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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good evening. This is your host Dan Supanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. Gary
Speaker 7: Michael Hilton once sold this movie idea to hollyo with
Speaker 7: the straight to video Deadly Run was about a man
Speaker 7: who captures women only to set them free on this
Speaker 7: very private and secluded Georgia land so that he can
Speaker 7: hunt and kill them. In two thousand and seven, at least,
Speaker 7: that's the earliest investigators have been able to prove he
Speaker 7: brought Hollywood to life when he began using state parts
Speaker 7: as his own personal hunting grounds. Convicted of murder and
Speaker 7: sentenced to death, it would seem the case was not closed.
Speaker 7: Fred Rosen was commissioned by the Atlanta Journal Constitution to
Speaker 7: write a front page piece for their Sunday section on
Speaker 7: the real timeline of Meredith Emerson's murder, which is covered
Speaker 7: in his book Trails of Death. Rosen was denied information
Speaker 7: and now realized that the timeline in the book is wrong.
Speaker 7: Emerson should probably still be alive. The truth never came out,
Speaker 7: and Rosen is pursuing the story. The book that we're
Speaker 7: going to be profiling this evening is Trails of Death Revisited,
Speaker 7: an update with my special guest journalist and author Fred Rosen.
Speaker 7: Welcome back to the and thank you for the Greens'
Speaker 7: interview Fred Rosen, Dan, how are you great? Thanks? How
Speaker 7: are you doing, Fred?
Speaker 5: I'm doing well. Thank you.
Speaker 7: For our audience. I was very interesting. I listened to
Speaker 7: our previous interview that we did months ago, and you
Speaker 7: had talked about something very very interesting, and you had
Speaker 7: mentioned the listeners to watch for something to happen in
Speaker 7: late October, and then I was in contact with you
Speaker 7: and you had said the same thing. So let's just
Speaker 7: I think maybe, unless it's you think it wouldn't be prudent.
Speaker 7: Let's go back and give sort of an overview of
Speaker 7: the Gary Michael Hilton case itself and then give us
Speaker 7: the update and how this update came to be, and
Speaker 7: talk about the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the front page
Speaker 7: piece as much as you possibly can. Let's go back
Speaker 7: to Gary Michael Hilton.
Speaker 5: Sure well, Gary Hilton. Gary Hilton is a convicted serial killer.
Speaker 5: And that's what that's what the book Trails of Death
Speaker 5: is about. Gary began killing. He's only the third person
Speaker 5: in United States history to begin his career as a
Speaker 5: serial killer in his sixties. And what happened was Gary
Speaker 5: began killing in North Carolina in October of two thousand
Speaker 5: and seven, and he killed two people there, Irene and
Speaker 5: John Bryant. And then he got back in his van
Speaker 5: and he went south to Florida where he killed, decapitated
Speaker 5: and also took off the hands of Ryl Dunlap. And
Speaker 5: Gary did these things because it was going to obscure
Speaker 5: the identity of these individuals. Then get back in the
Speaker 5: van again and went up to Georgia where he kidnapped, decapitated,
Speaker 5: or rather murdered and decapitated Meredith Emerson. And that occurred
Speaker 5: in early January of two thousand and eight. And what
Speaker 5: happened after that was after the police caught him in Georgia,
Speaker 5: he fled to the murder of Emerson, he got life
Speaker 5: in prison with parole. He was extradited to Florida where
Speaker 5: he was convicted of murdering Sheryl Dunlap and sentenced to death,
Speaker 5: and then he got extradited to North Carolina where he
Speaker 5: was convicted earlier this year in federal court for murdering
Speaker 5: the Bryants on federal land and sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 5: And essentially that is where things have stood and where
Speaker 5: I come into it regarding doing a further investigation is
Speaker 5: I've become privy to certain information which I am working
Speaker 5: on right now, and it will sort of extend this
Speaker 5: case and it will elucidate certain aspects of it that
Speaker 5: to this point in time haven't been And that is
Speaker 5: the story I'm working on for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Speaker 7: Okay, now, tell us a little bit more, because what
Speaker 7: we alluded to and we spoke of, I spoke of
Speaker 7: in the introduction was the timeline. So that's that's pretty basic.
Speaker 7: But tell us a little bit more without giving anything away.
Speaker 7: If you whatever you can't give away, please don't. But
Speaker 7: tell us more what aspect we're dealing with, and how
Speaker 7: much and how important is this pre development.
Speaker 5: Well, let's put it this way. You're a hell of
Speaker 5: a good journalist for pressing things. No, I mean it,
Speaker 5: because I can't really talk about it, but I can
Speaker 5: say this. The there was a timeline that was released
Speaker 5: by the police in Georgia, and that timeline includes when
Speaker 5: she when Meredith was actually abducted, the time period during
Speaker 5: the search, and then subsequently the time period during when
Speaker 5: she was uh murdered, and then when they finally capture
Speaker 5: mister Hilton. Now, one of the things that I can
Speaker 5: talk about because this is this is already public, is this,
Speaker 5: but I sort of put it together a little bit differently,
Speaker 5: and that and that is this that Gary Hilton had
Speaker 5: a federal warned out for his arrest at the time
Speaker 5: of all of these murders, and believe it or not,
Speaker 5: for abandoning his car on federal land in Georgia, Okay,
Speaker 5: and it is a misdemeanor warrant. And this did not
Speaker 5: and what makes it interesting, and this is really the
Speaker 5: periphery of what I'm doing. But again, I don't mind
Speaker 5: talking about this because this is certainly this has been reported.
Speaker 5: But what I've done is basically put it all together.
Speaker 5: And what occurred was this that this warrant occurred in
Speaker 5: two thousand and six, and the warrant was never served
Speaker 5: because they couldn't find Hilton, And what subsequently happened was
Speaker 5: that the warrant just remained outstanding and it was for
Speaker 5: his arrest. And what occurs is that after he kills
Speaker 5: the Bryans in North Carolina, Irene and John Bryant, he
Speaker 5: has stopped in Georgia in a rural area and his
Speaker 5: license is run and the warrant doesn't come up. He
Speaker 5: then goes to the Apalachicola National Forest in Florida and
Speaker 5: he gets stopped there and the warrant is run and
Speaker 5: it doesn't come up again, and then he subsequently will
Speaker 5: kill Ryl Dunlap and Meredith Emerson. The story that I'm
Speaker 5: writing deals with, among other things, why that warrant did
Speaker 5: not come up when these people stopped him. So I
Speaker 5: will be answering that question in the article. And I've
Speaker 5: been able to get the cooperation of the United States
Speaker 5: Marshall Service. They've been very kind and helping, and they've
Speaker 5: actually been great, Actually, they've really been great. And so
Speaker 5: I'm in the process of interviewing other individuals to put
Speaker 5: together the rest of this information so that we have
Speaker 5: a more accurate picture about why these people wound up dying.
Speaker 5: And this will be a story, hopefully it'll be later
Speaker 5: this month on the front page of the Sunday section
Speaker 5: of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. How'd I do good?
Speaker 7: I still have some questions, though, well.
Speaker 5: You can ask them. I don't know if I can answer.
Speaker 7: Okay. What I'm curious is is that the way you
Speaker 7: spoke about it is that, Okay, you're going to tell
Speaker 7: why even though there was these two federal warrants, that
Speaker 7: this warrant didn't come up. Now, being a curious mind
Speaker 7: that I am am, I sounds like if you did
Speaker 7: get cooperation from the US marshalls, then certainly there isn't
Speaker 7: much blame to be assigned to anyone specifically.
Speaker 5: That would be a safe assumption.
Speaker 7: Okay, is it? How groundbreaking? Is is the information?
Speaker 5: Well? I didn't think any of that stuff. I can't
Speaker 5: do that. There will be groundbreaking information in the story, uh,
Speaker 5: there will will. There will be groundbreaking information in the
Speaker 5: story because, as in any situation where individuals are abducted,
Speaker 5: the what occurs is everybody is put on alert and
Speaker 5: as an information comes out, in dribs and drabs, and
Speaker 5: it really does take time for a journalists to put
Speaker 5: together the the the the overall line of the whole thing.
Speaker 5: And it's not just it's not just the timeline, uh.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's part of it, but it's it's it's
Speaker 5: the it's getting the perspective on what happened and why
Speaker 5: it happened. And it isn't a question of of get
Speaker 5: a blame or something of that nature. It's simply what
Speaker 5: we journalists do, which is trying to get the best
Speaker 5: attainable version of the truth. And that's not an easy
Speaker 5: thing to do. And as you know, and I was looking,
Speaker 5: I've been lucky enough to be able to get access
Speaker 5: to certain information, uh that I had been denied previously,
Speaker 5: and that's helped me to really put the whole thing
Speaker 5: in perspective, so to take a look at really why
Speaker 5: these things, why these things happen the way that they happened.
Speaker 5: And that's what I think is most important, is is
Speaker 5: the why it happened and the way it happened. And
Speaker 5: again I know that I'm speaking in generalities. I you know,
Speaker 5: when you're in the middle of doing something, it's difficult
Speaker 5: to do otherwise, And but that's what the story will
Speaker 5: deal with. And so I would simply ask the listeners
Speaker 5: confidence and patience, and you know, if they, if they,
Speaker 5: you know, keep abreast with us, they will get their
Speaker 5: money's worth. And from what I understand, you can just
Speaker 5: get the paper online for nothing, so it won't cost anything.
Speaker 5: But so anyway, I'm putting it together, and there's still
Speaker 5: certain individuals that I need to speak to regarding this,
Speaker 5: and and that's that's where it's at right now.
Speaker 7: Now you can't tell us by what route you were
Speaker 7: able to gain this new information that was, as you say,
Speaker 7: was denied to you initially.
Speaker 5: Bee Trout Betroth.
Speaker 7: Okay, well enough said, then, you know, I know, I
Speaker 7: see what happened.
Speaker 5: Was in order to understand where I come into this,
Speaker 5: I had started working on this story almost three years ago.
Speaker 5: Well actually I started working on it really to day
Speaker 5: that Meredith was abducted. I started researching it, but it
Speaker 5: wouldn't be until two years later because it took time
Speaker 5: for the case to wind through the system.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: A couple of years later, I was working for Hustler magazine.
Speaker 5: I write for Larry Flint occasionally, and I was writing
Speaker 5: a story about this case, and I requested information through
Speaker 5: the Freedom of Information Act in Georgia, and I requested
Speaker 5: information regarding the case, and it went to the to
Speaker 5: the I sent it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 5: and then in some mysterious way, it wound up on
Speaker 5: the desk my request of the Speaker of the Georgia House.
Speaker 5: He then took to the floor of the Georgia Legislature
Speaker 5: and condemned me and Larry Flint. First time I've ever
Speaker 5: been in such good company and I and I had
Speaker 5: completely forgotten that Larry had been shot in Georgia, and
Speaker 5: so he's always had a very problematic relationship with the state,
Speaker 5: and as soon as they saw his name, they went
Speaker 5: ballistic on both of us. And so what occurred was
Speaker 5: that they within maybe one month of that occurring, in
Speaker 5: March of twenty ten, they rushed through the Georgia legislature
Speaker 5: some legislation called, I think it's called the Meredith Emerson
Speaker 5: Memorial Act, which made it or rather it stopped journalists
Speaker 5: and anyone else from gaining access to certain crime team photos,
Speaker 5: to certain crime reports, and so they basically shut down
Speaker 5: and from that point onward, journalists had to rely on
Speaker 5: what was given out by the state in the Georgia
Speaker 5: end of the case, and that's what occurred. And I
Speaker 5: might add that the law was passed ex post facto,
Speaker 5: which of course means that it was after the fact.
Speaker 5: So they said that what I did in requesting the
Speaker 5: information was against the law, when of course it wasn't
Speaker 5: at the time. And so the information that came out
Speaker 5: of the State of Jews was dribs and drabs, and
Speaker 5: it was whatever they wanted us in the media to get.
Speaker 5: And I wasn't the only one. I was not the
Speaker 5: only one. This was everybody else, both in the national
Speaker 5: and the international media. So if you were if you,
Speaker 5: for example, were calling from the Canadian Broadcasting Service and
Speaker 5: you asked for this information, they would deny it to you.
Speaker 5: And that, I might add, is atypical for most of
Speaker 5: the United States, most of in most of the United States,
Speaker 5: it's it's it's not that difficult to get this information.
Speaker 5: But as they said, this is what they decided to
Speaker 5: do in Georgia, and the law stands on the books,
Speaker 5: and so I'm I'm partially responsible for them shutting down
Speaker 5: on some of us. So I guess that might incur
Speaker 5: the wrath of some of my fellow journalists. But all
Speaker 5: I was doing was doing my job. And the kicker
Speaker 5: to the story is that at the time Larry canceled
Speaker 5: the article, so I didn't even get paid. I mean,
Speaker 5: and you understand that, and I'm sure other people do.
Speaker 5: I mean, especially you know, when you're struggling through a
Speaker 5: recession like everybody else. Why why didn't they cancel the article? Well,
Speaker 5: it turned out that.
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Speaker 5: Larry was in the process of trying to get crime
Speaker 5: scene photos and again he had filed freedom of information
Speaker 5: and it was involving a wrestler named Chris Vanoit, and
Speaker 5: Vanoit had killed his family and then himself in what
Speaker 5: was later judged to be a steroid rage. And this
Speaker 5: was in Fulton County, Georgia, which is the Atlanta area,
Speaker 5: and Larry was trying quite rightly according to the law,
Speaker 5: to get photos and he was planning on running them
Speaker 5: in the magazine. And Hustler does quite a bit of
Speaker 5: good journalism and he wanted to run that with with
Speaker 5: a story. However, they were denying him these photos. And
Speaker 5: what I didn't know I just blundered right into it
Speaker 5: was that this was happening at the same time as
Speaker 5: I'm requesting the photos of the Emerson crime scene. And
Speaker 5: the next thing you know, Dan, I'm getting condemned, and
Speaker 5: you can look this up on the web, folks. I'm
Speaker 5: getting condemned for wanting to publish pictures of the headless
Speaker 5: corpse and that was never the case. And so in
Speaker 5: order to stop the bad publicity that I was getting
Speaker 5: and these individuals in Georgia from condemning me, I wrote
Speaker 5: an Atlanta Journal constitution on that piece, in which I
Speaker 5: explained what I was trying to do was deduce what
Speaker 5: Gary's m O was, what Gary Hilton's m was, to
Speaker 5: see if I could tie him into other crimes and
Speaker 5: to understand what this guy was doing, because that's what
Speaker 5: our job is, to understand it and to report it.
Speaker 5: And I was lucky enough to be able to publish
Speaker 5: that piece for the newspaper, and that curtailed, at least
Speaker 5: at the time, the criticism toward me. But it was
Speaker 5: a very very very difficult situation for me personally, and
Speaker 5: not to mention the fact that I kept getting all
Speaker 5: these phone calls in the Georgia Press on my cell
Speaker 5: phone and I didn't have unlimited minutes, and the next
Speaker 5: thing you know, I got the big cell phone bill.
Speaker 5: So it was a very very very difficult situation for
Speaker 5: a while. Until I got to write the book, and
Speaker 5: that really helped a lot.
Speaker 7: Yes, and it's the great book, Two Trails of f
Speaker 7: You know the thing that sort of you don't downplay
Speaker 7: in the book, and I can see why, but at
Speaker 7: least in terms of this is interesting to a lot
Speaker 7: of people at the outset of this case, Gary Michael Hilton.
Speaker 7: We have not even gone into the torture van and
Speaker 7: we will get into a few things here in just
Speaker 7: a little bit when we revisit some of these content
Speaker 7: that was cool Man, Yeah, well, you know, got be dramatic.
Speaker 7: I like that, Dan cool speaking of speaking of dramatic
Speaker 7: because we spoke about in the last interview and I'm
Speaker 7: not really sure if you you applauded me from my
Speaker 7: perspective on on say, uh, you know, murder and the
Speaker 7: capital punishment, and we won't get back into the of course,
Speaker 7: I just don't agree with the death penalty. But the
Speaker 7: thing is that you spoke about was that Gary Michael
Speaker 7: Hilton had an accident later in life that almost you
Speaker 7: describe it as being scalped, and so he had this
Speaker 7: head injury, get some type of accident, and you speak
Speaker 7: about that should have been factored in to the case itself,
Speaker 7: and that should have been seriously considered, and especially when
Speaker 7: you say, you know, sixty one years old, never violent before,
Speaker 7: and then all of a sudden he turns into this
Speaker 7: vicious serial killer, decapitating and taking off hands. What I
Speaker 7: wanted to talk about was is the Hollywood movie script
Speaker 7: that he submitted, or the at least idea for the script.
Speaker 7: Tell us more about that. I think that's fascinating that
Speaker 7: this person would be actually have this movie actually happen
Speaker 7: and be out on a release, and basically years later
Speaker 7: in the area that he described in this fictional story
Speaker 7: about being in Georgia, he is convicted a charge and
Speaker 7: convicted of murder that actually happened in Georgia. So tell
Speaker 7: us more about this deadly run and his flirtation with Hollywood.
Speaker 5: Sure, and not only I'll preface this by saying this
Speaker 5: is extremely timely because I don't I don't know if
Speaker 5: we got into his appeal when I spoke to you last,
Speaker 5: but good well, it enters into his appeal and very immediately.
Speaker 5: So let me explain what happened in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 5: Gary and I call him Gary because I feel like
Speaker 5: I know him, and in writing the book, I got
Speaker 5: friendly with and I became friends with Dino Scorfani, who
Speaker 5: is his childhood friend from Highley of Florida. So and
Speaker 5: Dino took me around and he showed me all the
Speaker 5: places where they grew up. Well prior to that, when
Speaker 5: Gary was seven, a murphy bed fell on his head
Speaker 5: and scalped him, literally leaving him with frontal brain lobed
Speaker 5: damage that would not be diagnosed until he was arrested
Speaker 5: for these crimes. So we take it forward now into
Speaker 5: the nineteen nineties. Gary is a former Vietnam veteran. He
Speaker 5: was actually in the European Theater. Well, it wouldn't be
Speaker 5: the European Theater at that point, but it was in
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixties and Gary Michael Hilton, the future serial
Speaker 5: killer who literally had his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Speaker 5: The United States government had deployed handheld nuclear weapons to
Speaker 5: be fired at the East Germans if they came over
Speaker 5: the horizon in West Germany. Larry was one of those
Speaker 5: guys in what was known as the Davy Crockett Platoon.
Speaker 5: Now he winds up, he winds up getting out of
Speaker 5: the service after he has a schizophrenic, nervous breakdown. So
Speaker 5: now we've got two positive factors here, Dan, We've got that,
Speaker 5: we've got brain injury, and there's also something else which
Speaker 5: I talk about in the book. And so he winds
Speaker 5: up in the nineteen nineties. He's a con man and
Speaker 5: he runs various kinds of scams, usually involving something along
Speaker 5: the lines. It could be anything from selling magazines to
Speaker 5: homesiding or whatever it might be. And he gets arrested
Speaker 5: on some very minor misdemeanor charge in Atlanta, the Atlanta area,
Speaker 5: and he becomes friends with a man named Samuel Rail
Speaker 5: who is an attorney, and sam Rail is producing low
Speaker 5: budget films. Direct the video and Gary comes up with
Speaker 5: the idea and what we call it's what we would
Speaker 5: call the story in the movie business, and he comes
Speaker 5: up with the story for Deadly Run. And Deadly Run
Speaker 5: is about a man from Atlanta who takes beautiful girls
Speaker 5: into the distant woods, lets them go, hunts them down,
Speaker 5: and kills them. And guess what Gary takes takes Rail
Speaker 5: to this area in Georgia where he will later kill
Speaker 5: Meredith Emerson, and this is where they shoot this film
Speaker 5: in that area. So Gary writes this, Yeah, he writes
Speaker 5: the story and what happens is instead of usually if
Speaker 5: you write a story for a movie, you get stored
Speaker 5: it says story by and then screenplay by. But apparently
Speaker 5: there was some sort of a deal you know all
Speaker 5: above BOYD where Gary just decided to take the money
Speaker 5: and so his name does not appear on the film.
Speaker 5: But mister Rail has confirmed many many times in print
Speaker 5: that Gary is the dude that wrote the story. Well,
Speaker 5: this is where I think it gets very interesting here
Speaker 5: because of what you talked about earlier regarding the death penalty.
Speaker 5: During the trial which I of Cheryl Dunlap's murder in Florida,
Speaker 5: it's a death penalty trial. It's the first time, Dan,
Speaker 5: that I've ever sat through that kind of a trial.
Speaker 5: I'd never sat in on a death penalty case before,
Speaker 5: and I have to tell you that it was it
Speaker 5: was heartbreaking to me. I might have been the only
Speaker 5: one in the courtroom that I felt that way, but
Speaker 5: that's the way I felt, you know. And I'm being
Speaker 5: honest with you and with the listeners. I don't like
Speaker 5: to sit there and watch the person condemned to death. Sorry,
Speaker 5: it just doesn't you know, it doesn't work for me,
Speaker 5: especially when I knew this was a serial killer that
Speaker 5: was made. He wasn't born that way. Well, listen to
Speaker 5: this during the trial. At one point during the sentencing phase,
Speaker 5: the expert witness for the state testifies about Hilton creating
Speaker 5: the story for the movie. Okay, and this is the
Speaker 5: expert witness for the state, and he claimed that this
Speaker 5: was an example as I recall of Hilton's psychoses. Well,
Speaker 5: at that point, the defense attorney pointed out, Hey, this
Speaker 5: is true. The guy really did this. He made film
Speaker 5: into reality. Well, Hilton gets convicted and he gets sentenced.
Speaker 5: It took them about an hour and twenty minutes for
Speaker 5: twelve men and women to condemn him to the death
Speaker 5: chamber in Florida. That's an automatic mandatory appeal. It was
Speaker 5: recently heard by the Florida Court of Appeals. And you
Speaker 5: know what, I couldn't believe it. The Florida Court of
Speaker 5: Appeals stated that this whole business about the movie never
Speaker 5: should have been entered into evidence, and they didn't think
Speaker 5: it was true. They didn't think it was true. And
Speaker 5: I'm listening, you know, I'm listening to the arguments. You know,
Speaker 5: these are oral arguments available. You know, you could watch
Speaker 5: them live online, and I'm going I don't think they
Speaker 5: got that one right. You know, nobody believes it, but
Speaker 5: I can't. You know, it's like nobody wants to believe
Speaker 5: what occurred, and I and it's it's and I think
Speaker 5: the reason is you don't want to believe that's such
Speaker 5: a quote unquote monster can exist. And and and that
Speaker 5: right there is the problem. People don't want to believe that,
Speaker 5: nor do they want to see the warning signs. Dan,
Speaker 5: There are always warning signs with these individuals. And if
Speaker 5: you take as take a look at Hilton's background as
Speaker 5: I did in Tales of Death, what you'll see is
Speaker 5: you'll see there's a pattern. And it's up to the psychiatrists,
Speaker 5: social workers, all of these individuals. They're the ones who
Speaker 5: are supposed to be following this dude. But that doesn't happen.
Speaker 5: And that's what what's what's unfortunate, not just in this case,
Speaker 5: but in many other cases. I mean, you know, stop
Speaker 5: me at any point, okay, because you know me, I'll
Speaker 5: just go on and on.
Speaker 7: Well, what I wanted to what I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 7: is that being a big student of the law, basically
Speaker 7: watching it and hearing decisions and studying decisions. To a
Speaker 7: certain degree, we talk about at least in for all
Speaker 7: intentsive purpose, we're talking about an intent to murder is
Speaker 7: diminished if someone is like in this country, we talk
Speaker 7: about self induced intoxication reducing criminal responsibility, but when we're
Speaker 7: talking about insanity, you could say insanity or not criminally
Speaker 7: responsible because they didn't have the intent to commit the crime.
Speaker 7: Because they were insane, they were not of their right mind.
Speaker 7: They were acting out of character. And you're talking about
Speaker 7: a man that acted out of character now to rebut that, to.
Speaker 5: Argue with you, to a.
Speaker 7: Certain degree, the movie really shows a lot of calculation.
Speaker 7: He fantasized. He certainly knew how he fictionalized something was
Speaker 7: convincing enough to a movie maker and was made into
Speaker 7: a movie. To some kind of certain degree. Absolutely, that
Speaker 7: would be that would sound like somebody is very calculating,
Speaker 7: since he set this fictional hunting ground in Georgia and
Speaker 7: he did kill in Georgia, like you had mentioned. The
Speaker 7: other thing is that some of the things we talked
Speaker 7: about the torture van, we just alluded to it. But
Speaker 7: he had all this weaponry and a way of sub
Speaker 7: doing somebody in that van. A lot of the things
Speaker 7: he did decapitation, hands removed, So a lot of people
Speaker 7: would argue that there's all this calculation, there's all of
Speaker 7: this planning, there is all of this evading the law.
Speaker 7: How do you answer to that in terms of not
Speaker 7: criminally responsible due to some form of organic and you know,
Speaker 7: brain trauma here or brain damage. So let me about that.
Speaker 5: No, that's a great question. That's why I love coming
Speaker 5: on with you because you get me to think, ah, well,
Speaker 5: a couple of things. There's no question we're talking premeditation, right,
Speaker 5: there's no question about it. The the the ultimate Well,
Speaker 5: there's no question we're talking premeditation. And especially when we
Speaker 5: talk about the the what what he does post death
Speaker 5: to these two individuals. The reason that he that he
Speaker 5: that he takes off the head and and in one
Speaker 5: case the hands, is is to hinder identification. And you
Speaker 5: know what, in Florida, he was so successful that they
Speaker 5: could never say for sure that that the bones they
Speaker 5: recovered were Sheryl Dunlaps. They couldn't even make a d
Speaker 5: N a d N A profile because what he did
Speaker 5: was he took the bones and he burned me and
Speaker 5: it burned them. So there's no question that we're dealing
Speaker 5: with somebody who commits premeditated murder and certainly thinks it out,
Speaker 5: uh well, which you know extensively. What you're getting at, Dan,
Speaker 5: is this you're not You're not asking the question, it
Speaker 5: seems to me about whether he's You're you're certainly asking
Speaker 5: the question is he responsible? And of course the answer
Speaker 5: is yes. But the question really is should the individual
Speaker 5: be condemned to death? Should the individual in eight in
Speaker 5: in the you know, we could take Robert Picton? Did
Speaker 5: I say his name correctly? Yep? Yeah, Robert Picton as
Speaker 5: an example, should be individual? I mean, and there's a
Speaker 5: guy who killed people and and the and the bodies
Speaker 5: wound up in the food supply and the food should
Speaker 5: should should we as a state, And when I say we,
Speaker 5: I mean be it Canada, be it the United States
Speaker 5: or wherever? Should we as a state execute individuals for
Speaker 5: premeditated murder? And and should we execute if there is
Speaker 5: some sort of diminished capacity as we've been discussing, and
Speaker 5: well the thing and you know, and and and that
Speaker 5: that's those are really good questions, and those are the
Speaker 5: kinds of questions that we've all been been grappling with
Speaker 5: for the last two hundred years.
Speaker 7: Well, if there is justice, then there is no there's
Speaker 7: going to be no one that is deemed worthy of
Speaker 7: the death penalty or not worthy of the death penalty.
Speaker 7: There you would therein would lie the problem. Therein lies
Speaker 7: in justice. Right there. It's just like the better the
Speaker 7: lawyer you have. If you have a million dollars a
Speaker 7: month for ten lawyers, you get OJ's defense. If you don't,
Speaker 7: well what kind of Diffe's true?
Speaker 5: Yet?
Speaker 7: The other thing is is that it's unfair to the
Speaker 7: entire judicial system. If you think geez, jail is punishment,
Speaker 7: We're gonna stick a drug dealer in there for fifteen
Speaker 7: years to teach him, for him to learn a lesson,
Speaker 7: to be separated from society, apparently, but we're going to
Speaker 7: kill a guy. We're going to execute a guy that
Speaker 7: may even want to die. I think jail isn't I
Speaker 7: think in prison has to prison itself is the punishment,
Speaker 7: the separation from society, you know, the denunciation from society.
Speaker 7: And if that isn't enough, then it should be enough,
Speaker 7: and it certainly is for every other crime. So and again,
Speaker 7: if only some people are deemed worthy of the death
Speaker 7: penalty at a certain age for a certain amount of crimes.
Speaker 7: Then and then there is a variance. There is there
Speaker 7: is not uniformity throughout the United States.
Speaker 5: So damn You're You're extremely eloquent. You've made the probably
Speaker 5: one of the most eloquent arguments I have ever heard
Speaker 5: against capital punishment. And I would offer this, I would
Speaker 5: go back into American criminal history, which I'm more familiar with.
Speaker 5: There was a very thing, and I wrote about this
Speaker 5: in one of my books, The Historical Atlas of American Crime.
Speaker 5: It's a very famous case. Leopold and Loebe. They were
Speaker 5: called the thrill killers of the nineteen twenties. They abducted
Speaker 5: and murdered a twelve year old boy for kicks. That
Speaker 5: was the only reason they did it, just for kicks.
Speaker 5: And their defense attorney with Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney,
Speaker 5: probably the most famous defense attorney in our history. And
Speaker 5: here's what happened. Darrow did something that is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 5: This occurred in Illinois where they had the death penalty,
Speaker 5: and Darrow pled him guilty. To begin with, he went
Speaker 5: right to the sentencing phase, and he decided to go
Speaker 5: right before the judge and plead for their life, and
Speaker 5: Darrow's argument was that how far have we come from
Speaker 5: Biblical times when people would get stoned If what we're
Speaker 5: going to do is take two twenty one year olds
Speaker 5: and throw their lives away in the electric chair, when
Speaker 5: the punishment enough is to put them in jail for life,
Speaker 5: and he argued, is it possible, Is it possible for
Speaker 5: a soul to be redeemed? And well, yeah, I know.
Speaker 5: It became the basis for Bookal Compulsion, which was later
Speaker 5: a movie. And what makes it so interesting is this,
Speaker 5: I didn't even know this as a kid. Nathan Leopold
Speaker 5: survived into the nineteen fifties, and so when he was
Speaker 5: an older man in the late fifties, he was paroled.
Speaker 5: This thrill killer was paroled. He went to Puerto Rico
Speaker 5: and he became a research scientist and he lived there
Speaker 5: very peacefully until his death in the nineteen seventies, which
Speaker 5: I'm astonished at because I was around and I don't
Speaker 5: remember hearing anything about him. During World War Two, we
Speaker 5: upolled volunteered to be a test subject for various kinds
Speaker 5: of vaccine scientists were trying to perfect to help our
Speaker 5: soldiers in the Pacific theater of operation who were being
Speaker 5: exposed to various kinds of diseases. So now here's a
Speaker 5: question if Nathan Leopold didn'ts did guide in the electric
Speaker 5: chair and wasn't used as a human guinea pig, is
Speaker 5: it possible that some soldiers who later got a vaccine
Speaker 5: he tested would have died? I mean, isn't it isn't
Speaker 5: It doesn't one life affect another. And so I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, most times we don't get this philosophical because
Speaker 5: it gets so emotional when we're talking about about crime
Speaker 5: and death. And and look, if it was my child,
Speaker 5: I mean I would I would kill the guy and
Speaker 5: take the penalty of being honest, you know, unlike Michael
Speaker 5: Ducacus in nineteen eighty eight. But that's another story. And
Speaker 5: I just feel that the death penalty not only doesn't
Speaker 5: it work, it's too expensive. And these individuals, you are
Speaker 5: so right, then they just want to die, many of them,
Speaker 5: because they've led such lousy lives. We're releasing them from
Speaker 5: their from their their own personal terror by killing him,
Speaker 5: put him in jail, keep the lights on all day.
Speaker 5: They'll go schizophe it. In three years, you'll get what
Speaker 5: you want. You'll get your revenge. We'll put him into
Speaker 5: you know what'll put him into the general population. Somebody
Speaker 5: will kill him. It inevitably happens, you know, don't make
Speaker 5: a mistake. Does anybody in their right mind to think
Speaker 5: that if O. J. Simpson wasn't segregated in his Nevada prison,
Speaker 5: he would be he would be alive. I'm sorry, he'd
Speaker 5: be dead. Somebody would take him out so they could
Speaker 5: say that they killed the guy that killed you know,
Speaker 5: that that killed this murderer. And if OJ wants to
Speaker 5: sue me for saying that, go ahead and do it
Speaker 5: make my day punk.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, and the thing is that the people that are
Speaker 7: in prison live every day with who knows, and so
Speaker 7: they have that fear hanging over their head. And so certainly,
Speaker 7: maybe not exactly the same kind of terror they inflicted
Speaker 7: on their innocent victims, but certainly a certain kind of
Speaker 7: terror for the rest of your life. I don't know
Speaker 7: if anybody's really comfortable any of these killers, like you say,
Speaker 7: somebody might just just the way the thing works, you know,
Speaker 7: might just want to kill him just to have their
Speaker 7: own infamy.
Speaker 5: So you're right, I'll spin it another way. I actually
Speaker 5: found a couple of years ago. Five years ago, I
Speaker 5: was doing research on a book that didn't come to be,
Speaker 5: and I found an innocent man for the first time
Speaker 5: in my life in prison. His name is Raymond Gray.
Speaker 5: He's in prison in Michigan. He's been there for forty
Speaker 5: years for a murder he didn't commit.
Speaker 7: Forty years are How are you so certain?
Speaker 5: Because we have an affidavit from the real bad guy
Speaker 5: where he confesses that's number one, number two Gray. There
Speaker 5: was no motive, there was no means, there was no opportunity,
Speaker 5: and he had witnesses to say he was someplace else.
Speaker 5: And we have the real bad guy and we're working
Speaker 5: right now. I'm part of a group to get him out,
Speaker 5: and we're hoping to get him out either later this
Speaker 5: year or early next year. And the other thing was
Speaker 5: I was able to show through forensics that he couldn't
Speaker 5: have committed the crime. Ray is. The guy that was
Speaker 5: killed was a drug dealer who is over six feet tall.
Speaker 5: He was shot through the shoulder from behind, and Raymond
Speaker 5: Gray is about five feet seven. If he stands on
Speaker 5: his tiptoes, how does a guy who's five feet seven
Speaker 5: standing on his tiptoe shoot a guy from on top
Speaker 5: doesn't work. So between that the affidavit from the real
Speaker 5: bad guy saying that he did it and that he
Speaker 5: worked with his partner in doing it, we know that
Speaker 5: ray didn't do it. And the irony here is that
Speaker 5: Raymond Gray is one of the greatest African American artists
Speaker 5: in the United States. He's become a great artist before
Speaker 5: behind prison walls. And the reason I'm mentioning it is
Speaker 5: because first he shouldn't be there, but second, it's so
Speaker 5: difficult to even get anybody to talk about this any
Speaker 5: publicity because people don't want to know Dan then an
Speaker 5: innocent man is in jail. They want to know the
Speaker 5: system works, just like they want the bad guy like
Speaker 5: a Gary Hilton to sit down in the electric chair
Speaker 5: and be electrocuted. It's a lot easier to do that
Speaker 5: than to deal with the reasons behind these things. I mean,
Speaker 5: if we dealt with the reasons behind these things, these crimes,
Speaker 5: if we dealt with what makes a serial killer in
Speaker 5: a case like Gary Hilton, we could have stopped it.
Speaker 5: People would be alive. But that didn't happen, and that's
Speaker 5: what we hurt. Trust.
Speaker 7: How could we have stopped it? Who could have you
Speaker 7: say that the psychologists is a psychiatrist. Take us back
Speaker 7: to where that where that juncture would have been. You
Speaker 7: say he was in Vietnam. Uh, tell us when this
Speaker 7: would have happened that somebody would have intervened in? How
Speaker 7: could they have intervened?
Speaker 5: And how sure? Oh boy, I love you, I love you?
Speaker 5: You man? You asked them best questions. All right, well
Speaker 5: I'll take you back even further. I'll take you back
Speaker 5: to when the dude is he's he's fourteen years old?
Speaker 5: Is okay? So this is he's he has brain injury.
Speaker 5: Gary has the brain injury when he's seven. He has
Speaker 5: a problematic relationship with his mother. So far, you know,
Speaker 5: there's no excuses here, right, I mean, it is what
Speaker 5: it is. But get this, he's fourteen, he picks up
Speaker 5: he picks up a gun and he shoots his stepfather. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: he's hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. Okay, I got a question, guys,
Speaker 5: did you follow him? You hospitalize this dude? Any any shoes?
Speaker 5: It's his stepfather. I mean that's violent, that's violent for today.
Speaker 5: In the nineteen sixties, it was unheard of, and he
Speaker 5: was fourteen. Yes, and wait a minute, he gets better.
Speaker 5: So now when he gets to be about sixteen going
Speaker 5: on seventeen, he volunteers for the United States Army. Oh
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. Would somebody please explain to me why it
Speaker 5: is you didn't check out the dude and't find out
Speaker 5: what he did, or did you check it out and
Speaker 5: say he'd be a great candidate? And who decided to
Speaker 5: take a guy who was in a psychiatric hospital and
Speaker 5: put his finger on the nuclear trigger because that's the
Speaker 5: way it was. I mean, they had hand held nukes.
Speaker 5: They were like mortar fired and they put this guy's
Speaker 5: finger on it. Okay, fine, you know what happens then,
Speaker 5: like I said, he winds up going schizo in the army.
Speaker 5: Does anybody follow him? No? Not, as far as I know,
Speaker 5: we could find out any of this. And the and
Speaker 5: the kicker on all of this is nobody seems to care.
Speaker 5: I mean a trial, they introduced most of this evidence.
Speaker 5: Nobody seemed to care because the crime was so horrific,
Speaker 5: And so it gets lost. And as that gets lost, Dan,
Speaker 5: that means that the next time around it's going to
Speaker 5: get lost again and again and again, and the possibility
Speaker 5: and nobody goes back and says, Okay, who is responsible
Speaker 5: for this? Nobody takes any responsibility for any of this stuff.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's the problem as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 5: because nobody responsibility. Yeah, I think that you know that.
Speaker 7: The answer to that question that I had was, when
Speaker 7: he's fourteen and he shoots his stepfather, not only should
Speaker 7: he have been hostilized, should have been put in some
Speaker 7: kind of incarceration as well. Tell us what the the
Speaker 7: analysis that diagnosis was at that time, and and how
Speaker 7: long was he in a in a hospital setting, and
Speaker 7: what what form of therapy, if any, did he receive?
Speaker 5: Again another great question. The answer is number one, we can't.
Speaker 5: I can't get the records for a lot of different reasons,
Speaker 5: not the least of which he was a minor. What
Speaker 5: we do know is the general outline of it is, oh,
Speaker 5: he was hospitalged for all of about six months. That's it.
Speaker 5: He was given some sort of medication. There's some evidence
Speaker 5: he was given authorizin but very briefly, and then but
Speaker 5: sees and the pattern continued. Here's what happens. He gets now,
Speaker 5: he gets out, and then his mother besides I don't
Speaker 5: want him around owned and ships him off to a
Speaker 5: neighbor for a year, and you know why. But he
Speaker 5: prospered during that year with the neighbor. That's what's interesting,
Speaker 5: because he was in a loving environment, which he did
Speaker 5: not have in his home. And during the trial, what
Speaker 5: was so fascinating was that his aunt, who was from
Speaker 5: Argentina because his stepfather was Gary is from here, but
Speaker 5: the mother remarried an Argentinian and so his father's sister,
Speaker 5: who would be his aunt, came into the courtroom and
Speaker 5: it was the only time that Gary smiled. He looked
Speaker 5: at her. He hadn't seen it, probably in thirty five years,
Speaker 5: and you could see the sympatico between them, and she
Speaker 5: testified that the mother was never loving to the son.
Speaker 5: Now I'm not trying to make this simplistic court make
Speaker 5: any excuses. I mean, this man committed terrible, terrible crimes.
Speaker 5: But what I'm saying is why didn't this system that
Speaker 5: was set up to do something about this do something
Speaker 5: about it. Why didn't that you just mentioned something, you said, incarceration,
Speaker 5: You know what, it might have saved the life. Supposing
Speaker 5: they did incarcerate him for a while, it might have
Speaker 5: saved the life in some way. That kind of intervention
Speaker 5: it's hard to say. But the thing is this, this book,
Speaker 5: and this guy blew a part of all of my
Speaker 5: notions about serial killers. I mean I never expected to
Speaker 5: find a serial killer that was made. I always thought
Speaker 5: they were born with some a barren gene. Well maybe
Speaker 5: there are some, but not this guy. This guy was made.
Speaker 5: And you know what else, when he was in high school,
Speaker 5: this guy was like he was he's a professional musician,
Speaker 5: he was a drummer. People liked him. And it wasn't
Speaker 5: you know, he wasn't modeling behavior. I mean, this is
Speaker 5: something that happened over a period of time, and that's
Speaker 5: what That's why when he finally was condemned to death,
Speaker 5: I'll be honest, but what am I going to do?
Speaker 5: Why I was? I I cried, Okay, I cried. I
Speaker 5: cried because all I can think about was this young
Speaker 5: man who had all of these capabilities. And the guy,
Speaker 5: by the way, he's got a genius IQ in the
Speaker 5: high or twenties, so he had a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 5: And if the chips had fallen differently, we're not having
Speaker 5: this conversation and four people are alive, and so that's
Speaker 5: what's propelled me to continue on the case and try
Speaker 5: to answer certain questions that remains semed unanswered, because it's
Speaker 5: just too damn easy for people not to accept responsibility
Speaker 5: for their actions, and you know, they need to accept
Speaker 5: responsibility for their actions, especially when human lives hang in
Speaker 5: the balance.
Speaker 7: Now we haven't spoken about it, and we're talking about
Speaker 7: a couple elderly couples, and then we talk about a
Speaker 7: much younger woman. Yes, and these are very very innocent people.
Speaker 7: I mean, we spoke about that last time. If he
Speaker 7: ever was innocent people to pick on, and these really were.
Speaker 7: Now what I always think, and because I don't know either,
Speaker 7: it's the age old question, and I think that's all
Speaker 7: our listeners and people that read true crime and the
Speaker 7: people that write true crime are always wondering is a
Speaker 7: genetic are they made? Is it the environment? What creates
Speaker 7: this kind of abearance, this kind of mutation in the
Speaker 7: human form here this serial killer?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 7: Maybe when you talk about the the the genius, I
Speaker 7: q that a lot of these guys really are kind
Speaker 7: of bright. And with those a lot of the guys
Speaker 7: that are really bright are are lust killers as well? Yes,
Speaker 7: And not that I've done the stats or anything, but
Speaker 7: is it maybe that some people throughout history have wanted
Speaker 7: to experience the ultimate taboo, something that no one else does.
Speaker 7: Is this something? I mean, obviously these other psycho psycho
Speaker 7: psychological problems are present, but it isn't it ultimately that
Speaker 7: these people understand what line they're crossing and still choose
Speaker 7: to go there yet in a dark area?
Speaker 5: Yes, sir, they do understand it. That's that's been my experience.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've had the occasion to write I never
Speaker 5: intended to, but it's just worked out that way. As
Speaker 5: serial killing has become much more common in the millennium
Speaker 5: and leading into the millennium, I would I would say that, yes,
Speaker 5: that what serial killers enjoy, and I would include mister
Speaker 5: Hilton in this category, is they enjoy controlling the moment
Speaker 5: of death. They get a kick out of it, and
Speaker 5: many of these individuals, I wouldn't put Hilton in there,
Speaker 5: but many of them certainly get a sexual thrill out
Speaker 5: of it, and they also get a tremendous thrill out
Speaker 5: of using their intellects. And they're not you know, they're
Speaker 5: not all geniuses, but they have a feral instinct certainly
Speaker 5: to avoid detection, and they definitely do enjoy playing that
Speaker 5: cat and mouse game with the police. And we see
Speaker 5: that time and time again, don't we. I mean, how
Speaker 5: many times? Do I mean? Look at you? Look at Hilton.
Speaker 5: Hilton is a great example. Look at you know he
Speaker 5: doesn't get captured because of great police work. You know
Speaker 5: this is this is not you know. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think most of your listeners know that it showed like
Speaker 5: Criminal Minds is fiction, that the FBI has never caught
Speaker 5: a serial killer. I think they know that. You know,
Speaker 5: there's no such thing as Hannibal Lecter, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I'd say Anthony Hopkins in the street. He didn't look
Speaker 5: anything like Hannibal Lector to me.
Speaker 4: But but but.
Speaker 5: With somebody like like Gary Hilton, he enjoyed the cat
Speaker 5: and mouse game until until he after he kills Meredith
Speaker 5: Emerson in Georgia, and it's his last murder. He doesn't
Speaker 5: He could have gotten right on the road in his
Speaker 5: van and driven any place he wanted to go, and
Speaker 5: he would have been free, because though they knew who
Speaker 5: he was, Gary was certainly smart enough. He'd already switched
Speaker 5: a life in the van. He could he could have
Speaker 5: abandoned the van, stalln a car or whatever, But you
Speaker 5: know what happened. He drove down off the mountain where
Speaker 5: he killed her. He pulls into a gas station and
Speaker 5: broad daylight, and he starts bleaching the rear of the car,
Speaker 5: the rear of the van out to get rid of
Speaker 5: the evidence. Now Gary knew better than that. He knows,
Speaker 5: he knows that bleach is not going to cover anything up.
Speaker 5: He did it because he wanted to get caught. He
Speaker 5: was tired of the cat and mouse game. We see
Speaker 5: this time and time again that they play this game.
Speaker 5: They control the moment of death, and when they've gotten
Speaker 5: their kick out of it and they're tired of it,
Speaker 5: they just give up and they and they let the
Speaker 5: police capture them. We see again it's time and time again.
Speaker 5: Very few, I mean, there's very few cases where the
Speaker 5: cops actually trap the dude down.
Speaker 7: What what was the circumstances or what was the evidence
Speaker 7: that Gary Hilton knew that the police knew that he
Speaker 7: decided to, like you say, give up. It's interesting that
Speaker 7: your conclusion there, It makes a lot of sense. But
Speaker 7: what was the evidence that the police had at that
Speaker 7: time that convinced Gary Hilton that the gig was up?
Speaker 5: Oh? Well, Gary Gary is a very avuncular sort. Gary,
Speaker 5: like many of these individuals. That's another thing we find
Speaker 5: with serial killers, as you know, and as many of
Speaker 5: the listeners do, which is they talk a lot and
Speaker 5: so and Gary talks about anything. And I mean, I'd
Speaker 5: love to get in the room and talk to him,
Speaker 5: but I've been denied that opportunity. But I'll pay you.
Speaker 5: Gary himself said that what occurred was that when he
Speaker 5: came off the mountain after killing Meredith, he saws picture
Speaker 5: on the front page of the local newspapers. He knew
Speaker 5: they were looking for him by that, and that they
Speaker 5: they they knew twenty four hours before Meredith died who
Speaker 5: they were looking for. They knew exactly who they were
Speaker 5: looking for. So when he saw the newspaper, he didn't
Speaker 5: high tail it for the hills, or get on a
Speaker 5: plane or whatever the case might be, or drive north,
Speaker 5: you know, to ken A bunk Port, you know, and
Speaker 5: say loo to George W. Bush. Not that's how I
Speaker 5: got that in there. What he decided to do was
Speaker 5: he said, I'm just going to clean out my van. Well,
Speaker 5: let me see if I get this straight. Gary, he
Speaker 5: pictures on the front page. It's on the news. It's
Speaker 5: daylight and you're cleaning out your van in a in
Speaker 5: a shopping center and a front full view of people
Speaker 5: who you know, what do you think happened? Somebody saw
Speaker 5: him and call the cops. That's how they got him.
Speaker 5: And you know what when they when they arrested him,
Speaker 5: I thought, all of us in the press, what that
Speaker 5: they arrest them? You know, and we figured, Okay, they're
Speaker 5: arresting them, and they're going to hold them for killing Meredith?
Speaker 5: Right right?
Speaker 7: Wrong?
Speaker 5: Remember the outstanding federal warrant. Yeah, that's how they hold them.
Speaker 5: Well initially sure, yeah, but except that if it wasn't
Speaker 5: in the database, how they find out about it? That
Speaker 5: got to read the article. But seriously, that's what happens.
Speaker 5: They hold them because they hold them because of the
Speaker 5: of that warrant. And then they later drew up and
Speaker 5: put the papers. And by the way, Dan, I never
Speaker 5: saw a case adjudicated. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 5: a serial killer. You know that within ten days they
Speaker 5: had a plea agreement with the guy. Within ten days
Speaker 5: the guy they had they had signed sealed, delivered life
Speaker 5: with parole, and he was on his way to Florida
Speaker 5: to stand trial and The reason for that is what
Speaker 5: we talked about earlier, which is the death tunnel. Will
Speaker 5: Georgia has it, Florida has a fast track on it.
Speaker 5: And so the idea was to get him into Florida,
Speaker 5: to try him there and put him into the into
Speaker 5: the electric chair or the death chamber or whatever they
Speaker 5: want to call it right now.
Speaker 7: And he was relatively cooperative with this. He didn't fight this,
Speaker 7: really did he No. Got an addition, Yeah, now let
Speaker 7: the lens creed the credence to this idea that he
Speaker 7: might have wanted that death penalty.
Speaker 5: So you know, well, you know what he said, and
Speaker 5: he said on the tape one of the taped interviews.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you watch the taped interviews, I think
Speaker 5: they would probably be chilling to a lot of people
Speaker 5: that don't understand the guy because he's sitting there with
Speaker 5: his lex cross describing everything he did. And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 5: I let him master dive me to Florida. You know
Speaker 5: what he says that look ahead, extra dive me. I
Speaker 5: don't really care. He says, you know it's going to
Speaker 5: take you fifteen or twenty years to execute me, and
Speaker 5: by that time, you know, I'm going to be a
Speaker 5: really old man, so you know, do whatever you're going
Speaker 5: to you want to do. That's what he and for
Speaker 5: that reason he wouldn't cooperate. He would have given him.
Speaker 5: See that's the other thing, if they were willing to
Speaker 5: make a deal. Now think about this for a second.
Speaker 5: They knew, well I shouldn't say they knew they had
Speaker 5: these bones, hand bones and skull bones, but they couldn't
Speaker 5: make a DNA match, and so they couldn't say for
Speaker 5: certain that this was the dead woman. Now they did
Speaker 5: have They eventually had some blood evidence that they were
Speaker 5: able to find which did tie him in to Cheryl
Speaker 5: Dunlap in Florida, but it was never one hundred percent
Speaker 5: positive that those bones were Cheryl's. So here's the question.
Speaker 5: If you're the family, you want to make a deal
Speaker 5: so that he tells you the truth. Would you want
Speaker 5: to live the rest of your life and not knowing
Speaker 5: for certain? On her gravestone On Cheryl's gravestone, I went
Speaker 5: to her grave, it doesn't say the date of death
Speaker 5: because they don't know the date of death. She's got kids.
Speaker 5: Those kids have to live with death for the rest
Speaker 5: of their lives, and their families and their family families.
Speaker 5: So what's it worth to you to have? Is is
Speaker 5: revenge worth lack of closure? And right now, as far
Speaker 5: as what's happening in Fara, because of other aspects of
Speaker 5: this case, this is a good possibility they're gonna commute
Speaker 5: his death sentence. So now what happens if they commute
Speaker 5: his death sentence, You're gonna you'll never get Not only
Speaker 5: are you denied the opportunity for revenge, you don't get
Speaker 5: the final answer if that really is Cheryl Dunlap. Sure,
Speaker 5: it's Cheryl Dunlap, well ninety nine point nine percent sure
Speaker 5: based on circumstance, But that did wouldn't you like to
Speaker 5: know how it happened? Wouldn't you like to know the
Speaker 5: day it happened? So you've got the closure once in
Speaker 5: for all. I don't know, well I would.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's incredible. I just handled the case a few
Speaker 7: weeks ago, and was the families got together and said listen,
Speaker 7: or at least a couple of the victim's families got
Speaker 7: together and said, we'd just like to give this guy
Speaker 7: life because he would be able to testify admit to
Speaker 7: all the things that he did. And the prosecutor refused,
Speaker 7: So there is a thirst for revenge, I think. But
Speaker 7: when we talked about we went last time and we
Speaker 7: had a very very controversial hour before we talked about
Speaker 7: trails of death, and we've talked politics. The only thing
Speaker 7: I want to say about politics is that that's why
Speaker 7: you have this thirst for revenge a lot of times,
Speaker 7: because it is definitely all tied up in politics.
Speaker 5: Oh you know, isn't that a great point? I mean,
Speaker 5: I mean, what happens if you take it out of
Speaker 5: the equation. I mean, let's just talk, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, you guys did it right? Well?
Speaker 7: No, But I think the thing is American states like
Speaker 7: Illinois as has abolished it. And I think just the
Speaker 7: the the wrongful convictions, the cost, especially in a recession,
Speaker 7: in tough times, and and you know, people thinking more
Speaker 7: rationally about it. I think too less there's less desire
Speaker 7: for the death penalty. But there's these other major factors
Speaker 7: like how many wrongful convictions, how many people are working
Speaker 7: in the pursuit like yourself, And I want to applaud
Speaker 7: you for your efforts too to get this mister Gray
Speaker 7: out of prison. Is that there's so many people with
Speaker 7: so much, you know, really really good evidence that the
Speaker 7: prosecutors are really just it's a matter of ego. They
Speaker 7: don't want to go back there. They don't want to
Speaker 7: admit they made a major problem, like that made a
Speaker 7: major mistake, and a mistake is too nice a word. Basically,
Speaker 7: when someone spends forty years of their life in prison
Speaker 7: for something they didn't do. So I applaud you to that,
Speaker 7: But I think what will happen. I think what will
Speaker 7: happen is that the people have to demand and the
Speaker 7: people voice their opinion, and what you'll have is you'll
Speaker 7: have the law changing, that's all. And maybe some certain
Speaker 7: states will be the last to make the change, but
Speaker 7: certainly it seems that there is less of a desire
Speaker 7: for it for various reasons. But the good reason is
Speaker 7: wrongful convictions. That's just seems to be sensible.
Speaker 5: And you know what, when you talk about wrongful convictions,
Speaker 5: and in ray Gray's case, thank god we're not dealing
Speaker 5: with the death penalty because Michigan was the first state
Speaker 5: to outlaw it. But I've heard people make the argument that, well,
Speaker 5: if somebody is convicted wrongfully of murder executed, they're just
Speaker 5: the soldier in the battle against crime. And I hear that,
Speaker 5: and I want to throw up.
Speaker 7: I hope nobody to me.
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, you know, it's forget about any
Speaker 5: you know, No, I won't forget about biblical you know,
Speaker 5: biblical stuff. I mean, the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 5: we're supposed to be a people of laws. We're supposed
Speaker 5: to stand up for what's right. And you're totally correct
Speaker 5: in standing up for what's right. When you say that,
Speaker 5: ego gets in the way, and and and prosecutors and
Speaker 5: and and and and you know, right up the line
Speaker 5: when it becomes when the death penalty is a political thing,
Speaker 5: it's not going to be used correctly. There's got to
Speaker 5: be a better way, and there is a better way,
Speaker 5: but but people refuse to see it. And I mean,
Speaker 5: you can you know, you can bargain with serial killers.
Speaker 5: It's it's happened time and time again. What do you
Speaker 5: think Gary cooperated in Georgia because they said we're gonna
Speaker 5: give you life with parole. They knew he wasn't going
Speaker 5: to get out, So what were they giving up. They
Speaker 5: were giving up nothing in order to solve the case,
Speaker 5: at least as far as their concerned.
Speaker 7: Well, I think, you know, as we wrap up this program,
Speaker 7: I would like to just say that I think the
Speaker 7: issue with people is that they have seen people imprisoned
Speaker 7: then released, put sentence to mental institutions, released, then re offended.
Speaker 7: So that is the nightmare that somebody Again when we
Speaker 7: talk about responsibility, who's responsible when that happens, exactly, And
Speaker 7: so that's what some of these people are saying as well.
Speaker 7: Or the person that had numerous offenses, numerous violence, violent
Speaker 7: offenses and they weren't recognized by the law previously. So
Speaker 7: I can see everybody's point, but I do think that
Speaker 7: the tide will turn because of just runful conviction and
Speaker 7: the price tag and people waiting twenty years for death row. Anyway,
Speaker 7: like you say, some states are much quicker, but none
Speaker 7: of them are very quick really, so none.
Speaker 5: Of them are very quick, absolutely right, And I agree
Speaker 5: with what you're saying also about when an individual commits
Speaker 5: a crime, serves their time in jail, and then they
Speaker 5: get out and the recidivius who takes the responsibility. I
Speaker 5: totally agree with that. But then again, you know, then
Speaker 5: you have to take a look at what it is
Speaker 5: that they're learning when they're in prison. I mean, what
Speaker 5: is it? You know, what is pretty you know what
Speaker 5: is it about? I mean that gets into a whole
Speaker 5: other discussion.
Speaker 7: Well, life without the possibility of parole doesn't mean that
Speaker 7: that really is throw away the key because rehabilitation of
Speaker 7: what for what purpose? So life without the possibility of
Speaker 7: parole I like that type of sentence. Everybody's happy, they're
Speaker 7: never getting out, They're going to die in prison, and
Speaker 7: we're we're still a good society that's willing to take
Speaker 7: care of them and give them three squares a day
Speaker 7: and give them and protect them as much as we
Speaker 7: possibly can, which is something that they didn't afford their victims.
Speaker 5: So which shows that we are of a higher nature,
Speaker 5: doesn't it. I think so.
Speaker 7: I think I think we can at least afford them
Speaker 7: that because prison is no you know, no picnic. I'm
Speaker 7: watching some programs, so I think everybody knows that if
Speaker 7: they had any idea of prison being some kind of
Speaker 7: you know, spa health camp, that I think that's been
Speaker 7: the spelled. So if that isn't enough, you know, a
Speaker 7: twelve by eight cell for the rest of your life
Speaker 7: with the threat of death, I think that I think.
Speaker 5: Sure enough, sure, sure, I agree with everything that you're saying.
Speaker 7: Anyway, Fred, I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 7: coming on, and we'll have to keep us abreast of
Speaker 7: what's going on, and I think people you pique the
Speaker 7: people's interest to keep a close mind on Gary Michael
Speaker 7: Hillton and all the developments and very very interesting story.
Speaker 7: Like you say, there's so much stuff online. It was
Speaker 7: very interesting to talk about the Hustler controversy as well,
Speaker 7: and very very interesting. So and the book that if
Speaker 7: people were listening to is the program is Trails of
Speaker 7: Death Gary Michael Hilton, with my special guest Fred Rosen.
Speaker 7: So thank you very much. Fred. I hope to talk
Speaker 7: to you soon with your new project and the best
Speaker 7: of luck and.
Speaker 5: Best of luck with your book as well. Of course
Speaker 5: you're a terrific writer.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you, Fred, thank you very much. I can't
Speaker 7: I got to have you on just for all those compliments.
Speaker 5: It's my pleasure. You take care of yourself, and I
Speaker 5: hope the listeners are well.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much, Fred, have a good evening you too.
Speaker 7: Good night much