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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 3: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history, True Murder with your host,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 4: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 4: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 4: history and the authors that have written about them. When
Speaker 4: filming his TV series Race Relations On, Saffran spent an
Speaker 4: uneasy couple of days with one of Mississippi's most notorious
Speaker 4: white supremacists. A year later, he heard that the man
Speaker 4: had been murdered, and what was more, the killer was black.
Speaker 4: At first, the murder seemed to twist on the old
Speaker 4: deep self race crimes, but then more news rolled in.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was a dispute over money or, most intriguingly,
Speaker 4: over sex. Could the infamous racist actually have been secretly
Speaker 4: pardon me? At first, the murder seemed to twist on
Speaker 4: the old deep self race crimes, but then more news
Speaker 4: rolled in. Maybe it was a dispute over money, or,
Speaker 4: most intriguingly, over sex. Could the infamous racist actually have
Speaker 4: been secretly gay with a thing for black men? Did
Speaker 4: Saffran have the last footage of him alive. Could this
Speaker 4: be the story of a life time? Seizing his Truman
Speaker 4: Capote moment, he jumped on a plane to cover the trial.
Speaker 4: Over six months, Saffran got deeper and deeper into the South,
Speaker 4: becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder,
Speaker 4: white separatists, black campaigners, lawyers, investigators, neighbors, even the killer himself.
Speaker 4: And the more he talked with them, the less simple
Speaker 4: the crime and the world seemed. The book is Murder
Speaker 4: in Mississippi And with my special guest, John, author and
Speaker 4: documentary filmmaker John Saffran. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 4: you for agreeing to this interview. John Saffran, thank you
Speaker 4: very much. Leave me John fine, Thank you fine, thank you,
Speaker 4: thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: I think we're a bit out of sync, but we'll
Speaker 2: be able to figure that out. I guess we'll just
Speaker 2: leave death after our sentences or something. But I'm very
Speaker 2: on your show. I listened to your show a loss,
Speaker 2: and your show directed me to all the true crime
Speaker 2: writers that helped me a loss with writing my true
Speaker 2: crime books. So I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much, and it was an honor
Speaker 4: to be on your program and the special sixth part
Speaker 4: six author sixth part true crime series that aired on
Speaker 4: the ABC this summer. Was fantastic to be on that
Speaker 4: program with you. So that was a great honor. Exert
Speaker 4: He's got some children running around, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to get into a quiet place. But
Speaker 2: you know, maybe this is good atmosphere. You know how
Speaker 2: I say, like sometime's right, the ice sounds good when
Speaker 2: you know there's a bit of noise in the background,
Speaker 2: like the same alive or something. Sure.
Speaker 4: Congratulations on the book, by the way, this is a
Speaker 4: one wild tale. Maybe you can tell our audience to
Speaker 4: give up like you very much do in the book.
Speaker 4: And I think it's very important, obviously, because you are
Speaker 4: integral part of this story and you've put yourself inside
Speaker 4: this story and rightfully self. Tell us about your background
Speaker 4: and so we can understand how you came to this
Speaker 4: story in particular. But tell us about your background in
Speaker 4: Australia and on Australia and the kinds of documentaries, the
Speaker 4: kind of filmmaker that you are, the kind of journalism
Speaker 4: that you have done. Tell us about your background, John.
Speaker 2: You know, I do documentaries that have a bit of
Speaker 2: a twist. So I guess for international audiences something a
Speaker 2: bit like Michael Moore or even sometimes a bit like
Speaker 2: Sasha Baron Cohen Borat, where you go out to tell
Speaker 2: a story and it is documentary, but you've got you've
Speaker 2: got twists in them, and you try to make them
Speaker 2: amusing too. And so I went off of filming a
Speaker 2: TV show and I I went to Mississippi and I
Speaker 2: filmed this white supremacist called Richard Barrett, and I played
Speaker 2: a little trick on him that I in the book,
Speaker 2: where I procure a saliva sample of him and then
Speaker 2: take it to be the DNA tested. And then I
Speaker 2: returned to one of his white supremacist meetings and you know,
Speaker 2: in front of the room, you know, announced that you know,
Speaker 2: he's got a bit of African DNA. And anyway, obviously
Speaker 2: Richard Barrett, he wasn't happy with this, and he started
Speaker 2: legal action and that had and he was a lawyer
Speaker 2: as well as a white supremacist, and it was a
Speaker 2: very clever lawyer, and he just managed to threaten my
Speaker 2: TV station in a way that we just felt, well,
Speaker 2: they felt compelled to not air the story. So I
Speaker 2: just ended up on the cutting room floor. I spent
Speaker 2: two days with this guy, Richard Barrett, and got to
Speaker 2: see inside his weird secret world, but we weren't able
Speaker 2: to use any of the footage. And that was that.
Speaker 2: And then eleven months late, I'm just schooling around the
Speaker 2: internet and Richard Barrett. I find out he's just been
Speaker 2: killed in his house. And you know, the house and
Speaker 2: both him were the killer tried to light them on fire.
Speaker 2: And then the killer, a man, a young black man
Speaker 2: named Vincent McGee, was caught and you know, one of
Speaker 2: his first stories is, hey, it was self defense because
Speaker 2: Richard Barrett, the white supremacist, tried to make sexual advances
Speaker 2: on me. And you know, so that's been pretty wild.
Speaker 2: And you know, the trial was scheduled to start soon,
Speaker 2: so I just had to either jump on a plane
Speaker 2: and cover it or not. And you know, there wasn't
Speaker 2: really enough time to think or do anything, or try
Speaker 2: to get together a TV production or anything. So just
Speaker 2: ye had jumped on a plane with my dictaphone and
Speaker 2: my notepad and then ended up spending six months in
Speaker 2: Mississippi following the case.
Speaker 4: Now, was your original intention just in realizing that when
Speaker 4: you were searching the internet that because you do have
Speaker 4: a conversation with the guys that you were involved with
Speaker 4: that had been involved with the filming of Richard Barrett
Speaker 4: and when he was murdered, you guys had a conversation like, well,
Speaker 4: now we can use this footage, can't we? And so
Speaker 4: did you jump on that plane with the plan to
Speaker 4: write a book or did you jump on the plane
Speaker 4: just to follow up that story.
Speaker 2: No, definitely to write a book, because yeah, as I said,
Speaker 2: it's quite exhausting getting a production up, like a film
Speaker 2: or a television production up. I mean, unless you're just
Speaker 2: going to run off and shoot it yourself. So I
Speaker 2: didn't kind of want to do that. And I also
Speaker 2: just felt this great freedom in kind of just being
Speaker 2: able to go on my own. And when you're filming,
Speaker 2: you have to like hustle a lot. You have to
Speaker 2: like talk people into appearing on camera. And so someone
Speaker 2: can have an incredible someone can have an incredible story
Speaker 2: to tell, but as soon as you press record, suddenly
Speaker 2: they don't want to say everything like they would, you know,
Speaker 2: if they weren't being filmed. And then people can you know,
Speaker 2: not be really good talent for TV. For instance, they
Speaker 2: can be rambling too much, your lack energy or something.
Speaker 2: And whilst if you interview people and put them in
Speaker 2: a book, suddenly, as long as their story is really good,
Speaker 2: you can kind of dodge around those other things and
Speaker 2: sort of just not mentioned oh, by the way, this
Speaker 2: guy told me this story in an excruciating, long winded
Speaker 2: way that lacked energy, so like you just don't you
Speaker 2: just don't mention that bit and you've got like a nice,
Speaker 2: tight little story and so and yeah, there was a
Speaker 2: lot of freedom and it was really refreshing, and you
Speaker 2: also you could just spend more time. Like when I'm filming,
Speaker 2: usually we land in a place like when we did
Speaker 2: the Richard Barrett thing, the original prank, Like we just
Speaker 2: landed there for like a day basically, and then everything
Speaker 2: else is travel and you just have to capture everything quickly,
Speaker 2: and you know, you can't always get to the essence
Speaker 2: of something, and whilst with a book I could, so yeah,
Speaker 2: I really liked it. I also like the parameters of
Speaker 2: writing a book because often it's good to have parameters
Speaker 2: because it just kind of sets down something that you
Speaker 2: can work at. So for instance, if a TV station says, oh,
Speaker 2: you have to deliver a half hour show. It's not like,
Speaker 2: oh damn, I wish I could do forty minutes. It's
Speaker 2: like I wish I could do twenty minutes. It's like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: there's one thing set in place that I can work towards.
Speaker 2: And sometimes, I know this sounds of extrange, because everyone
Speaker 2: likes to creative freedom, but sometimes having parameters just you
Speaker 2: just get on with things and you move on with them.
Speaker 2: So I started reading lots of true crime books which
Speaker 2: I haven't read before, and I started trying to understand
Speaker 2: the architecture of them and how they work. And so
Speaker 2: when I went over there, I sort of had that
Speaker 2: in my head. I had these I saw what all
Speaker 2: these other true crime writers did, and I tried to
Speaker 2: follow their directions of how they found out things. And
Speaker 2: it didn't always work, and that was that, And sometimes
Speaker 2: it sort of did the opposite of work. It didn't
Speaker 2: work at all. Like, for instance, I noticed a lot
Speaker 2: of true crime books start up where they just explain
Speaker 2: really simply the crime and then the rest of the
Speaker 2: book is, you know, the why or how did it
Speaker 2: end up there. But when I went over there, the
Speaker 2: more I spoke to people, the more I started getting
Speaker 2: slightly different versions of everything, and I found it really annoying, Like,
Speaker 2: for instance, the mother of the killers, then Richard Barrett
Speaker 2: pulled up on the day of the killing. He pulled
Speaker 2: up in a black suv. And then you know, another
Speaker 2: person close to the case said, oh, on the day
Speaker 2: of the killing, Richard Barrett, he pulled up, but he
Speaker 2: was riding a bicycle. And then I'm like, well, what
Speaker 2: do I write in that chapter in the book where
Speaker 2: I do I say he pulled up in a bicycle
Speaker 2: or do I say pulled up in an suv? And
Speaker 2: so yeah, things like that drove me crazy. But then
Speaker 2: once I up back with all the all the material
Speaker 2: and I typed a lot of things, lots of interviews
Speaker 2: and written lots of nights, I realized, like, all that confusion, like,
Speaker 2: that's the book, and I might as well, yeah, not five,
Speaker 2: It might as well just write the book about how
Speaker 2: the further I got into the story, the foggy things
Speaker 2: got right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for various reasons, but certainly that's what you found.
Speaker 4: The more you talk to people, there more questions rather
Speaker 4: than answers. Yes, so let's get back to let's get
Speaker 4: to for our audience, that doesn't know too much about this.
Speaker 4: You've talked about Richard Barrett. Was there in your two
Speaker 4: days with Richard Barrett? Was there anything extraordinary about Richard Barrett?
Speaker 4: Because I think it's you haven't really explained exactly why
Speaker 4: you thought you had this real story, this story that
Speaker 4: you could instinctively as a documentary filmmaker, you knew that
Speaker 4: there was when you do have a story that's extraordinary,
Speaker 4: when there's something else to be learned from this, And
Speaker 4: what did you think and what did you believe you
Speaker 4: might learn from this or what you might see or
Speaker 4: what it might be an example of, and hence you
Speaker 4: were interested in writing this book.
Speaker 2: Well, we kind of thought we were. We thought me
Speaker 2: and the crew when we were over there, and we
Speaker 2: weren't particularly trying to trip him up on anything like
Speaker 2: this or whatever, but we we thought he was a
Speaker 2: big camp and we thought, oh, it's weird. He sort
Speaker 2: of you know, if I had to make a guess
Speaker 2: after spending two days with him, I'd be going, Oh,
Speaker 2: he's probably gay, you know, and which is kind of weird.
Speaker 2: If the guys are leading white supremacist then you know
Speaker 2: that had nothing to do with what we were filming
Speaker 2: or whatever. So we didn't really like think about it
Speaker 2: that much, but that was that. And then so then
Speaker 2: when we found out he'd been killed and one of
Speaker 2: the versions of events was he may have made a
Speaker 2: sexual advance on the black guy, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: that kind of matches up with that. So I guess
Speaker 2: that became an interesting part of the story for me,
Speaker 2: like can you be a leading white supremacist who's like
Speaker 2: hiding such a deep secret? And the more and the
Speaker 2: more the more I got into the book, the more
Speaker 2: I found out that one way into the book it
Speaker 2: is all about secrets and how you know it's impossible
Speaker 2: to get to them sometimes and Mississippi, Yeah, it's definitely.
Speaker 2: It's definitely a place of secrets where people and I
Speaker 2: guess that it's kind of like the opposite of a
Speaker 2: lot of the modern world where everyone's just trying to
Speaker 2: take a hundred photos of themselves and put them up
Speaker 2: on Facebook every hour, and that's the way the world
Speaker 2: is going in one way, but in another way, there's
Speaker 2: still you know, lots of secrets and lots of people
Speaker 2: trying to hide things.
Speaker 4: Now, you know, I found interesting too, and it was
Speaker 4: we have this in common is that our stories made
Speaker 4: Stormfront and this tell us of what Stormfront is and
Speaker 4: what sort of the what you've found out yourself looking online,
Speaker 4: what Stormfront have to say about you and this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Stormfront is a white nationalist website, like an
Speaker 2: international one, but people from all over the world, people
Speaker 2: from all over the world, you know, post on it.
Speaker 2: And I was a person of interest to them because
Speaker 2: I pranked in the past, in a totally separate case,
Speaker 2: I'd pranked this ku Klux Klansman where I tried. I
Speaker 2: tried to join the ku Klux Klan even though I'm
Speaker 2: even though I'm Jewish, and I thought, so I kind
Speaker 2: of go in there and I kind of act all naive,
Speaker 2: like I'm like, listen, why can't I join? I don't
Speaker 2: do anything Jewish anymore, you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: eat kosher. I haven't been into a synagogue since my
Speaker 2: bar mitzvah let me join. And yeah, and so anyway,
Speaker 2: so once that was aired, then the people from Stormfront
Speaker 2: were onto me. So were they were warning everyone, listen,
Speaker 2: if you hear Saffran's filming another show, just watch out.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're definitely onto me. Interesting and also they
Speaker 2: also the thing with Richard Barrett once I start once
Speaker 2: he was killed and I started looking into it, just
Speaker 2: all over message boards or white supremacist message boards, are
Speaker 2: people all suspect with that he was, Yeah, he was
Speaker 2: secretly gay. So it wasn't like I was the only
Speaker 2: one who had that impression. But then one of the
Speaker 2: sort of weird twists in the book is like it's
Speaker 2: like the opposite of what you'd expect. It's like, at
Speaker 2: a certain point in my researching, when I'm over there,
Speaker 2: it might be the big reveal or I was thinking
Speaker 2: in my head, I was like, my god, it might
Speaker 2: be that he's not gay, like because you just instinctively think, oh,
Speaker 2: the way a book should be is there's this white
Speaker 2: supremacist and I don't know what's going on, and then daddah,
Speaker 2: I find this secret ever that he's gay. But it
Speaker 2: was more like everyone spoke about how he was probably gay.
Speaker 2: But then I'd sort of like I met up with
Speaker 2: so many people who actually knew him, not knew him
Speaker 2: from one degree of separation, but like knew him and
Speaker 2: knew him when they were young boys, and Richard was
Speaker 2: a bit older and they didn't think he was it
Speaker 2: was like, anyway, so many people who had like direct
Speaker 2: contact with him and you know, really didn't have an
Speaker 2: agenda to stand up for him, would say, I listen,
Speaker 2: he was a jerk. I hated him. He was a creep.
Speaker 2: But I've got to tell you, you know, I was
Speaker 2: fourteen at the time he was twenty, and you know,
Speaker 2: I can't remember him being a predator. And so it
Speaker 2: was like that became an interesting part of the journey,
Speaker 2: was maybe people just make up rooms and stories in
Speaker 2: their heads and then they just become the truth in
Speaker 2: inverted commas. But then you know it's not the truth.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now you have been to the US before, Like
Speaker 4: you said, you're in Orange County with the KKK. Now
Speaker 4: you're back in Mississippi again, and this is the state
Speaker 4: capital's Jackson, Mississippi. Tell us describe the people and the
Speaker 4: atmosphere of the geography. Tell us a little bit about Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 4: A little bit of a culture shock, I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, there's been a lot of self segregation
Speaker 2: over the last ten years. So you have the Jackson
Speaker 2: which is in Hinz County and Jackson's like vast majority black.
Speaker 2: And then right next to it. You've got rankin county
Speaker 2: where all the white people have gone, and you know
Speaker 2: that's majority white. And because of the way people have
Speaker 2: voted in in America, in the little community, as soon
Speaker 2: as the demographic shifts in the community, you start voting
Speaker 2: for people of your own race or ethnicity. So you know,
Speaker 2: the people in power in Jackson over the last ten
Speaker 2: years have you know, the sheriffs and the heads of
Speaker 2: police and the judges and everyone else that gets voted in.
Speaker 2: You know, more black people have becoming in charge. But
Speaker 2: the one difference I really noted compared to Melbourne where
Speaker 2: I live, is there there was generally only black people
Speaker 2: or white people, whilst in I don't know what's going
Speaker 2: down in different places in Canada, but you know, in Melbourne,
Speaker 2: you know we'll have Arabs, or will have Greek people
Speaker 2: and Maltese people and Chinese people and Indian people and
Speaker 2: you know, few Aboriginal people. But whilst yeah, in Mississippi,
Speaker 2: it seems like you're either black or you're white, and
Speaker 2: there were nothing none of these sort of like in
Speaker 2: between people that you have in multicultural places. So that
Speaker 2: was like really start, like, I don't think there's even
Speaker 2: many like Latino Latin American people there. So yeah, that
Speaker 2: was that was that was really stark and I really
Speaker 2: noticed that. And also you turn up to some place
Speaker 2: and pretty much everyone's black, you know, like in a
Speaker 2: or pretty much everyone's white, like yeah, and that's that's
Speaker 2: really notable. And I know I'm not going mad by
Speaker 2: noticing that because I found this promotion I think in
Speaker 2: some Jackson local newspaper where they're trying to encourage black
Speaker 2: and white people that like eat together at the local
Speaker 2: eateries and there were like twenty percent off if you
Speaker 2: dine with someone of the other Rakish and this was
Speaker 2: like two ten or something that that little promotion was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, so that's that's a culture shock.
Speaker 4: I would be for me too. That's exactly the situation here.
Speaker 4: It's multicultural. You see every reason ethnicity everywhere, and so
Speaker 4: it's very diverse in all the community.
Speaker 2: So yeah, now you said, the other thing I noticed
Speaker 2: about Mississippi was very parochial, where like other parts have
Speaker 2: been in America. Like you say, you're from Australia and
Speaker 2: everyone kind of wants to ask you questions about it
Speaker 2: and what's it like, and everyone's really enthusiastic about finding
Speaker 2: out about some other place in the world. But in
Speaker 2: Mississippi it was very parochial. They didn't really think of
Speaker 2: the rest of America except in really negative ways, like
Speaker 2: as if everyone in New York their only purpose of
Speaker 2: existence is to try to somehow keep Mississippian down, like
Speaker 2: the real bitter, paranoid view of the rest of America.
Speaker 2: And then and yeah, not the rest of the world
Speaker 2: that doesn't even enter there generally, you know, generalizing, but
Speaker 2: compared to other places I've gone, Yeah, it's very parochial,
Speaker 2: not a very cosmopolitan outlook, and parochial almost to the
Speaker 2: extent of like the county in Mississippi you're in, so
Speaker 2: not even like the whole of Mississippi. It's like you're
Speaker 2: in your little county and you're really inward looking to
Speaker 2: that county and you're just not really that interested in
Speaker 2: what's going on outside.
Speaker 4: Now, in your journey in Mississippi, you go to this
Speaker 4: trial and it's about a month before the trail occurs,
Speaker 4: So you're in Mississippi for a month, am I correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, for previous to the trail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I kind of base that on
Speaker 2: when I was just trying to guess at what I
Speaker 2: meant to be doing. I just decided I'll go a
Speaker 2: month early because in Midnight in the Garden of Good
Speaker 2: and Evil, that true crime book, you know, he's in
Speaker 2: the small town, the author John Barrant, way before the trial,
Speaker 2: and that really helps you, you know, get to know
Speaker 2: the locals and suddenly you're not just this kind of
Speaker 2: strange journalist is just rocked up, and you know, you
Speaker 2: get a bit of time to sort of build up
Speaker 2: trust and sniff around. So yeah, I was there for
Speaker 2: a month, and you know, I met lots of interesting
Speaker 2: people that ended up in the book. And it's always
Speaker 2: like I couldn't have asked to bump into more interesting
Speaker 2: people that who were exactly what I was looking for
Speaker 2: for the sake of my book. So but then then
Speaker 2: the trial was delayed, and that's when I decided, well,
Speaker 2: I had other work to do, so I just went
Speaker 2: back left Mississippi, and then I came back months later.
Speaker 2: I'm already confused about exactly how long it was, because
Speaker 2: then the trial was scheduled to happen again. You know,
Speaker 2: it happened again. So I returned again about a month
Speaker 2: earlier and then you started on my way again.
Speaker 4: Now before this trial, before you see really what happens
Speaker 4: in terms of legally to Vincent, Who do you interview?
Speaker 4: What important characters do you interview? I mean, they're all
Speaker 4: fascinating characters, that's for sure, But tell us some of
Speaker 4: the important characters that you spoke to previous to the trail.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess Jim Giles is. I call him a
Speaker 2: white nationalist frenemy of Richard Barrett's because even though they
Speaker 2: were both white nationalists, they you know, they didn't like
Speaker 2: each other. He was a local. He lived in a
Speaker 2: trailer on his mother's farm and would broadcast a white
Speaker 2: nationalist radio show every morning, and he'd sometimes talk about
Speaker 2: Richard because they've lived in the same county, and he
Speaker 2: was suspicious. He thought Richard might have been an agent
Speaker 2: for the FBI, or a police informer, a secret Jew,
Speaker 2: and all these other things. On top of all the
Speaker 2: negative things that other people have to say about Richard,
Speaker 2: that they were his suspicions. And he's the one who
Speaker 2: applied for Richard's FBI file to be opened, and it
Speaker 2: was opened, and so that's that's how I got my
Speaker 2: hands on Richard's FBI file and I just turned up
Speaker 2: on his doorstep, really, but he wasn't there, and I
Speaker 2: don't know, left messages and then finally he agreed to
Speaker 2: meet me, and so he was quite nice in person,
Speaker 2: but as soon as I left, he's like, you know,
Speaker 2: a big talker and a bit sort of obviously he's
Speaker 2: not that happy that I'm a jew for Antiant. So
Speaker 2: he's actually just very recently read the book or I
Speaker 2: sent it. I sent the book to most of the
Speaker 2: people mentioned in the book, and they're starting to receive
Speaker 2: their copy Cippy, and he's, yeah, he's already sort of
Speaker 2: going through my book with a fine tooth comb, sort
Speaker 2: of picking up any minor thing that he disagrees with,
Speaker 2: like that, just the most ridiculous, pedant things like oh well,
Speaker 2: John says that when I took the DVD that I
Speaker 2: walked back to my trailer, But that's not true. John
Speaker 2: walked back to his car and sort of plating all
Speaker 2: these books, these little things that sort of don't make
Speaker 2: any difference, as you know, errors that sort of somehow reflect,
Speaker 2: you know, on me, and he thinks I'm also well,
Speaker 2: he thought I was an FBI informer too, so as
Speaker 2: well as Richard. He thought he was very suspicious about
Speaker 2: why this strange guy had just turned up in and
Speaker 2: you know, that's part of him was quite exhausting. But
Speaker 2: again he was very energetic and an interesting guy. And
Speaker 2: also when I was face to face with him, I
Speaker 2: hung out with him a couple of times, like he
Speaker 2: I mean, it's I guess, it's just really interesting that
Speaker 2: someone who invests so much time in being a white
Speaker 2: nationalist and having all these views against Jews and blacks,
Speaker 2: like when push comes to shove and I just turn
Speaker 2: up there, Like it's not like he bashed me or anything.
Speaker 2: He was like accommodating and humorous and yeah, So the
Speaker 2: world's a confusing place, which I guess is another thing
Speaker 2: that kind of comes out from my book because I
Speaker 2: do meet these people that are on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you might think they're like carting characters of evil. Then
Speaker 2: they've got their you know, everyone's a person and sure
Speaker 2: people woman, Yeah, people are confusing and like Jim Jars
Speaker 2: and yeah, so he was one of the people I met.
Speaker 2: I also I met the son of this famous white
Speaker 2: supremacist who assassinated a black guy called Medga Evers in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties and the mega evers, like the airport's
Speaker 2: named after him. And anyway, I met up with I
Speaker 2: met up with his son, who is now an old
Speaker 2: man himself, and he also had all his suspicions about Richard,
Speaker 2: and yeah, he was trying to kick me up into
Speaker 2: like paying him thousands of dollars so you know, to
Speaker 2: be to be in my book and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: He was trying to deal with me, and I just said, oh, listen,
Speaker 2: you know, I can't really do that. And yeah, he
Speaker 2: was pretty mad, and my name started getting around town.
Speaker 2: Like weeks later, I'd chased down some other white nationalists
Speaker 2: and they'd heard through you know, the grapevine that I
Speaker 2: was in town and to watch out to me. But
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just it seems it sounds really scary,
Speaker 2: but you just sort of go, well, you know, chances
Speaker 2: are I'll be okay, so just keep on turning up.
Speaker 2: And I just had a rule for this because of
Speaker 2: my TV show that so fulls of like pranks and
Speaker 2: manipulation and trick in saying one thing to people but
Speaker 2: meaning in other because you're trying to do some comedy,
Speaker 2: I just thought I'm just going to be truthful for
Speaker 2: this whole thing, and truthful to the point that if I,
Speaker 2: like I met a white supremacist and they bothered to
Speaker 2: ask me whether I was Jewish, unless I really I
Speaker 2: just told them, I thought himself, maybe if I feel really,
Speaker 2: really really threatened, maybe I'll lie. But otherwise no, So
Speaker 2: I'd be sitting, you know, I'd be turning up to
Speaker 2: some white supremacists little bungalow in the forest, and I'd
Speaker 2: be there on my own with him at night, and
Speaker 2: for some reason they get suspicious that I was Jewish
Speaker 2: and they asked me, and I just said, you know,
Speaker 2: I am, and then yeah, it seems it seems to
Speaker 2: take a lot of heat out of things anyway. It
Speaker 2: seems like when a lot of these people, when push
Speaker 2: comes to shoves, they're big talkers. Thank God, they're big talkers,
Speaker 2: are not not, you know, actually violent.
Speaker 4: Well, it was interesting in your book too, is that
Speaker 4: you ask because you really again, maybe I'll ask this question.
Speaker 4: And you can also talk about the idea that blacks
Speaker 4: were on lower on the wrong than gaze and you're
Speaker 4: maybe kind of surprised on their their sentiment about that.
Speaker 4: But did Jim Giles, did he believed that that Chard
Speaker 4: was gay, and hey, yeah, yeah, he.
Speaker 2: Was absolutely certain, you know, he was this. And he
Speaker 2: said that he was certain because when he first met
Speaker 2: up with Richard, because they were both in the scene,
Speaker 2: he just started noticing Richard kept on ringing him again
Speaker 2: and again, and he just got this weird energy from him.
Speaker 2: It's like, why does this guy keep on ringing me?
Speaker 2: And then he thought, oh my god, this guy's trying to,
Speaker 2: you know, hook up with me or whatever. And he
Speaker 2: basically got the same vibe that you know I got
Speaker 2: when I was filming my documentary show. It was the
Speaker 2: same thing. It's kind of everyone got that vibe from
Speaker 2: Richard Barrett. But yeah, as you said, I said, one
Speaker 2: of the interesting things was, I guess in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: we assume, oh, hang on, you know, back in the
Speaker 2: old days, you know, all those all the white people
Speaker 2: in Mississippi, they would have hated blacks and they would
Speaker 2: have hated Gaze. But there was I did a bit
Speaker 2: of research into that, and like gay people who were
Speaker 2: around in the sixties, and the kind of thought was
Speaker 2: you were allowed to be gay as long as he
Speaker 2: didn't quite say it. So, for instance, there were openly
Speaker 2: gay bars like everyone knew they were gay bars in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties and these when all this crazy stuff
Speaker 2: is going on with lynchings and everything of black people,
Speaker 2: and everyone knows they're gay bars, and you kind of
Speaker 2: you were allowed to go to them, but you just
Speaker 2: couldn't quite say it. You couldn't like seal the deal
Speaker 2: and tell people you were gay. But everyone was allowed
Speaker 2: to know you were gay, and you weren't necessarily in
Speaker 2: a threatening situation like you were if you were black.
Speaker 2: So and I actually read this book by this guy
Speaker 2: called John Howard who had grown up in Mississippi and
Speaker 2: he was gay, and from think of the expression he used,
Speaker 2: but it was like quiet acceptance. So what was they
Speaker 2: mean acceptance? So it was more like looking the other wife.
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Speaker 2: All these or all the Mississippians would like look the
Speaker 2: other way, and you know, provided you didn't quite say it,
Speaker 2: they'd let you get away with it, even in the
Speaker 2: bad old days.
Speaker 4: Well, it seems pretty tolerant for the time in a
Speaker 4: pretty and a very intolerant place. That's that's the surprise
Speaker 4: out of the deal. Certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think a little bit of it
Speaker 2: is that in the South, they're really they were really
Speaker 2: angry about being like a radical, like a political radical.
Speaker 2: So well, I didn't like black people at all. But
Speaker 2: then around the nineteen sixties, all the you know, like
Speaker 2: when New Yorkers came down and people were like left
Speaker 2: wing and they were radical, and they were hippies. That's who.
Speaker 2: That's who the white people there really didn't like. And
Speaker 2: so four the nineteen sixties, it's not like gay people
Speaker 2: were perceived as politically radical. It was just almost like,
Speaker 2: it's this thing they do and it's a bit of
Speaker 2: a it was seen as a bit of a vice,
Speaker 2: a bit like, oh, I say, the town drunk or
Speaker 2: there's someone wasn't something like that. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's best, it'd be best if they weren't a drunk,
Speaker 2: but they're a drunk, and let's just be polite about it.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of a Homosexuality was seen like that.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until the nineteen sixties that suddenly homosexually
Speaker 2: homosexuality got kind of an attached to being like left
Speaker 2: wing radical, and that's when that's when people in the South,
Speaker 2: or at least lots of them, like started being really
Speaker 2: negative about homosexuality because it was seen as this sort
Speaker 2: of radical thing.
Speaker 4: Right, socialist or something. Yeah, socialist. Yes, Now you spoke
Speaker 4: to Vincent McGee's mother, Tina, When did you speak so
Speaker 4: before the trail? Now, what did you you see in
Speaker 4: terms of the motive, Well, she was.
Speaker 2: The one who spilt the beans on Vincent. For a
Speaker 2: while was deny like when it was first arrested that
Speaker 2: he went through the motions of denying. He knew anything
Speaker 2: about it about Richard Barrett being killed. Rich about sixty
Speaker 2: five years old by the way, at the time of
Speaker 2: when he was killed. And then he kind of weazled
Speaker 2: around and said, well, yeah, I saw him that night
Speaker 2: that I left and he was fine. But then his
Speaker 2: mother who was also pulled in to rather the time
Speaker 2: Richard was murdered and they realized Vincent had done it
Speaker 2: and they caught Vincent. She just spilt the beans and
Speaker 2: she said Vincent had come home and he had blood
Speaker 2: all over him and he said that, you know, Richard
Speaker 2: tried to rape him and that's why he had to
Speaker 2: fight back. And then it said there's only like two
Speaker 2: properties in between the mcgeese and Richard Barrett. That's an
Speaker 2: other kind of strange thing. People found it strange that
Speaker 2: Richard Barrett, a white nationalist, was in this little pocket,
Speaker 2: this little community where a lot of people were black,
Speaker 2: and yeah, he lived pretty much next door to the
Speaker 2: to the mcgeese. And so then when Vincent found out
Speaker 2: his mother had fessed up something, then he sort of
Speaker 2: had to negotiate how he was going to come up
Speaker 2: with some sort of confession that sort of ticked all
Speaker 2: these boxes. But it became, you know, it became increasingly impossible,
Speaker 2: like he was trying to reconcile. Well, yeah, my mum's
Speaker 2: kind of telling the truth, but she's not. And Richard
Speaker 2: attacked me, but it wasn't sexual. And yeah, I saw
Speaker 2: the interrogation room footage quite late on in My journey,
Speaker 2: and you just see everything picking her away in his
Speaker 2: brain as he's as he's sitting there in the interrogation booth,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't know what other people know, he doesn't
Speaker 2: know what the investigators know, what his mother's said, and
Speaker 2: he's just trying to work out how is he going
Speaker 2: to weave his way out of this situation, which was
Speaker 2: really you couldn't really weave your way out of it.
Speaker 2: And then Vincent started claiming that his mother had said
Speaker 2: that because the investigators had threatened her and saying because
Speaker 2: she was dragged in before Vincent was arrested. So he
Speaker 2: says that she says that the investigator says, listen, we're
Speaker 2: hunting for Vincent and unless you tell us what's happened,
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to kill him. And so she
Speaker 2: was so scared that Vincent was going to get killed
Speaker 2: that she just that's why she came up with this
Speaker 2: storky and she came up with the story about the
Speaker 2: sexual assault because it was a credible story. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is another confusing thing. I totally appreciate the listeners.
Speaker 2: Now we will be getting very confused. But Vincent, after
Speaker 2: saying that Richard had made a sexual attack on him,
Speaker 2: he kind of walked back from that. He said, oh, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't that. It wasn't that. He just attacked me
Speaker 2: and for these really weird reasons. I ah, we had
Speaker 2: a fight over faithbook. He wanted me to get off
Speaker 2: the computer. I've done his house on Richard's computer, and
Speaker 2: he wanted to get off the computer, and one thing
Speaker 2: led to the other, and then you know, we I
Speaker 2: killed him. And Angeloa was like, what that doesn't even
Speaker 2: make any sense because Vincent. The other thing I realized
Speaker 2: that I should say is Vincent had done yard work
Speaker 2: for Richard Barrett, so it was kind of you know,
Speaker 2: several several times, and so that that was their connection
Speaker 2: where where on one level, it makes sense that Vincent
Speaker 2: McGee was in the house of this white supremacist Richard Barrett.
Speaker 2: And then the confusing thing about him stepping back from
Speaker 2: the sexual assault claim is that would have been his
Speaker 2: best defense, like both on paper and in the real world,
Speaker 2: because on paper, it's like, well, that's self defense. And
Speaker 2: then in the real world because in that part of
Speaker 2: Mississippi it was a conservative county and they possibly would
Speaker 2: have been sympathetic to a man saying this and I
Speaker 2: had to fight off another man because he was trying
Speaker 2: to sexually assault me. And so why did he Why
Speaker 2: did he step back from that story if that was
Speaker 2: his best defense, and I yeah, it's very confusing. And
Speaker 2: then one version of events is he stepped back from
Speaker 2: it because him and Richard were actually in a consenting
Speaker 2: relationship where Richard would pay him for sex and Vincent
Speaker 2: was so determined that he did not want this sort
Speaker 2: of like coming out in court or whatever. That's why
Speaker 2: he kind of stepped away from it because it just
Speaker 2: it would have been like the ultimate taboo, right.
Speaker 4: But what was his defense to police finally after you know,
Speaker 4: after they got through that his mother had had already
Speaker 4: spelt the beans, like you said, what in the end
Speaker 4: with the police, what was his was it self defense
Speaker 4: that Richard had pulled a knife on him and he
Speaker 4: in return had had a knaighthe is that the.
Speaker 2: Deal, Well, the the kind of exacerbating, exhausting thing is
Speaker 2: which is just so confusing. It's so confusing for people
Speaker 2: who kind of want a neat thing or for things
Speaker 2: to make sense, is that rather than go to trial,
Speaker 2: he decided to plead guilty. And at this point there
Speaker 2: was like the death penalty wasn't on the table anymore,
Speaker 2: like had been long taken off the table, and because
Speaker 2: there was original around the table, so he played, he
Speaker 2: played guilty. And usually when you play guilty, you get
Speaker 2: like a pretty good deal because you're saving the court
Speaker 2: all this time and you're giving me the investigators what
Speaker 2: you want. But they gave him sixty five years. So
Speaker 2: he accepted a plea bargain where he got sixty five
Speaker 2: years jail, and he's like twenty two or whatever, so
Speaker 2: he's not going to get out till he's nearly ninety.
Speaker 2: And so then the question became, why would you what
Speaker 2: would you plead guilty if the best I was going
Speaker 2: to give you is sixty five years? Like why not
Speaker 2: just roll the dice and have a court case, because
Speaker 2: you know, anything can happen, and then if the worst happens,
Speaker 2: it's not like you're going to get anything much worse
Speaker 2: than sixty five years jail. So anyway, but his actual
Speaker 2: and his plea bargain it said, it was it was
Speaker 2: this really Weasley language where it was we accept sort
Speaker 2: of that there was an element of manslaughter as opposed
Speaker 2: to murder to this, but having said that, Vincent didn't
Speaker 2: have to kill Richard Barrett. So it was like the
Speaker 2: most real Weasley thing where where because obviously, if it
Speaker 2: was actually man's laws, why would why would they have
Speaker 2: given him sixty five years or why would he have
Speaker 2: accepted it? And it was a very it was a
Speaker 2: very complicated thing where where the most the easiest explanation
Speaker 2: is Vincent just wanted at any point just to not
Speaker 2: have to appear in court where it would have come out.
Speaker 2: But he had a relationship with which Richard Barrett.
Speaker 4: Didn't he say to you that he wanted to move
Speaker 4: from one prison to get out of a particularly bad prison. Again,
Speaker 4: he doesn't make a sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, that is true. There's so many layers
Speaker 2: about like why would he have accepted this, But that's
Speaker 2: very true. What you're saying is that he and this
Speaker 2: was quite credible. He was saying that the just in
Speaker 2: the small county jail, he was a victim of attacks
Speaker 2: and violence and racism from the White guards, and he
Speaker 2: felt so threatened there that he thought if he pleads guilt,
Speaker 2: he will get moved out of there into the bigger
Speaker 2: Mississippi in prison and he'll be safer there. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's actually very true that that could have been another
Speaker 2: reason why he decided to take this incredibly bad plea bargain.
Speaker 2: And it was kind of like the sentence was like
Speaker 2: perfect for the district attorney and for the because it's
Speaker 2: so expensive the prosecutor death penalty case. And at the
Speaker 2: very start they did keep that on the table because
Speaker 2: and this was when it looked like it was going
Speaker 2: to be this big theatrical trial and all the media
Speaker 2: was going to be there, and but then it kind
Speaker 2: of died down, and so suddenly the district attorney he
Speaker 2: kind of didn't want to prosecute a death penalty case
Speaker 2: anymore because they're so difficult, you know, they go on
Speaker 2: for years forever, and they cost a fortune, and so
Speaker 2: you know, but he couldn't look like he couldn't look
Speaker 2: like he was backing down and letting this guy off
Speaker 2: the hook. And so yeah, he got he got the
Speaker 2: perfect thing, that distric attorney.
Speaker 7: He got this.
Speaker 2: He got this sentence where unless someone was really altered,
Speaker 2: really pro descinalty, like she hard to complain about the sentence,
Speaker 2: like Vincent's not going to get out till he's ninety
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 4: So yes, well he believes he might be Elton thirty.
Speaker 4: He does have the possibility to get out in thirty.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean that was his great spot to you.
Speaker 4: He said, why, well, well we'll be in here for
Speaker 4: sixty five only, here for thirty only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there was another layer to it. I mean,
Speaker 2: as you can see, there's just so many insane layers
Speaker 2: to it. I guess this even ties in with secret.
Speaker 2: So one of the other interesting things I found out
Speaker 2: about the little counties there in Mississippi is that they
Speaker 2: kind of the way they get voted in is by
Speaker 2: being really tough on crime, But being really tough on
Speaker 2: crime is expensive, and also people don't want taxes raised,
Speaker 2: So it's this impossible thing where if people want people
Speaker 2: locked up forever, plus they don't want to pay any
Speaker 2: extra taxes, and something has to give. So I started
Speaker 2: finding out that in these small counties, at least in Mississippi,
Speaker 2: you'd have the district attorney making this big theatrical show
Speaker 2: of this person's going to be in jail until there
Speaker 2: are one hundred here's the sheet of paper showing it.
Speaker 2: And then when everything dies down in ten or twenty
Speaker 2: years and you know, everyone's forgotten about that and there's
Speaker 2: not going to be too much trouble, but you know,
Speaker 2: they sort of like softly kind of release them. And
Speaker 2: so there's a difference between the theater that they make
Speaker 2: about how tough on crime they're going to be and
Speaker 2: how long they're going to imprison people and how long
Speaker 2: they actually they actually do that. And in fact, the
Speaker 2: reason Vincent McGee was able to kill Richard Barrett in
Speaker 2: the first place is Vincent had been in jail before,
Speaker 2: and he was meant to be in there for this
Speaker 2: really long time, and they just released him early. Like
Speaker 2: everyone was quite when Richard was killed. Some people were shocked.
Speaker 2: They're going, hell, and isn't it there that guy who
Speaker 2: should still be in jail? And it was, Yes, it
Speaker 2: was that guy who should still be in jail, but
Speaker 2: they released him because of budgetary pressures. Where you relieve
Speaker 2: a bit of those budget pressures if you let out
Speaker 2: prisoners early.
Speaker 4: You found out through this entire ardyssey, here, this journey,
Speaker 4: whether you felt that there was some element of self defense.
Speaker 4: And again it's hard to tell exactly the real turn
Speaker 4: of events, but you did find out his real registered
Speaker 4: or at least a verifiable violent pass.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that, Yeah, he had a very unattractive
Speaker 2: violent past. Where again, did I stay there so long?
Speaker 2: I got to meet the people, so, for instance, I
Speaker 2: got to meet his ex girlfriend and ex girlfriend's mother.
Speaker 2: And suddenly, when you start hearing the small stories, even
Speaker 2: if they're not as dramatic as a murder, they're just like,
Speaker 2: they're awful stories. They're awful stories about him threatening his girlfriends,
Speaker 2: want to have power over her, and you know, him
Speaker 2: striking her, and yeah, so suddenly because I went I
Speaker 2: went in there, and I guess in one way, I
Speaker 2: wanted the story to be simple. I wanted to be about,
Speaker 2: you know, this young black guy and he's been unfairly
Speaker 2: you know, prosecuted in the Deep South, and you know,
Speaker 2: and they're picking on him because he's black and because
Speaker 2: you know they're they're all in cahoots with Richard Barrett,
Speaker 2: the white supremacist. But then when you start hearing about
Speaker 2: the little stories about his past, you realize the pretty
Speaker 2: unattractive character himself. Vincent McGee, he was in his own
Speaker 2: way as unattractive as Richard Barrett because he was like
Speaker 2: a bully, and he was also he was very intelligent
Speaker 2: and very charming and very funny except and very very handsome.
Speaker 2: But he only he'd only like show that side of
Speaker 2: him when there was something in it for him. So
Speaker 2: with men, it was like, well, can I get money
Speaker 2: off this person? And if it was women might have
Speaker 2: been you know, can I get sex off this girl?
Speaker 2: So he would be definitely he was able to turn
Speaker 2: on the charm and intelligence when he wanted, but then
Speaker 2: as soon as he didn't need, you know, like as
Speaker 2: soon as he was bored with people, then he'd instantly
Speaker 2: turn that off and he would be happy to be violent.
Speaker 2: And it was hard to know what to make of
Speaker 2: it all in so much as he'd had such an
Speaker 2: awful past, totally absent father pretty much, and his mother
Speaker 2: arguably wasn't she was also absent in her own way.
Speaker 2: And so there is an element where I look at
Speaker 2: it and see like my childhood and look at his
Speaker 2: childhood and go, well, how can I, you know, how
Speaker 2: can I judge this guy? But having said that, he
Speaker 2: had a brother, Vincent McGee, he grew up in the
Speaker 2: same circumstances and he didn't end up, you know, murdering
Speaker 2: people and beating women, and you know, so, yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess like the world's just a mess, really, and people's
Speaker 2: lives are mess and situations are messes. And because I
Speaker 2: stayed there for so long, I got to see the
Speaker 2: mess and all the complications and all the way everything's
Speaker 2: just tangled up. Like if I was there for a
Speaker 2: short time, if I was there for a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks or maybe a month, I might have been able
Speaker 2: to write a book where it is all about Vincent McGee,
Speaker 2: the guy who should not have been put in jail
Speaker 2: because you know, he was attacked by a white supremacist
Speaker 2: and and they're picking on him because he's black. And
Speaker 2: but you know, like, yes, as I said, the more
Speaker 2: the more I spoke, the more the deeper I got
Speaker 2: into things, and the more you started to see the
Speaker 2: ugly violent side of Vincent. He even threatened me. So
Speaker 2: there's almost no better example of it's not when it
Speaker 2: comes to Vincent's violent nature, it's not even hearsay. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, I was there on the phone to him,
Speaker 2: and then as soon as he couldn't get what he wanted,
Speaker 2: he'd make these pretty horrific threats against me, which he
Speaker 2: talked about how he could he had people on the
Speaker 2: outside even though he's in prison, and he has people
Speaker 2: who can like come to my little place in Mississippi
Speaker 2: that night and can kill me if I don't give
Speaker 2: him money. And you know, so when I when I
Speaker 2: And that was kind of interesting because one of the
Speaker 2: stories about why Vincent cracked and killed Richard Barrett is
Speaker 2: that Schard owed him money for doing from yard work
Speaker 2: and Richard tried to rip him off and not and
Speaker 2: then he just went crazy. It's his money was denied him,
Speaker 2: and that seems a parallel exactly what was happening with me,
Speaker 2: where Vincent was demanding money off me and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to give it to him, and then he just
Speaker 2: instantly snapped and started threading, threatening me with death.
Speaker 4: Now is this guy was he trying to come across?
Speaker 4: Do you believe like sort of a gangster guy. He's
Speaker 4: got a bunch of tattoos, a tear drop tattoo, he
Speaker 4: wears the dow rags. You have a story in there
Speaker 4: where he says, I took this do rag off a
Speaker 4: guy in prison. He came back into my cell and
Speaker 4: so then I shoved the bottle up his ass. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: tell us, is this guy a gangster guy? He talks
Speaker 4: about pimping women. He's a violent guy, taking a woman's
Speaker 4: car and then smacking it up and saying, oh, well,
Speaker 4: is that what he's trying to portray himself as.
Speaker 2: But I think he was a gangster without a gang though,
Speaker 2: like so many people in the book, they were lonely
Speaker 2: men who like Richard Barrett and Jim Giles I spoke
Speaker 2: about before, and so many people were off on their
Speaker 2: own and almost like making up a fantasy world in
Speaker 2: their heads in some ways about their position in the world.
Speaker 2: And he was he was a violent gangster, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure he did all that stuff, like in a very
Speaker 2: micro way. I do believe that he picked out this
Speaker 2: girlfriend of his, and I do believe he Yeah, he
Speaker 2: did violent things and stole things and everything, but I
Speaker 2: don't think he had a posse, and in fact that
Speaker 2: that was where he was similar to Richard Barrett. Richard
Speaker 2: Barrett tried to pitch himself to the world as he's
Speaker 2: this white supremacist leader with all these followers, and he
Speaker 2: scratched the surface and he sits alone in his little
Speaker 2: house every night. And I think Vincent's mayor had that
Speaker 2: abyss in that he you know, he had these tatoo
Speaker 2: marks that suggested he was I think from the Vice
Speaker 2: Lord's gang. But yeah, I didn't really believe it. Like
Speaker 2: when he threatened me and said he's got these gang
Speaker 2: members who can like come over and get me, I
Speaker 2: just didn't believe it. But at that point I was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: you've got a fantasy world in your head.
Speaker 4: Of the self importance. And Jim Giles too, on his
Speaker 4: mum's property in the middle of nowhere podcasting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, what he was, Yes, and it was interesting.
Speaker 2: I didn't really think about this until after the book
Speaker 2: was printed. But like so much of the book is
Speaker 2: about like lonely people who just are out on their own.
Speaker 2: Like there's not really big themes in the book where
Speaker 2: I hang out with the district attorney and his family
Speaker 2: or anything. It's all about Jim Giles alone in his caravan,
Speaker 2: or Ernest McBride, the black journalist alone or day and
Speaker 2: if everyone's just on their own. So yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: bit melancholy, I guess.
Speaker 4: And you did have a fair amount of cooperation, even
Speaker 4: though not everyone cooperated. You've had an incredible amount of
Speaker 4: cooperation from local people that must have thought, you know again,
Speaker 4: not even used to outsiders, and let alone someone from
Speaker 4: Australia that's uh, you know so, and and also cooperation
Speaker 4: with prosecutors. And a lot of people spoke to you
Speaker 4: and gave you a lot of information. So you've got
Speaker 4: a lot more questions and answers. But a lot of
Speaker 4: these people you spoke to a heck of a lot
Speaker 4: of people doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, And I think I reckon I could
Speaker 2: have got payoffs if I would have written the book
Speaker 2: slightly differently if I could just settle on believing these people,
Speaker 2: like the investigators, for instance, they gave a version of
Speaker 2: events which is so dramatic and colorful because basically what
Speaker 2: and as soon as Vincent pled guilty and so that
Speaker 2: there wasn't a trial, what I did was I went
Speaker 2: and witnesses that are already been subpoenaed in the anticipation
Speaker 2: of a trial. So I got those subpoenas and I
Speaker 2: just went around to all the people who would have
Speaker 2: been witnesses at the trial, and you know, lots of
Speaker 2: swake to me, like the investigators, and the investigators did
Speaker 2: give like this incredible theatrical story of what happened on
Speaker 2: the night and Vincent's real relationship to Richard. And I
Speaker 2: guess if I was a different sort of writer, I
Speaker 2: would have gone, Okay, I'll make that the end of
Speaker 2: the book. I'll make that that's what's happened, because there's
Speaker 2: definitely enough action in there, and there's definitely enough closure
Speaker 2: in there. And probably if I would have got got
Speaker 2: on a plane and left back to Australia after I
Speaker 2: met the investigators, maybe I should have because that could
Speaker 2: have been the end of the book, and I would
Speaker 2: have had a more maybe a more kind of conventional,
Speaker 2: satisfying ending. But I made either the mistake or not
Speaker 2: the mistake of just sticking around. And then people started
Speaker 2: questioning the investigators, and I just I could never bring
Speaker 2: myself to sort of finding that what a person said
Speaker 2: was the whole truth about what happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't come to that because you're not. I guess,
Speaker 4: I guess what it is. Possibly is there a documentary
Speaker 4: sort of have a forced angle that you're looking at something,
Speaker 4: But with a book it's yeah, you can't, you can't,
Speaker 4: and so you don't. And then at the end you've
Speaker 4: got everything there and all you can do is present it.
Speaker 4: So you spoke to which was very interesting conversation. Is
Speaker 4: you finally track down You'd heard that Richard Barrett had
Speaker 4: a sister, so you spoke to her. What did she
Speaker 4: have to say about her brother?
Speaker 2: Well, she started off by sort of trying to defend
Speaker 2: him as much as she could, like she didn't she
Speaker 2: didn't like agree with him politically at all, and she
Speaker 2: lived in Miami. But she was just being the dignified
Speaker 2: relative who was trying to present good sides of Richard.
Speaker 2: But then ultimately she sort of cracked in her own way,
Speaker 2: and she had so much personal anger about little things
Speaker 2: like the way that Richard Barrett had hurt other people
Speaker 2: in other ways. Because the interesting thing about Richard Barrett
Speaker 2: was he was a very unattractive character, but almost like,
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously being racist wasn't good, but that kind
Speaker 2: of like wasn't the worst of him. Heels like he
Speaker 2: would have been a weasily awful person even if he
Speaker 2: wasn't a racist, and he'd do things like he'd rip
Speaker 2: people off, and he'd misrepresent other people in the worst way, like,
Speaker 2: for instance, he'd misrepresent white Mississippis. He'd tricked them into
Speaker 2: coming to his events under the guys as they're just
Speaker 2: it's a patriotic American thing. So all these white people
Speaker 2: are coming thinking, oh, we're celebrating America, and then you know,
Speaker 2: takes photos. Yeah, Richard takes photos of it all and
Speaker 2: puts it up on his website, and suddenly this crowd
Speaker 2: of white people are presented as they've turned up to
Speaker 2: his white supremacist rally. So he was just like, he
Speaker 2: was such an awful person. And so then his sister
Speaker 2: in her own way had all these like micro awful
Speaker 2: stories that really reflected that. I like when she actually
Speaker 2: cracked a bit, like stopped defending him, was when, out
Speaker 2: of all things, I started talking to her about chess,
Speaker 2: because apparently Richard was very good at chess, and then
Speaker 2: she goes, oh, yeah, Heed to always beat me at chess.
Speaker 2: And then she says, but you know what, I think
Speaker 2: he cheated, and then she was like angry. Started I
Speaker 2: could see the anger in her face at her brother
Speaker 2: cheating at chess with her when they were both young.
Speaker 2: And then she just told incredible stories such as how
Speaker 2: when the fly used to go out for a meal
Speaker 2: and then the father would leave a tip on the table,
Speaker 2: and then they'd all leave, and Richard would sneak back
Speaker 2: and steal the tip from the way through, and then
Speaker 2: the father would like shame, the ashamed father would have
Speaker 2: to walk back into the restaurant and and give a
Speaker 2: second tip. And just all these little mic and stories,
Speaker 2: and so she definitely validated other people's impression of Richard Barrett.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she she was hurt too by him being
Speaker 4: a cheap skate and being an insensitive guy. Even though
Speaker 4: you could see that she did have a respect for
Speaker 4: him because not not too many people speak highly of
Speaker 4: them whatsoever. Well, yeah, it was interesting the more you
Speaker 4: speak to people, how that truth just seems to come
Speaker 4: out and she's trying to be nice, but then she
Speaker 4: has to tell you the truth and she's co operating.
Speaker 4: So amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: Now, John, we're almost at a time, and I know
Speaker 4: that you have to go because you have a program
Speaker 4: on Australian radio yourself, and maybe you can tell us
Speaker 4: a little bit about that, and also how they might
Speaker 4: have people that would like to contact you, might be
Speaker 4: able to contact you, and of course we know just
Speaker 4: tell us where John, this book can be available Murder
Speaker 4: in Mississippi, The True story of how I met a
Speaker 4: white supremacist be friend of this black killer and wrote
Speaker 4: this book.
Speaker 2: The well, my website's just John Saffran dot com and
Speaker 2: that's got links to like my Twitter and my Facebook
Speaker 2: and my emails. Anyone can get to me that way
Speaker 2: and with the book. The sort of good news bad
Speaker 2: news is for Americans is anyone can order the hard
Speaker 2: copy book from Australia. But you know it's slightly complicated
Speaker 2: and you have to pay post gig, you know, like
Speaker 2: you just find them online thing. But it's not out
Speaker 2: in America yet as such, it's only out like you
Speaker 2: can get it posted from Australia to America or we're
Speaker 2: wherever else. But we have got an American publisher now
Speaker 2: who's going to release the book. They're going to release
Speaker 2: the book in America. Fall. We don't have Fall in Australia,
Speaker 2: but I looked it up on Google. That's awesome, so
Speaker 2: we went to yes. So it's going to be released
Speaker 2: like around in twenty fourteen September in America. And you know,
Speaker 2: true True Murder Exclusive. They're changing the titles, but we haven't.
Speaker 2: They haven't. They haven't decided what. They haven't decided what
Speaker 2: they're going to change the title to. So yeah, they'll
Speaker 2: be exciting because I get to, you know, any remorse
Speaker 2: I have about which I changed this or that, and
Speaker 2: ah that's always been bugging me. I get a second
Speaker 2: shot of it in this American version. But I think yeah,
Speaker 2: And so it's kind of annoying unless you're in Australia
Speaker 2: or New Zealand getting the e book. It's like geo blocked,
Speaker 2: so you can't get it. So but yeah, as I said,
Speaker 2: it will be if someone really wanted that, they can
Speaker 2: order the hard copy from just any any online bookshop
Speaker 2: that's in Australia that posts internationally. Or yes, Americans can
Speaker 2: wait until the fall too, hear the to get the
Speaker 2: American one, which will have a different title. But I'll
Speaker 2: no doubt the I'll make that known on all my
Speaker 2: social media and stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll have to have you back on too to
Speaker 4: tack about it again and just introduce people the American
Speaker 4: public to the book once it's available again. So we
Speaker 4: can obviously do that.
Speaker 2: People who get people who like your show, will your
Speaker 2: podcast True Murder they'd like because I did a sixth
Speaker 2: part show called John Safran's True Crime, which is just
Speaker 2: downloadable anywhere in the world as a podcast, and it's
Speaker 2: me interviewing true crime writers, including Dan Sepanski, and the
Speaker 2: s ot of the idea behind it is I've just
Speaker 2: come back from Mississippi and had this crazy adventure trying
Speaker 2: to write a true crime book. And I talked to
Speaker 2: all these other true crime writers who had their own
Speaker 2: version of that, and we kind of compare war stories.
Speaker 2: So I got to speak to like John Barren, the
Speaker 2: author of Midnight in the Garden of good and evil
Speaker 2: and rule, a stranger beside me and just yes. So
Speaker 2: it was fun and insane. Yeah.
Speaker 4: You you were able to able to secure interviews with
Speaker 4: some of the biggest people and some fascinating interviews. And
Speaker 4: I saw, well it did on iTunes charts as well.
Speaker 4: People really enjoyed it and so and I did immensely.
Speaker 4: So it was it was great. I want to thank
Speaker 4: you John for coming on and talking about murder in Mississippi.
Speaker 4: A fantastic story here and an incredible journey into America
Speaker 4: from us from Melbourne to Mississippi. Thank you very much
Speaker 4: for coming on and sharing this story with us this evening.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Okay, bye bye, good night, good nuye,
Speaker 2: good nye.