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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your
Speaker 5: Host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. Fred Rosen is a former columnist for the
Speaker 6: Arts and Leisures section of the New York Times. He's
Speaker 6: also one of the most important and successful figures in
Speaker 6: true crime writing and the author of several true crime classics.
Speaker 6: He got off to an incredible start with Lobster Boy
Speaker 6: in nineteen ninety five, Blood Crimes in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 6: and Gangmum and The Mad Chopper, both published in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety eight. Deacon of Death was published in two thousand,
Speaker 6: Needlework in two thousand and one. Both Body Dump and
Speaker 6: Flesh Collectors were published in two thousand and two, The
Speaker 6: Historical Atlas of American Crime in two thousand and five.
Speaker 6: When Satan Wore Across and There But for the Grace
Speaker 6: of God were both published in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 6: Deadly Angel in two thousand and nine, and Trails of
Speaker 6: Death in twenty eleven. Did They Really Do It was
Speaker 6: published in twenty fifteen. Born to the Mob and Murdering
Speaker 6: the President were published in two thousand and sixteen, The
Speaker 6: Bayou Strangler in two thousand and seventeen, and Bat Masterson
Speaker 6: in twenty nineteen. We will discuss how he got started
Speaker 6: in what cases and killers in particular most shaped his
Speaker 6: remarkable true crime body of work. The episode tonight is
Speaker 6: Fred Rosen True Crime Retrospective. My special guest journalist and
Speaker 6: author Fred Rosen. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you very much for this. Fred Rosen.
Speaker 3: Oh, Dan, I'm overwhelmed, I really am. I mean, as
Speaker 3: you were reading off those books, you know it brings
Speaker 3: back all these memories.
Speaker 6: You know, Well, that's good. Yes.
Speaker 3: Do you know what's interesting when you look back on
Speaker 3: a book and you know this, When you look back
Speaker 3: at a book, you don't remember necessarily yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: you remember some of the details about the case, depending
Speaker 3: upon what the case is, but you also remember what
Speaker 3: was going on personally, you know.
Speaker 6: Sure, let's talk about the books in particular. As I
Speaker 6: mentioned and in the introduction, you got off to incredible
Speaker 6: start with Lobster Boy. Now, where were you previous to
Speaker 6: Lobster Boy in your career? And give us the particulars
Speaker 6: the circumstances in which this book, very important, true crime
Speaker 6: classic with the wildest and true crime history. Tell us
Speaker 6: about Lobster Boy, tell us about the genesis of Lobster
Speaker 6: Boy and your career as a result.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you. I'll tell you what happened. I had
Speaker 3: actually done another true crime book prior to that, called
Speaker 3: Doctors from Hell, right, And what happened was and and
Speaker 3: what happened was I was trying to sell a novel
Speaker 3: and I got friendly for various reasons, you know, with
Speaker 3: this editor. His name is Paul Dennis, who really shaped
Speaker 3: a lot of true crime at Pinnacle Books, right, and
Speaker 3: he's and I was standing on the corner of Park
Speaker 3: Avenue and thirty fourth Street in the middle of Manhattan,
Speaker 3: ban and he said to me, well, you know what,
Speaker 3: I don't want to publish your novel, but like you
Speaker 3: to work on this book called Doctors from Hell. I
Speaker 3: need a journalist. And I was teaching journalism at the time, okay,
Speaker 3: at Hastra University, so uh, you know he offered me.
Speaker 3: You know, I remember the wind. You know, it was
Speaker 3: almost like a what do you call it? A spiritual moment.
Speaker 3: You know. I was thinking, you know, do I do
Speaker 3: I do this? Because it wasn't something that I was
Speaker 3: necessarily looking to do. It was an opportunity and I
Speaker 3: went with it. And then what happened loss the boy. Okay,
Speaker 3: shortly after I do that book. Oh man, I'm in Florida,
Speaker 3: Yeah it was. I was. I was on vacation and
Speaker 3: I saw something in the local paper about a case
Speaker 3: involving a lobster boy. And I'm going, uh right, okay
Speaker 3: and uh and I called and I called up pulled Dennis,
Speaker 3: the editor, and I said, you know, this is a
Speaker 3: weird case. He says, it's your next book. So what
Speaker 3: he says, it's your next book. Okay, it's my next book.
Speaker 3: So I start looking into it, and uh, there was
Speaker 3: there was the What happened, okay, what happened was Brady
Speaker 3: Styles Junior, who's lobster boy was a circus I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: carnif Freak, who had ecodactyly which is what caused the
Speaker 3: feet and the and they hands to fuse and give
Speaker 3: him what looked like the lobster cause.
Speaker 6: Okay, he was.
Speaker 3: He was abusive to the family, blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway,
Speaker 3: loves for short his wife, working with her our son,
Speaker 3: who is his steps on, Grady's stepson, they harbor a
Speaker 3: hit man to come into the house and kill him. Well,
Speaker 3: uh I I uh the the attorney for uh for
Speaker 3: the wife sent out a video tape and it was
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be used and heard defense. So
Speaker 3: what it shows is Lops the boy wrestling with his
Speaker 3: song Lops the Boys Jr. Okay, right. And I get
Speaker 3: a copy of it, Dan, I don't know if I
Speaker 3: ever talked about this. I don't think I have. And
Speaker 3: and I get a copy of it, and I, you know,
Speaker 3: and I listened to it, you know, I play you know,
Speaker 3: it's this is back in the nineties, so it's it's video.
Speaker 3: And uh, what you hear in the background is tibbetzy.
Speaker 3: I think I have to translate that. Huh right, timbosing
Speaker 3: is a Yiddish term for kidding around. You hear the
Speaker 3: family kidding around in the background. Okay, fade out, fade in.
Speaker 3: I go to the trial. I'm at the trial, and
Speaker 3: the the the During the trial, the defense attorney shows
Speaker 3: the tape, except he turns down the sound and it's silent.
Speaker 3: I didn't know he turned it down. I found that
Speaker 3: out later. But when you look at it without sound,
Speaker 3: it looks like the fathers of using the son, Right,
Speaker 3: So what is what does your buddy do? He walks
Speaker 3: up to the prosecutor. I walk up to the prosecutor
Speaker 3: and I said, my copy of the tape has has
Speaker 3: sound and there's Kimbecy and he said, get me a
Speaker 3: copy of it. Send it, Send it. It's evidence in
Speaker 3: a murder case. Oh my god, you know this this
Speaker 3: was you know, I'm going, what the hell do I do? Dan?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm getting involved in a murder case directly.
Speaker 3: And you know usually journalists don't do those things, and
Speaker 3: you know we report, we don't get involved. Well, let'll
Speaker 3: tell you what. So I have to decide. I mean,
Speaker 3: I got the tape, and you were asking what I
Speaker 3: was doing at that time. I was still teaching. But
Speaker 3: get this. I get the tape. Okay, I'm in and
Speaker 3: I'm in a hotel room in Tampa and I get
Speaker 3: a phone call and it's from the school I was
Speaker 3: teaching at the telling me, I, I'm not getting tenured
Speaker 3: because my degree is in film, it's not in journalism.
Speaker 3: I'm not qualified to continue teaching. And I look at
Speaker 3: the tape and I'm going, okay, I'm not qualified to
Speaker 3: teach the journalism, but I'm about to break a major
Speaker 3: murder cake. And I had to decide what to do
Speaker 3: with the tape? Did it was? It was one of
Speaker 3: the most pivotal moments in my life because I knew
Speaker 3: if I turned it over, she'd get convicted, and I
Speaker 3: was putting my life at risk. So I didn't know
Speaker 3: what to do. And I sat in the room, I
Speaker 3: looked out the window, and I went back to my childhood,
Speaker 3: and I thought, what would the lone ranger do? Because
Speaker 3: he was huh And so I said, the lone ranger
Speaker 3: would turn over the tape and would serve justice regardless
Speaker 3: of the consequences. And that's always been the way that
Speaker 3: that I functioned, you knows, in terms of the way
Speaker 3: I work. And so that's what happened. I turned the
Speaker 3: tape over, and sure enough, the yeah, I got, I got,
Speaker 3: I gotta you know, I got, I got a threat
Speaker 3: from the family, but thank god, nothing happened.
Speaker 6: And were you criticized by them? Were you criticized by
Speaker 6: the media at all? With your stats?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well yeah, there were some people that criticized me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the funny thing is Dan, as sensational as this sounds,
Speaker 3: it didn't get very much in the way of national publicity.
Speaker 6: Really, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now it could be because it was the
Speaker 3: mid nineties and you know it's different today, obviously, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, but no, so, yeah, there was some people
Speaker 3: that criticized me, but I just, you know, I just
Speaker 3: rolled with the punches.
Speaker 6: The publisher, Pinnacle at the time, must have been pretty
Speaker 6: happy with the results. And so you get to your
Speaker 6: next book. In nineteen ninety six, Blood Crimes. Yeah, Brian
Speaker 6: Freeman and his fifteen year old brother murdered their entire
Speaker 6: family mother, mother, father, and younger brother. And these are
Speaker 6: neo Nazi skinheads. Tell us just something that comes to
Speaker 6: mind with this, your second book, Blood Crimes.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what comes to mind. They were the
Speaker 3: brothers with Jehovah's witnesses, so they rebelled against the parents
Speaker 3: by becoming skinheads. It's weird, but they got friendly when
Speaker 3: they escaped after they did the killing. They went up
Speaker 3: to Michigan and they with some white supremacist friends. What
Speaker 3: happens during the trial, which is in Allantown, Pennsylvania. Their
Speaker 3: white supremacist friend's skinhead friend comes down to testify.
Speaker 7: And I'm sitting here and I got to stop myself
Speaker 7: from laughing so much because what happens is I started
Speaker 7: talking to him.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a reporter, and you know, of course
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, Jiefred, it's a little bit weird,
Speaker 3: a Jewish guy talking to neo Nazi blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But I said, you know what, I'm working, and I
Speaker 3: floked to the guy who says, oh, I need to
Speaker 3: live to the airport. I drove the neo Nazi to
Speaker 3: the airport. All it was, it was, and you know
Speaker 3: it was. It was very interesting because he gave me
Speaker 3: the information about the brothers.
Speaker 7: Yeah, amazing, and and and and.
Speaker 3: The other thing that was interesting about that was that
Speaker 3: because I had lived in Brooklyn Heights section of Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: a neighborhood in Brooklyn, and that is where the the
Speaker 3: Uh Jehovah's witnesses are based. That's where they have their
Speaker 3: world headquarters. So I was very familiar with with.
Speaker 6: Witness Okay, let's talk about Gang Mom. This is very
Speaker 6: interesting case of incredible deception. Was Mary Louise Thompson uh
Speaker 6: mother of a troubled team. She had been an active
Speaker 6: become an active painter against team gang activity. What did
Speaker 6: the neighbors find out about the model mother.
Speaker 3: The neighbors found out in it was Eugene Washington that
Speaker 3: she was running her own, her own street gang. That
Speaker 3: while she was coming across publicly as an advocate against gangs,
Speaker 3: she had her own gang. And uh, she running her
Speaker 3: own gang. And eventually she her son, rather her son.
Speaker 3: What happens is she winds up, she winds up getting
Speaker 3: one member of her of the gang to kill a boy,
Speaker 3: a teenager that's going to testify against her son in
Speaker 3: a case. And that's why she winds up going to
Speaker 3: jail for life, you know. And this is this is
Speaker 3: the Pacific Northwest. They don't get around with these things,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, they're they're they're very you know,
Speaker 3: it's not someplace you're going to get away with something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 6: What do you remember about the mad Chopper type of Florida?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I'll tell you what I remember about the
Speaker 3: Mad Chopper, Oh boy. Uh. I had to take two trips.
Speaker 3: I always go to the scene of the crime always,
Speaker 3: and so the first trip was down to Florida where
Speaker 3: he killed a murdered a a prostitute. But then I
Speaker 3: went out to California because the reason he was called
Speaker 3: the Mad Chopper it's awful. He shopped, he kidnapped the
Speaker 3: young girl and chopped though for wrong. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: mean it's and he wound up getting, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of years in prison. And I wound up going.
Speaker 6: Up to.
Speaker 3: I actually went up to northern California to the area
Speaker 3: where it happened. You know, I went to the scene
Speaker 3: of the crime, and and I talked to the it
Speaker 3: was it was and I also was I remember Modesto. Uh,
Speaker 3: I had to go to Modesto and uh I talked
Speaker 3: to the police officer there who was the the detective
Speaker 3: on the case. It was just, it was just but
Speaker 3: it was. It was a very very upsetting case because
Speaker 3: the girl, oh god, you know, she never recovered, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, sure she got you know, an artificial are
Speaker 3: but you know, emotionally forget about.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing was she testified that trial though remarkably
Speaker 6: Yeah she was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but it but it uh, it was, man,
Speaker 3: it was the mere fact that the law let and
Speaker 3: they changed it afterwards, I know they changed it. They
Speaker 3: let the guy out was ridiculous. I mean it was
Speaker 3: really really ridiculous. And uh so and when when they
Speaker 3: did let him out, no community would take them. You know,
Speaker 3: they had to move him around.
Speaker 6: Incredible. Yeah, you have a couple again, sheeps and wolves
Speaker 6: in sheep's clothing. Pardon me, uh, A couple of remarkable
Speaker 6: stories involving something that people would not believe if it
Speaker 6: were not for they would believe it will have hard
Speaker 6: time believing if it was fictional. This deacon of death
Speaker 6: church deacon Smithers. This is in Tampa by day, he's
Speaker 6: the church deacon. But what's he doing at night? And
Speaker 6: what does it lead to?
Speaker 3: Well? I also have a memory on that book too.
Speaker 3: What happens is what Sam is doing is at night,
Speaker 3: he leaves his house and he ticks and he picks
Speaker 3: up girls along one of you know the street that
Speaker 3: Hillsborough I think it's Hillsboro Avenue where propstitute. She'll do
Speaker 3: that on a way of work. Blah blah blah. I
Speaker 3: does stuff like that. But eventually he picks up two
Speaker 3: girls and he transports them to this house where he's
Speaker 3: the k taker someplace out in the country, and he
Speaker 3: murders both of them. Dump him in ah, what do
Speaker 3: you call it? Uh? I don't know. A pond a
Speaker 3: pond right, and dumps in a pond and uh, it was. Oh,
Speaker 3: and what happened was that both of the women were prostitutes.
Speaker 3: And what happens is oh, must have been about a
Speaker 3: couple of years afterwards. I mean, Facebook is amazing, Dan,
Speaker 3: sometimes because I started getting what do you call it
Speaker 3: pms the personal message from from a prostitute who've been
Speaker 3: working the streets with one of them, and she started
Speaker 3: telling me about the woman and basically what she's what
Speaker 3: she's telling me is she's lucky and she didn't wind
Speaker 3: up that way. It was. It was really amazing. You know,
Speaker 3: once in a while those things happened, you know, not
Speaker 3: very often with some you know where somebody talks to
Speaker 3: you after the fact, you know, after after the case.
Speaker 3: But but that was that was very upsetting. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was very upsetting. And but you see, you've also
Speaker 3: mentioned h a lot of those earlier cases took place
Speaker 3: in Tampa, Florida, in that area at Hillsboro County, because
Speaker 3: that's where Lobster Boy took place. You know, it was
Speaker 3: pretty far south in the county. But it's basically what
Speaker 3: happened was I formed a relationship with with the you know,
Speaker 3: with the police officers, and also with the public information officers,
Speaker 3: so I'd ask them to let me know if they
Speaker 3: had any interesting cases, and they would.
Speaker 6: Talk about interesting case is when Satan wore across. This
Speaker 6: is nineteen eighty in Toledo, Ohio and again on one
Speaker 6: of the holiest days of the church calendar. You write
Speaker 6: the body of an none was discovered in the sacristy
Speaker 6: of a hospital chapel. Seventy one year old sister Margaret
Speaker 6: Anne been strangled and stabbed. And here it goes her
Speaker 6: corpse arranged in a shameful and stomach churning to say
Speaker 6: the least pose. Police had a suspect, Father Gerald Robinson,
Speaker 6: tell us how what happens here? And then what happens
Speaker 6: twenty three years later in this incredible story, Well.
Speaker 3: What happens is what happens is that Robinson is interrogated originally,
Speaker 3: but the mon senior comes in and gets him out.
Speaker 3: You know, the church used its influence uh uh uh
Speaker 3: uh and got him out. And then they moved him
Speaker 3: around from parish to parish. And funny thing on that
Speaker 3: case is, as I got into it, uh, there was
Speaker 3: a cop, former cop who had been at the crime
Speaker 3: scene and he uh, he had been I don't, I
Speaker 3: guess blacklist. He had been blacklisted by the department because
Speaker 3: he didn't go with their what do you know, their
Speaker 3: take on the thing, right, so you know, and so
Speaker 3: and and again oh oh oh oh, I forgot oh
Speaker 3: one more thing is Colombo used to say, uh, I uh,
Speaker 3: this is the first time I ever spoke to an exorcist. Wow, Dan,
Speaker 3: I got on the phone with an exorcist, see, and
Speaker 3: you know, because they called in an exorcist and to
Speaker 3: help them figure out what was going on because it
Speaker 3: was a satanic inspired crime. And then I and so
Speaker 3: I got to talk to the exorcist. You know, that
Speaker 3: was pretty That was pretty interesting.
Speaker 6: Yes, no kidding. What was interesting too, is it twenty
Speaker 6: three years later. Really what we had and what you
Speaker 6: write about I thought was very interesting was that it
Speaker 6: was a different time and you know, it's twenty three
Speaker 6: years later, but the societal shift in attitude was really
Speaker 6: what facilitated Robinson being convicted because it was a different,
Speaker 6: completely different time. I you say, the church didn't have
Speaker 6: the power that it had with the exposing of all
Speaker 6: the scandals over the years in that interim.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, And that was what was so
Speaker 3: interesting about it and fact, Oh yeah, I just Robinson
Speaker 3: died in jail a couple of years ago. Somebody contacted
Speaker 3: me to let me know about it.
Speaker 6: Interesting. You wrote a book called There But for the
Speaker 6: Grace of God. Well, it's just what that is? Briefly,
Speaker 6: what do you mean by there but for the Grace
Speaker 6: of God? When you include well.
Speaker 3: It's based on that old expression, oh God, help come
Speaker 3: me out here. There. Well, There but for the Grace
Speaker 3: of God is about Oh boy, this is the most
Speaker 3: emotional book I ever did. No questions, Oh yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean it. It's this was a book. I interviewed survivors
Speaker 3: of septs and it was it was, it was. It
Speaker 3: was a real education exact. One of the survivors, who
Speaker 3: I'm not going to mention by name, but found a
Speaker 3: way to make money off of it. But I got
Speaker 3: to say that, uh what was so how? Oh man,
Speaker 3: I'll never forget this. I met the woman who who
Speaker 3: was in the uh, the woman who put ted Bundy
Speaker 3: in the chair. It was when Bundy went into the
Speaker 3: so already how in Florida and Central Florida, And this
Speaker 3: woman had come in after Bundy had killed two of
Speaker 3: her sorority sisters upstairs, and she came into the the
Speaker 3: I was gonna say the ante room, but it would
Speaker 3: be the living room. And she said to me she
Speaker 3: could feel her grandfather's arm on her, stopping her from
Speaker 3: going further into the room, because if she'd gone further
Speaker 3: into the room, she would have been close to Bundy
Speaker 3: and he bya killed her. But she was able to
Speaker 3: see him and at the stairs in a circle of light,
Speaker 3: pool of light. Whatever. And what happened was she she
Speaker 3: later testified against him and put him in the electric chair.
Speaker 3: But I gotta tell you the emotion. I have never
Speaker 3: ever been that close to that kind of evil. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't mean to get you know, mystical
Speaker 3: or anything, but I just have to tell you that
Speaker 3: the vibe was just I could feel the Bundee vibes
Speaker 3: and I'm just talking to this woman, you know, luckily,
Speaker 3: but again lially she's vibed and had a life and
Speaker 3: so forth and so on. That was just very very emotional.
Speaker 6: Tell us how you came to be involved and write
Speaker 6: Deadly Angel Crying. That occurred in Wassilla, Alaska, a little
Speaker 6: place about forty two hundred people. She was an exotic
Speaker 6: dancer at this bush company in nearby Anchorage. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about what you remember about this.
Speaker 3: Well, the thing I gotta tell you about that is
Speaker 3: that the woman, Okay, this is about an exotic dancer
Speaker 3: who allegedly lures one of the one of the guys
Speaker 3: she's living with out into the country in murdersm The
Speaker 3: thing is, later on this became the first closed case
Speaker 3: that the closed case squad in that area of and
Speaker 3: the state police handled. Okay, But she actually was later
Speaker 3: found her conviction was overturned by the what you called,
Speaker 3: you know, the appeals court. So as far as the
Speaker 3: you know, of course of concern, she's not guilty.
Speaker 6: There was no follow up to this. I mean normally
Speaker 6: even Pinnacle had a sort of a rule, didn't they
Speaker 6: didn't they have if this is a Pinnacle release, didn't
Speaker 6: they have a rule to wait till those appeals were exhausted.
Speaker 6: What was it that was the new evidence brought up later?
Speaker 6: Was it was circumstances.
Speaker 3: It was circumstances. But but also the this wasn't Pinnacle,
Speaker 3: this was Harpercollin, Okay, and this was different. I have
Speaker 3: to tell you that that this was a different point
Speaker 3: in in in my career. It was. All I can
Speaker 3: say is it was different. Okay, And in terms of appeals,
Speaker 3: now that you mentioned it, yeah, you got a good
Speaker 3: point there. Usually wait until everything is is juty caated
Speaker 3: before you you publish. But this is but this is
Speaker 3: what happened. But of course it took years. You know that.
Speaker 3: The other thing it took you know, it took years.
Speaker 3: I remember that it was the stripper in the case.
Speaker 3: She came from joy Z. It's amazing how you remember
Speaker 3: those things. She came from New Jersey. But it was
Speaker 3: it was I didn't go now, see that's the case.
Speaker 3: That's the case where I did not go to I've
Speaker 3: been to Alaska, but I didn't go to Alaska on
Speaker 3: that Maybe if I had, you know, I would have realized,
Speaker 3: you know, the the you know, the the legal problems whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have an experience with a particularly evil serial killer.
Speaker 6: They are all, I guess a certain amount of evil.
Speaker 6: But this Hilton, oh, Gary Michael Hilton, Trails of Death.
Speaker 6: What do you remember about this guy that struck in Florida,
Speaker 6: Georgia and North Carolina before he was finally caught.
Speaker 3: By I gotta just say a couple of things about
Speaker 3: this First, you know, you always when you you know,
Speaker 3: except for like podcasts, which of course this is, you
Speaker 3: don't expect a tape of an interview that well, to
Speaker 3: stay around. I did an interview in twenty eleven with
Speaker 3: Yate Line NBC on this case, and they rebroadcasted a
Speaker 3: week ago last Friday. And the thing about Hilton that
Speaker 3: was different for me than any other well, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's probably different than certainly any other serial killer case.
Speaker 3: But any I think any other case that I've done.
Speaker 3: Is what happened was I got friendly with one of
Speaker 3: his childhood friends in Hiah, Florida, not too far from
Speaker 3: where I live now. So Dan, I went over to
Speaker 3: Hialiah and his friend took me. Oh man, he took
Speaker 3: me down the canals they used to go down as kids.
Speaker 3: He took me to where they they what do he
Speaker 3: called they played as kids. And when I added it
Speaker 3: all up, Okay, I see the guy's background. I talked
Speaker 3: to his friend. I researched his background and found out
Speaker 3: that he got through a certain amount of abuse. Okay,
Speaker 3: and I and he clear, and I sat behind him.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Dan, I sat behind the guy in court.
Speaker 3: I mean the only thing between us it was the railing,
Speaker 3: so I could hear all of his conversations with his
Speaker 3: attorney and stuff like that. Hilton, and I have to
Speaker 3: tell you that this was the first time I was
Speaker 3: in a courtroom where a man was sentenced to death.
Speaker 3: I'd never experienced that. And I'll be quite frank and say,
Speaker 3: when I walked out of that courtroom after that happened,
Speaker 3: I shed a few tears. And the reason I shed
Speaker 3: a few tears is because it was pretty obvious from
Speaker 3: the when the defense argued for the guy's life, how
Speaker 3: he'd been abused, how he had brain problems for very
Speaker 3: you know, he'd had some brain damage. You know, this
Speaker 3: was actually you know, it was it was very interesting,
Speaker 3: and so I felt badly, you know, I felt like,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know, you know, just the idea,
Speaker 3: you know. Help. However, look and the guys and then
Speaker 3: what happened with that one? Here we go Facebook again.
Speaker 3: Somebody contacts me on Facebook who was a friend of his,
Speaker 3: who's who's in Florida and goes and sees him every
Speaker 3: now and then. So I've said to myself now for
Speaker 3: a couple of years, she do you want to visit
Speaker 3: them because I never did an interview and I don't
Speaker 3: know where I go with it. Dan, You know you
Speaker 3: know where do you go with it? You visit a
Speaker 3: convicted serial killer and jail. The books are realt What
Speaker 3: am I going to write about?
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Speaker 12: Welcome to the Family vdW group. No perch's necessary if
Speaker 12: we we're privited by loss he terms and conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 3: You know, sure? So I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's talk about flesh collectors. Well, you call it
Speaker 6: misfit Jeremy Rogers twenty one and racist devil worshiper Jonathan
Speaker 6: Lawrence twenty three. They met in a Florida Penal System
Speaker 6: mental hospital. So a relationship made in True crime Heaven.
Speaker 6: That's nineteen ninety eight in Pensacola, Florida. Layton Smitherman. What
Speaker 6: happens with these guys? And why what are these guys
Speaker 6: really all about?
Speaker 3: As you write, Well, these guys are they're weird. I
Speaker 3: mean even for killers, they're weird. One of them seems
Speaker 3: to be into the devil. But they oh boy, what
Speaker 3: they do is first they when they go when they
Speaker 3: fire at Smitherman, and it's it's sort of a random thing.
Speaker 3: But then eventually they wind up killing the cousin of
Speaker 3: one of these two killers, right because they and then
Speaker 3: and that's really the sad part. What happens is one
Speaker 3: of them goes out a date with a girl, and
Speaker 3: it's really sad. He ticks her up at her house
Speaker 3: and the guy's got tattoos all over his body, but
Speaker 3: he's all clothed because when he ticks the girl up,
Speaker 3: the mother is there and the girl is just like
Speaker 3: I think, I think she was eighteen, she was just
Speaker 3: about to graduate. And what happens is they take her
Speaker 3: out into the country. I mean, you know, these two guys.
Speaker 3: I think this is one of those situations where those
Speaker 3: two personalities became very working together, became very deadly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and and and uh and so they they one of
Speaker 3: them shoots her, and then the other one, Oh boy,
Speaker 3: he uses a knife and he cuts up her calf
Speaker 3: muscle like he's gonna And then when the when Todd
Speaker 3: Hand who's the detective, comes into their when he goes
Speaker 3: to arrest them, and he comes into their trailer, he
Speaker 3: finds he finds the flesh and the refrigerator. Incredible, incredible,
Speaker 3: I mean just incredible, but very evil people. You know,
Speaker 3: like when we were talking a couple of minutes ago
Speaker 3: about Gary Hilton, I just I don't, I don't. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't call Gary evil. Okay, bad maybe, but but these
Speaker 3: but these two guys, oh man, they're they're they're off
Speaker 3: the charts and uh, they're just off the charts. And
Speaker 3: it was very, very upsetting. And of course I went
Speaker 3: to the uh. I traveled to Pensacoa to well, it's
Speaker 3: it's across from Pensacola and it's it's the Redneck rivi Era.
Speaker 3: That's where I first learned. Yeah, that the that the uh,
Speaker 3: the uh the coast of Florida, New Mexico, you called
Speaker 3: the Redneck rivy Era.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, and I can also say go ahead, go
Speaker 6: ahead for it.
Speaker 3: No, I was just gonna say, I just remember that
Speaker 3: when I covered that case, hurricane hit and a hurricane
Speaker 3: hit and the tree came down right near me. So
Speaker 3: I feel very lucky, you know, it got added out
Speaker 3: one alive.
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Speaker 6: to talk about one of the books that you in
Speaker 6: the eighteen books that we're featuring today. Did they really
Speaker 6: do it? Tell us a little bit about the genesis
Speaker 6: of this book and what you cover in this book.
Speaker 6: Four cases.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, yeah, oh boy. I have a very strong interest,
Speaker 3: as you know, Dan, in history, American history, and so
Speaker 3: I was interested in cases in American history where maybe
Speaker 3: there was some doubt about whether the bad guy did
Speaker 3: it or not. And I had to pick the cases, okay,
Speaker 3: And one of the cases that was pretty easy. It
Speaker 3: was uh uh that what's his name? That the bomber?
Speaker 3: But the the no no, no, no, no, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: uh no, the the uh the the the the the
Speaker 3: the guy that was allegedly involved with the World Trade
Speaker 3: Center bombing. Uh. But the point is, the point is
Speaker 3: when I was working on the cases, there was one
Speaker 3: case that really got to me. It was doctor Samuel Mudd.
Speaker 3: A lot of people don't remember this, but doctor Mud
Speaker 3: was a doctor in uh Maryland. Who's who what after
Speaker 3: John Wilkes Boo's shot President Lincoln a scape eight and
Speaker 3: he he uh and and he wound up coming to
Speaker 3: MUD's house to get his ankle set. Well, the question
Speaker 3: was did Mud know Booth before? Did he have any
Speaker 3: idea that what what Booth was going to do? So
Speaker 3: I started doing my research, tim and I find I
Speaker 3: find that, uh, there was there was a a letter
Speaker 3: that Jenny Carter, our former president, sent to the grandson
Speaker 3: of doctor Mudd in the late seventies where he said
Speaker 3: to him, well, I think he's innocent, but I can't
Speaker 3: pardon him because it's not federal, it's not thing along
Speaker 3: bows part. And he actually was correct. He couldn't pardon
Speaker 3: because it was the military trial. But the first question,
Speaker 3: what's the question, why did Jimmy Carter write a letter?
Speaker 3: Why did you know? Why did he say that?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 3: Uh? What what happens? H? I'll never forget this. I
Speaker 3: get on the phone and I call up the Carter
Speaker 3: Center in in Atlanta, and uh and they and they said,
Speaker 3: I said, I had a question for the president. This
Speaker 3: is about history. And they said, okay, fax it in.
Speaker 3: He's in town. I said, he's in town. He's not
Speaker 3: in planes. They said, no, he's here. I said, okay,
Speaker 3: So I fax in the question Dan. Well, then five
Speaker 3: days I go to the mailbox. I opened my mailbox
Speaker 3: and there's a letter and there's no stamp on it.
Speaker 3: And what wait a minute, only presidents have franking privileges.
Speaker 3: Sure enough in the back, it said Jimmy Carter, I
Speaker 3: open it up. I opened it up, Stan, I opened
Speaker 3: it up. Carter took my facts and wrote me a note,
Speaker 3: and he said, dear Fred, I did what my people
Speaker 3: told me to do. And I thought to myself, what
Speaker 3: former president would say, I messed up that way and
Speaker 3: get back to you so fast. Except Jimmy Carter, you know.
Speaker 3: And and because it because he did mess up. And
Speaker 3: this is important because at doctor Mudde's trial, his slaves
Speaker 3: testified that Booth had shown up prior to getting his
Speaker 3: ankle set, so he knew him. He knew him. And
Speaker 3: mud wound up going to the dry Tortugas, which is
Speaker 3: down here off the coast of Florida, and he was
Speaker 3: pardoned because they had a yellow fever epidemic and he
Speaker 3: helped out. But the fact is he sure as heck
Speaker 3: knew what was going to go on, and he's sure
Speaker 3: as heck knew. John Wilke spoof.
Speaker 6: Incredible.
Speaker 3: So that yeah, and that was what was so interesting
Speaker 3: about that book in terms of the in terms of
Speaker 3: the cases, let's go.
Speaker 6: To the Bayou Strangler. Ninety seven bodies of young African
Speaker 6: American men began turning up in the cane fields of
Speaker 6: New Orleans suburbs. You had direct access to this investigation
Speaker 6: and Dominique's confession, and you went explored this community here
Speaker 6: to be able to write this story, The By You Strangler.
Speaker 6: Tell us just a little tidbit about the By You Strangler.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is about a guy named Ronald J. Dominate
Speaker 3: and he is member for the Killed Totals.
Speaker 6: But you're breaking up, Fred, Sorry, can you repeat that again?
Speaker 3: He murdered twenty three men and I was taken the
Speaker 3: investigating officer, a woman to all of the dump stypes
Speaker 3: where the guy dumped his body. That was something, I mean,
Speaker 3: it wasn't it really? Oh boy, you know it's it really?
Speaker 3: You know it really talking to you, what it really
Speaker 3: comes to is if you're going to write a true
Speaker 3: crime book in essential being a detective, you know. And
Speaker 3: I was taken to the dumbstites, and I'll tell you
Speaker 3: it was it was very, very emotional, the fact of
Speaker 3: that he had picked on gay or bi sexual men.
Speaker 3: And that was what was so interesting was that because
Speaker 3: he did, the case got very little national publicity. Nobody
Speaker 3: wanted to publicize it because it you know, at least
Speaker 3: at that point, they didn't. Maybe it would be different today.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I mean, but so when they
Speaker 3: finally finally formed their task force to get the guy,
Speaker 3: it really pushed things, you know, it it got they
Speaker 3: got things going. But but that was also very I
Speaker 3: got upsetting. But I got to tell you something. The
Speaker 3: cops on the case. She took me, she took me
Speaker 3: out for lunch, and we went to this lunch place
Speaker 3: and and uh, you know we're right, you know, we're
Speaker 3: rural Louisiana, right on the Gulf, and there were all
Speaker 3: these other cops there and and uh, they said, I
Speaker 3: wanted to try this. I said, what's that? They said,
Speaker 3: French frieda alligator. There wasn't a few of My response
Speaker 3: was going to be, you know, and of course I
Speaker 3: knew I was being uh, you know tested. Uh, but
Speaker 3: they did. They This was a case where the cops
Speaker 3: did a very very they did. They did a great job.
Speaker 3: They really did a great job, because if they hadn't
Speaker 3: gotten this guy, he still be out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he was, as you're right, he was flying
Speaker 6: under the radar for years. He's working as a pizza
Speaker 6: delivery man and a meter reader.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 6: He didn't fit anybody's profile, did he didn't.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. And I only that what he
Speaker 3: didn't do what you would have thought a serial killer
Speaker 3: would do in the bayou, which is dumped the bodies
Speaker 3: in the bayou. He didn't do that. He dumped them
Speaker 3: by the side of the road. It was certainly certainly
Speaker 3: an element of ego involved in this, and uh it Yeah,
Speaker 3: certainly an element of ego involved in it.
Speaker 6: Tell us about I know this is close to home
Speaker 6: to you. This is more recent books for you, murdering
Speaker 6: the President. Ooh, James Garfield shot by Charles Guiteau. Tell
Speaker 6: us about the history books, what they did say and
Speaker 6: what you found control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what happened was the history books will say that
Speaker 3: President Garfield dived from a wound by the fellow guito
Speaker 3: who shot him. And it happens that when I first
Speaker 3: started writing researching, this is when I did my Atlas
Speaker 3: of crime. I got a hold of and this goes
Speaker 3: back to fifteen years sixteen years whatever. I got a
Speaker 3: hold of a scientific journal in which Alexander Graham Bell
Speaker 3: writes about inventing the world's first metal detector in eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty one to find a bullet in the president's body.
Speaker 3: And I'm going, oh, that's really interesting, so, you know,
Speaker 3: so I of course I kept going with the research.
Speaker 3: But what I did was I ran the doctor his
Speaker 3: name through uh you know, basically through all the computer databases.
Speaker 3: And what do I find out? The guy's a con man.
Speaker 3: The guy claimed to have a cure for cancer. He oh,
Speaker 3: he was a coward in battle. Most importantly, he claimed
Speaker 3: that the bullet was on the left side of the
Speaker 3: President's body. He claimed its publicly. And so when doctor
Speaker 3: Bell and thence the world's first medical metal detector and
Speaker 3: Alexander Graham Bell goes to the White House and with
Speaker 3: the doctor to to uh uh use the machine on
Speaker 3: the president. And what happens The doctor won't let Bill.
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Speaker 12: Welcome to the Family vdW group. No perch is necessary.
Speaker 12: I believe we're primited by loss. He terms and conditions
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Speaker 3: Use the the machine on the side of the body
Speaker 3: where he where he said the bullet isn't because he
Speaker 3: didn't want to look bad. He didn't want him to
Speaker 3: find the bullet and then and then and then and
Speaker 3: then he would look bad. So so the wind up
Speaker 3: after that is, uh, Garfield is dying from bullet from
Speaker 3: blood poisoning, and the doctor keeps operating without without uh
Speaker 3: scrubbing his hands, even though at that point sepsis was
Speaker 3: something that was coming into vogue. Well, right, Garfield gets
Speaker 3: the the the blood poisoning and the doctor and then
Speaker 3: oh and then the other thing is you boy or boy?
Speaker 3: This guy decides to give the president of the United
Speaker 3: States a nutritious enema. I'm cleaning it up and where
Speaker 3: he's gonna pump stuff up into his rectum that contains vitamins,
Speaker 3: stuff like that. You know, soup is waying, Yes, soup.
Speaker 3: He pumps soup into his rectum. It's ridiculous. He thinks
Speaker 3: he's he thinks that the that the that the body
Speaker 3: will absorb it. Basically, he was torturing the president. That's
Speaker 3: what he was doing. And and the other thing is,
Speaker 3: you know, this was a book that I felt the
Speaker 3: personal attachment to because through circumstance I had gotten friendly
Speaker 3: with with with with the President's great great great grant
Speaker 3: stud Hank Barfield, and we'd hit it off, and so
Speaker 3: I felt like a responsibility Dan, because this is my
Speaker 3: friend's family. You know, it's amazing, you know some of
Speaker 3: the things that you wind up working on that you
Speaker 3: never think you'd work on.
Speaker 6: Certainly, tell us about the historical atlas of American crime?
Speaker 3: What is the historical What happened was I wanted to
Speaker 3: write a history book, and in fact, I just got
Speaker 3: the rights back to the book. I just have to
Speaker 3: find somebody to publish it. And I decided to take
Speaker 3: a different look at crime in America. I decided to
Speaker 3: look at crime in America from the point of view
Speaker 3: of how crime spread across the continent the United States did,
Speaker 3: and what influenced crime, such as technology, medicine, communications and
Speaker 3: I and I dealt with all of those things in
Speaker 3: this book in terms of how they influenced certain crimes.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about needle work.
Speaker 3: Ooh, needle work, oh boy? Yeah? What uh? Aside from
Speaker 3: the fact that the plane that I was supposed to
Speaker 3: take from from Uh, I was supposed to take this plane. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'll just say it, Okay, A plane I was supposed
Speaker 3: to take from Newark Airport was the Lake because the
Speaker 3: weather dn And I'm walking through the I'm walking through
Speaker 3: the airport because I'm I'm going to get on a
Speaker 3: plane to Michigan. I'm walking through the airport and who
Speaker 3: do I Who do I see in front of me?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 3: Oh? God? What's his name? He played Captain Captain Cisco
Speaker 3: on Star Trek the Next Generation? What's his name? Well? Anyway, well, anyway,
Speaker 3: what happens is what happens is I want to walk
Speaker 3: up to the guy and say, she, can you be
Speaker 3: us out of here? But I luckily I didn't because
Speaker 3: he had a really scowl on his face. So anyway, Uh,
Speaker 3: I went. I wound up the next day going to Michigan.
Speaker 3: And actually I think, yeah, that was I think that
Speaker 3: was the first time I went to Michigan. And that
Speaker 3: was an interesting one because it's about Ah, it's about
Speaker 3: this couple and it's actually it's actually about it. What
Speaker 3: do you call it? A triangle? It's a romantic triangle.
Speaker 3: This woman is married to a drug dealer. He sets
Speaker 3: up shot down the block from the police officer police department,
Speaker 3: and because he figures nobody will know it's him, and
Speaker 3: his wife gets involved with a guy and eventually what
Speaker 3: happens is they working together give the husband a hot
Speaker 3: shot of heroine, which kills him instead of he was
Speaker 3: a diabetic, instead of giving him the insulince. And then
Speaker 3: there's a woman who's a friend of hers and she
Speaker 3: learns about some of this stuff and they wind up
Speaker 3: killing her, and then they and then they've got to
Speaker 3: then transport her body to another part of Michigan and
Speaker 3: burn it and you know, stuff like that. So that
Speaker 3: was a very that was in some ways that was
Speaker 3: almost a straightforward case in the sense that the police
Speaker 3: were very helpful, both the two police departments, but the
Speaker 3: the In fact, I think I recently, yeah, I recently
Speaker 3: got contacted. I tried following through one more time on Facebook.
Speaker 3: The woman that went to jail had two kids and
Speaker 3: one of those kids is now an adult and contacted
Speaker 3: me through Faithful and I was trying to follow up
Speaker 3: and nothing's happened yet.
Speaker 6: Wow. Yeah, that's amazing, amazing the contact you do get
Speaker 6: after these books. And even if it is years later,
Speaker 6: these books still get people's attention in order for people
Speaker 6: like this to come forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about body Dump October nineteen ninety six. Say,
Speaker 6: women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York,
Speaker 6: all young, pretty and petite, but most were hustlers and crackheads.
Speaker 6: You say, unfortunately. Yeah, the death toll was eight victims.
Speaker 6: What do you remember about body Dump?
Speaker 3: What I remember about body Dump is the fact that
Speaker 3: this case took place near where I was living. I
Speaker 3: was living in Woodstock, New York. This was across the
Speaker 3: river in Poughkeepsie, and so I was actually able to go.
Speaker 3: It was It was a very easy It was very
Speaker 3: easy in terms of investigating. I didn't have to get
Speaker 3: in the plane, but I went. I became friendly with
Speaker 3: one of the detectives. Again, this is a serial killer,
Speaker 3: Kendle Francois, and he would kill these women and bury
Speaker 3: him in his hand. Else not very store them, excuse me,
Speaker 3: store them.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was in the courtroom when he was sentenced.
Speaker 3: And New York does not have the death penalty, so
Speaker 3: you know, they did for five minutes, but then they
Speaker 3: got rid of it. Well. I listened to the victims
Speaker 3: families delivered victim impact statements. It was very very emotional,
Speaker 3: very very very emotional. I remember that vividly. And then
Speaker 3: I remember looking at Francois. I wasn't I certainly was
Speaker 3: not as close to him as I was the Hilton,
Speaker 3: But the vibes were completely different. I mean, France Woaugh
Speaker 3: gave off vibes, you know, Gary didn't do that. This
Speaker 3: guy gave up bad vibes and it, you know. And
Speaker 3: I went down the streets where he picked the women up.
Speaker 3: I think I talked to at least one of the prostitutes.
Speaker 3: It was, it was, it was, It was pretty. It
Speaker 3: was pretty upsetting.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Yeah. It reminds me of the case in Cleveland
Speaker 6: where that person. Again, it's incredible to think that people
Speaker 6: could keep rotting bodies, not like Gacy in a basement
Speaker 6: where some of the smell would be contained, but rotting
Speaker 6: bodies in the home. Pilot eyes well, and.
Speaker 3: In the case of Kendall Francois, he lived with his
Speaker 3: sister and his parents, and they they all claimed they
Speaker 3: didn't smell anything because the place was very dirty. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get started but but it was
Speaker 3: just you know, and I remember looking at the house,
Speaker 3: photographing the house. I think at one point it was
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm trying to remember if I got
Speaker 3: in now, I don't think I did. They sold it eventually. Uh.
Speaker 3: In New York to have a law that you got
Speaker 3: to tell people, you know, for place, for murder took place,
Speaker 3: you got to tell them. But anyway, uh, yeah, and
Speaker 3: it was just a very what do you call it,
Speaker 3: very average, ordinary, h middle class neighborhood. You wouldn't have
Speaker 3: thought of anything out of the blue, you know, out
Speaker 3: of the ordinary.
Speaker 6: Rather, yeah, you took a little bit, uh, a little
Speaker 6: bit of a detour and true crime for people. Most
Speaker 6: people would stick to the same serial killers and those
Speaker 6: types of killers. But you wrote a book. I guess
Speaker 6: it was. This was co author too, Born to the Mob.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about Born to the Mob.
Speaker 6: About co author this.
Speaker 3: Book, Oh boy, that the only reason that book happened
Speaker 3: was because I had an agent at the time that
Speaker 3: put me in touch with a guy who had contacted
Speaker 3: her wanted to write write a book named Frankie Sashio.
Speaker 3: He he had been a member of the Bananas and
Speaker 3: he was actually a member of all the crime families
Speaker 3: because he was an earner, and so I got together
Speaker 3: with him. Oh boy, that was that was a very
Speaker 3: tough book because I made the mistake, mistake of trusting him,
Speaker 3: and that was a big mistake. Once in the mob,
Speaker 3: always in the mob. You know, that's what their their
Speaker 3: their values are and so you know, I wrote the
Speaker 3: book with them. But uh, I got to tell you
Speaker 3: I would never ever, well, I shouldn't say never. Sean
Speaker 3: Connery did that once. It didn't quite work out. But uh,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't go looking for another Mob book. It doesn't
Speaker 3: interest me one way or the other. I'm not interested.
Speaker 3: I know too much about it, you know, I think
Speaker 3: I think that's part of it. I think when you're writing,
Speaker 3: you want to learn something. You know. I don't need to.
Speaker 3: I don't need to know the intricacies of the mob families.
Speaker 3: I know all about that. I'm more interested in the
Speaker 3: other stuff. You know, what if people do what they do,
Speaker 3: who are they? That sort of thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's talk about something that you was close to
Speaker 6: your heart. You had thought about it and conceived of
Speaker 6: it long ago, and this was a subject that you
Speaker 6: wanted to write about and you finally did in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 6: Bat Masterson tell us a little bit about Matt Masterson.
Speaker 6: Why this story, this book is so important to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan oh Well, this book is so important
Speaker 3: to me because I wanted to write a book about
Speaker 3: this guy for forty years, and it's taken me a
Speaker 3: long time to put it together. Why it's percolated for
Speaker 3: so long? And I realized what it is? Which is it?
Speaker 3: I started out watching the TV series Votam called Bat Masterson,
Speaker 3: starring Jane Barrett. But then I did my research and
Speaker 3: I found out he came to New York at the
Speaker 3: turn of the century. I found this out in the seventies.
Speaker 3: He came to New York in the nineteen hundreds and
Speaker 3: became a reporter for a local paper. Well, but then
Speaker 3: I found something else out. I found two things out.
Speaker 3: First was Masterson was involved in the most sensational murder
Speaker 3: case in New York state history, which became the basis
Speaker 3: for the Trial of the Century, involving a guy who
Speaker 3: allegedly what he called drowns his fiancee because he doesn't
Speaker 3: want to marry her. Well, that became the basis for
Speaker 3: Dreiser's novel and American tragedy, and at the film A
Speaker 3: Place in the Sun. Sorry Montgomery Cliff, Elizabeth Taylor, and
Speaker 3: Shelley Winters. But in every single, every single iteration, what
Speaker 3: they got wrong was that bat Masterson covered the case
Speaker 3: and salted for this newspaper. I mean, he knew what happened, okay,
Speaker 3: and he actually was very upset when Chester the election
Speaker 3: murderer was convicted and he felt and he wrote an
Speaker 3: article about it with a headline news style Inchlaine, upstate
Speaker 3: New York. And when I found that out, and and
Speaker 3: just and then really just in the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: I became the only one to find out that Master
Speaker 3: was an illegal alien. It had been reported for a
Speaker 3: long time he was born in Much in Quebec Province,
Speaker 3: but nobody ever reported he was illegal. And originally when
Speaker 3: it came to America, the borders were open, but then
Speaker 3: they changed it. That's one of the things I learned,
Speaker 3: and so I said, I have to write this book
Speaker 3: now because of what my country is going through. And
Speaker 3: what was really educational was with all of the criticism
Speaker 3: being leveled at the current American president regarding his way
Speaker 3: of treating immigrants, it turns out there's nothing new under
Speaker 3: the song. This has been going on since Miller Fillmore
Speaker 3: was president, going back into the middle eighteen hundreds, there's
Speaker 3: always been problems. But I felt like I had a
Speaker 3: responsibility as an American to tell Masterson's story now because
Speaker 3: he's considered to be an American legend. Yeah, and also
Speaker 3: I'm friends with you, so I wanted to tell you, Hey,
Speaker 3: this guy's a great Canadian.
Speaker 6: Now. So what I wrote in go ahead, Sorry.
Speaker 3: No, no, So that that's it. So I wanted to
Speaker 3: write it, and I finally was able to get it
Speaker 3: to do it. And and there's seven murders in the
Speaker 3: in the book, the seven murders seven different mercs, which
Speaker 3: is pretty cool.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Now, what I mentioned in the introduction was that
Speaker 6: we were going to discuss how you got started, and
Speaker 6: we did talk about that, but what cases in particular,
Speaker 6: and cases and killers included with those cases most shaped
Speaker 6: your remarkable true crime body of work, which talk about
Speaker 6: just briefly about some of the cases that that really
Speaker 6: were pivotal in your writing career, either changing or reinforcing
Speaker 6: or moving your career ahead.
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Speaker 3: Wow, that's a hell of a question. Well, certainly, certainly
Speaker 3: the first one is going to be would be Lobster
Speaker 3: Boy way, oh and flesh Collectors. When I wrote Flash Collectors,
Speaker 3: I didn't mention this I had. I told the the
Speaker 3: the the d A on the case. I said, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I can write another true crime book
Speaker 3: because of the way that they killed this young girl.
Speaker 3: And I had at that point, you know, at that
Speaker 3: point my daughter was she was young, but not that young.
Speaker 3: But the point is I had some ident identification, you know.
Speaker 7: What I mean.
Speaker 3: And so so I I said, I don't think I
Speaker 3: can write another two crimebooks, and and and the the
Speaker 3: The prosecutor says to me, Fred, I hope, I hope
Speaker 3: you changed your mind. I said, why, And that's when
Speaker 3: he said to me, Fred, we speak for the dead.
Speaker 3: That changed. That changed me.
Speaker 8: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: That that that really changed me. It gave me an impetus.
Speaker 3: I mean, right now, for instance, you know, right now,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm investigating Natalie Wood's death. But the reason
Speaker 3: I'm doing it is because I don't know anybody else
Speaker 3: is doing it. She deserves justice as much as anybody else.
Speaker 3: So that's that certainly had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 3: I will also say that when I wrote the Atlas
Speaker 3: of Crime, the it got me into writing about history.
Speaker 3: And I think, yeah, I didn't realize at that point
Speaker 3: because everything I had done, was I've written to that point,
Speaker 3: was current cases, and I for some reason I hadn't
Speaker 3: thought about historical true crime. And that turned me around,
Speaker 3: you know, and got me looking at historical true crime.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean, you know, and it's so interesting,
Speaker 3: you know, and and and and bought you know, what
Speaker 3: bothers me? What bothers me is like when it always
Speaker 3: bothers me, when somebody is convicted of a murder and
Speaker 3: they didn't do it. And that's that's where, you know,
Speaker 3: did they really do it? The idea came about for that,
Speaker 3: but you know, I look, I didn't even look until
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. I didn't know is a
Speaker 3: song called hang Down your Head Tom Dooley, right, folks
Speaker 3: swung by the Kingston Trio. Well, I had no idea
Speaker 3: Tom Dooley was a real guy, and it's real and
Speaker 3: well that's the way they pronounced it, but it spelled
Speaker 3: it differently. But that's not the point. The point is,
Speaker 3: you know, I look at it and and I you know,
Speaker 3: when I start reading about these cases, I go, gee,
Speaker 3: nobody ever said this, you know. And it goes back
Speaker 3: to what we were talking about before, which is, after a while,
Speaker 3: you know, well, you know, it's like when the legend
Speaker 3: it's like they say in The Men who Shot Liberty Valance,
Speaker 3: when the legend becomes back Frank, the legend.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, we talked about you mentioned an early influence
Speaker 6: in your writing, and I'm curious as well as like
Speaker 6: I'm sure the audience is curious, how much of a
Speaker 6: role or what was the role of this lawrence, this
Speaker 6: editor that you talked about in other edits editors at
Speaker 6: Pinnacle and HarperCollins in sort of being able to capture
Speaker 6: your true voice and also just I guess urge you
Speaker 6: to or the end product to be very very concise,
Speaker 6: a very very enjoyable. I can say, easy read, but
Speaker 6: a read where you're wanting more at the end. Well,
Speaker 6: tell us about the shape this some of the shaping
Speaker 6: of the of the style of the books.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, actually that goes way back. It goes back
Speaker 3: before I became a true crime author. That goes back
Speaker 3: to film school. I learned how to write in film school.
Speaker 3: That was the first place where I found out in
Speaker 3: my early twenties that I was a writer. Up to
Speaker 3: that point, I thought everybody could write, right, I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I'd had no teachers who encouraged me. But when I
Speaker 3: got to graduate school and I was a USC, I
Speaker 3: was taught to write film, and so I took, even
Speaker 3: though film, of course is different than than than than
Speaker 3: a print, the same techniques of move the move the
Speaker 3: story along. I'm a story's gotta move, you know. I
Speaker 3: learned that. Also, I'll tell you I learned a lot
Speaker 3: of that, you know, in terms of h how to
Speaker 3: write from people that I read. Now, I'll tell you
Speaker 3: who I learned the most from, probably sirroth Conan Doyle.
Speaker 3: Sir Rothur Connan Doyle and you know, an incredible writer.
Speaker 3: And then then later on Raymond Chandler. I read all
Speaker 3: of these mystery novelists, and you know, and I thought
Speaker 3: I was going to do something. I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to do fiction. But then I got the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do nonfiction and in true crime, and I took
Speaker 3: to it, you know, like you know whatever, and it did.
Speaker 3: Really it's been good. You know. Of course things have changed,
Speaker 3: you know, like Paul Dennis, who I mentioned earlier, was
Speaker 3: a terrific editor. But that's it. As far as any
Speaker 3: other editors, no, there's nobody. I will tell you one thing, uh, quick,
Speaker 3: quick story. I have become friends with a writer named
Speaker 3: Alison Adams. Why well, at a certain point, I her fault. Well,
Speaker 3: at a certain point, I started investigating her father's suspicious debt.
Speaker 3: Who's a father? Nick Adams. Nick Adams was one of
Speaker 3: my childhood heroes. He played Johnny Yuma, the Rebel on
Speaker 3: ABC TV, and he died from an apparent drug overdose.
Speaker 3: And I started watching the old his old show, The
Speaker 3: Old Shows, and it turned out that in the show,
Speaker 3: the character of Johnny Yuma is a writer. And I
Speaker 3: started thinking to myself, she could not have influenced me,
Speaker 3: you know, and I felt again and I felt an
Speaker 3: obligation to help out Alison, which I did, and and
Speaker 3: in fact, she wants to do I think you may
Speaker 3: have talked to word at some point. She wants to
Speaker 3: do a podcast. And but so he Nick was certainly
Speaker 3: an early influence. And we mean early in terms of writing,
Speaker 3: but but really in terms of structure and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot at school, you know, I learned
Speaker 3: a lot at school. And but when it comes time
Speaker 3: to you know, it's from Conan Doyle that you find out,
Speaker 3: you know, you got to talk to people when you're
Speaker 3: doing this work. You know, you got to talk to
Speaker 3: people and and put it together and use logic, you know,
Speaker 3: and and so forth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what is uh down the pipe for you? What?
Speaker 6: What are you working on now? Or what do you
Speaker 6: hope to work on? What is the subject matter that
Speaker 6: you may want to work on? What is next for
Speaker 6: Fred Rosen?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, you ever get tired of it? Asking me
Speaker 3: difficult questions. Uh no, it's a good question, all right.
Speaker 3: I want to do There's a murder case that somebody
Speaker 3: told me about out in Louisiana. The problem is that
Speaker 3: they got one guy, but there's probably the other guys
Speaker 3: that did it, and there's a really good there's a
Speaker 3: possibility that some of the officials in the parish are involved.
Speaker 3: So that, you know, I try, Dan, I try to
Speaker 3: stay out of dangerous situations, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: when somebody wants you know, you know, if somebody wants
Speaker 3: to hide something. Now, that's one thing I'm definitely just
Speaker 3: as we're talking, you know, I'm going to keep going
Speaker 3: with Natalie Wood and see what I can find out.
Speaker 3: I don't have any any any you know, I don't
Speaker 3: have any place. I'm going with it because it's that's
Speaker 3: that's an incredit. How the heck do you prove that
Speaker 3: a woman would shoved into the water by her husband
Speaker 3: when she's got when when they when the autopsy show
Speaker 3: she's got bruises all over her body? How do you
Speaker 3: do it? You can't, you know you can't. So but
Speaker 3: I'm going to keep I just saw I'm going to
Speaker 3: keep investigating. And the other thing I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: Is I I want to do a I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about this. I keep going you know, it's I think
Speaker 3: it's I keep going back to my childhood. But there
Speaker 3: must be a reason. And when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: there was a mini series that Disney did. Disney pioneered
Speaker 3: a mini series, by the way, you know, Davy Crockett
Speaker 3: was a mini series.
Speaker 6: Sure, but he did.
Speaker 3: A miniseries in the ooh late fifties early sixties called
Speaker 3: The Nine Lives of al Fago Baca. Al Fagobaca was
Speaker 3: a Mexican American lawman, a legend, and I just think
Speaker 3: that would be a very very good true crime book
Speaker 3: because one of the things I discovered was that one
Speaker 3: of the cases Baca worked on in the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 3: he used forensics to solve the case. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but also you know these days, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: I don't want to get political, but I think it's
Speaker 3: I think it's relevant that in this Mexican American woman
Speaker 3: both boy, they discriminated, they discriminated against him, they tried
Speaker 3: to tried to kill him, you know. Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: would like to do something on him.
Speaker 6: Sure, America might be ready for it. Fred. I want
Speaker 6: to thank you so much for coming on and talking
Speaker 6: about all of the books that you've written, and we've
Speaker 6: missed a couple that you've co authored, and you have
Speaker 6: some crime files, and could we could go on some
Speaker 6: more about other things that you've written. But these are
Speaker 6: the major eighteen works, your body of work, These eighteen
Speaker 6: books that I urge people to go to. These serial killers.
Speaker 6: As we know now it's the age of spree killers
Speaker 6: and one off killers and those kinds of killers. So
Speaker 6: these books in a sense in essence become true crime
Speaker 6: classics because of the killers, because of the investigations, because
Speaker 6: of the forensic limitations at those times enabling these serial
Speaker 6: killers to go on and on and on. I want
Speaker 6: to thank you very much, Fred for coming on talking.
Speaker 3: About and I want to thank you so much for
Speaker 3: this retrospective. I don't have words. Thank you, sir, Thank.
Speaker 6: You so much. Is there can people refer to Amazon page?
Speaker 6: But do you have a website in case people might
Speaker 6: want to contact you? Tell us how people might contact
Speaker 6: you or look at other.
Speaker 3: Work fredrosendot Net.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 3: That's it. Just either go to Amazon or of course
Speaker 3: Facebook or fredrosendot Net.
Speaker 6: You're all over the place. Yes, thank you so much. Fred.
Speaker 3: All Right, thank you Dan, thank.
Speaker 6: You so much Fred. Talk to you against good night okay.