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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 Zupanski.
Speaker 3: Good evening. Please, no, don't make me go back to
Speaker 3: the park. I can draw you a map. I promise,
Speaker 3: I can show you where everything happened. Own survivor trembled
Speaker 3: as she pleaded with investigators. For over forty years, the
Speaker 3: events of what happened at kit Chee Manitoud the night
Speaker 3: of November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three remained a mystery to
Speaker 3: all but a few. Then the lone survivor broke her silence.
Speaker 3: Five teenage friends had driven to the park to spend
Speaker 3: a few hours around a campfire. By morning, four had
Speaker 3: been murdered, and only she was still alive. Gitchee Girl
Speaker 3: Uncovered is a chilling account of the strange twists and
Speaker 3: bizarre details discovered by an elite team of investigators under
Speaker 3: intense pressure to catch the killers. After spending hundreds of
Speaker 3: hours with the lone survivor, investigators and family members of
Speaker 3: the slain boys, and by gaining access to court records.
Speaker 3: Authors Phil and Sandy Hammond give the reader out what
Speaker 3: will happen next inside story of the monstrous crime the
Speaker 3: Shukton Midwest. They bring the reader into the deviant world
Speaker 3: of the brutal killer with an up close look at
Speaker 3: how they think and operate. The Hammond's book Getchie Girl,
Speaker 3: the survivor's inside story of the mass murders the Shock
Speaker 3: the Heartland, rose to become a bestseller. However, both books
Speaker 3: were written so that they can be read in either
Speaker 3: sequence or independently. The book that we're featuring this evening
Speaker 3: is Getchy Girl Uncovered, a true story of a night
Speaker 3: of mass murder and the hunt for the deranged killers,
Speaker 3: with my special guest journalists and authors Phil and Sandy Hammond.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 3: for agreeing to this interview Phil and Sandy Hammond. Ydan
Speaker 3: good evening, Thank you very much for this interview. Now,
Speaker 3: Phil and Sandy tell us a little our audience about
Speaker 3: your connection in terms of geography to this story and
Speaker 3: also your personal connection to this story.
Speaker 5: See Dan. The murder took place just across yeahwall border.
Speaker 5: But these were all Souit Falls, South Dakota kids, and
Speaker 5: that's where Sandy and I grew up and were raised
Speaker 5: and went to school. I actually went to school and
Speaker 5: knew all the boys that lost their life that did
Speaker 5: you managed you that night? In fact, Mike Cadres was
Speaker 5: my childhood best friend. I lived right in the same
Speaker 5: neighborhood with all of them very close.
Speaker 3: As you do in the book, you take the reader
Speaker 3: immediately and in a series of flashbacks where we go
Speaker 3: to February thirteen, two thousand and sixteen, a Barnes and
Speaker 3: Noble bookstore in Soux Falls, South Dakota, and Sandra Cheski
Speaker 3: and yourselves tell us about this.
Speaker 5: What happens right.
Speaker 7: Sandra Chesky, the lone survivor of those Getchy managed to
Speaker 7: mass murders, had been silent about what happened that night
Speaker 7: for forty years. She didn't speak about it until our
Speaker 7: first fit book came out. Getsch you girl. So we
Speaker 7: have this book signing at Barnes and Noble and it
Speaker 7: was a path house. Sander's mouth dropped open. She just
Speaker 7: kept saying over and over all these years, I didn't
Speaker 7: think anyone cared about me, but then people did. For
Speaker 7: two to three hours, people kept coming in. They would
Speaker 7: give her hugs, They'd say, I thought about you.
Speaker 5: Over the years.
Speaker 7: I've wandered off and on whatever happened to that girl
Speaker 7: who survived, or I prayed for you. And women would
Speaker 7: come up and say, I need to tell you something privately,
Speaker 7: and they whisper in her ear, I was sexually assaulted,
Speaker 7: and you've made me feel like I can get through
Speaker 7: this and maybe even tell my story sometime. And Sandra
Speaker 7: just all those years, those forty years, she thought she'd
Speaker 7: been dealing and coping with what had happened. But that
Speaker 7: day she realized she hadn't been. And I recall her
Speaker 7: telling a group of people that during the trials, her
Speaker 7: attorney gave her a good advice. He said, when we
Speaker 7: go outside, there's going to be media. So whenever we
Speaker 7: go outside, put your head down. Then all they can
Speaker 7: give of is a shot at your forehead. And she said,
Speaker 7: for four years, I've been walking with my head down,
Speaker 7: And she told a few people at the end, no more.
Speaker 7: After today, I am walking with my head up. And
Speaker 7: she realized that by sharing her story that day. That's
Speaker 7: when she started to heal. And we said in the
Speaker 7: book the tough little girl from Gischie was back. And
Speaker 7: we'll get to that nickname later on.
Speaker 3: Right, let's talk about November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 3: the name Getschie Girl comes from Getchie Manitou State Park.
Speaker 3: And tell us about the friends that went along with
Speaker 3: Sandra that faithful evening.
Speaker 5: Okay, Dan, November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three. You know, teenagers
Speaker 5: couldn't just pop in a CD and watch a movie
Speaker 5: like they can today. They didn't have all the electronic
Speaker 5: video games. Kids got together, they went to somebody's house,
Speaker 5: went to a park, a lake, and that's what this
Speaker 5: group of friends did. You had each year old Stuart
Speaker 5: Baby high school senior working long hours at ups after school,
Speaker 5: had bought his own old beat up sixty seven Chevy
Speaker 5: band and he was a general generous one, drove everybody around.
Speaker 5: Then you had seventeen year old Roger Assam, fifteen year
Speaker 5: old Mike hadrafth fourteen year old Dana Baby that Stuart's
Speaker 5: younger brother, and then of course Sandra Cheske, who was
Speaker 5: thirteen at the time. A group of friends decided to
Speaker 5: get together. Now kidson Manitu State Park is located about
Speaker 5: fifteen miles east of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, just across
Speaker 5: into the Iowa state line, and it was a popular
Speaker 5: place where kid could go and hang out. Winding river there,
Speaker 5: rock ledgers, tree, rolling hills, kind of a beautiful place.
Speaker 5: And that November seventeenth, seventy three, November was a pretty
Speaker 5: mild fall. We had good temperatures, and the kids decided
Speaker 5: to go out there, build a fire, bring a guitar,
Speaker 5: long and hang out for a couple hours at the
Speaker 5: park that night. And so that's how that's the group
Speaker 5: that went out there.
Speaker 3: Now you say that they scrounge enough money to get
Speaker 3: a joint, the smoke and there was again one of
Speaker 3: them was going to play acoustic guitar. And Sandra had
Speaker 3: been dating this Roger for a little bit, you know,
Speaker 3: again not serious dating, but they knew each other and
Speaker 3: that was somewhat of a date that this was, this
Speaker 3: get together was. Now while they're there, Soon after they're there,
Speaker 3: what happens.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, again, the marijuana comes into play later on,
Speaker 5: and of course Sandra's age related to kind of dating,
Speaker 5: Roger Wressom comes into play. The kids had driven around
Speaker 5: for about two hours. The older kids thought it would
Speaker 5: be cool to be musicians and have a little marijuana.
Speaker 5: They finally found for me that would sell them one
Speaker 5: join the marijuana. Vicious rumors around this murder later on,
Speaker 5: So the kids get out to the park about nine
Speaker 5: thirty at night in November and the Midwest, it's already dark.
Speaker 5: So they get some firewood together, they build a fire.
Speaker 5: So they've got this roaring fire going, and a heavy
Speaker 5: fog starts rolling in a thick, heavy fog, and so
Speaker 5: as the kids are kind of talking, them playing the
Speaker 5: guitar and you know, just doing the teenage things, dan,
Speaker 5: they start to hear strange noises crumpling the leaves, twigs snapping,
Speaker 5: you know, it sounds like denim scraping on a branch,
Speaker 5: and the kids are getting spooked. You know, it's spooky
Speaker 5: night anyway with all the fog. But you know, they're
Speaker 5: just convincing themselves it's a wild animal. But it just
Speaker 5: didn't sound like a wild animal. In fact, Roger said,
Speaker 5: probably a bear and kind of laughed. You know, in
Speaker 5: the Midwest where we're at, in South Dakotin and Iowa.
Speaker 5: There's no bear, so they were trying to just brush
Speaker 5: it off. And every time they'd hear these sounds, the
Speaker 5: kids would go quiet and listen, but then the sounds
Speaker 5: would go quiet. Not much longer after that, all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, three shadowy figures appeared on a rock ledge
Speaker 5: about thirty yards above the campfire, and the kids look.
Speaker 5: They were holding weapons. Roger some step forward and said,
Speaker 5: who are you guys? What do you want? And then Dan,
Speaker 5: with the blast of a shotgun, the night of Terror started.
Speaker 3: As you do in the book, Sandy, you take us
Speaker 3: back to Sandra's incredible beginning just to start, just to
Speaker 3: just to illustrate, I think the beginning of a very
Speaker 3: difficult life.
Speaker 5: Talk about exactly.
Speaker 7: Sandra's mother, Lolo, was walking up to the sitter's house
Speaker 7: after work and she's going to pick up her three
Speaker 7: boys when she goes into labor with Sandra. So this
Speaker 7: sitter gets very excited. She calls this neighbor, Barbara, who
Speaker 7: is a beloved grade school teacher, and she says, Lolo
Speaker 7: just went into labor. Can you drive her to the hospital. Well,
Speaker 7: Barbara has never met Lolo, but that can't stop her
Speaker 7: from helping out.
Speaker 5: She says, sure, I'll.
Speaker 7: Do that, and she says to her teenage daughter Joyce,
Speaker 7: come with me, you know, just in case. So they
Speaker 7: drive the three minutes to the hospital. They pull up
Speaker 7: and Lola says, oh no, she said, not this hospital.
Speaker 7: I thought, you know, I had to go to Eagle Butt.
Speaker 7: Lolo's part Native American, and so because of that, in
Speaker 7: order to get medical care, she can only get it
Speaker 7: at certain Native American hospitals. And at the time, her
Speaker 7: marriage is hanging by a thread, and her husband's off.
Speaker 7: He's not sending money. She's doing what she tend to
Speaker 7: make ends need. And Barbara says, Lola, that's seventy five
Speaker 7: miles away, and they discuss it. Lolo says, no, I
Speaker 7: have these long labors. Trust me, I'll make it. So
Speaker 7: they head off west. The only road is this old
Speaker 7: car highway, and as soon as they head west, the
Speaker 7: sun sets. They're just thrust into darkness and blackness except
Speaker 7: for the headlights. They're having to constantly slow down for
Speaker 7: deer and animals. It's a windy road and all of
Speaker 7: a sudden, based on Lolo's breathing, Barbera knows that baby's
Speaker 7: ready to come. She's just a very astute person. And
Speaker 7: she tells her daughter, we're pulling over, get in the
Speaker 7: back seat, and throws her a towel, and so Joyce
Speaker 7: the daughter gets back there. Fortunately, Joyce worked as a
Speaker 7: nurse's aid at the hospital, and so she had seen
Speaker 7: a lot of deliveries, hadn't helped with one that had
Speaker 7: seen them, and like her mother, she was very observant.
Speaker 7: She delivered Sandra with no problem. So in the back
Speaker 7: seat of this fifty seven Chevy, Sandra's born. They drive on. Yeah,
Speaker 7: they get to Eagle Beat where mom and baby get
Speaker 7: checked in, and then Barbara and Joyce ask when we
Speaker 7: go see the baby, and the nurses say, well, no,
Speaker 7: she might be contaminated. She was born in the backseat
Speaker 7: of the car. So to this day Sandra will say, geez,
Speaker 7: even when I was a newborn, I was excluded from
Speaker 7: the group. And like you said, her unusual birth foreshadowed
Speaker 7: a light that would follow the same kind of unusual path.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, let's get back as you do. In the book
Speaker 3: to November eighteenth, nineteen seventy three. A day later after
Speaker 3: this event, a couples in Gischee, Manitou State park and
Speaker 3: they see three figures lying in the grass. Of course
Speaker 3: they call police, but what do police find as soon
Speaker 3: as they get there? From what county? You explain that
Speaker 3: there's certain there's overlapping counties involved in this case and
Speaker 3: in this park actually as well. But you introduce to
Speaker 3: Craig Vincent and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation Terry Johnson.
Speaker 3: So tell us about what the couple finds, the police
Speaker 3: that they call, and what happens.
Speaker 7: Okay, so, right, a couples out test driving a car.
Speaker 7: They decide to go through the park. They see these
Speaker 7: bodies laying there and the first thought is a gentleman
Speaker 7: gets out and as soon as he gets up there,
Speaker 7: he sees a lot of blood, he sees drag mark.
Speaker 7: He gets back in the car. They race out, go
Speaker 7: to the nearest farm, because there are a lot of
Speaker 7: farms around gets Manchu State Park and they call the police.
Speaker 5: The suit balls.
Speaker 7: Police get there very quickly. The sheriff of the county
Speaker 7: that it's in is Craig Vincent and he has one deputy,
Speaker 7: Leery Roy Greasy. They also get there very quickly. Now
Speaker 7: around this area, possibly no one who showed up had
Speaker 7: ever investigated a murder before. Sheriff Vincent and Deputy Greasy
Speaker 7: definitely had not, but they knew everyone knew right away.
Speaker 7: What they needed to do is get that park field
Speaker 7: off protect the evidence. They didn't have anything in their
Speaker 7: vehicles to do that, so they go to a nearby farm,
Speaker 7: ask for some snow fence and poles and get that
Speaker 7: set up. And at the same time, what happens in
Speaker 7: small counties is Vincent and his deputy still have all
Speaker 7: of their daily work to do.
Speaker 5: They have to run the jail, they have.
Speaker 7: To arrest people and all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 7: what they do is they call the Bureau of Criminal
Speaker 7: Investigation in Iowa, and this is a group of people
Speaker 7: who move around to different areas where a county needs help.
Speaker 7: So several of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents come in,
Speaker 7: headed by Terry Johnson, and they arrived one by one
Speaker 7: at the park and it is getting very dark and
Speaker 7: very late, and they eventually have to just close down
Speaker 7: until daybreak.
Speaker 3: Now, Craig Vincent tells BCI agent. He tells them that
Speaker 3: there is a survivor. There's a person, a girl who
Speaker 3: survived the murders. And you say that Johnson was stunned
Speaker 3: and tell our audience where they there's still an imminent
Speaker 3: danger because they don't know who these killers are. So
Speaker 3: for her protection, where is sandrak And where is she
Speaker 3: housed at?
Speaker 5: And then tell us again, Yeah, Terry, there's suppose these
Speaker 5: killers are running around and of course they've got a
Speaker 5: living witness. This young girl has lived through this mass murder.
Speaker 5: And so she's housed at the juvenile detention center and
Speaker 5: so falls South Dakota. It's a lot of facility. Actually,
Speaker 5: the head of the facility did not want there, okay,
Speaker 5: he you know, his job was to protect the other
Speaker 5: kids that are locked up there and his staff, and
Speaker 5: he's thinking, what if these killers find out the loan
Speaker 5: survivors here and they need to rub her out, they
Speaker 5: could come here, you know, kind of went back and forth,
Speaker 5: and you know, the powers above him made the decision,
Speaker 5: and she was house there for her protection with some
Speaker 5: extra round the clock police, uh, you know, surveillance of
Speaker 5: the place. So that's where she was kept for her
Speaker 5: protection while this investigation started kicking off.
Speaker 3: Now with this survivor, there's also the identity or the identification,
Speaker 3: the difficult identification of the boys and themselves and then
Speaker 3: Vincent's job is to notify the boys' families and find
Speaker 3: out any information on why they might have been there
Speaker 3: that night. And then one of the most dramatic things
Speaker 3: of this book is what Vincent and Johnson know that
Speaker 3: they need from Sandra. Tell us about that?
Speaker 5: Ah yeah, yeah. Orus Benson had to go around in
Speaker 5: families and break the hard news that they've lost loved
Speaker 5: ones to a murder and tried to find out any
Speaker 5: information with there have been some reason they were out there,
Speaker 5: just could anybody have forced them out there? And so
Speaker 5: he didn't really get anything. And so now they've got
Speaker 5: Sandra Chesky who is basically pretty severely traumatized. We will
Speaker 5: get to the sexual assault here in a little bit
Speaker 5: during the show, but you know, she said.
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Speaker 5: Traumatized young girl and what they really need is the
Speaker 5: next day for her to go back out to get
Speaker 5: you Manitu and walk them through the park and tell
Speaker 5: them where everything happened and how it happened. And this
Speaker 5: young girl was terrified. She did not want to go
Speaker 5: back to get you manit to. She begged and pleaded,
Speaker 5: she tried every way to get out of going back there.
Speaker 5: But you know, Craig Vincent was very fatherly to her.
Speaker 5: He really calmed things down. Terry Johnson believed her. You know,
Speaker 5: this girl wasn't believed by a lot of the detectives.
Speaker 5: They thought, you know, why did one girl live through
Speaker 5: this thing? She knows what's going on, or she's protecting somebody.
Speaker 5: So there's a lot of controversies surrounding Sandra Chesky. They
Speaker 5: were finally able to convince Sandra, you said you would
Speaker 5: do whatever it took to help your friends. Now it's
Speaker 5: the time, Sandra, You've got to be brave. You've got
Speaker 5: to go back to the park. Where we can videotape
Speaker 5: you walking through there. And so that's what they did
Speaker 5: the next day with Sandra.
Speaker 3: Now Sady tell us what she because we do as
Speaker 3: an audience, do not know. And this is the first
Speaker 3: time you're revealing the book exactly what happened and why
Speaker 3: Sandra was the survivor, at least in her explanation, the
Speaker 3: only living witness. This is very important. So the videotaping
Speaker 3: the in the state park where all the locations and
Speaker 3: what happened, as you do writ in the book, tell
Speaker 3: us take us back to that November seventeenth and what
Speaker 3: actually happened after Roger Essam was was shot and what
Speaker 3: happened after.
Speaker 7: Okay, so after Roger is shot, there's another shotgun blast
Speaker 7: and Stewart Baty is also hit and he falls and
Speaker 7: the other kids run and hide.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to fel tell a little bit about
Speaker 5: that point. Well, you know, at this point, Mike Chadra's
Speaker 5: of my childhood best friend. Here's a fifteen year old
Speaker 5: Chad through the twelve gage shotgun blastoy and he has
Speaker 5: the heroic quality to grab Sandra Chesk who's frozen with
Speaker 5: and physically drag her by her jacket to safety behind
Speaker 5: some big trees, and Dana Baby, the young middle school
Speaker 5: he ran off and hit as well. And so now
Speaker 5: you've got a fifteen year old and a thirteen year
Speaker 5: old her terrified. Steward is laying out there just wailing.
Speaker 5: You know, I've been shot. It hurts so bad. Helped me, Oh,
Speaker 5: somebody helped me. And you know they're whispering what's going on,
Speaker 5: what's happening. It's dark, you know, there's a dim firelight,
Speaker 5: and they can see these assailants starting to move around,
Speaker 5: move off the rock ledge and come down by the fire.
Speaker 5: They can hear them whispering and talking. And you get
Speaker 5: two young teenagers that are petrified, and Sandra going should
Speaker 5: we run? Should we run it? And they didn't know
Speaker 5: what to do, and then there's assailants. They start yelling Dan,
Speaker 5: where the police come out? With your hands up? Where
Speaker 5: the police come out? And Sandra didn't want to come out,
Speaker 5: but Mike told her, look, I don't know why these
Speaker 5: cops are shooting at us, but they have shot at us.
Speaker 5: We need to come out. And they came out with
Speaker 5: their hands up. And when they come out, Mike, as
Speaker 5: we're walking towards the assailants asked why they're being shot at,
Speaker 5: and one of the assailants pulls the twelve gigs up
Speaker 5: to his shoulder and shoots Mike, and he's severely wounded.
Speaker 5: He spins around and falls to the ground and its instinctively.
Speaker 5: Sandra falls down next to him and tries to play dead.
Speaker 5: Dana Batty had also come out of the trees with
Speaker 5: his hands up as well, and so now Mike is
Speaker 5: laying on the ground severely wounded. Sandra's trying to play
Speaker 5: dead at that poy didn't work. The killers went over
Speaker 5: and kicked the kids and made him get up, and
Speaker 5: now they've got him at gun points.
Speaker 7: So then after they have marched the kids around the park,
Speaker 7: they wire Sandra's hands and they get her in the
Speaker 7: pickup and two of the men stay with the boys
Speaker 7: at the park, and the oldest one, who calls himself
Speaker 7: the Boss, takes off with Sandra in the truck. They
Speaker 7: don't have a plan. He doesn't have a plan. He's
Speaker 7: driving around thinking what he's going to do, taking her
Speaker 7: here and there on these back roads, and after a
Speaker 7: couple two and a half two to three hours, they
Speaker 7: wind up at an abandoned farm, and his brothers show
Speaker 7: up there too, and there's a sexual assault. Sandra is
Speaker 7: raped and when it's over, only one of the brothers
Speaker 7: raped her. He gets out and another one climbs in
Speaker 7: and says, that wasn't so bad, was it. And Sandra
Speaker 7: was so strong, she said she refused to cry. She
Speaker 7: wasn't going to give them satisfaction. She wouldn't cry, but
Speaker 7: she was just numb. And the two brothers had to leave.
Speaker 7: We'll probably get to that later. They had to leap,
Speaker 7: and the oldest one, the boss, is left with her
Speaker 7: at the farm. It's his job to kill her. Sandra
Speaker 7: doesn't know that, but it's his job to kill her.
Speaker 7: And he takes her up to this abandoned house and says,
Speaker 7: I'm going to take you in there and scare you
Speaker 7: to death. Look at those windows first, and Sanders starts
Speaker 7: to go up to the window, and she says, this
Speaker 7: is weird. I'm not going up. She starts to take
Speaker 7: charge and he listens to her. She was just without
Speaker 7: realizing it did all the things that you should in
Speaker 7: a situation like that, So very quickly he decides he
Speaker 7: doesn't know what to do with her, gets her in
Speaker 7: the car, they start driving. He says, well, I'm going
Speaker 7: to take you home, and she just can't believe that.
Speaker 7: She doesn't know if she should believe him or not.
Speaker 7: And he says, you have to tell me where you live,
Speaker 7: and you have to give me your phone number first.
Speaker 7: Then I'll let till phil.
Speaker 5: Yeah. All the while he's telling her he's a cop,
Speaker 5: he's an undercover cop who was infiltrated the Hell's Angels,
Speaker 5: and you know, he's gonna let her live, you know,
Speaker 5: provided he gives her He gives him her phone number,
Speaker 5: and then he does take her home and drop her
Speaker 5: off about a half a block away from her house
Speaker 5: and lets her lets her live that night.
Speaker 7: And that's after she gives him her phone number, and
Speaker 7: he says, I'm putting this in my little black everybody
Speaker 7: who sells drugs in here, and uh, I'll probably call,
Speaker 7: you know, look up and call up sometime.
Speaker 3: Who does she tell? Who does Satra tell immediately after
Speaker 3: this about this assault?
Speaker 5: If anyone, well, you know, you know, she's so frightened
Speaker 5: that her mom is still sleeping. It's about five in
Speaker 5: the morning. Her mom has to get up in about
Speaker 5: an hour and go to work. She's afraid she's going
Speaker 5: to be in trouble. She's been raped, she'd been traumatized,
Speaker 5: she's seen her friend shot. And she goes in and
Speaker 5: she wakes up her older brother and she starts telling
Speaker 5: him that these would a cop rape me? Why would
Speaker 5: these cops shoot the boys? And her brother tells her,
Speaker 5: you know, Sandra, they don't sound like real cops. You
Speaker 5: need to go to the police. And she said, but
Speaker 5: they know where we live. They said they'd come and
Speaker 5: kill us. They've got my phone number. And her brother said, Sandra,
Speaker 5: I don't know. You've got to go to the police.
Speaker 5: Maybe you should wake up mom. And she was too
Speaker 5: frightened to She didn't know what to do. He said,
Speaker 5: go to your bedroom and think about this for a while.
Speaker 5: But you've got to go to the police. These guys
Speaker 5: don't sound like real cops. And so here's this girl.
Speaker 5: She's traumatized and now she's totally confused that what she
Speaker 5: should do, and what does she do. The next morning,
Speaker 5: she kind of dozes off her She sets up in
Speaker 5: bed with her head back against the wall and kind
Speaker 5: of dozes off. When she wakes up, her mom is
Speaker 5: gone and she doesn't have a way into Sue Falls.
Speaker 5: You're living on an acreage outside of Sioux Falls, about
Speaker 5: eight miles. So she called a friend and told the
Speaker 5: friend what happened, and the friend said, well, we've got
Speaker 5: to get into Seux Falls. She didn't have any way
Speaker 5: to do it, So the two girls went to the
Speaker 5: interstate and actually hitchhiked into the Sioux Falls to the
Speaker 5: police department, and that's when they went in. Now the
Speaker 5: cops up there in Sioux Falls, they already know there's
Speaker 5: been a mass murder. They're on high alert. And now
Speaker 5: this young girl walks and then she says, I was
Speaker 5: out to get you manitude. And instantly Sandra Chesky has
Speaker 5: read her rights. She's taken to an interrogation room. She's fingerprinted,
Speaker 5: and she's considered a suspect, and she's started to be
Speaker 5: interrogated by some of the homicide detectives up there in
Speaker 5: shoot Falls.
Speaker 3: Now you get back to Craig Vincent and Johnson and
Speaker 3: the people that believe in her story and as a result,
Speaker 3: try to get information from her. And what's one of
Speaker 3: the most fascinating aspects of this story is how much
Speaker 3: she remembers and what she remembers. So tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about how they get this information from her,
Speaker 3: from this traumatized girl, what relationship is leveraged here, and
Speaker 3: also what kinds of details does she give them And
Speaker 3: as a result of those details, what do the police
Speaker 3: create and implement.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll tell you a little bit and I'll let
Speaker 5: Sandy takeover. So Kerrie Johnson, BCI, Adrian Head and Vincent
Speaker 5: come in. They believe this girl. It kind of split
Speaker 5: the investigative team. There was a lot of controversy. Half
Speaker 5: the detectives did not believe this girl. They thought she
Speaker 5: was a lot eyeing through her teeth, and Vincent and
Speaker 5: Johnson believed her. So they were the ones, obviously that
Speaker 5: finally got her to go out in videotape at the park.
Speaker 5: But then Sandra starts telling them details of this thing
Speaker 5: and some of the incredible details, what they were wearing,
Speaker 5: how they looked. I let Sandy kind of take over
Speaker 5: on some of the details.
Speaker 2: They right.
Speaker 7: She remembered that there was a crack in the windshield,
Speaker 7: what color the lights were on the dashboard, there was
Speaker 7: an inspection sticker with a white border, and it looked
Speaker 7: like it had been torn off a roll. She noticed
Speaker 7: that Jagot edges I mean those were small, an inch
Speaker 7: by an inch, and Shelter remembered that the glove compartment,
Speaker 7: she said, didn't have like a push button, you turned
Speaker 7: the handle. And then she remembered that the wristwatch that
Speaker 7: the boss was wearing, it had one of those stretchy bands.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's just the beginning of it. She was
Speaker 7: noticing everything in spite of going through a rape, seeing
Speaker 7: her friends shot, being traumatized, and they thought, this isn't right.
Speaker 7: Nobody remembers that much detail. Oh and then she even
Speaker 7: remembered what brand of cigarettes. One of the murderers smoked
Speaker 7: Full Malls And they said, how do you know that?
Speaker 7: And she just said, well, I asked him. She just
Speaker 7: had that kind of personality to get to know people.
Speaker 7: And because she remembered so much detail.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's thinking. They're thinking she knows these guys somehow. Damn.
Speaker 5: So that's so that's where the controversy comes in and
Speaker 5: the splits the investigative team.
Speaker 7: But then they did interview her three times, which is
Speaker 7: common because they're saying, if the story stays the same,
Speaker 7: And one thing that struck all of them, even the doubters,
Speaker 7: was that her story stayed the same. No matter what
Speaker 7: they asked or trot how they tried to lead her,
Speaker 7: her story stayed the same. But based on what she
Speaker 7: told them, what they implemented was they made a grid
Speaker 7: around the soup Bowls area and they had her give
Speaker 7: a description of the abandoned farm where they'd been. Actually
Speaker 7: they had gone to a couple of places so right
Speaker 7: by each other. So they made sketches of that distributed
Speaker 7: it all over a tri state area, and then every
Speaker 7: day some of the DCI agents and other people would
Speaker 7: go out and when they checked an area of the grid,
Speaker 7: they'd mark it off. If they saw something that looked
Speaker 7: like it matched the description, they would go and get
Speaker 7: Sandra at the detention center, bring her out there and
Speaker 7: see if it was the place. They asked her, if
Speaker 7: you saw it again, would you recognize it?
Speaker 5: And she said, you bet I would, so yeah, So
Speaker 5: they're hunting for this abandoned farm where she was raped.
Speaker 5: That was the big thing. So you've got detectives back
Speaker 5: and Sue balds in he had good luck finding this
Speaker 5: abandoned farm. You know, go go keep driving your grid
Speaker 5: and wasting money. This girl's lying through her teeth. She
Speaker 5: protected a jealous boyfriend or somebody, and so they continued
Speaker 5: driving this grid looking for this abandoned farm where she
Speaker 5: was taken unassaulted.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: At the same time, there is another couple of important
Speaker 3: details that he said he was a drug our apartment,
Speaker 3: a narcotics officer, and he rifled off a number, a
Speaker 3: badge number which included eight hundred in terms of her
Speaker 3: memory and with that information, and also that she had
Speaker 3: a pretty good description of the seventy one Chevy, so
Speaker 3: they were doing a search of seventy one Chevies. And
Speaker 3: also tell us about what connection they made in their minds,
Speaker 3: what the importance of that eight hundred number would be,
Speaker 3: and as a result, what did they do.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, here you go, Dan, eight hundred numbers, badge
Speaker 5: numbers at that time in Iowa were narcotics agents. And
Speaker 5: since these shooters said that they were police and it
Speaker 5: was a drug rate, since the kids had a little
Speaker 5: bit of marijuana, now they're wondering, do we have dirty
Speaker 5: cops involved in this thing? Okay, they're trying to figure
Speaker 5: out the significance of this eight hundred number. They're trying
Speaker 5: to check out any narcotics agents it might have been
Speaker 5: operating in the get humanitu area for undercovered drug busts.
Speaker 5: Do we have dirty cops are involved in killing these kids?
Speaker 5: Does the eight hundred number means something different? Well, it's
Speaker 5: somebody's prison number, you know. Somebody just usually doesn't make
Speaker 5: up a number that's related to something. So that was
Speaker 5: the big debate going on among the investigators at that time.
Speaker 5: So they started sending one of the bcidents that was
Speaker 5: assisting up to the state penitentiary to start going through
Speaker 5: eight hundred number prison inmates to see if anybody had
Speaker 5: been released, Is there anybody that's been involved in shootings
Speaker 5: or sexual assaults. They were eliminating people that dent max,
Speaker 5: you know, the aids of the people or things like that,
Speaker 5: or people that have been deceased. So they're trying to
Speaker 5: narrow this thing down. So there's a lot of controversy
Speaker 5: surrounded this eight hundred number.
Speaker 7: But several of the folders that they checked didn't have pictures,
Speaker 7: so they couldn't determine if it matched the description, and
Speaker 7: any of the folders without a picture they pulled out
Speaker 7: and then would grab usually get to those and check
Speaker 7: into them further, and.
Speaker 5: One of them would happen to be sitting and go ahead, yeah, no,
Speaker 5: so go ahead no, I was going to say, and
Speaker 5: one of those that didn't have the picture connection to
Speaker 5: the eight hundred number.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. What was the media response at that time, What
Speaker 3: did the media know and what did the media convey
Speaker 3: to the public at that time?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, they, of course, like in a lot
Speaker 5: of investigations, while they don't want to release too much,
Speaker 5: so there was a lot of there was a lot
Speaker 5: of mystery and controversy. All people knew was that there
Speaker 5: was one teenager that lived through it, and then here
Speaker 5: started the rumors. Why did this one teenager live? Is
Speaker 5: she involved? You know? Was she dating one of the killers?
Speaker 5: Who are these killers? And so basically they just gave
Speaker 5: a little bit of the detail of who was killed,
Speaker 5: where they were killed, how they were killed, and that
Speaker 5: it was an ongoing investigation. Now, Sandra did sit down
Speaker 5: with a sketch artist gave composite sketches of the three assailants,
Speaker 5: and that was distributed in the paper. Description of the
Speaker 5: pickup truck with the cracked windshield and what they figured
Speaker 5: it was a fleet line pickup. Okay, that was all.
Speaker 5: And so they had the public on the lookout for
Speaker 5: that and amazingly, when these killers were apprehended, the compositive
Speaker 5: sketches matches them very very closely. Andrew did an excellent
Speaker 5: job describing these killers.
Speaker 3: While the police are still continuing this investigation the public.
Speaker 3: You talked about the rumors, but what was the sense
Speaker 3: how what type of level of fear was in this
Speaker 3: community as a result?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: People were keeping their doors locked, you know, especially in
Speaker 5: the rural areas out by work that you manit to.
Speaker 5: People are setting up that night, one family member which
Speaker 5: step at night with a loaded weapon, trying to guard
Speaker 5: their homes. You know, there was a lot of fear,
Speaker 5: you know, and especially in the Midwest at that time, Dan,
Speaker 5: there was just not a lot of violent crime at all.
Speaker 5: It was this kind of a sheltered environment. You know.
Speaker 5: The Gidchee crimes really brought the horror of the world
Speaker 5: home to the Midwest where we lived. It was just,
Speaker 5: you know, it's a lot of fear going on.
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Speaker 3: slash true murder. Now, Phil and Sandy, we were talking
Speaker 3: about the ongoing search and then the split in the
Speaker 3: investigative team. Half of these detectives, these veteran detectives, thought
Speaker 3: it was too suspicious that she was dropped off by
Speaker 3: these psycho killers, potential serial killers. And in the book
Speaker 3: you write about a couple cases that had some similarities
Speaker 3: that set the investigation off for a bit. Detours into
Speaker 3: those areas before they were deemed that there was no
Speaker 3: real connection to this tell us about the incredible event
Speaker 3: that leads to the apprehension of they only knew their
Speaker 3: names hatchet Face, Sneaky and the boss tell us about
Speaker 3: this incredible event with Sandra Jeski.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, of course carry this. This grid search is
Speaker 5: going on for nearly two weeks. Okay, they spotted an
Speaker 5: abandoned farm that kind of matched the description, and so
Speaker 5: they went to the detention center to get Sandra to
Speaker 5: take her out there. Well, when they go out to
Speaker 5: the abandoned farm again, she says, no, this isn't the play.
Speaker 5: So there's more disappointment. So they've started to head back
Speaker 5: towards town and Alson Sanders said, wait a minute, I
Speaker 5: think that might be the place. Here there was another
Speaker 5: abandoned farm not too far from the one they went
Speaker 5: to look at, and she said, yes, I think this
Speaker 5: is the place. And while they're going to pull in there,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden she looks up and she starts screaming,
Speaker 5: there he is. There's one of them. That's the boss.
Speaker 5: Right there there he is. A pickup truck was coming
Speaker 5: right down the road right at him, and there was
Speaker 5: the pickup that they'd been searching for. And it was safe.
Speaker 5: Andrew Chesky, the lone survivor that's with us. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's like crazy, you can't make it up. And she's
Speaker 5: with these detectives and she spots and she's part of
Speaker 5: the apprehension of Alan Fryer, twenty nine years old, the
Speaker 5: self proclaimed boss. He still had a shotgun in his
Speaker 5: vehicle with him. There was the crack in the windfield,
Speaker 5: everything how Sandra described it. There was a pickup that
Speaker 5: was the murder pickup that night, and they put Ellen
Speaker 5: under arrest and then immediately they start focusing on his
Speaker 5: two brothers.
Speaker 7: Well what Right after they arrested him, one of the
Speaker 7: BCI agents got in the vehicle with Alan to just
Speaker 7: talk with him, see what was going on, and he
Speaker 7: said Alan went for his weight. He started to reach
Speaker 7: under his shirt. So the BCI agent's starting to grab
Speaker 7: for his gun, and Alan pulls a pack of Palma
Speaker 7: cigarettes out of his waistbands because he'd never known anyone
Speaker 7: kept his cigarettes and his waistbands, and he said, Allen
Speaker 7: the Boss looked at him and he said, Alan knew
Speaker 7: that I knew that. He knew that I knew that
Speaker 7: he was the murderer. And he didn't. He didn't resist arrest,
Speaker 7: but they did come up with some wild stories to
Speaker 7: justify what they've done, and.
Speaker 5: So Dale immediately they focused on his brother's twenty four
Speaker 5: year old David Pryor and twenty one year old James Bryer.
Speaker 5: James went by sneaky, David, the twenty four year old
Speaker 5: went by hatchet face, and of course and Alan the
Speaker 5: oldest one was the boss.
Speaker 3: Which one This is an incredible twist again, it sounds
Speaker 3: like fiction. Which one of these guys was actually doing
Speaker 3: a prison sentence or a jail sentence and tell us
Speaker 3: how he just happened to be not in prison or
Speaker 3: in jail in custody this night. What was the reason?
Speaker 5: Just to add okay, James Bryar and James Bryer, the
Speaker 5: one that actually raped Sander, the Knight in the pickup truck,
Speaker 5: was serving time in the Suit Falls Minnihaha County Jail
Speaker 5: for stolen goods. The jail had a work release program
Speaker 5: and if by administrative permission, go to their job and
Speaker 5: then at the end of the shift come back and
Speaker 5: lock up and have to be locked up on weekends
Speaker 5: and holidays. It was a system to try to keep
Speaker 5: these guys who were locked up in jail from losing
Speaker 5: their jobs, and so Alan or James Bryer had permission.
Speaker 5: He was a tow truck driver for a tow truck company,
Speaker 5: and so was his brother, hatchet Face David, So you've
Speaker 5: got Sneaky and David both working for a tow truck company. Well,
Speaker 5: the night of the Get You Manitude murders, James was
Speaker 5: supposed to go back to the jail and lock up
Speaker 5: about five pm supper times, but he had David call
Speaker 5: and the jail and impersonate his boss and say we're shorthanded.
Speaker 5: We need James to work a second shift. And the
Speaker 5: lie worked, the jail allowed him to be out, and
Speaker 5: then the three brothers got together. They actually loaded their
Speaker 5: shot and with double lot buckshot they were going to
Speaker 5: get you. Managed to to poach a gear that night,
Speaker 5: but then they're hunt for gear, turning to the hunt
Speaker 5: for kids when they heard the guitar player heard the
Speaker 5: kids talking, and so there was a big outcry around
Speaker 5: the area that this guy was out of jail and
Speaker 5: he's part of a mass murder and a rape while
Speaker 5: he's supposed to be incarcerated for crimes that he had
Speaker 5: previously done. So there was a big outcry around the
Speaker 5: community against that work release program in the jail. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just crazy.
Speaker 3: Now what is Sandra's now? She was stayed at the
Speaker 3: juvenile's detention center. Now these people have finally been captured,
Speaker 3: these killers, and you talk about when they did just
Speaker 3: detain Alan the Boss Friar, she cried hysterically, like an
Speaker 3: incredible release, it seemed so. Tell us what she goes,
Speaker 3: moves from the juvenile detention center and now these guys
Speaker 3: are processing these killers. Where does Zadra go?
Speaker 7: Well, she went back to the juvenile detention center right
Speaker 7: after they were caught, right when she was out at
Speaker 7: the farm, because she was hysterical and they knew they
Speaker 7: needed to just get her out of there. But once
Speaker 7: they were captured, then she was allowed to go back
Speaker 7: home with her family.
Speaker 3: Now, tell us a little bit about the strategy to
Speaker 3: police employ when they first questioned Alan the Boss Friar,
Speaker 3: and what happens does he lawyer up or do they
Speaker 3: get some information from him?
Speaker 5: You know, no, he doesn't. Alan Fryar's kind of a
Speaker 5: wild individual. He was cocky. He thought he could pull
Speaker 5: the wool over people's eyes. But he was a big storyteller.
Speaker 5: Here's a guy that said that he hunted predators by
Speaker 5: hanging out the windows of an airplane while the pilot
Speaker 5: flew low. He would hang out and shoot at predators.
Speaker 5: And one time he fell off a SiO, fell off
Speaker 5: a silo and landed on a cow. And so he
Speaker 5: starts telling opening up and telling the detectives this crazy story.
Speaker 5: Him and his brothers were out there fishing, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, these guys, these boys that got killed,
Speaker 5: started shooting at them with twelve gage shotguns, and they
Speaker 5: had to crawl through the weeds and hide, and they
Speaker 5: snuck up behind one and jumped him and beat him
Speaker 5: up and got his shotgun. And then now they had
Speaker 5: a weapon, so they started shooting back, and if anybody
Speaker 5: got killed, it was in self defense because those boys
Speaker 5: were shooting at them first. And they don't even know why.
Speaker 5: They were just probably because they were all on drugs,
Speaker 5: smoking marijuana or something. So they had guns and started
Speaker 5: shooting us. But luckily we beat one up and got
Speaker 5: their weapon, got the weapon and killed the boys. So
Speaker 5: that was his story to start with.
Speaker 3: Now. At the same time, he's not a very bright guy, admittedly,
Speaker 3: and so what he's doing is placing himself in that
Speaker 3: park and in those statements to contain these wild assertions
Speaker 3: and allegations. He basically is digging his own grave in
Speaker 3: terms of information. What does he say about the other
Speaker 3: brother's involvement. Vincent and Johnson have the real information that
Speaker 3: they believe from Sandrachski.
Speaker 7: Yes, right, And so what Alan does is he points
Speaker 7: the finger at his brothers. He changes his story every
Speaker 7: time they talk to him, and at one point one
Speaker 7: of the agents says, come on, Alan, you should know
Speaker 7: better than to tell a story like that. You know,
Speaker 7: we're talking to your brothers too. There are other people
Speaker 7: talking to your brothers, and whoever comes clean first and
Speaker 7: tells the truth is going to end up the best. Okay,
Speaker 7: Allen thinks about it. He says, bring everyone in here,
Speaker 7: I'll tell you the truth.
Speaker 5: Well, then he.
Speaker 7: Makes up another wild tale, and he had a third one.
Speaker 7: And when they interview his brothers, they also blame the
Speaker 7: other two.
Speaker 5: So each brother.
Speaker 7: Claims to be innocent and blames the other two brothers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they all claim they weren't the trader man. It
Speaker 5: was the other two brothers that pulled the trader. Typical yeah,
Speaker 5: you talk.
Speaker 3: About one of the brothers though being much different, tell us.
Speaker 5: About Yeah, that's James. He was the one that the
Speaker 5: BCI agents told us he was just cold, hateful, of
Speaker 5: cold eyes that just would stare right through you. He
Speaker 5: didn't get nervous, and they said he was just off
Speaker 5: and of course he actually was. I mean, he was
Speaker 5: the rapist. He was a violent one. He was one
Speaker 5: of the lead executioners when they kept the boys out
Speaker 5: of the park that night. And that was James Fryar,
Speaker 5: the rapist.
Speaker 7: And yeah, we'll tell you a little bit of background
Speaker 7: on him. When he was arrested for the first time
Speaker 7: at age nine or ten for taking a car and
Speaker 7: driving it. And he continued to get in trouble stealing things,
Speaker 7: candy bars from stores, stuff like that. And then he
Speaker 7: stole a grain truck from a neighbor and at his
Speaker 7: dad's request, he was put into planking. And then that
Speaker 7: is the state training school in South Dakota. So he
Speaker 7: gets out and almost as soon as he's out, still
Speaker 7: the sixty four oldsmobile today from the school parking lot,
Speaker 7: meets some kids out on county road races, it rests,
Speaker 7: it ends back up at the State Training School again
Speaker 7: at fifteen years old now, and he is so out
Speaker 7: of control and angry and violent that they end up
Speaker 7: sending him to the state mental hospital.
Speaker 3: Right now, there's the information to put this whole case
Speaker 3: together there. Obviously there's search warrants, search warrants issued, and
Speaker 3: they gather information. But they get a lot of information
Speaker 3: from Alan and these other brothers about the murder weapon.
Speaker 3: Tell us who they get the information from about the
Speaker 3: murder weapon, where's it supposed to be? Do they find it?
Speaker 3: Tell us about the search for the shotguns.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the middle brother, Dan, he decides he's
Speaker 5: going to play guilty and he's going to come clean
Speaker 5: and he's going to help out the investigation because it
Speaker 5: might do him good. So he starts opening up and
Speaker 5: saying that they threw an in a place called grass lake.
Speaker 5: Actually not a lake. It's like about a football in
Speaker 5: a field half. It's a big duck sluw or a bog.
Speaker 5: A lot of people duck hunt there, and so he
Speaker 5: broke the weapons down and threw it out there. And
Speaker 5: the night that he threw it out there, there was
Speaker 5: no ice covering it. But now by about the time
Speaker 5: the BCI agents need the weapons. You know, cold Weather
Speaker 5: has said it, and so now the slew is all
Speaker 5: frozen over. So David Pryor Hatchet Base, did drive the
Speaker 5: agents out there and show where he was standing when
Speaker 5: he threw the murder weapons away, okay, And they.
Speaker 7: Used industrial metal detectors to try to find them that
Speaker 7: they borrowed from the National Guards and also had to
Speaker 7: get permission to burn all of the cat hills and
Speaker 7: things off of this slew so that they could even
Speaker 7: see what was in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so they did end up finding one of
Speaker 5: the weapons broken down. It was a smith Field twelve
Speaker 5: gage pump. They never did find the barrel, but they've
Speaker 5: got they got the magazine and you know, the stock
Speaker 5: and all that stuff. And so they did find one
Speaker 5: of the weapons where David said it was throwing.
Speaker 3: Incredible Now, while these guys are incarcerated another again almost
Speaker 3: sounds too weird to be true. You talk about Mike
Speaker 3: Hadrath's brother Bill, just a very interesting coincidence, told us.
Speaker 5: Upon Yeah, now, and again since I have a personal connection, now,
Speaker 5: Amember Mike Hadraff was fifteen who was murdered, get you
Speaker 5: manic you His older brother Bill was three years older
Speaker 5: than us, So we were fifteen at the time Mike
Speaker 5: lost his life, I was too. His brother Bill had
Speaker 5: just turned eighteen. He was in still in high school,
Speaker 5: had just turned eighteen, but he started running with some
Speaker 5: bad kids and he got in some trouble for stealing
Speaker 5: some stuff. So the judge wasn't playing games with him
Speaker 5: since he was eighteen. He got put in jail, the
Speaker 5: county jail for three months and while, but he on
Speaker 5: school release, so the jail band would take Bill Hadraff,
Speaker 5: Mike's older brother, to school every day from the jail.
Speaker 5: And while he's in jail, he's setting. He's setting there
Speaker 5: with a killer that killed his younger brother, but he
Speaker 5: doesn't know it. It's this strange guy, James Fryer, who's
Speaker 5: in there for stolen goods. And while this hunt for
Speaker 5: the killers is going on, well, the hunt for the
Speaker 5: killers is going on, James Bryer is safely setting in jail,
Speaker 5: but he's sitting in there with Bill Hadraf, the older
Speaker 5: brother of Mike who lost his life. It gets humanitude,
Speaker 5: and so it just it's a crazy, incredible, strange twist.
Speaker 7: You couldn't make that up.
Speaker 3: Now you talk about James pleading guilty. But what does
Speaker 3: Allen and or pardon me? What do what does Alan
Speaker 3: and James do? Then?
Speaker 7: Okay, So Alan and James end up in the county
Speaker 7: jail together and in the summer they decide that they're
Speaker 7: going to make a break for it. So they break out.
Speaker 5: Of jail, get three blocks to steal a.
Speaker 7: Brand new pickup, go all the way across South Dakota
Speaker 7: around an eight hour drive into Wyoming where they dumped
Speaker 7: that truck and steal another little car and they get
Speaker 7: to Gelllett, Wyoming where they hit a pedestrian but don't
Speaker 7: injure them, and that's where they are captured and then
Speaker 7: returned again. But both of them went to trial. They
Speaker 7: did not say guilty.
Speaker 5: The jail break was really an intense thing too, that
Speaker 5: created a lot of fear in the area. All they've
Speaker 5: made their jail break, Dan was the Lion County Jail
Speaker 5: was a small jail that was very old. That for sure,
Speaker 5: Craig Benson worked out of Lyon County Rock Rapids, Iowa.
Speaker 5: It would get you manto us in that jurisdiction. They
Speaker 5: had just recently, about eight months before, had put some
Speaker 5: new locks on the jail doors well, somebody on an oversight,
Speaker 5: they were bolted into place, but somebody had forgotten to
Speaker 5: bring in a welder and well built boats from the place,
Speaker 5: and Alan Fryer saw that, so he got a piece
Speaker 5: of metal off his bed in the jail, shaped it
Speaker 5: in the form of a ratchet, and over a few
Speaker 5: knights worked on those bolts and got them loose enough
Speaker 5: to take those locks off. I was sure Craig Benson,
Speaker 5: who had a very good share, very very diligent, got
Speaker 5: right in the media, especially after they were recaptured, and
Speaker 5: he took responsibility for that that it was his responsibility
Speaker 5: that jail shell Locke should have been welded.
Speaker 7: And after Alan escaped out of his jail, then he
Speaker 7: went and let his brother James out.
Speaker 5: James was taking a different jail show, but the keys
Speaker 5: were in the in the office and Alana hanging on
Speaker 5: the wall, kind of like the Andy Griffiths show.
Speaker 3: Wow and tell us about tell us about the trial,
Speaker 3: at least the highlights, not to go too much into
Speaker 3: the ridiculous stories, but the features of who was there
Speaker 3: and who who wasn't, you know, suspiciously absent, but what
Speaker 3: family members were there give us some of the things
Speaker 3: that happened at the trial before we get to what
Speaker 3: was the result with the jury.
Speaker 5: For these three, you know, probably the most interesting thing
Speaker 5: for your listeners, dan Is Sandra Chesty was the star witness.
Speaker 5: Here's this frail thirteen year old girl when the murder
Speaker 5: trial starts. She turns fourteen during but she's so young
Speaker 5: and so naive. And she gets on the witness stand
Speaker 5: and repeatedly the judge and the attorneys have to tell
Speaker 5: her speak up, speak up. And she was, you know,
Speaker 5: being grilled by these defense attorneys, and she asked the
Speaker 5: judge of her mother, Lolo could come up and set
Speaker 5: in the witness stand with her, and the judge granted that.
Speaker 5: He allowed her mother to come and set in the
Speaker 5: witness stand with her and hold her hand. And here
Speaker 5: this young girl is being grilled day in and day out.
Speaker 5: There was time where she was on the stand in
Speaker 5: for three straight hours. And just to give you an
Speaker 5: idea of how young she was, one of the attorneys said, now,
Speaker 5: come on, Sandra, didn't you give consent for the sex
Speaker 5: that night? And Sandras asked him what does consent mean?
Speaker 5: I mean, she was just so young, and of course,
Speaker 5: you know, they you know, their questions are all could
Speaker 5: trip her up? You know, come on, Sandra, you said yourself,
Speaker 5: you were frightened, you were hiding in the trees, and
Speaker 5: you can say it was Alan Fryer that shot my
Speaker 5: client shot. You cann't say who did And she said, yes,
Speaker 5: I did. He was the one with the gun up
Speaker 5: to his shoulder. No, it was too dark, Sandra, you
Speaker 5: said that. She said, no, there was enough firelight. I
Speaker 5: saw he was the one. And so they were trying
Speaker 5: to trip her up. And here Dan is where she
Speaker 5: gets a second nickname. You know, around the community, she
Speaker 5: got known as the Getchy Girl. That's where the title
Speaker 5: of the books come from. But at the trial, even
Speaker 5: the defense attorneys and people on both sides started dubbing
Speaker 5: her the tough little girl from Getchie. The tough little
Speaker 5: girl from Getchie keeps coming back, coming back and standing
Speaker 5: up to these defense attorneys. And of course, you know,
Speaker 5: they ended up getting the convictions first murder against both
Speaker 5: James and Helen after a year and a half of trials.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Now, what was the media response to that before
Speaker 3: we get to a really sad response from Harrisburg High School.
Speaker 5: Well, you know the media, you know, the media was,
Speaker 5: you know, obviously with a media frenzy, you know, because
Speaker 5: there was just such a huge case in the tri
Speaker 5: state area there, and of course everybody was elated that
Speaker 5: they caught these killers and they got their just reward
Speaker 5: for what they did to those young kids. How to
Speaker 5: get you managed to that night, and so they really didn't,
Speaker 5: you know, do anything out of the ordinary of what
Speaker 5: you would normally see in the newspaper clippings. You know,
Speaker 5: they showed they kept updates on the trial. You know,
Speaker 5: month after month there would be new things in the paper.
Speaker 5: You know, it just went on and on, like you
Speaker 5: know those murder trials.
Speaker 3: Can't you talk about the effect, Well, we've talked about
Speaker 3: Sandra and what she went through, the trauma of that
Speaker 3: event and losing her friends, being sexually assaulted, being doubted
Speaker 3: by police, they polygraphed her. There was many, many interviews.
Speaker 3: Use you talk about the effect though in the community,
Speaker 3: and it's real dramatic. In the book where you talk
Speaker 3: about Harrisburg High School, she attempts to go back to
Speaker 3: high school. Now she's been a hero in this case.
Speaker 3: So anybody that had any doubt this case should have
Speaker 3: the depiction of it the stories, the articles, the newspaper response.
Speaker 3: But what happens at Harrisburg High School?
Speaker 5: Well, Dan, it's here where the sad, sad, sad part
Speaker 5: of the whole story comes about. Not everybody, I want
Speaker 5: to put it up front, not everybody, but so many
Speaker 5: people back during that time didn't have a lot of
Speaker 5: compassion for a rape victim, and she was. It was
Speaker 5: a time when you kind of blamed the rape victim.
Speaker 5: You shouldn't have been there, you know, why were you
Speaker 5: out with a group of boys that night anyway at
Speaker 5: the park, What were you wearing? Okay, The vicious rumor
Speaker 5: started on her. You got what you deserve, Sandra, and
Speaker 5: they said the Kitchi girl, you know, they started calling
Speaker 5: her the Gitchie girl. That was the progatory name. Sandra
Speaker 5: came back to school after missing almost a year and
Speaker 5: a half at these murder trials, and teachers were helping
Speaker 5: her to try to catch up with the work, but
Speaker 5: it was a being shunned by the other girls and
Speaker 5: her peers. She would come into the school cafeteria and
Speaker 5: try to sit down with a group of girls and
Speaker 5: they would get up and pick their trays up and
Speaker 5: walk away from her. And the whispers and the taunts,
Speaker 5: and a couple of girls tried to be her friend,
Speaker 5: but their moms told her they weren't allowed to hang
Speaker 5: out with the tainted getchy girl, and then of course
Speaker 5: the pure pressure from the other teenage girls. Eventually it
Speaker 5: got too hard and they abandoned Sandra too. She was
Speaker 5: just left to be the getchy girl. Nobody talked to her.
Speaker 5: She went to a school dance one night and stood there.
Speaker 5: Even though she was a very pretty young girl, nobody
Speaker 5: would ask her to dance, Nobody would talk to her.
Speaker 5: And to the point where this girl just dropped out
Speaker 5: of school, she said, I felt years older than my peers.
Speaker 5: Nobody wanted me. They don't want the getchy girl, and
Speaker 5: so she drops out of school.
Speaker 7: And I will say all these years later that here
Speaker 7: is for Communitia has come back and supported her than
Speaker 7: one of those people who wasn't nice to you. I'm
Speaker 7: really sorry about it, and Sandras said. One regret she
Speaker 7: has is that her mom developed dementia just before the
Speaker 7: book came out, and she's never been able to tell
Speaker 7: her mom that now she has all this support from
Speaker 7: people that her mom wouldn't have to be embarrassed of
Speaker 7: her anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you talk about too that that's yeah, Yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 3: you talk about too that the counseling was not available
Speaker 3: in the seventies. It was never was never offered to her.
Speaker 5: Yeah. You know, Dan, I'm still a high school teacher
Speaker 5: here in Iowa, and we've got a lot of teenagers
Speaker 5: that are reading this book. They just can't understand that.
Speaker 5: And I said, you guys, it was just a different time.
Speaker 5: You guys know that if we had kids murdered in
Speaker 5: our high school, there'd be an army of counselors in
Speaker 5: here tomorrow talking to all of you that were upset teachers.
Speaker 5: But not back then. They just didn't offer the counseling
Speaker 5: like they do now. I mean back and if you had,
Speaker 5: you know, quite a bit of money, you might go
Speaker 5: see a psychiatrist. But it just wasn't offered. And so
Speaker 5: Sandra had to find all these ways to deal with
Speaker 5: being the getchy girl in this horrible rape and the
Speaker 5: murder of her friend. She had survivor's guilt. She would
Speaker 5: go to those boys's grave and sing to them and
Speaker 5: talk to them, and the weather was nice. She she
Speaker 5: had survivor's guilt. She didn't want to be alive. She
Speaker 5: was suicidal for a long time, and she even discovered that.
Speaker 7: When she was around animals like other people's dogs, that
Speaker 7: she would start to feel better and feel calm. And
Speaker 7: she based me on her own before that was even
Speaker 7: a term.
Speaker 5: So and so that's why we say the tough little
Speaker 5: girl from Gitchie kept coming back. She had to find
Speaker 5: all these ways emotionally, spiritually, physically after that that rape.
Speaker 5: You know, she had to find all these ways to
Speaker 5: come back and to keep her head up on her own. Yeah,
Speaker 5: on her own.
Speaker 3: Even the trauma of the I would say the trial
Speaker 3: would have been traumatic as well, with the you know,
Speaker 3: blown up photos of the atap see photos of her friends.
Speaker 3: The grilling that was done didn't seem to be interrupted
Speaker 3: by anyone. Really considering the age, you know, now you
Speaker 3: would have it would be much different, I think because
Speaker 3: of the age and also our attitude towards rape victims. Now,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be as advantageous to a defense lawyer to
Speaker 3: cross examined her the way she was cross examined as
Speaker 3: you write this book.
Speaker 7: Yes, and at the time it was an open court
Speaker 7: even though she was thirteen and turned fourteen. As the
Speaker 7: trials went on. So it was full every day of strangers.
Speaker 7: Sometimes high schools would show up there as a civics
Speaker 7: part of their civics class. So in front of a
Speaker 7: room full of strangers, she has to reveal all of
Speaker 7: these intimate details and tell about being raped and everything
Speaker 7: that happened, and with those.
Speaker 5: Killers sitting right there far from her, glaring at her.
Speaker 5: I mean today, a minor rape victim would probably be
Speaker 5: allowed to be in another room and there would be
Speaker 5: videotaped and be piped into the court and a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, it depends on the state I suppose
Speaker 5: that you're in.
Speaker 7: And their name would be kept crying out.
Speaker 5: Yes, this poor girl was just pounded relentlessly from every side.
Speaker 5: I mean, what a strong girl.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the strength is incredible. And you talk about too
Speaker 3: not to and it's almost downplay, but we forget that
Speaker 3: she was plagued with insomnia. You talk about skin lesion,
Speaker 3: severe weight loss, nausea. You know this is these are
Speaker 3: the real things that weren't dealt with and that she
Speaker 3: had to overcome. And then you take us as you
Speaker 3: do and originally in the book to in the beginning
Speaker 3: of the book to twenty sixteen, when getche Girl the
Speaker 3: first the first one came out, the survivor's inside story
Speaker 3: of the mass murder of Shock to Heartland. You talk
Speaker 3: about that was a healing process for because she didn't
Speaker 3: know how much support was really outfit and like you say,
Speaker 3: people had probably treated her bad came forward. That's very cathartic.
Speaker 3: You also have something to say about this book and
Speaker 3: its effect on her as well.
Speaker 5: Tell us, well she continues to heal, Dan, I mean,
Speaker 5: the book signings have been incredible. I mean we're blessed
Speaker 5: as authors. We have events, and I mean there are
Speaker 5: packed houses, and of course Sandra's when especially when she's there,
Speaker 5: it's even more of a packed house. And of course
Speaker 5: it's they're always positive, they're always supportive. And so she
Speaker 5: continues to heal through the second book, and it's she
Speaker 5: keeps telling her story now over and over and it's
Speaker 5: her therapy getting it out now. And she Now, when
Speaker 5: we first started the book, she just blocked so many emotions.
Speaker 5: She was very robotic about telling this story. Now Sandra
Speaker 5: laughs at certain things. She'll laughs at the story of
Speaker 5: her mom trying to get to the Ego Butte hospital
Speaker 5: and her having to be born in a car. She'll cry.
Speaker 5: She'll break down and cry now when she's telling about
Speaker 5: that night when she first started telling us, she was
Speaker 5: just just stoneface. She just had blocked this big emotional wall.
Speaker 5: But so it continues, the healing continues for Sandra Cheski
Speaker 5: and for as authors. One thing, that's one thing we're
Speaker 5: really proud of.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, she didn't move that far from the area, did she.
Speaker 3: She didn't move all across the country.
Speaker 5: No, she didn't. She tried to get away for a while. Dan.
Speaker 5: She moved away from South Dakota to Minnesota and was
Speaker 5: living with a friend. But her friend was dating somebody
Speaker 5: was gone at night and she's still to this day
Speaker 5: fearis tonight. So she had to be by herself. She
Speaker 5: said it was better because I could walk the streets
Speaker 5: and nobody recognized me as the Get You girl. But
Speaker 5: she didn't have her mom and her family around her.
Speaker 5: She needed that support group. So she came back and
Speaker 5: lived in the area, and she still lives in So Falls,
Speaker 5: South Dakota. She has stayed there. A tough little girl
Speaker 5: from Get You stayed around. Yep.
Speaker 3: Absolutely incredible. Well, this is an incredible story and an
Speaker 3: incredible tale of strength and perseverance and you can't make
Speaker 3: up this stuff. This is incredible story. Thank you very
Speaker 3: much for coming on and talking about gets You Girl Uncovered,
Speaker 3: a true story of a night of mass murder and
Speaker 3: the hunt for the deranged killers. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 3: Is there a facebook page or a website that we
Speaker 3: might people might take a look at this book and
Speaker 3: maybe your other book as well. All right.
Speaker 7: Our Facebook page is Phil Hammon and Sandy Hammond, and
Speaker 7: there is another Facebook page Getchy Girl.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been We've been a pleasure.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Thanks for having us on, Dan, thank you.
Speaker 5: We love your show.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure. You
Speaker 3: have a great evening. Hope to talk to you both
Speaker 3: again soon.
Speaker 5: Good night, Thank you, thank you.