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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 7: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. On December twelfth, nineteen eighty two, a strange
Speaker 8: house in the remote mountains of northwest Georgia became a
Speaker 8: bloody slaughterhouse for two men and their dogs. One of
Speaker 8: the victims, an accomplished scientist and university professor, experimented with
Speaker 8: the occult a self portrait found that the crime scene
Speaker 8: appeared to depict the professor gagged with gunshot wounds to
Speaker 8: his head, exactly as his body was discovered by investigators.
Speaker 8: Had he gazed into the future and witnessed his own
Speaker 8: death or had the painting inspired the murder. The case
Speaker 8: became a media sensation, with allegations of satanic cults, supernatural curses,
Speaker 8: and mind control experiments. The only things stranger than the
Speaker 8: murders themselves was the legal odyssey that followed, resulting in
Speaker 8: four Supreme Court decisions and revelations that would stun the
Speaker 8: judicial system. After years of reachure research involving court transcripts,
Speaker 8: audio recordings, and interviews with the participants in the case,
Speaker 8: including the murderers themselves, author Daniel Ellis peals back the
Speaker 8: layer of legend to reveal the truth behind one of
Speaker 8: the most bizarre true crime cases ever to emerge from
Speaker 8: the dark Southern Woods. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 8: evening is Corpsewood, a True Crime Like no Other, with
Speaker 8: my special guest, journalist and author Daniel Ellis. Welcome to
Speaker 8: the program, and thank you for greeing this interview Daniel Ellis.
Speaker 6: Thanks Dan, and thank you for having me here. It's
Speaker 6: a true honor.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. This is an incredible tale, quite
Speaker 8: lengthy book, and as I mentioned to you, absolutely necessary.
Speaker 8: This is a very very very involved case. Incredible. So
Speaker 8: let's get right to this, maybe just briefly, how did
Speaker 8: you come to want to write this, or feel the
Speaker 8: need to write this, or be in a position to
Speaker 8: write Corpsewood. Tell us how you came to this story corpse.
Speaker 6: Would Well, I guess first a little bit about my background.
Speaker 6: I am from the South. I lived in North Georgia
Speaker 6: where the case happened. But after high school I moved
Speaker 6: to Los Angeles for a number of years and I
Speaker 6: worked in the film and television business. But I moved back,
Speaker 6: you know, with my family, and I continued to write.
Speaker 6: But one day, truly by chance, I ran into a
Speaker 6: couple of people who were talking about ghost stories and
Speaker 6: the supernatural, and I asked if there were any haunted
Speaker 6: places in the area. I was just curious. I thought, well,
Speaker 6: it might make an interesting screenplay if there was a
Speaker 6: haunted house or something. And this person wrote down on
Speaker 6: the piece of paper said well, here, I know of
Speaker 6: a haunted place. And this girl wrote down the word
Speaker 6: corpsewood and said, go and google that. And I'm like, corkswood,
Speaker 6: what is that? She just google it? So I looked
Speaker 6: it up and I said, well, okay, there wasn't much
Speaker 6: on it. That there was a positive information back then
Speaker 6: on the case. And when I learned what it was,
Speaker 6: I said, well, this doesn't really intrigue me. I said,
Speaker 6: this isn't a ghost story. This is some sort of
Speaker 6: a terrible murder that happened. But I put it away
Speaker 6: for about six months, and I came around the piece
Speaker 6: of paper again and I was gonna just toss it,
Speaker 6: and I don't know. Something about it kept I kept wondering, well,
Speaker 6: these things I'm seeing on the internet, they seem to
Speaker 6: be so outrageously embellished, and all these things about these
Speaker 6: evil men that were murdered and all this, and I
Speaker 6: want to know what the real story was. So I
Speaker 6: don't know. It just it's like one of those songs
Speaker 6: when you first hear it, you hate it and you go,
Speaker 6: I don't want to hear that again. Then the more
Speaker 6: you've listened to it, you know, there's something about this
Speaker 6: that I can't stop listening to it, And after a
Speaker 6: while it becomes your favorite song, you know. I'm sure
Speaker 6: as a journalist you may have that sort of bug
Speaker 6: that gets in you. But I started going down to
Speaker 6: the courthouse where the thing happened, and I asked a
Speaker 6: look at the transcripts, and of course they stacked from
Speaker 6: forward a ceiling and I began reading, and the more
Speaker 6: I would I would read about the truth. You know,
Speaker 6: there were all these unanswered questions, and I started recognizing
Speaker 6: names of people in there, like our local was superior
Speaker 6: court judge down the street from me has an office.
Speaker 6: He was the prosecutor back then, and our city attorney
Speaker 6: was one of the defense attorneys. So I started reaching
Speaker 6: out to all these people I did not know, and
Speaker 6: I would just start bugging people of this old case.
Speaker 6: And I was surprised how many of them were interested
Speaker 6: in talking about it. And you know, one thing would
Speaker 6: lead to another, and I'm sure you know from your
Speaker 6: experience you know exactly what I mean. It's like you
Speaker 6: just can't stop, and the more doors that get closed
Speaker 6: in your face, the more that you want to continue. Anyway,
Speaker 6: I'm sorry to be sober bose, but that's what happened.
Speaker 6: Next thing I knew I was it was consuming a
Speaker 6: lot of my life, and I was traveling to uncover
Speaker 6: documents and talk to people far away.
Speaker 8: I can certainly understand the obsession, not just for a
Speaker 8: story once you are interested, but this story in particular.
Speaker 8: As you do, you start off not introducing I guess
Speaker 8: chronologically better for better lack of better term, but you
Speaker 8: take us to December sixteenth, nineteen eighty two, and a
Speaker 8: friend of doctor Scudder, Charles Scudder and Joey Odom, and
Speaker 8: his name is Raymond Williams, and this is in Chattooga County.
Speaker 8: Maybe you can tell us exactly where this is in
Speaker 8: northwest Georgia. You say, surrounded by the Chattahoochee National Forest,
Speaker 8: Chatooga County. Tell us where this is in northwest Georgia
Speaker 8: and set the stage for what this place is really like.
Speaker 8: And before we talk about Raymond Williams and a discovery
Speaker 8: on December sixteenth, well.
Speaker 6: Chatooka County is let's see think about the geography here
Speaker 6: of the United States. There's we have what's called the
Speaker 6: tri state area where three states come together. It's Georgia.
Speaker 6: Alabama would be to the west of US and to
Speaker 6: the north is Tennessee. And right here in the corner
Speaker 6: of the Georgia side of it, which we called North Georgia,
Speaker 6: but it borders Tennessee. It's very rural and at the
Speaker 6: time the county only had twenty three thousand people, and
Speaker 6: it's a very poor county. And that's one of the
Speaker 6: reasons that doctor Scudder was able to purchase the land
Speaker 6: that was there. He was looking for some inexpensive acres
Speaker 6: of hardwood trees and he was able to buy forty
Speaker 6: acres for ten five hundred dollars back in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 6: and it's a very depressed economy. But it's still very
Speaker 6: rural to this day the area, and you know, if
Speaker 6: the people need anything substantial, they have to drive as
Speaker 6: far as Rome, Georgia. Sorry, all these pit places. It's
Speaker 6: hard to describe without looking at a map that the
Speaker 6: Atlanta would be around ninety miles away, ninety miles to
Speaker 6: the south of Chijugu County and Tennessee. Chattanooga, Tennessee is
Speaker 6: about forty miles to the north something there about. But
Speaker 6: the area where the house was was up on the
Speaker 6: it's in the mountains and it's an area that we
Speaker 6: call Taylor's Ridge. It goes back really far back before
Speaker 6: the Revolutionary War, you know, with the British, and it's
Speaker 6: got a lot of history with Cherokee Indians and settlers.
Speaker 6: But anyway, it's still very remote to this day. And
Speaker 6: doctor Scudder decided to build this house up there with
Speaker 6: no running water, electricity. He designed it himself, even though
Speaker 6: he'd never laid a brick before in his life. You know,
Speaker 6: he'd been a university for professor. And they built the
Speaker 6: strange house. It was shaped like an old passioned bathtub,
Speaker 6: you know, the like the clawfoot type of bathtub. It's
Speaker 6: in an oblong shape. And they lived off the land,
Speaker 6: basically planted their own food. They had an herb garden.
Speaker 6: It's very frugally. They dug a well and they lived.
Speaker 6: They had mountain water. They cooked with wood stove. They
Speaker 6: made candles and they recycled the wax and made new candles.
Speaker 6: And they it was doctor Scudder and his partner friend
Speaker 6: Joey Odam, and they had two English mastifs that they
Speaker 6: had brought down from Chicago with them, and they did
Speaker 6: the pretty comfortable life considering it was some people would
Speaker 6: say it's very austere that they. You know, Scudder had
Speaker 6: written to friends it is the happiest he had ever
Speaker 6: been in his life. And he enjoyed it far more
Speaker 6: than all the creature comforts that he had when he
Speaker 6: lived on the West Side of Chicago, because he didn't
Speaker 6: have the bills to worry about anymore, and no more stress,
Speaker 6: just you know, living from day to day and reading
Speaker 6: and writing and doing his gardening, and he was always
Speaker 6: building some sort of project. That the house is full
Speaker 6: of Renaissance air antiques and so that's that was one
Speaker 6: of the things that through the investigators the on December sixteenth,
Speaker 6: when after Raymond Williams had reported seeing bullet holes in
Speaker 6: the kitchen door and he reported to the police that
Speaker 6: there was some problem. He didn't go in or anything.
Speaker 6: He was afraid at least all the bullet holes in
Speaker 6: the door. And when the Sheriff's department showed up, they'd
Speaker 6: never been inside. They had no idea. The nearest neighbors
Speaker 6: were something like five miles away, and even to this
Speaker 6: day the roads through what there were all these unpaved
Speaker 6: logging roads, very remote, and so when the Sheriff's department
Speaker 6: came in, they didn't know what to make of this place.
Speaker 6: They found the two dead men. Doctor Scudder had been
Speaker 6: bound and gagged and had Evan shot in head five times.
Speaker 6: Joey Odam was lying on the floor have a shirt
Speaker 6: on and he had also been shot and they had
Speaker 6: five times. And the dogs had also been shot and
Speaker 6: killed in the study. And of course the thing that
Speaker 6: got into the media because a lot of the law
Speaker 6: enforcement people were they were just delivering all sorts of
Speaker 6: statements just off the cuff, which you know now they
Speaker 6: would be much more controlled than nineteen eighty two, it
Speaker 6: was a different story. So reporters were outside and they
Speaker 6: would say, oh, it's you know, they'd say, oh, it's
Speaker 6: some they saw some homosexual literature laying on the floor.
Speaker 6: Now there, it wasn't it was like erotica. It'd be
Speaker 6: really tame stuff, you know, to us today. But it
Speaker 6: was reported in the media that the house was full
Speaker 6: of medieval weapons and bizarre sexual equipment. And doctor Scudder
Speaker 6: had a couple of skulls in the house. He had
Speaker 6: a he had a plaster or resident skull sitting on
Speaker 6: the desk. You know, it's like the ones you'd see
Speaker 6: back in the old days, like a classic study. He'd
Speaker 6: seel like in an English manner. You know, you sit
Speaker 6: in the movies all the time, and so he was
Speaker 6: sort of he built the house for effect. So when
Speaker 6: you come in, you think, oh, this is like a
Speaker 6: set from an old hammer horror movie. You know. He
Speaker 6: had the bookshelves with all sorts of books. A lot
Speaker 6: of them were just used for decoration, a lot of
Speaker 6: impressive looking in law books that he got at some
Speaker 6: rummage sale. I had the privilege of looking at some
Speaker 6: of those books someone had gotten and I that's why
Speaker 6: I was able to look good. And I saw that
Speaker 6: the pages hadn't even been cut on some of them,
Speaker 6: so no one ever read these books. But there were
Speaker 6: a lot of books that of course had been read,
Speaker 6: but they were from everything you can imagine. Anyway, I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: did I do interrupt me? I'm rambling on here. I
Speaker 6: don't know where to stop. But that's the way they
Speaker 6: when they did.
Speaker 8: Okay, what I wanted to talk about though, despite what
Speaker 8: the media said, because it's two different things. What the
Speaker 8: what the police found, what the police knew, what the
Speaker 8: investigation discovered, and what the media reported, and how the
Speaker 8: media reported. So let's talk about really again, nobody had
Speaker 8: seen a house like this. They really did. These two
Speaker 8: people by themselves had cleared this land, and we're talking
Speaker 8: about a very remote place, and they found a remote
Speaker 8: place within a remote place to build this unique place.
Speaker 8: You talk about stone stairs inside, so very much like
Speaker 8: a castle. This and also tell us about as we
Speaker 8: talked about in the beginning in the introduction, about this
Speaker 8: self portrait with him gag. So I think this is
Speaker 8: very important and tell us more of the actual things
Speaker 8: that these people in nineteen eighty two or maybe even
Speaker 8: people today would be not familiar with that were about
Speaker 8: the occult that Charles Scudder and Joey Odom had in
Speaker 8: this very very unique castle like building.
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, one of the things that was, you know
Speaker 6: that's always been reported even today, was that that Scudder
Speaker 6: had the a pentagram symbol. You know this throughout the house.
Speaker 6: Two of the chimneys had ceramic uh pentagrams on it.
Speaker 6: You know, the pentagram when it's made, you know, it's
Speaker 6: called the pentacle. You know, the star in the circle
Speaker 6: when it's upright, just like a regular five point star
Speaker 6: it is, you know, it's supposed to be like well
Speaker 6: they in different cultures it's considered good luck whatever. But
Speaker 6: Scudder had it where the points are up, which is
Speaker 6: the way that the Church of Satan laid it in
Speaker 6: their logo. Well, what that was just it was just
Speaker 6: kind of like basically they were tired and feathered with
Speaker 6: Scudder odam more with this brush that they were there
Speaker 6: were these devil worshippers, which actually was not true. The
Speaker 6: case was that Joey Odom always maintained that he was Catholic.
Speaker 6: He never said he had anything to do with the
Speaker 6: accult or anything Charles Scudder. On the other hand, he
Speaker 6: was always kind of a He liked his sort of
Speaker 6: tweak people's noses. He did this one he was at
Speaker 6: the university. His colleagues in Chicago told me that because
Speaker 6: it was a very stayed, good, button down profession, you know,
Speaker 6: to be in the medical field and at that university.
Speaker 6: So you know, here's Scudder walking around with the white
Speaker 6: lab coat and basically a clown those and making fun
Speaker 6: of a lot of things because he didn't, you know,
Speaker 6: he was a serious scientist. But he the students loved
Speaker 6: them because he could relate. He would he would mess
Speaker 6: with people in that way. But his colleague said that
Speaker 6: he only did the stuff with the occult. He only
Speaker 6: messed with you if he thought he was going to
Speaker 6: offend you or ruffle your feathers. But if you were
Speaker 6: in on kind of like the joke, he didn't even
Speaker 6: bother with you because there's no fun. It's like an
Speaker 6: adolescent boy trying to scare you with a rubber snake
Speaker 6: or something. Well, what he did was when he got
Speaker 6: down to Chachuga County, he of course he purposely put
Speaker 6: those up on the chimneys and he made a stained
Speaker 6: glass pentagram that he put in the house and all
Speaker 6: this was of things because he Charles Stedder, he really
Speaker 6: did follow a lot of the the tenets of the
Speaker 6: Church of Satan. But the Church of Satan is not
Speaker 6: what a lot of people think that it is. They
Speaker 6: don't believe in a literal Satan. They don't believe in,
Speaker 6: you know, they don't believe in the supernatural at all,
Speaker 6: as far as beings or ghosts or that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: But for Scudder and the time he grew up, that
Speaker 6: was he found a lotther concepts very liberating, you know,
Speaker 6: to be a gay man, and that they basically in
Speaker 6: the Church of Satan, anything goes between consenting adults. So
Speaker 6: he didn't actually belong to the Church of Satan's it's
Speaker 6: widely reported even now on the Internet that he did.
Speaker 6: He didn't because one thing he didn't he didn't want
Speaker 6: to pay one hundred dollars for a lifetime membership. But
Speaker 6: what he did was he paid ten dollars to get
Speaker 6: their newsletter called The Cloven Hoof, so that he could
Speaker 6: he would just read what's going on or whatever. But
Speaker 6: he didn't feel like it was important to join things.
Speaker 6: But what happens is Okay, this is where it's really
Speaker 6: kind of muddy. Okay, even though he didn't he didn't
Speaker 6: worship any entities or anything like that, but as a
Speaker 6: science just he had become frustrated with what he called
Speaker 6: ritual science, the reductionists type of things that they did
Speaker 6: in the scientific field, and he began to turn to
Speaker 6: metaphysical studies. And a lot of people will say, well,
Speaker 6: isn't that the same thing, Well, no, it's not. He
Speaker 6: I found when I was doing doing this research that
Speaker 6: a lot of scientists, it's more common than I thought.
Speaker 6: On the side, a lot of them do experiment with
Speaker 6: other things. And I found that very surprising because so
Speaker 6: many of them are, you know, what are called reductionists,
Speaker 6: and they don't believe in anything that you can't measure
Speaker 6: or quantify or whatever. But there was a there was
Speaker 6: a push in Scudder's time to start studying consciousness and
Speaker 6: what the nature of it is. And so anyway, what
Speaker 6: Scutter was starting to do, you know, when I said
Speaker 6: metaphysical studies, he was experimenting with esoteric airing is the
Speaker 6: esoteric arts, I guess, including string, which is it's an
Speaker 6: ancient it's been around, you know, forever, ancient Persia. They
Speaker 6: used to use it to look into the It's like
Speaker 6: you create like a viewing device using like a reflective surface.
Speaker 6: Nostradama supposed they did it with a bowl of black
Speaker 6: ink and a candle, and you put yourself in an
Speaker 6: altered state of consciousness. And the practitioners of this sort
Speaker 6: of thing say that you can see other dimensions, other worlds,
Speaker 6: different times. And I was amazed at how common this
Speaker 6: once was, and the eighteen hundreds, mirror gazing was all
Speaker 6: the rage. I found some postcards in an antique store
Speaker 6: where they showed a lady from the eighteen nineties and
Speaker 6: looking into a mirror. And there was a myth that
Speaker 6: you could if she looked into a mirror a Halloween,
Speaker 6: she'd see her future husband's face or something like that.
Speaker 6: And anyway, Scudder was experienting with that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: He told a friend of his that I know that.
Speaker 6: He said that when he was experimenting in Chicago one time,
Speaker 6: would scrying to see if there's anything to it. That
Speaker 6: he said he he envisioned the way he thought he
Speaker 6: was going to die someday, and he as long as
Speaker 6: he could hold the vision, he used a black mirror
Speaker 6: and a candle, and he painted that portrait. That the
Speaker 6: that the police found and the and the way his
Speaker 6: body was found was the way it was displayed in
Speaker 6: the painting. Of course, the cops don't believe in crystal
Speaker 6: balls and this sort of thing. There their their take
Speaker 6: on it from what they told me when I interviewed
Speaker 6: the ones involved, and they're like, well, we're thinking that
Speaker 6: some murderers saw this painting and they copied it. You know,
Speaker 6: it was they influenced them. But when I when I
Speaker 6: talked to the killers, only one of the killers had
Speaker 6: been in the house before the murders, and so he's
Speaker 6: the only one that actually knew any of the contents
Speaker 6: of the house. And he insisted that he never saw
Speaker 6: that painting until after his trial. He said, yeah, I
Speaker 6: know the one you're talking about it. He goes that
Speaker 6: one was because the cops asked me about it. But
Speaker 6: he goes, I swear it's just the coincidence. It just
Speaker 6: it just happened that way. It's a conundrum, but I
Speaker 6: have not found you know, like in the book, I
Speaker 6: can't conclude which way it was because every when I've
Speaker 6: talked to that we're involved in they're just kind of like,
Speaker 6: I don't know how that came about, but Scudder is
Speaker 6: several years younger in that portrait, and I have a
Speaker 6: picture of it in on the back cover because he
Speaker 6: painted it, you know, many years before he ever ever
Speaker 6: dreamed of coming to Georgia. And it's strange because he
Speaker 6: also painted some like yellow, yellowish green bricks that are
Speaker 6: broken all around his portrait. And it's funny because now
Speaker 6: that the house has been burned many years ago, and
Speaker 6: if you go up there now, it very much looks
Speaker 6: like that, like it's in pieces with bricks like that,
Speaker 6: and it's a it's very mys serious. The other thing
Speaker 6: that I looked at was when I obtained a photographs
Speaker 6: of that portrait from the GBI that Georgia grew over investigations,
Speaker 6: and there's there's what appeared to be gunshots in the portrait,
Speaker 6: like broken glass, and there's a like a diagonal line
Speaker 6: that was created in real life when I inverted the
Speaker 6: picture and I did an overlay on the computer, and
Speaker 6: that crack follows that, and I'm thinking, that's so strange.
Speaker 6: I mean, but again, you know, that could be a coincidence,
Speaker 6: but it kind of gave me the creeps. I'm thinking,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't know if there's anything to this
Speaker 6: strying and all this sort of thing. I really don't
Speaker 6: only know from the people that I've interviewed and those
Speaker 6: who are into it. I've talked to people who who
Speaker 6: no longer do those things that they at one time
Speaker 6: they were into the occult or including scrying, and they
Speaker 6: told me it's something to avoid because they said, yeah,
Speaker 6: you can see other things, but they said that while
Speaker 6: you're looking through that mirror, other things on the other
Speaker 6: side are looking at you, which is kind of creepy.
Speaker 6: Said that you allow things to come through a portal,
Speaker 6: and that you're supposed to draw like a circle around
Speaker 6: yourself with salt or something in light light candle before
Speaker 6: you do it. I think it doesn't sound like anything
Speaker 6: I need to be doing. You know, it's whether there's
Speaker 6: anything to it or not. I mean, I mean, sure,
Speaker 6: who wouldn't like to get the lottery numbers or something
Speaker 6: and you know just once but well, you talk.
Speaker 8: You talk about you talk about tarot card reading, though like,
Speaker 8: let's we can't talk about this too much because we
Speaker 8: have a lot to cover. But to add even more
Speaker 8: mystery to this with the portrait and then him being murdered,
Speaker 8: and you talk to the to the killers themselves or
Speaker 8: one of them. One of them claims no memory, the
Speaker 8: other one says, no, I didn't see that painting. So
Speaker 8: it seems from the story before we get ahead of anything,
Speaker 8: that there's a lot of believability that. But you do,
Speaker 8: let's talk about this terrort card reading. He believed in
Speaker 8: this supernatural enough and then start concentrating on tarort card reading.
Speaker 8: In fact, he was doing it for friends until one
Speaker 8: night one particular person came by. His tone, even the
Speaker 8: way he spoke was different, Doctor Scudder, So tell us
Speaker 8: a little bit about that, his sort of the evening
Speaker 8: that happened, and what was the result. Well, then a
Speaker 8: little bit more credence to that the occult had something
Speaker 8: to do with this.
Speaker 6: That's the thing. It's he was continuing along the lines of,
Speaker 6: you know, departing from the ritual science that he was
Speaker 6: trained in for many years that he taught. But so
Speaker 6: he was engaging in these things like the scribe that
Speaker 6: I mentioned, But he was really Many of the people
Speaker 6: who knew him talked about the uncanny accuracy he had
Speaker 6: with greeting your cards, you know, using the Darrow and
Speaker 6: then doubt that I mentioned in the book was had
Speaker 6: been substantiated by two different people that he had done
Speaker 6: reading for a man named Claude Buller Drew in a
Speaker 6: small store, and the guy didn't believe in it anything,
Speaker 6: and so, and Scudder was always cool as a cucumber
Speaker 6: and as a matter of fact, but he became alarmed
Speaker 6: when he was doing this reading and he basically told
Speaker 6: the guy that you know, was that he saw his death,
Speaker 6: that it was imminent, and the guy just kind of
Speaker 6: laughed it off. And a month later, that guy, he
Speaker 6: was thirty eight years old, was found dead in his home.
Speaker 6: And you know, of course I immediately started trying to
Speaker 6: follow it up with death certificates, anything in the records
Speaker 6: that would substantiate that, and I did. I found the
Speaker 6: guy's death certificate that the the corner just said it
Speaker 6: appeared to be Mio Cardio in Fars heart attack. But
Speaker 6: the guy was thirty eight and he just just dropped dead. Well,
Speaker 6: the thing was, I put an excerpt in there of
Speaker 6: that chapter from a letter that Scudder had written to
Speaker 6: his friend in England, who was another professor, who actually
Speaker 6: Professor Anthony Stafford Beer he split his time between the
Speaker 6: UK and Toronto. In fact, he died in Canada back
Speaker 6: in two thousand and two anyway, And Stafford Beer was
Speaker 6: a professor of cybernetics, business management and a theorist. And
Speaker 6: he'd written a lot of letters to Stafford Beer, and
Speaker 6: they would communicate about a lot of things, and he
Speaker 6: was telling them that he scudder decided that he thinks
Speaker 6: that there was some scientific basis for tarot, that he
Speaker 6: was trying to link each aspect of it to some
Speaker 6: aspect of science. He thought that there was some sort
Speaker 6: of correlation. And I couldn't find any more of his
Speaker 6: writings to explain what he was talking about. But he
Speaker 6: was outlining a book about this. But after the death
Speaker 6: of mister Bullard, he had just abandoned the project. And
Speaker 6: his friend said that he refused to do any more
Speaker 6: readings for people. Something about it shook him up. He
Speaker 6: didn't he didn't like something about it. Just it bothered
Speaker 6: him so deeply that I mean, but the you know
Speaker 6: that that would be where he would be in conflict
Speaker 6: with the with Church of Satan and their beliefs. They
Speaker 6: wouldn't believe in this sort of thing. That that's why
Speaker 6: Scudder just he just embraced some of the ideas of
Speaker 6: the Church of Satan. So that's why, you know, he
Speaker 6: didn't worship devils or anything, but he did believe in,
Speaker 6: you know, studying these things. That one of his big
Speaker 6: grips he had with the scientific world was, well, how
Speaker 6: can we just outright dismiss things like the astrology or
Speaker 6: something unless we put them to the same test that
Speaker 6: we put everything else. And we take the brains of
Speaker 6: micece and di buy them. You know, we go sift
Speaker 6: through them like breadcrumbs and find every neuron we can.
Speaker 6: But why don't we before we disprove it, why don't
Speaker 6: we go ahead and put them to the test and
Speaker 6: see if there's anything to it. They didn't dismiss it
Speaker 6: if there's nothing there, but that was sort of his
Speaker 6: you know, he wanted to see what there was. So
Speaker 6: of course, the public wasn't aware of all of the
Speaker 6: you know, the things about all that. They just knew
Speaker 6: a little bit about the tarot or whatever things that
Speaker 6: he did. I just dived into it in more, you know,
Speaker 6: in more debts.
Speaker 8: But tell us about tell us about the actual lives
Speaker 8: of doctor Scudder. You talked about how we talked about.
Speaker 8: We've covered the occult and really his interest in it
Speaker 8: and why, but again probably not Church of satan at
Speaker 8: Hearst would be happy to know really what doctor Scudder's
Speaker 8: life with Joey Odam that always claimed to be a
Speaker 8: Catholic and never a Satanist, not for fun or not
Speaker 8: for anything. So tell us what this couple's life was.
Speaker 8: We haven't explained why these people, these two men are
Speaker 8: a couple, uh, doctor Scudder, as we mentioned, he's a homosexual.
Speaker 8: But tell us, just briefly how these people came to
Speaker 8: be together, and tell us why they wanted to get
Speaker 8: off the grid, to get away from their typical life
Speaker 8: that they had both lived for the most of their lives.
Speaker 8: Joey Odam being forty four, tell us what their life
Speaker 8: style really was like in the middle, middle of nowhere,
Speaker 8: in this castle like home. What were they really like?
Speaker 6: Well, well, of course they'd been together since nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 6: and Charles had actually met Joey when he was on
Speaker 6: a business trip to New York City and he met
Speaker 6: Joey working in a bookstore, and for whatever reason, they
Speaker 6: just they just had that you know, chemistry, the connection
Speaker 6: that some people have. And when I mean, Joey was
Speaker 6: a native of Chicago. When he moved back, he and
Speaker 6: Charles you know, started sort of seeing each other. And
Speaker 6: Charles had bought a mansion on the on the west
Speaker 6: side of Chicago, and he filled it with all these
Speaker 6: barque uh you know, air antiques and things that he
Speaker 6: had he'd picked up at auctions and places that were liquidating,
Speaker 6: and Joey just you know, he needed the place to stay.
Speaker 6: Charles was raising his four sons, uh you know, from
Speaker 6: his previous marriage, So it worked out well that Joey
Speaker 6: just lived there. I've been inside that house. It's it's
Speaker 6: pretty huge even now, I mean, it's still magnificent that
Speaker 6: they haven't changed any of the decor from the sort
Speaker 6: of the nineteenth century, I mean, the twentieth century era.
Speaker 6: But so when after one of Scudder's sons had died,
Speaker 6: suddenly they you know, was sold. It was suicide, but
Speaker 6: I wasn't able to substantiate it. So so he at
Speaker 6: that time, Scudder was having a lot of upheaval and
Speaker 6: his his his professional life. He was being frustrated at work,
Speaker 6: and he was approaching the age of fifty and like
Speaker 6: many of us, you know, just decided that this what's
Speaker 6: the point of doing this anymore? You know, His his
Speaker 6: sons were they were grown, they had joined the navy,
Speaker 6: and it was basically just Charles and Joey. So when
Speaker 6: one of Scudder's relatives had passed away, he left them
Speaker 6: a little bit of money, and Scudder decided to take
Speaker 6: a big chance. He says, well, because I'm tired of
Speaker 6: paying bills, and the people in this house is ridiculous,
Speaker 6: and the crime in the neighborhood had just you know,
Speaker 6: the neighborhood had deteriorated over the years, so much so
Speaker 6: that Scudder's friends were afraid to visit anymore. So Scudder
Speaker 6: decides to just liquid eate as much as he could,
Speaker 6: except for the antiques and things that he really liked,
Speaker 6: and he bought the forty acres of Wildern in southern
Speaker 6: Chaitoo County, Georgia. Decided He's just going to build a
Speaker 6: house and just live out there. And he wrote an
Speaker 6: article that was published in the Mother Earth News, and
Speaker 6: it's a first hand account of the you know, of
Speaker 6: basically his frustrations with work and why he decided to
Speaker 6: to do that, and about his you know, their struggles
Speaker 6: to build a chemical bathroom, and they had a kerosene
Speaker 6: powered refrigerator in the house and they lived pretty comfortably.
Speaker 6: He put the rest of the money that he had
Speaker 6: in the bank, and back in eighty two, the interest
Speaker 6: rates were such that he could make a pretty decent
Speaker 6: amount of money off of a certificate of Debodsit he
Speaker 6: was making something like a hundred dollars a month just
Speaker 6: an interest, and they used that for a little bit
Speaker 6: of gasoline they needed, or you know, buy some sax
Speaker 6: of flower or whatever. And Scudder would make his own
Speaker 6: wine out there. They they at first, they kept to themselves,
Speaker 6: and you know, they always had a project that they
Speaker 6: were working on, building a pond, or they built a
Speaker 6: three story structure in the back of the house. It
Speaker 6: was used as a chicken house, and uh, they but
Speaker 6: what happened was little by little people started to encroach
Speaker 6: on them, like people hunting or whatever. They'd come across
Speaker 6: this strange house in the middle of nowhere, and they're
Speaker 6: like they had a you know, a gargoyle sitting out
Speaker 6: on the gazebo, and these stone grotesques on you know,
Speaker 6: on top of these outbuildings, and they're like, what the
Speaker 6: heck is his place, and uh, you know, and Scudder
Speaker 6: was you know, he was a good host and all that.
Speaker 6: He didn't put out any well maths that he was
Speaker 6: just trying to keep to himself. But what happened was
Speaker 6: that first winter they were there, Joey was involved in
Speaker 6: an accident and he Joey had always been really sharp
Speaker 6: before mentally, and after this accident, his mind was impaired.
Speaker 6: He was he was slower than he used to be,
Speaker 6: and he just wasn't as sharp anymore. And a lot
Speaker 6: of Charles's friends have told me that that's basically when
Speaker 6: because Charles became lonely and he started to let people
Speaker 6: into his life. So more and more people would come
Speaker 6: up there and they would hang out, and they started
Speaker 6: bringing fruit for them and Charles would make wine out
Speaker 6: of it, and they would trade with people they had
Speaker 6: tried to, you know, foster a sense of community. And
Speaker 6: that was what was really strange, talking to people who
Speaker 6: you know, developed Christians, and that when the cops had
Speaker 6: talked to these people, nobody had anything bad to say
Speaker 6: about Charles or Joey, and they're like, what's the deal here?
Speaker 6: You got a couple for gay guys and to fish
Speaker 6: out of water and they got, you know, everything that
Speaker 6: would go against the Bible belt that then you got
Speaker 6: people who say nothing but good things about them, who
Speaker 6: would want to hurt them. So that was what was
Speaker 6: really strange for people. I mean for the police, they
Speaker 6: couldn't understand, like who had it in for these guys,
Speaker 6: but they would they would host you know, parties and
Speaker 6: people would come up there. And I found pictures where
Speaker 6: there's you know, families came up there, I mean their
Speaker 6: kids are sitting at the picnic table or whatever, and
Speaker 6: Joey Odin would bake bread and by all acounts, they
Speaker 6: were pretty happy up there. But that seemed to be
Speaker 6: the lifestyle that was. I mean, of course there would
Speaker 6: be other things going on. There were adult activities going on,
Speaker 6: you know, at night. I mean I did find where,
Speaker 6: you know, some you know, there's there's a gay community
Speaker 6: everywhere in the world, you know, even even there, and
Speaker 6: word got around it, you know, and the you know,
Speaker 6: they'd be gay people coming up there, and they would
Speaker 6: be liaisons and things like that with different people. But
Speaker 6: that wasn't really what it was all about. That's what
Speaker 6: the media made it into. But it was really no
Speaker 6: different than you know anybody. Now, that's just you know
Speaker 6: in any big city, that's you know, there's like they
Speaker 6: got some casual bating thing going on. Because Charleston alway
Speaker 6: had their own rooms. They really weren't a couple like that,
Speaker 6: you know, they were more like just friends after all
Speaker 6: those years. Just you know, but that's that was pretty
Speaker 6: much what you know was going on. But people were fascinated.
Speaker 6: When I found some some of the interviews that the
Speaker 6: police had done with different people, they would they would
Speaker 6: ask them and say, what did you do when he
Speaker 6: went up there? And one guy was saying, well, he goes.
Speaker 6: Mister Scudder was helping me with my reading. He was
Speaker 6: teaching me because I didn't I didn't have you know,
Speaker 6: I didn't finish school, and he was teaching me about
Speaker 6: Shakespeare and about Edgar Allen Poe. And I found a
Speaker 6: lot of that sort of thing. People lived in trailer
Speaker 6: parks that had found their way up there, and there
Speaker 6: was no sexual thing going on. He would just rather
Speaker 6: than talk down to them, he was trying to help them,
Speaker 6: to make them, help them to understand why Shakespeare endears
Speaker 6: to this day, and you know why the same struggles that
Speaker 6: you know, the man has. It has always been there
Speaker 6: and you know, kind of complex subjects, but he tried
Speaker 6: to help him with it. But sorry, Dan, do you
Speaker 6: feel free to jump in when I ramble? I'm sorry. Yeah.
Speaker 8: What I wanted to say was the what you have
Speaker 8: is the situation with doctor Scudder being quite gregarious now
Speaker 8: that you mentioned that his partner is not the same person,
Speaker 8: diminished mentally and physically, and doctor Scudder, who went there
Speaker 8: for privacy, is now a lot more gregarious and people
Speaker 8: bring him fruit and he entertains and makes wine. So
Speaker 8: let's get to the situation where the bodies are discovered.
Speaker 8: We mentioned that there's multiple gunshot wounds, the dogs are murdered,
Speaker 8: the dogs are killed, but tell us about a couple
Speaker 8: other things, including the gag in the mouth for doctor Scudder,
Speaker 8: and what police can surmise, just briefly, what they can
Speaker 8: surmise from the information, and then what does the media,
Speaker 8: how does the media portray this before we talk about
Speaker 8: you know, the subsequent coming forward of one of the
Speaker 8: people that was there that evening.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, at the time I'll mention that, you know,
Speaker 6: the state investigator, they just say the Georgia Grill investigation.
Speaker 6: In many ways. They were sort of ahead of their time.
Speaker 6: They were doing things like fiber and soil analysis and
Speaker 6: things like that, you know before a lot of other
Speaker 6: American agencies were doing that sort of thing. So they
Speaker 6: were they were really meticulous going through it. And even
Speaker 6: on the first day they had just from the blood
Speaker 6: evidence they had, they had some eyes that that joey
Speaker 6: Odom had been shot first, and that that that Scudder
Speaker 6: had been bound and gagged and had apparently been marched
Speaker 6: into the into the study and was murdered there. And
Speaker 6: they had already identified from you know, shoe print evidence, uh,
Speaker 6: that that they were you know, multiple suspects. They knew
Speaker 6: that there were at least three individuals, you know, impossibly
Speaker 6: a fourth, just based on the blood evidence. And and
Speaker 6: they also you know, when they collected shell casings and things,
Speaker 6: they they discovered that there had been two weapons that
Speaker 6: had been used, and uh there you know, there was
Speaker 6: at least they knew there was a rifle that was
Speaker 6: involved because they found twenty two caliber long rifle shells
Speaker 6: and then they found a few shells that came from
Speaker 6: what they figured was a revolver. It was a twenty
Speaker 6: two caliber short and they were putting that together pretty quickly.
Speaker 6: The Sheriff's department. By the way they and I saw
Speaker 6: the scene, they knew it was too complex for the
Speaker 6: resources they have, and that's why they called them the GBI,
Speaker 6: because the GBI came up from Atlanta with their prime
Speaker 6: lab people and they do autopsies and everything. The medical
Speaker 6: examiner at that time, he'd done more than two thousand
Speaker 6: autopsies at that point, and so when he did the autopsies,
Speaker 6: he was because of the cold temperatures out on the
Speaker 6: mountain in December, he couldn't place exactly, you know, he
Speaker 6: didn't know who died first, really, I mean, because they
Speaker 6: died too close together and so medically you couldn't determine it.
Speaker 6: Even though they still figured that Joe Golden was shot first.
Speaker 6: That he had estimated that the murders probably happened somewhere
Speaker 6: around December twelfth to the thirteenth. He didn't think it
Speaker 6: was before that, which, of course it had happened on
Speaker 6: December twelfth, it turned out. So let's see, So I'm
Speaker 6: not sure what would you like for me to.
Speaker 8: How's the media and how does the media portray this?
Speaker 8: They have not any more information police, but they're on
Speaker 8: the scene, they're in nineteen eighty two, and like you say,
Speaker 8: a Bible belt of sorts, and so, how does the media,
Speaker 8: because this is important for the person coming forward, how
Speaker 8: is that story portrayed in the media? Tell us how
Speaker 8: it looks?
Speaker 6: Okay? So what was happening was that there were many
Speaker 6: of these officers that were involved. A lot of them
Speaker 6: were the Sheriff's department, people who basically took a back
Speaker 6: seat once the GBI came in, but before that officially happened,
Speaker 6: in the first early hours of this investigation, they were
Speaker 6: coming out and just making having these impromptu press conferences,
Speaker 6: and they were telling reporters it's like, oh this, you know,
Speaker 6: this is like a They kept mentioning homosexual and they'd say, oh,
Speaker 6: they're all devil worship and just all kinds of things
Speaker 6: that had been substantiated just based on what they were seeing,
Speaker 6: like oh, well you can see these ceramic pentagram things,
Speaker 6: that's the mark of the devil. These guys were devil
Speaker 6: worshippers and that stuff. You know, it just get caught fire.
Speaker 6: CNN came to the scene they were CNN was only
Speaker 6: about two years old at the time. Cable News Network
Speaker 6: and they came up from Atlanta and they started reporting
Speaker 6: on it. So it went worldwide. There were newspapers in
Speaker 6: Europe that were contacting the authorities wanting to know more
Speaker 6: about it. The San Francisco Chronicle was reporting on it.
Speaker 6: I mean at the time it became because this is
Speaker 6: before pre you know, this pre internet. Now everything goes
Speaker 6: you know, viral, as I say, But back then it
Speaker 6: was old fashioned media with print and television and but
Speaker 6: the but the media kept basically regurgitating this stuff and
Speaker 6: then they would augment it. There are many accounts right
Speaker 6: now that you can find on the internet, if you know,
Speaker 6: look at copies like the should Hago Tribune and different
Speaker 6: newspapers where they're reporting that this was a fortress. There
Speaker 6: was a castle, and they're making it larger and larger
Speaker 6: and h embellishing thing. It was that the walls were
Speaker 6: three feet thick, and that there was there were there
Speaker 6: was torture equipment found. Uh, it just it got crazy.
Speaker 6: There was a little decorative uh mace and flail you
Speaker 6: know from the medieval times. You know that you would
Speaker 6: find in the like a dime store and a little
Speaker 6: little cheap thing people would have sitting around a decorative item,
Speaker 6: and that was reported as being an extensive arsenal of
Speaker 6: medieval weapons, and uh, they said there were whips and
Speaker 6: chains and all the things that weren't there, you know,
Speaker 6: with a you know, sexual stuff that it just got
Speaker 6: to be crazy and crazy to It got to the
Speaker 6: point where doctor Scutter's colleagues in Chicago they were just
Speaker 6: incensed by this, and they had written a letter to
Speaker 6: the Chicago Tribune and they all signed it, a lot
Speaker 6: of these doctors, and they were just saying they it
Speaker 6: was they were just insulted by the way that a
Speaker 6: man like doctor Scott, who had was actually a serious scientist,
Speaker 6: you don't mean, no matter what he did on the time,
Speaker 6: but as far as his published papers, he completely took
Speaker 6: that very seriously in his teaching career, that they'd marginalized
Speaker 6: him in some sort of a cartoon character. And the
Speaker 6: triviae never printed it, but I've seen the letter when
Speaker 6: you know, when I was invited to Chicago to you know,
Speaker 6: talk to some of his colleagues. But that was that's
Speaker 6: sort of like what drives it to this day. And
Speaker 6: that's one of the reasons why in the book that
Speaker 6: it became so lengthy because when I would work on this,
Speaker 6: I would constantly encounter people who were they didn't matter.
Speaker 6: You could show them, you could have a you could
Speaker 6: have videotaped the actual murder and everything, and they will
Speaker 6: still swear up and down that it's not that way,
Speaker 6: it's this way, that it didn't happen like that. So
Speaker 6: I had to start going to the transcripts in order
Speaker 6: to you know, because of the veracity of what happened,
Speaker 6: because people keep well even now they'll resist on the
Speaker 6: internet and say they'll go on the Facebook pages and
Speaker 6: say say, no, that's that's not true. I know somebody
Speaker 6: went up there and they did man, they used to
Speaker 6: sacrifice animals up there, and you know, there's absolutely no
Speaker 6: you know, nothing at all that backs that up now
Speaker 6: that stuff happened. You know, there's no one who can
Speaker 6: actually say that they saw it. There's always something third
Speaker 6: or fourth pound that they've heard. So the only way
Speaker 6: that I could, you know, to do that, you know,
Speaker 6: it's basically just to say, well, look, I had just
Speaker 6: to go with the truth. Here's what would.
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Speaker 6: No purchase necessary. I believe were privateed by loss he
Speaker 6: terms and conditions eighteen plus actually said this is what
Speaker 6: the testimony said. Because even people who testified in the
Speaker 6: trials now they're the ones that are so around they're
Speaker 6: saying they never said these things. They're saying, oh, I
Speaker 6: never testified to that. I don't know where people get
Speaker 6: this idea. I've seen them go on television now and
Speaker 6: say that there was a show that just came on
Speaker 6: the Investigation Discovery Channel and they did a there's a
Speaker 6: show called Silent Witness and they just did it about
Speaker 6: a month ago, and they did it on the Corps
Speaker 6: with thing but you would never recognize recognize it from
Speaker 6: the recreation they did. They had all the facts were wrong.
Speaker 6: But there's people now say, oh, well, that was never
Speaker 6: we never said that. We never did this. But you know,
Speaker 6: as when you're doing you know, investigative I mean, I
Speaker 6: mean as you know, I mean you are at you know,
Speaker 6: you've got to if you've got the truth, you've got
Speaker 6: to you know, you've got to back it up because
Speaker 6: you encounter so much resistance and people who just want
Speaker 6: to believe, they want to believe a myth. And I admit,
Speaker 6: you know, the myth is so much more interesting, probably
Speaker 6: to a lot of people. You know, if you're making
Speaker 6: a Hollywood movie, sure you know, you know, just make
Speaker 6: a bunch of stuff up. But to me, the truth
Speaker 6: is so much more fascinating.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about the actual facts here with the we
Speaker 8: didn't get to what the motive seems to be, the
Speaker 8: seeming motive for this murder. The place is ransacked, There
Speaker 8: is all these antiques, but are they carted off? What
Speaker 8: valuables are taken? What is seen as valuable? And then
Speaker 8: tell us how someone comes forward, Teresa Hu comes forward?
Speaker 6: Okay, uh should go ahead, and just to describe the murderers.
Speaker 8: What's again they did police have? What what do police
Speaker 8: see as the motive for when they see the crime
Speaker 8: scene here? What are they deduce as the motive for
Speaker 8: this overall, rather than devil worship. But what is there?
Speaker 8: What do they see? Will mention ransack? The place's ransacked,
Speaker 8: but what there's valuable? So what what is stolen? And
Speaker 8: do the police reclude that this is a robbery?
Speaker 6: Well, they thought early on that there was a robbery.
Speaker 6: They could clearly see that that that the assailants were
Speaker 6: searching for something, and they didn't know what it was,
Speaker 6: you know, they of course they're just speculating what could
Speaker 6: it be of any value? So they didn't know. They
Speaker 6: didn't have any folid leads at the time that it happened,
Speaker 6: I mean at the time that they fell on the
Speaker 6: crime scene. But it was the following day that the
Speaker 6: case was broken. There was a young girl, eighteen years old,
Speaker 6: Teresa Hudgens, and she came forward and she told the sheriff,
Speaker 6: Darry McConnell that she'd only speak to him and him
Speaker 6: alone that that so she was terrified, and she said
Speaker 6: that she had information about the case. And so McConnell
Speaker 6: met with Teresa Hudgens and she's she's this a little
Speaker 6: tiny girl and very you know, seft spoken, and she
Speaker 6: told them that she was there and she witnessed this.
Speaker 6: So that's what gave them the first solid break that
Speaker 6: they had in the case. I mean, there were fingerprints found,
Speaker 6: and they'd taken those those days that's before aphis. You know,
Speaker 6: we didn't have the automated you know, fingerprint system computerized
Speaker 6: like they can use now. They had to have a
Speaker 6: suspect and you know, you had to go through you know,
Speaker 6: the old fashioned way of comparing prints and all. It
Speaker 6: would have taken quite a while to find someone. So
Speaker 6: as they she told what happened that that on December twelfth,
Speaker 6: she had a date with this nineteen year old kid
Speaker 6: that she'd known for a long time named Joey Wells,
Speaker 6: And so she went over to Joey Wells's trailer where
Speaker 6: he lived with his mom and his family. And when
Speaker 6: she was there, there were two other people there. There
Speaker 6: was a guy named Tony West who was thirty years
Speaker 6: old and he was a next convict. He'd just got
Speaker 6: out of prison actually a few months earlier for shooting
Speaker 6: his brother in law on the back in an argument
Speaker 6: over a poker game, and he'd been released from prison
Speaker 6: after this. And the other guy that was there was
Speaker 6: a good guy that she knew since for two or
Speaker 6: three years they used to play basketball together. Guy named
Speaker 6: Avery Brock or Kenneth Avery Brock. He went by Avery
Speaker 6: and so the four of them were there talking, and
Speaker 6: so Tony West asked, you know, what are you guys
Speaker 6: going to do tonight? And they said, well, we were
Speaker 6: going to go riding around, just you know, on a date.
Speaker 6: But Joey's carr's not working, so we're just gonna hang
Speaker 6: out here and watch TV. So Tony West said, wells,
Speaker 6: you did not do anything, why don't you go with
Speaker 6: us just to go riding around. So the four of
Speaker 6: them get into this nineteen seventy javelin and they start
Speaker 6: driving around to do accounting. There's nothing to do, it's cold,
Speaker 6: it's it's a Sunday night, and they scraped together enough
Speaker 6: money for one dollar's worth of gasoline and a pack
Speaker 6: of Marboro cigarettes, which costs eighty five cents back in
Speaker 6: those days. And they start driving around. So we're like,
Speaker 6: what do you guys want to do? And well, what
Speaker 6: can we do? We have no money. So Avery Brock
Speaker 6: suggests that he goes we go up and hang out
Speaker 6: with the Devil Worshipers and Teresa Hudgins is like, devil worshipers,
Speaker 6: what are you talking about? And they're like, well, don't
Speaker 6: worri It's just these two gay men that live up
Speaker 6: here on the mountain. They're cool. They make their own
Speaker 6: wine and doesn't cost anything and sit around just talk.
Speaker 6: And so Joey Wells and his date Teresa Hudeans had
Speaker 6: never been there, so they said, sure, we got nothing.
Speaker 6: They went up there. Well, what they didn't know was
Speaker 6: that Tony West and Avery Brock had been there on
Speaker 6: another occasion. Avery Brock had been there seven times. He
Speaker 6: knew Scudder well. And what had happened was with Avery,
Speaker 6: he was seventeen years old. And what started off as
Speaker 6: sort of like a teacher, like a mentor student kind
Speaker 6: of relationship with Scudder, it sort of the lines got
Speaker 6: blurred and brought He had some sort of sexual liaison
Speaker 6: with the doctor Scudder, and it had happened a few times.
Speaker 6: But what happened was on the the week before, Tony
Speaker 6: West had finally gone up there with with Avery and
Speaker 6: to meet Scudder. And when Tony was there, he saw, uh,
Speaker 6: he saw Scudder and Avery have this sexual kind of vaison.
Speaker 6: One performed rule stands on the other. And after that,
Speaker 6: you know, Tony was sort of ragging on the on
Speaker 6: Avery about it, saying, you know, you know, hey, if
Speaker 6: that's the way, you know, water affoats your boat. And
Speaker 6: Avery was humiliated because you know, he uh, he didn't
Speaker 6: want a way to find out about that, especially in
Speaker 6: the South at that time, you know, to be thought
Speaker 6: of as as gay or communists or atheists was just
Speaker 6: you know, fiped out of the question. It's the Bible belt,
Speaker 6: and you know, you don't want people to know that.
Speaker 6: So Avery began to talk himself into the idea that
Speaker 6: he was taken advantage of by Scudder, that maybe he'd
Speaker 6: gotten a little drunk with the wine and his inhibitions
Speaker 6: were lowered. So he decided, he goes, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 6: going to kill that SB. So Tony says, well, look,
Speaker 6: if you're going to take it that far, you might
Speaker 6: as well make it worth your while. He goes, you know,
Speaker 6: those guys have got to have money up there. Tony
Speaker 6: hadn't been in the house. This lives on happened in
Speaker 6: the Chicken House I mentioned earlier. So Tony had never
Speaker 6: been in the house, but Avery had, so he knew
Speaker 6: that they had antiques and things that he didn't know
Speaker 6: what the value of it was. But they thought, well,
Speaker 6: they've probably got money schooled scrolled away somewhere, you know.
Speaker 6: That's what they were thinking. Because neither Scudder Odom had jobs,
Speaker 6: so they thought they were just rich. So Avery had
Speaker 6: wanted to rob them. But it wasn't supposed to happen
Speaker 6: now night. But what happened was when they went up
Speaker 6: there in the car, the four of them were doing
Speaker 6: this substance called now here, they call it tutalu, and
Speaker 6: it's basically that it's tylu wing. It's a solvent and
Speaker 6: people sniffe it to get high.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: It's the kind of thing you find in the airplane glue,
Speaker 6: that sort of stuff. They put it in the jug
Speaker 6: and they were they were huffing this stuff on the
Speaker 6: way up and getting high when they got up there.
Speaker 6: And Scudder Strange left had a very parochial attitude about
Speaker 6: things like that. He didn't he didn't do drugs. He
Speaker 6: was an expert in drugs that he didn't. He was
Speaker 6: opposed to people using them. And I think because his
Speaker 6: youngest son had also got mixed up with that that
Speaker 6: sort of thing, and he didn't he didn't hold with
Speaker 6: smoking or anything. He was really surprising. I mean that,
Speaker 6: you know, he had no problem with people drinking wine,
Speaker 6: but everything else he thought there were too many preservatives
Speaker 6: and food. He had a big you know, he'd get
Speaker 6: people a big speech about it. But since people were
Speaker 6: visiting or whatever, he's like, okay, whatever, let live. He
Speaker 6: was whatever. But what happened was during this well, the
Speaker 6: four of them got up there and we're, uh, that
Speaker 6: is Teresa Hudgens, Joey Wells, and Tony West and every
Speaker 6: rock started thinking about he's gonna he wants to go
Speaker 6: ahead and do this robbery of a scudder. So he
Speaker 6: goes down to the car, he gets the rifle that
Speaker 6: he brought with him. He comes up there and basically
Speaker 6: he attacks the professor and Teresa and Joe Joey, the Wells,
Speaker 6: her date. They're horrified. They start cutting up the sheet
Speaker 6: and tying up the professor, and the professor thought it
Speaker 6: was some sort of a game. He's like, hey, what
Speaker 6: kind of game do you want to play? I'll play
Speaker 6: your game. Because he you know, because he had no
Speaker 6: reason to think anyone had any animosity toward him, because
Speaker 6: he considered Avery's friend. You know, they had been intimate
Speaker 6: and he didn't know what was going on, and so, uh,
Speaker 6: Teresa panicked and she tried to run. She went down
Speaker 6: the h how the chicken house, and Joey went with him.
Speaker 6: They went running down the road, and Tony West came
Speaker 6: after him with a rifle and forced him to come back.
Speaker 6: And uh, it just it escalated from there. Tony West
Speaker 6: and Avery Brock, they they got scuddered down to the
Speaker 6: h to the house.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: Avery Brock had gone and had shot and killed Joey
Speaker 6: Odom and he shot and killed the dogs, took scudder
Speaker 6: in and of course stutters just in horror of what's
Speaker 6: going on. He couldn't believe it because it kind of
Speaker 6: it came out of nowhere. And uh so uh the killers,
Speaker 6: they said, scuttered down on the couch and the study,
Speaker 6: and they began to interrogate him. And they they didn't
Speaker 6: even know that they weren't there was an electricity in
Speaker 6: the house. They were they had planned that when they
Speaker 6: were going to rob him, they were going to get
Speaker 6: a soldering iron, and they thought they could plug it
Speaker 6: in and put it in the professor's wreckt them they
Speaker 6: were going to torture him until he told where this
Speaker 6: non existent money was, and they just didn't get a
Speaker 6: chance to because they didn't know there were no electricity.
Speaker 6: But it was just I mean, it's insane. Uh, it's
Speaker 6: in a way it reminds me of in Cold Blood,
Speaker 6: you know, with a rumor about the Clutter family having
Speaker 6: money that they didn't have, and this kind of thing happens.
Speaker 6: But it was just so they ended up shooting and
Speaker 6: killing Scudder and they were.
Speaker 8: What does he stay? What does he say? There is
Speaker 8: there's an altercation that's very very profound. He again, he's
Speaker 8: horrified at looking at his partner. They tell him to
Speaker 8: do something, tell us that exchange is very powerful.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, Well he when he's he's sitting there and
Speaker 6: there asking him. They're saying he and by the way
Speaker 6: he Scudder was even then held nothing against them. He said,
Speaker 6: I'll help you boys in any way I can. But
Speaker 6: then they will where's the money? And he goes, I don't,
Speaker 6: we don't have any money. And so he he's as
Speaker 6: Scudder sitting there, you know, he's looking around the room
Speaker 6: because they built this house with their own hands and
Speaker 6: it's decorated with artwork that he created from his own
Speaker 6: imagination and stained glass winds, those and things. And they
Speaker 6: said they demanded a sovereign iron, and as much in
Speaker 6: terror as you would have to be in that position.
Speaker 6: Scudder was so analytical that it took him out of
Speaker 6: that for a moment. He said, like a sovereign iron,
Speaker 6: Why would I have a sovereign iron? We don't have
Speaker 6: any electricity. Because even then he's like a scientist, He's like, well,
Speaker 6: this is so illogical. And so he kept looking at
Speaker 6: joey Odom playing in the like in the like in
Speaker 6: the hallway, the little Foye area, and he could see
Speaker 6: him laying their motionless, and the blood was, you know,
Speaker 6: spreading from his wounds, and Scudder just this. You know,
Speaker 6: he'd been called many things in his life that he
Speaker 6: didn't even called a coward. And he just stood up
Speaker 6: with these two thugs that were you know, younger than
Speaker 6: him and you know, uh, physically stronger, but they still
Speaker 6: had to use you know, guns and knives and things
Speaker 6: to subdue this fifty six year old retired professor. So
Speaker 6: he just stands up defiantly and starts walking towards joey Odom,
Speaker 6: and they pushed him back down, and Tony West said
Speaker 6: sit down and I'm gonna I'm going to kill you,
Speaker 6: and Scudder stood up again and he kept walking and
Speaker 6: West threatened them beginning he said, I said, sit down,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna kill you. And Scudder through his gag he said,
Speaker 6: he said, I asked for this, and Tony West shot
Speaker 6: him in the head and he ended up shooting him,
Speaker 6: you know, some five times before Scudder stopped breathing. He
Speaker 6: kind of just basically wouldn't die. I mean, it was uh,
Speaker 6: the medical examiner had said that you know, there was
Speaker 6: there was the torture, I mean, the amount of damage
Speaker 6: that he had sustained to his skull. Whatever. He's still
Speaker 6: but he was still able to live, like at least
Speaker 6: ten more minutes. He was still breathing, sitting on the
Speaker 6: floor before Tony West only delivered the you know, the
Speaker 6: Kudi gras and they were going to kill Teresa Hudgens.
Speaker 6: They and she talked him out of it because she
Speaker 6: had a h she was only eighteen, but she had
Speaker 6: done a teenage bride and she from that may you know,
Speaker 6: she'd had a two year old daughter. And she tried
Speaker 6: to talk them out and said, I got a little
Speaker 6: girl at home and this and this and that, but
Speaker 6: she swore she wouldn't go to the cops and wouldn't
Speaker 6: say anything, but she was, you know, she was terrified
Speaker 6: that they would come back and get because they said
Speaker 6: they would. You know, you know, if the police catch
Speaker 6: us right away with they won't know you told and
Speaker 6: you better play that they catch us both, because the
Speaker 6: other ones can come back and get you. And uh,
Speaker 6: you know, she just saw the callous when they slaughtered
Speaker 6: these men and their dogs, and she knew they would
Speaker 6: they would do it.
Speaker 8: But you know, she was she was she was brave
Speaker 8: enough to come forward. So that's where they get the
Speaker 8: idea who these perpetrators are. Tony West and Avery Brock.
Speaker 8: We didn't mention that the vehicle the very distinctive vehicle
Speaker 8: with this pronounced stars on it, all black with these
Speaker 8: stars and with circles at the end pentagram, so a
Speaker 8: very very obvious car. But as we mentioned or you mentioned,
Speaker 8: the bodies aren't discovered right away by their friend Raymond Williams,
Speaker 8: so the vehicle's missing. Now they know who they're looking for.
Speaker 8: This is We're not anywhere near the end of this story.
Speaker 8: But let's talk about what happens with these two killers
Speaker 8: and who they meet up with in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: Okay, yes, doctor Scudder had a very distinctive black is
Speaker 6: a nineteen seventy six CJ five jeep with a metal top.
Speaker 6: It was all painted black and it looked like a
Speaker 6: military jeep. You know, it's got pentagrams on the doors,
Speaker 6: and that's that's what they stole. They told their they
Speaker 6: told their family members that they were going to Florida
Speaker 6: to throw them off, but in fact they were planning
Speaker 6: to go to Mexico. So they headed west and when
Speaker 6: they got to Mississippi, they were about to pass out.
Speaker 6: They went to this little rest stop, which was nothing
Speaker 6: more than a paved circle on top of a hill,
Speaker 6: very lonely, set back in the woods, and they saw
Speaker 6: an opportunity. They wanted to ditch this very distinctive looking vehicle.
Speaker 6: They didn't know if the place were looking for them
Speaker 6: or not at that point, so they saw a nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty brown Toyota sitting there and there was a man
Speaker 6: sleeping in. It was a twenty six year old Navy
Speaker 6: lieutenant then named Kirby Phelps, and he was driving on
Speaker 6: this way from Florida, to Oklahoma to see his mother
Speaker 6: at Christmas. And they walked over and locked on the window,
Speaker 6: and when Kirby rolled down the window, you know, perhaps
Speaker 6: thinking that they were asking for directions, Aby brought those
Speaker 6: a pistol up in his face and tells him to
Speaker 6: get out. They handcuffed him. Tony West took him out
Speaker 6: in the woods and shot and killed him. And they
Speaker 6: took both vehicles and they continued on west, and they
Speaker 6: dumped the chief in a bayou in Louisiana, and they
Speaker 6: loaded all their stuff into the Toyota and continued their journey.
Speaker 6: And that was that murder occurred near Vicksburg, Mississippi, which
Speaker 6: is pretty rich in Civil War history. But when the
Speaker 6: West and Block they on the way to uh To
Speaker 6: to Mexico, they stopped in near Waco, Texas, and they
Speaker 6: picked up a hitch hiker who said he knew his
Speaker 6: way around Austin. So they went to Austin and the
Speaker 6: things that belonged to Kirby Phelps that they had whom
Speaker 6: they'd murdered. And when the Western brock, they went to
Speaker 6: a topless bar with the hitchhiker and they got into
Speaker 6: a brock, got into he got drunk and got into
Speaker 6: a fight with the hitchhiker, and so they got rid
Speaker 6: of the hitch hiker, told him to get lost, and
Speaker 6: that Tony West and Avery continued fighting at the bar,
Speaker 6: and West left him and took off with the car.
Speaker 6: So Brock the next morning he sobered up, and of
Speaker 6: course neither of them had really been outside of this
Speaker 6: the area where they came from, so they didn't know
Speaker 6: what to do. And Brock especially, he was you know,
Speaker 6: he was inexperienced with the world, and he just decided, well,
Speaker 6: you know, he didn't even know if the crime had
Speaker 6: been discovered yet, so he decided to hitch hike back
Speaker 6: and he was just gonna just go back like nothing
Speaker 6: happened until he got back to Atlanta. I called his
Speaker 6: mother and found out that the cops were looking for him,
Speaker 6: and of course he denied because I didn't do it, Mom,
Speaker 6: And then because it was Tony, it made me sick
Speaker 6: watching him kill all those people. But Bock was the
Speaker 6: one who started the whole thing and shot Pot him himself.
Speaker 6: And so Tony West continued to drift around, driving around
Speaker 6: until he you know, started running out of you know,
Speaker 6: money and gas. He made his way back to Chattanooviu, Tennessee,
Speaker 6: and he tried to give himself up on Christmas Eve
Speaker 6: of eighty two, and the cop wouldn't take him in
Speaker 6: because they had entered his one of his alienas and
Speaker 6: alias is in the n C I C. So there
Speaker 6: was no hit on him when he was getting his
Speaker 6: real name of Samuel Tony West. So he had to
Speaker 6: he had to fight with the cop to to you
Speaker 6: know the copt. Well, it was this Christmas Eve. People
Speaker 6: commonly give themselves up or surrender for imaginary crimes, else
Speaker 6: they can get a hot meal and get all the
Speaker 6: all the bad weather, but so they so he gave
Speaker 6: himself up, and see what happened was the media has
Speaker 6: reported that Tony West just coincidentally ran out of gas
Speaker 6: in Chaddock to Tennessee, and that's why I tried to
Speaker 6: give himself up there. But what they didn't realize was
Speaker 6: that when Tony West was fifteen, he had killed his
Speaker 6: two year old nephew and he'd done other things. But
Speaker 6: see he just like he did with his and of
Speaker 6: course that was ruled an accident. But when he shot
Speaker 6: his brother in law over the poker game a few
Speaker 6: months earlier he'd done that in Tennessee, and Tennessee was
Speaker 6: was and he sort of is right now, sort of
Speaker 6: lenient with you know, with the criminal system, but Georgia
Speaker 6: is very punitive. It's like night and day. So Tony
Speaker 6: West thought, as he gave himself up in Chattanooga, everything
Speaker 6: would happened in Tennessee. He'd have to do more time
Speaker 6: and that would beg end of it. So he didn't
Speaker 6: realize when he went to you know, gave himself up
Speaker 6: to Tennessee, but they took him to Georgia. He told
Speaker 6: the cops in Georgia, he just casually he told everything
Speaker 6: exactly the way it happened, and he thought, well, it'll
Speaker 6: be the same thing in Georgia. They didn't realize Georgia,
Speaker 6: but they okay, thank you very much. They're very polite,
Speaker 6: and they okay, we're gonna sentence you to the electric
Speaker 6: chair for then his memory started getting bad. You know,
Speaker 6: he realized it's really a different ballgame in Georgia.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Now the interesting thing is the again, the bravery
Speaker 8: of Teresa coming forward and providing happened to be this
Speaker 8: incredible eyewitness. She can't attest everything. But when West gives
Speaker 8: the voluntary confession, and then the one with McConnell, he
Speaker 8: more than buries himself. Even if he tries to deflect
Speaker 8: responsibility to Avery a seventeen year old and he's thirty
Speaker 8: years old, makes no difference because, as everyone knows, in
Speaker 8: the felony murder, in the commission of a robbery or kidnapping,
Speaker 8: this is where you're at in terms of responsibility. However,
Speaker 8: he has appointed counsel a Blange or Blanger and another gentleman,
Speaker 8: and so the even though they have the confession and
Speaker 8: all that information and the eye wit and two eye witnesses,
Speaker 8: this story is not over. And it's not an open
Speaker 8: and shutcase, is it.
Speaker 6: Oh? By no means right, because what happened was uh
Speaker 6: at first, And I know I had the honor of
Speaker 6: interviewing the people you mentioned, Ben Bounger and Flipped and
Speaker 6: Skip Patty, and they're still in practice right now as attorneys.
Speaker 6: And at the time they didn't know what they were
Speaker 6: going to do as far as the defense, because you know,
Speaker 6: they had all these confessions west of course, given the
Speaker 6: h he'd given a confession on audio tape, which which
Speaker 6: you couldn't actually hear very well, I uncovered the recording
Speaker 6: and on Facebook, I've I've been posting a little bit
Speaker 6: of some excerpts from it because you know, people even
Speaker 6: now were saying, oh, that Bok's wrong. He never said that,
Speaker 6: so they didn't realize I found the tape and it
Speaker 6: was in Mississippi and a you know, archive wasn't supposed
Speaker 6: to be there. But anyway, they didn't use it in trial.
Speaker 6: But they you know, because you couldn't hear you couldn't
Speaker 6: hear West as well on it. Now you could with
Speaker 6: the technology, they could enhance it. So they went with
Speaker 6: the written confession he gave to another officer and with
Speaker 6: the you know, the confession he gave h McConnell and
Speaker 6: to the cop he tried to initially surrender to and
Speaker 6: Chad l So they had a lot, you know, they're
Speaker 6: not short on evidence. And he walks up wearing the
Speaker 6: suit from Kirby Phelps, he stole some of his clothes.
Speaker 6: He's wearing the bracelet he took off of doctor Scudder's
Speaker 6: body after he killed him. Means it's cold blooded and
Speaker 6: he's got all this evidence. And he said, this is
Speaker 6: what I you know, have this stuff. But so the
Speaker 6: attorneys told me that basically they were looking at the
Speaker 6: Lousi compulsion, all these types of things for mental stuff
Speaker 6: to try to keep them off of death row. And
Speaker 6: but what happened was they found that the attorneys found
Speaker 6: out shortly for trial that the GBI had found in
Speaker 6: a desk's drawer at Corpse Wood, which of course was
Speaker 6: the name of the house, they found some vials that
Speaker 6: were labeled LSD twenty five. It was delcid. It was
Speaker 6: used by It came from the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Switzerland.
Speaker 6: So they had discovered LSD back in the thirties. They
Speaker 6: used to use it in the forties and the fifties
Speaker 6: for psychiatric use. They would use it to you know,
Speaker 6: to try to you know, fix I guess the delusions
Speaker 6: or something were wrong, the same thing that they did
Speaker 6: with electrical the convulsive stock therapy, that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: But they found these vials. But the GBI, when they
Speaker 6: looked at it, they said, well, these are old. It
Speaker 6: was like pre banned. It was so old as before
Speaker 6: it was even the illegal United States. They were yellowed
Speaker 6: and cracked, and all one of them was intact. It
Speaker 6: was like an ampuel. You'd have to break it to
Speaker 6: get the substance out of it, so they could see
Speaker 6: that it was just something old and forgotten. And one was,
Speaker 6: you know, one bile was cracked and empty and dry
Speaker 6: and fell and was leaking and had some yellowed tape
Speaker 6: around it. So they threw it in a bag with
Speaker 6: some other stuff that they didn't think had any evidentiary
Speaker 6: value to the case, because obviously the killers had looked
Speaker 6: through the drawers and they didn't take it, so either
Speaker 6: they didn't see it or that wasn't what they were
Speaker 6: looking for. So but they didn't try to conceal it,
Speaker 6: but through sort of an error that they didn't they
Speaker 6: didn't log it in a lot of other things they
Speaker 6: didn't log too, but they were things like, you know,
Speaker 6: receipts and things like that, and things from the desk,
Speaker 6: you know, receipts were bills and stuff. So it was
Speaker 6: in this bag with all this stuff, and it went
Speaker 6: to the sheriff's office and it sat in it, you know,
Speaker 6: behind the guy's desk. But the prosecutor, you know, he
Speaker 6: was he was aware, but he didn't know. They didn't know.
Speaker 6: The assistant disc attorney mentioned it to the defense attorney,
Speaker 6: says Oholl you've also got this and this, and they
Speaker 6: wait a minute, you've got LSD and you didn't tell us. Says, oh,
Speaker 6: you weren't aware of this stuff. And so they made
Speaker 6: a big deal about it and said, how we've only
Speaker 6: got something. We're going to say that professor doctor Scudder
Speaker 6: put LSD in the wine and he drugged these guys
Speaker 6: and that's why they went crazy and did this stuff.
Speaker 6: And that's when Tony West he liked that idea, and
Speaker 6: to this day he will swear to you that that's
Speaker 6: what happened. But they invented this defense. There was actually
Speaker 6: there was no LSD in the wine, but the processus
Speaker 6: just didn't think it was going to be an issue,
Speaker 6: so they never they never had didn't have the bottles
Speaker 6: tested or anything, or had the wine tested because they thought, well,
Speaker 6: this is a silly But when it was the judge
Speaker 6: ruled that yeah, they can, defense can mention it. They tried.
Speaker 6: They went ahead and had the crime lab analyze the
Speaker 6: bottles and they found that it was negative, but because
Speaker 6: it came too late, they couldn't say it in the trial.
Speaker 6: So to this day you still have people who say, Hi, man,
Speaker 6: you don't know that LSD that was in there, that's why.
Speaker 6: And uh they never bothered didn't test those bottles, but
Speaker 6: they did test it, but legally they couldn't disclose. But
Speaker 6: the defense, you know, of course they're dancing and say, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, tell them that the jury, why didn't they
Speaker 6: have these tested ladies? Wasn't of course, you know, the
Speaker 6: prosecutors have to sit there and just you know, bite
Speaker 6: their fifth thing. You know, they can't say, well, we
Speaker 6: did test them. We can't tell you the results. But
Speaker 6: see Avery Brock had when he when he pleaded guilty.
Speaker 6: Uh they you know, he pleaded guilty before so there
Speaker 6: would be no trial. And he he said there was
Speaker 6: nothing in the line and they were going to have
Speaker 6: him come back and testify in the trial, and his
Speaker 6: lawyers shut it down because he still had he was
Speaker 6: going to be extra died in Mississippi to stand trial
Speaker 6: for the murder of Kirby Phelps. So they didn't want
Speaker 6: him to damage himself on you know, because he said,
Speaker 6: they're going to use it in the next in that
Speaker 6: trial over there. So that that legend continues to this day.
Speaker 6: In fact, I'm just I just talked to Skip Patty
Speaker 6: a couple of weeks ago and I saw him and
Speaker 6: he was telling he was reading the book and we
Speaker 6: were talking about the LSC think he said, I said,
Speaker 6: you know, Tony West, I spoke to him and to
Speaker 6: this day he still says he was drugged. And you know,
Speaker 6: Skip Patty was like, he said, you know, we just
Speaker 6: made that up. Say I know, but I said, You've
Speaker 6: got people who still believe it to this day that
Speaker 6: he was drugged and that's why he did it rather
Speaker 6: than he just did because you know, he didn't shoot
Speaker 6: his two year old nephew and kill him because of
Speaker 6: you know, LSD, or shoot his brother law on the
Speaker 6: poker game because of you know, he just it's just
Speaker 6: the way he is. You know, it's like a psychopath.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about this case. This is in Mississippi and Georgia,
Speaker 8: both death penalty states, so these become obvious death penalty candidates.
Speaker 8: You talked about the LSD and the futile futile defense.
Speaker 8: It really was. It was a good attempt, I guess.
Speaker 8: So they are convicted. But one I think one of
Speaker 8: the most again moving parts of your book is the
Speaker 8: pathetic attempt when he takes his own stand to defend himself,
Speaker 8: to try to prevent these jurors that are looking on
Speaker 8: to try to convince these jurors not to take his life,
Speaker 8: this Tony West, and that might include that to dispense
Speaker 8: with this LSD excuse. But tell us just a little
Speaker 8: bit about that, because I think that's again very very powerful,
Speaker 8: the kinds of questions that this prosecutor is cross examining
Speaker 8: him about these crimes, and yet he doesn't see what
Speaker 8: he needs to do here to spare his own life.
Speaker 6: But yeah, that's that was that was particularly strange. I
Speaker 6: had a psychological report they had done on Tony West
Speaker 6: in Mississippi, and the psychiatrists and the psychologists they agreed
Speaker 6: that basically he displayed sort of a psychopathic personality, but
Speaker 6: he but he doesn't have he basically balk both they
Speaker 6: don't have empathy for other people and they it's that's
Speaker 6: that's one of the reasons I think that Wes wasn't
Speaker 6: able to, you know, discern what he needed to say
Speaker 6: to try to elicit sympathy from the jury because he's
Speaker 6: denying responsibility. He tries to you know, like you mentioned
Speaker 6: that he's thirty and Brock was seventeen. He's trying to
Speaker 6: lay it off on him saying that, well, Avery said
Speaker 6: we had to do this, and that's so we did
Speaker 6: it so that you know, the prosecutor and say, well,
Speaker 6: you just let a kid lead you around by the nose.
Speaker 6: You're a thirty year old man. And so he's trying
Speaker 6: to deflect all responsibility from this because he's going to
Speaker 6: embrace this whole LSD thing. And but I mean, I
Speaker 6: think it's it's particularly telling the interview that Tony West
Speaker 6: gives later on to I don't remember. I think it
Speaker 6: was a CBS affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, where he said
Speaker 6: that he'd gone up there that night because Tony West
Speaker 6: claimed to be a Christian, and he said he'd heard
Speaker 6: about this man and he wanted to go and tell
Speaker 6: this man about his God. And you know, all these
Speaker 6: things are completely live, you know, and so he in
Speaker 6: his mind, he's because his family is there too, and
Speaker 6: he wants his his mother and his sisters to do
Speaker 6: him in a certain light and say, well, I would
Speaker 6: never have done these things. How can I be sorry
Speaker 6: if these happened? Because this wasn't me. Doctor Stutter hypnotized me,
Speaker 6: and he did these things to me. And that's why
Speaker 6: I did it, you know. So that's that's one of
Speaker 6: the reasons he won't let go of this idea that
Speaker 6: he's innocent. But but he's not. The only time he
Speaker 6: ever finally owned up to it was, you know, after
Speaker 6: the after the you know, he was finally offered a deal,
Speaker 6: after you know, the trials or whatever, he finally said, Okay,
Speaker 6: I did it, you know, like the closely well even
Speaker 6: said then that on one of them said, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't know why it happened, but it happened, and
Speaker 6: I did it. But it's it is it is very
Speaker 6: strange that I think that. I mean, well, I guess
Speaker 6: if someone doesn't have a conscience, it's not strange. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's why he's not gonna he doesn't know how to
Speaker 6: the way he's trying to get sympathies to say, well,
Speaker 6: it's just not my fault. I'm a victim, and it
Speaker 6: doesn't work no matter how many times he does it,
Speaker 6: it doesn't you know, it's the same result every time.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I agree, I mean I would certainly be saying,
Speaker 6: you know, you know, I wish I hadn't done this,
Speaker 6: and I'm sorry for the victims and their families. He
Speaker 6: didn't say any of that. He's basically sorry for himself
Speaker 6: that he's in this predicament, but he doesn't have any
Speaker 6: sorry sorry.
Speaker 8: How did the media portray this despite knowing the truth?
Speaker 8: Now having all this information, it was contrary to the
Speaker 8: salacious angle that they were putting forth. Does the media
Speaker 8: change its tune and be more realistic and tell the
Speaker 8: truth about what really happened here?
Speaker 6: Well? No, strange enough, it's you know, it's like any
Speaker 6: sensational story that it's only it's only in the you know,
Speaker 6: the headlines until another sensational story comes along and takes
Speaker 6: its place. And by the time these trials they stretched on. You, Now,
Speaker 6: the thing happened in nineteen eighty two, It didn't it
Speaker 6: didn't get resolved on until nineteen eighty eight, and by
Speaker 6: then people like, you know a lot of people, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: I kind of remember that, But they didn't. I didn't
Speaker 6: find anything with the with the where anything was conclusive.
Speaker 6: With any of the media, they just basically they I
Speaker 6: didn't see as many of the headlines that I had
Speaker 6: seen when it first happened, where it kept describing the
Speaker 6: victims as homosexual devil worshipers, and that was just you
Speaker 6: know that. I mean, of course that's what a sensational headline.
Speaker 6: Who wouldn't read that? But they the most I saw
Speaker 6: happened was that that's a slain professor, you know, or
Speaker 6: or they you know, something like fat. But they didn't.
Speaker 6: I didn't see any articles that that really resolved that.
Speaker 6: They just basically said what what the result was as
Speaker 6: far as the plea deal or whatever, and when the
Speaker 6: convictions happened, they just thought that they were, you know,
Speaker 6: convicted on this you know, account or whatever. But it's
Speaker 6: sort of like it became sort of the part of
Speaker 6: the you know, the the myth had already been kind
Speaker 6: of like invented. And that's why you'll see to this
Speaker 6: day if you google it. I mean, now there's tons
Speaker 6: of information, but you know, almost all of it is
Speaker 6: you know, it's not accurate. There's a Tony West's ex
Speaker 6: wife recently was was going on the internet and she
Speaker 6: was saying things about it couldn't this, couldn't be. You know,
Speaker 6: it's not like that. You know, he was drugged. He
Speaker 6: always said he was, and I was surprised for him.
Speaker 6: Hell just took his word for it without any you know,
Speaker 6: looking at you know, any of the information that's available,
Speaker 6: and there's people who claimed to be you know, who
Speaker 6: have written books or something, but they didn't even go
Speaker 6: look at the transcripts or anything. They just they googled it.
Speaker 6: And there's a I mean, there was a couple of
Speaker 6: thin little books that came out. One of them put
Speaker 6: you know, more effort into it, but the other the
Speaker 6: first one that came out, and they've got even the
Speaker 6: facts wrong about how many times Scudder and Odin were
Speaker 6: shot and where they were shot. And I was surprised
Speaker 6: that they can't even get that right, and that's that's
Speaker 6: easily available. But that's the way it kind of goes now.
Speaker 6: I mean, fortunately, things are starting to turn around. There's
Speaker 6: a Facebook page now devoted to the victims and it
Speaker 6: has like forty three hundred LIFs on it, and the
Speaker 6: owner of that page has asked me to contribute a
Speaker 6: lot to it because you know, they want because the
Speaker 6: families of the victims are a part of that. And
Speaker 6: Odam's family I met them and they told me that
Speaker 6: they were really glad that I treated their uncle with
Speaker 6: you no, like the way he really was like that
Speaker 6: he was just like a you know, you know, just
Speaker 6: like a benign, benign character. He didn't tell, you know,
Speaker 6: like he was just basically when they were kids, he
Speaker 6: would he would cheat at checkers, he would steal their
Speaker 6: checkers and things like that, and just you know that
Speaker 6: he's been made out to become kind of a monster.
Speaker 6: I mean, the sheriff at the time was quoted was
Speaker 6: telling the immedia sticked up by ap so I was
Speaker 6: reported everyone. He said that Joey Odin was the Scutter's lackey,
Speaker 6: his boy. He was like his servant. And I mean
Speaker 6: you have to, you know, think when you're you're writing
Speaker 6: something like this, and it's like there are living people
Speaker 6: who are around who knew those people loved them, and
Speaker 6: you have to think, well, you know, you owe everything
Speaker 6: to the truth, you know, to tell it the way
Speaker 6: that it was. And you know, I mean got family
Speaker 6: members who they read out their relatives saying that they
Speaker 6: sacrificed animals and they tortured animals and did all these
Speaker 6: horrible things that you know that they never did. And
Speaker 6: you know, I mean it's just a but yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 6: as far as the media, I haven't anything. Now, there
Speaker 6: was one the newspaper that most widely covered it in
Speaker 6: that County. It's the summer Ole News, and I had
Speaker 6: told when I would do my research, I put to
Speaker 6: their archives and I told them there were some things
Speaker 6: that weren't reported accurately back in the day. They had
Speaker 6: some facts wrong, and the publisher was very interested in that.
Speaker 6: They said, you know, we went with the best infation
Speaker 6: we had. The Thomas said, why, I realized that, but
Speaker 6: I found these things that are you know, do in
Speaker 6: the records, and you know, they were actually very receptive.
Speaker 6: They said, well, we may do a retrospective on this case,
Speaker 6: and if so, you know, would you mind contributing, because
Speaker 6: we're going to make sure that we get everything right. Well,
Speaker 6: we'll correct anything that wasn't accurate, even though it's you know,
Speaker 6: thirty something years later that they're interested in that, which
Speaker 6: I thought, you know, I have to give them a
Speaker 6: lot of respect. That's incredible to Some of it was
Speaker 6: just small stuff that it's reported even now incorrectly, like
Speaker 6: saying that Tony West's father was killed in a train
Speaker 6: accident and in Indiana, when in fact he's died in
Speaker 6: a car crash in Towards It's a lot of things
Speaker 6: that were you know, it's not right, but still you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, if you're doing you know, what's the point
Speaker 6: of doing in kind of investigative journalism if you're just
Speaker 6: going to make up the facts. I mean, there's too
Speaker 6: much work to go through archives, you know, boxes of
Speaker 6: old files, and you know, it's just you know, it's.
Speaker 8: You also add of course, not that one victim is
Speaker 8: more important than another, but the Kirby Phelps' mother is
Speaker 8: at the trial and has to endure listening to the
Speaker 8: details of the callous, cold blooded murder of her son
Speaker 8: very moving as well, just her participation in this and
Speaker 8: also at the same time she had to endure Tony
Speaker 8: West's supporters, and you had mentioned we won't have time,
Speaker 8: we don't have time to get into it at all.
Speaker 8: But of course he finds romance in prison and a
Speaker 8: supporter of woman ready to marry him if there were
Speaker 8: the bility to be married in prison in Georgia, so
Speaker 8: incredible details of the As you mentioned, the trial does
Speaker 8: not end right away. This stretches out for as you say,
Speaker 8: six years before the resolution of this case for these
Speaker 8: two killers, and there was safety locked behind bars forever.
Speaker 8: Tell us what the conclusion is for these is it
Speaker 8: life without parole? For both of them in the end,
Speaker 8: what is their end sentence.
Speaker 6: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that. In Georgia at
Speaker 6: the time, but they were sentenced George did not have
Speaker 6: life without possibility parole as a sentence, and of course
Speaker 6: you can't. You can't tendant someone and then retroactively go
Speaker 6: back and impose that. So at the time they were
Speaker 6: sentenced in Georgia, a life sentence was basically you would
Speaker 6: be paroled in eight to twelve years. Well, they were
Speaker 6: given three consecutive life sentences, so too, I mean one
Speaker 6: would think, okay, that's the end of it. Well that
Speaker 6: we're coming up on thirty six years right now, which
Speaker 6: would be the maximum time basically that they could be
Speaker 6: kept behind bars even though they did these you know,
Speaker 6: heinous crimes. Well, in Mississippi it was different there. They
Speaker 6: had a sentence of life like real life. And the
Speaker 6: agreements that the killers finally made with Mississippi was that
Speaker 6: that after the completion of their sentences in Georgia, they
Speaker 6: would go to Mississippi and they would have to you know,
Speaker 6: finish the rest of their sentences there. But when I
Speaker 6: was in Mississippi during the research, I met with the
Speaker 6: district attorney after Rickie Smith, and he was remembering the
Speaker 6: case of the prosecutor had passed away just a couple
Speaker 6: of years earlier, and he was a friend of the
Speaker 6: current district attorney, and he got interested in that, and
Speaker 6: I said, well, you know, my concern is that it
Speaker 6: was done so long ago, back in the eighties, that
Speaker 6: they didn't use computers very wisely the moment at that time.
Speaker 6: So I said, I'm afraid that it might have fallen
Speaker 6: between the cracks, and they don't have it set up.
Speaker 6: And so he became curious. He said, well, what was
Speaker 6: the style of the case, and I said it was
Speaker 6: a state versus West. He looked it up and sure enough,
Speaker 6: they didn't have a detainer in there. It wasn't there's
Speaker 6: no attach now. So basically if they had been released,
Speaker 6: they could have walked out of prison. I mean, they
Speaker 6: might have been discovered later. But you know, you've got
Speaker 6: unremorseful you know, multiple murderers, you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, they could still do things and
Speaker 6: there's you know, Brock told me that they get they
Speaker 6: get contraband cell phones in prison. So he does look
Speaker 6: up stuff about Cortswood and he sees that. I mean,
Speaker 6: so the district attorney, you know, he went in the
Speaker 6: computer and went in the system. He linked it together
Speaker 6: and then he said, okay done. He said, I can
Speaker 6: promise you now, he said, if they ever get out
Speaker 6: of prison in georget they're going to die here in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: But I mean, I was surprised that it wasn't linked up,
Speaker 6: but it just occouraged to me. I think, wonder if
Speaker 6: they ever set that up. So now at least they
Speaker 6: you know, they'll be sent there they ever get out.
Speaker 6: But it's coming up in thirty six years, so he
Speaker 6: got to maximum time. They can stay behind bars in Georgia.
Speaker 6: Of course, both of them had multiple medical problems, and
Speaker 6: I don't know why they would want to get out.
Speaker 6: I mean, West has outlived all his family members. They're
Speaker 6: all dead except for I mean, his sisters and his mother.
Speaker 6: They'll have restiratory problems. And Tony West used to be
Speaker 6: a chain smoker, but of course smoking this band in
Speaker 6: Georgia prisons, and he spends all this time in the
Speaker 6: medical prison. That's the irony of it. He's been kept
Speaker 6: alive by the same taxpayers that sought to execute them
Speaker 6: years ago, and he's outlived everyone because he gets you know,
Speaker 6: medical you better medical care than I would, you know,
Speaker 6: and every Brock has gotten multiple medical problems as well,
Speaker 6: and the decuriorating discs in his neck and spine, and
Speaker 6: a lot of people say that's karma, but I mean,
Speaker 6: I have you know, I'm not without you know, not
Speaker 6: without compassion. I mean, yeah, they did these things, but
Speaker 6: you know, I mean I would just at least like
Speaker 6: for them to have some remorse, you know what they
Speaker 6: did anyway, But.
Speaker 8: I don't know. You can't have remorse. You wouldn't done
Speaker 8: this sort of thing, so it doesn't exist later. You
Speaker 8: can't do something like this, not capable of doing this,
Speaker 8: and then experience going to a strip bar in the
Speaker 8: guy's clothes, pawning his stuff off.
Speaker 3: No, it's it.
Speaker 8: May it may not. You know, you may not jibe
Speaker 8: with what people think that everybody's basically good. They are,
Speaker 8: but there's these aberrations in society and they're psychopathic killers.
Speaker 8: That's what it is. I want to thank you very
Speaker 8: much Daniel for coming on and talking about your incredible book.
Speaker 8: Corpse would a true crime like no other for those
Speaker 8: that might want to further look into this you were
Speaker 8: talking about Facebook pages and websites. Tell us about your
Speaker 8: website and a Facebook page for the book, how they
Speaker 8: might contact you or find a lot more information about this.
Speaker 6: Sure, it's let's see. The one for my for my
Speaker 6: book is always get the get the U r L.
Speaker 6: I mean it's oops, well here we go, sorry about that.
Speaker 6: It is of course Facebook dot com slash corpse would.
Speaker 8: Book very good and uh I want to thank you
Speaker 8: again for talking about Corpsewood, a true life, a true
Speaker 8: crime like no other. Thank you very much, Daniel, and
Speaker 8: you have a great evening and hope to talk to
Speaker 8: you again.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you so much for the honor. I
Speaker 6: appreciate it.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you, good night, Okay.