison because he was on parole at the time
Speaker 6: for a burglary. He had gone back, but he wouldn't
Speaker 6: have spent twenty nine years in prison, and then he
Speaker 6: would still be alive. But that's what I think happened.
Speaker 8: You don't write about this in the book, but do
Speaker 8: you think that Dawson was well aware of the Tanya
Speaker 8: Browley case and that's why the KKK was carved in
Speaker 8: her specifically?
Speaker 6: I have no hard doubt that he knew about Ray.
Speaker 6: I mean everybody was talking about it in those days.
Speaker 6: I mean, like I said, Pickipsy's only a little over
Speaker 6: twenty miles from here, so everybody and their mother was
Speaker 6: talking about it. It was the big news. You know.
Speaker 6: Whether or not that into his motivations, it might have,
Speaker 6: I don't know, it could have.
Speaker 8: Certainly. Another interesting thing I I want to ask before
Speaker 8: I let you go is that there was cocaine found
Speaker 8: in her nose but not in her system.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's one of the big remaining mysteries. They found
Speaker 6: a small amount of cocaine residue in her nose when
Speaker 6: they did what they call a swab, and they were
Speaker 6: taking different samples and so forth, and it tested positive
Speaker 6: for cocaine, but it wasn't in her system. Had she
Speaker 6: snorted it, unless she was killed almost instantly afterwards, it
Speaker 6: should have appeared and it didn't. Several possibilities. One is
Speaker 6: that she was sniffing it as she was choked and killed,
Speaker 6: which I don't think is likely, but it's possible. Second,
Speaker 6: it was put there post more than or Third it's
Speaker 6: a lab error. I don't know which it is. That's
Speaker 6: never that's something it's never been resolved. But you know,
Speaker 6: it is certainly a mystery of why there was cocaine
Speaker 6: resident on her nose but nothing in her system. Because
Speaker 6: snorting the reason you see people snort cocaine. It gets
Speaker 6: in your system right away.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was sad too that that, again there's any
Speaker 8: depiction of a victim their bad behavior or or their
Speaker 8: past misdeeds. And it was sad to see that her
Speaker 8: father had made a statement that she was a victim
Speaker 8: of drugs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he did make that statement. You know. The point
Speaker 6: that you're making actually goes to the title that I chose.
Speaker 6: It's why I call it sidetracked. Some people think that
Speaker 6: it's because she was found by the side of the track,
Speaker 6: but that's not correct. The reason for the title is
Speaker 6: in several points. First, being murdered is the ultimate sidetrack
Speaker 6: being you know, her retire life was taken before that.
Speaker 6: I mentioned that you you've been parting in a few
Speaker 6: months before she died, so she had sidetracked herself although
Speaker 6: she was getting herself back on track and this end.
Speaker 6: Then of course you've got Kiernan who comes in with
Speaker 6: all of his shenanigans. That sidetracks a great deal. The investigation,
Speaker 6: you got sharp and coming in and all of these things.
Speaker 6: And then the family, of course they were trying. They
Speaker 6: had to actually hold the funeral hours earlier than it
Speaker 6: was announced to keep the media from showing up and
Speaker 6: shoving microphones in their face and saying how do you
Speaker 6: feel about this? Well, how do you think they feel?
Speaker 6: So all these different things were happening that sidetracked the investigation,
Speaker 6: sidetracked the family, and then I think the last part
Speaker 6: of the sidetrack is that as the years have gone on,
Speaker 6: prior to me writing this book, you never ever ever
Speaker 6: heard anything about her in the media after he was convicted.
Speaker 6: In fact, after he was convicted, they had one article
Speaker 6: where the police said, up, We're glad this matter is done.
Speaker 6: The next time the case or she appears in the
Speaker 6: paper is when he got per rolled twenty nine years later,
Speaker 6: and even her memory got sidetracked. And that was one
Speaker 6: of the reasons I wanted to write the book because
Speaker 6: I felt her story deserved to be told. She was
Speaker 6: a real nice, nice lady and a nice person, and
Speaker 6: she deserved better than what happened to her, and she
Speaker 6: deserved have her story told. And I just hope, as
Speaker 6: I say in the introduction, I hope I did justice
Speaker 6: to her memory.
Speaker 8: Well I'm going to say, Richard, you certainly did. And
Speaker 8: it's honoring her memory and talking about how the perpetrator
Speaker 8: of this gruesome crime was brought to justice and it's
Speaker 8: a great story. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 8: for coming on and talking about Sidetrack to betrayal and
Speaker 8: murder and a kiss cart. I know this is a
Speaker 8: wild Blue Press release, but do you do Facebook? There
Speaker 8: the website for this how people might look at other work?
Speaker 8: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm on Facebook. There is a Facebook page that
Speaker 6: I created for it. I'm a better writer than I
Speaker 6: am Facebook page creator, but it is there. It's the
Speaker 6: at simple that symbol at sidetracked K hill C A
Speaker 6: H I L L with a capital C, and that's
Speaker 6: where it's at. And you're welcome to come look at that.
Speaker 6: And there's a lot of information on the wild Bloot
Speaker 6: plus website. And if you go to YouTube and you
Speaker 6: you put in sidetracked in my name, you'll see at
Speaker 6: least you'll see two different videos. One that I and
Speaker 6: a friend of mine created with my voice, and there's
Speaker 6: another one that my publisher created with another person's voice
Speaker 6: that's well better than the one I created. But I
Speaker 6: think they're both good. But the one the published that
Speaker 6: the publisher did was better because well that's what they do.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Well, Thank you very much. Richard has been a
Speaker 8: pleasure sidetracked trail and murder of Ana Kisskart. Thank you
Speaker 8: very much for this interview. You have a great evening.
Speaker 8: Thank you