Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
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Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening.
Speaker 3: A crime that shattered paradise, A chase that became legend.
Speaker 3: Crystal Beach, Florida, nineteen forty nine, a peaceful seaside haven
Speaker 3: where crime was unheard of until one early morning, A
Speaker 3: brutal act of violence changed everything. John Calvin Rastus Russell,
Speaker 3: a drifter, thug and small time carthief, committed an unthinkable crime,
Speaker 3: the torture and murder of Norman Brown and the near
Speaker 3: fatal assault on his wife Anne. The savage attack sent
Speaker 3: shockwaves through the tight knit community, turning everyday citizens into
Speaker 3: arm vigilantes determined to bring a killer to justice. But
Speaker 3: this was no ordinary murder case. Russell's dramatic capture the
Speaker 3: next day was just the beginning of a story far
Speaker 3: stranger than fiction. As investigators pursued justice, shocking secrets unraveled
Speaker 3: about the victims, their past, and a tangled web of
Speaker 3: the seat that no one saw coming. With a desperate escape,
Speaker 3: a relentless manhunt, and a hurricane crashing into the chaos,
Speaker 3: the pursuit of Rastus Russell became a deadly game of
Speaker 3: cat and mouse, pushing the limits of nineteen forty's rural
Speaker 3: law enforcement. For nearly a month, terror gripped Crystal Beach
Speaker 3: in West central Florida. The case became national news, a
Speaker 3: chilling tale whispered for generations, But nothing will prepare readers
Speaker 3: for the explosive and controversial ending, one that left residence
Speaker 3: and police stunned. Just like the movies. One headline declared,
Speaker 3: but this was real, and now, for the first time,
Speaker 3: the full story of Rastus Russell is told, a tale
Speaker 3: of crime, deception, and justice that will haunt you long
Speaker 3: after the last page. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 3: evening is Madman, The incredible true story of John Calvin Russell,
Speaker 3: the heinous crime and sensational manhunt that terrified Central Florida
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty nine, with my special guest author M. F. Gross.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 3: this interview.
Speaker 2: M F. Gross, thank you very much. Dan, I'm glad
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much. And congratulations on this new book, Madman.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Dan, I'm glad we can talk about
Speaker 2: it here today.
Speaker 3: You write about a lot in your introduction to explain
Speaker 3: the times that we're nineteen forty nine, But tell us
Speaker 3: about Crystal Beach, Florida and Penelas County in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 3: and your background in writing and how you came to
Speaker 3: want to be the author of mad Man.
Speaker 2: Sure. Crystal Beach is a tiny seaside community on the
Speaker 2: west coast of Florida. It's just above clear Water, sits
Speaker 2: right on the golf used to be golf from Mexico
Speaker 2: Gulf of America, but it sits right on a little
Speaker 2: inlet called Saint Joseph's Sound, And back in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 2: it was really an little idyllic kind of seaside village.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew each other, all the kids played with each other,
Speaker 2: and really kind of that mid twentieth century Mayberry type place.
Speaker 2: And I had the privilege of moving to Crystal Beach
Speaker 2: in twenty or two thousand and seven. It's when I
Speaker 2: first moved there, lived there for twelve years, and during
Speaker 2: that time it still retained a lot of that character.
Speaker 2: It Obviously, new houses had grown up, but it still
Speaker 2: maintained a lot of that old Florida flavor. And I
Speaker 2: came across a book about Crystal Beach that was entitled
Speaker 2: Crystal Beach Shangri La, and it was really just a
Speaker 2: collection of stories from old time residents that had lived
Speaker 2: there back in the mid twentieth century, people that grew
Speaker 2: up in mostly in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and
Speaker 2: it talked about that that lifestyle and what it was
Speaker 2: like and how they spent a lot of their time
Speaker 2: out in the water scalloping and fishing and swimming and
Speaker 2: everything else. And there was a lot of really nice
Speaker 2: Americana stories in there about picnics and things they used
Speaker 2: to do together and that sort of thing. But in
Speaker 2: between those stories, I came across this darker memory of
Speaker 2: one resident by the name of Linda Henry. And Linda
Speaker 2: told the story of a very disturbing, macabre murder that
Speaker 2: had happened in Crystal Beach in nineteen forty nine. And
Speaker 2: I had never heard this story before. And I read
Speaker 2: the story, and the part that got me at the
Speaker 2: end was Linda talked about being a six year old girl.
Speaker 2: And obviously, the day of the murder, it was big
Speaker 2: news in Crystal Beach. All the residents were there and
Speaker 2: the police and everything else. But the next day she
Speaker 2: walked up there as a little girl, six year old girl,
Speaker 2: and she says she still remembers looking in the window,
Speaker 2: the bedroom window, and seeing all the blood. And she said,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a smell. There was a smell
Speaker 2: in the air of that blood, of that blood, and
Speaker 2: I still can't walk back there to this day without
Speaker 2: smelling that smell. And it just it disturbed her. And
Speaker 2: I said, boy, that is a creepy story. You know,
Speaker 2: I've got to figure out what happened there. And so
Speaker 2: I started researching a little bit, and the more I learned.
Speaker 2: First of all, I learned the house was only about
Speaker 2: one hundred yards from where my house was. Wow Else
Speaker 2: used to stand and I walked by there every day,
Speaker 2: and the house wasn't there anymore. But now I started
Speaker 2: looking at this in a new light, and the story
Speaker 2: just kind of took on a life of its own,
Speaker 2: and I decided to write a book about it. That
Speaker 2: fascinated me. That much.
Speaker 3: You take us to August seventh, nineteen forty nine, and
Speaker 3: the home of Norman and Anne Brown. Tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about Norman Brown. You say seventy four years
Speaker 3: old in nineteen forty nine. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about Norman Brown, his marriage to Anne, and what happens
Speaker 3: on that faithful day.
Speaker 2: Sure, Norman Brown was a retiree, worked for an electric
Speaker 2: company up in New York. And he has an interesting
Speaker 2: backstory which I won't go all into here, but he
Speaker 2: was he was married to Anne. They got divorced, Norman remarried,
Speaker 2: and they moved to Crystal Beach him and his second wife.
Speaker 2: And his second wife died shortly after they moved to
Speaker 2: Crystal Beach, and Norman went back to New York and
Speaker 2: remarried Anne and brought her back to Crystal Beach. So
Speaker 2: that's how they were living here in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: His wife, Anne was about ten years younger, and she
Speaker 2: was also a retiree. So they're living in Crystal Beach.
Speaker 2: They're living out in the secluded edge of Crystal Beach,
Speaker 2: down a dusty lane called Rattlesnake Road, and they had
Speaker 2: just put their house up for sale. They were supposedly
Speaker 2: having some financial difficulties, which may play into some of
Speaker 2: the theories later in the story. But they had just
Speaker 2: put their house up for sale, and that's where we
Speaker 2: find ourselves. On August seventh, nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3: He said that Anne looks out the window and sees
Speaker 3: a black nineteen forty six Ford. But she recognizes the driver,
Speaker 3: but you can't remember his name. What does she remember
Speaker 3: him from? And what happens once she sees him again
Speaker 3: in a few minutes fifteen minutes or.
Speaker 2: So, Sure, and Dan, that's an interesting point because she
Speaker 2: claims she didn't remember his name. But the more I
Speaker 2: read the book, the more suspicious I got of Anne Brown.
Speaker 2: But according to her, when he pulls up, she remembers
Speaker 2: him visiting the house a couple of months earlier, where
Speaker 2: he had supposedly stopped and asked for water in his car.
Speaker 2: Now she changes this story three times. First she says
Speaker 2: he stopped for water in his car, Then she says
Speaker 2: he stopped to look at the house. Then she says
Speaker 2: he was a pump prepair man and he came to
Speaker 2: repair the pump at the house. Well, Russell was never
Speaker 2: a pump prepairman. He never worked as a pump repairman.
Speaker 2: And the stories really don't add up altogether, but according
Speaker 2: to her, he stopped ask for water. They went out back,
Speaker 2: the pump didn't work, and while they were trying to
Speaker 2: get the pump to work, he asked about the house
Speaker 2: and if it was you know, what the price was,
Speaker 2: and he had some friends he thought might be interested
Speaker 2: in it. And she sent him to the neighbors for water,
Speaker 2: and that was the end of it. So when she
Speaker 2: sees this car pulling up again, she sees his face
Speaker 2: and she says, oh, you know, he must I remember
Speaker 2: that guy. He must be coming back to look at
Speaker 2: the house. You know, he said he was interested in
Speaker 2: the house. So that's what they're thinking when he pulls
Speaker 2: up on that early morning.
Speaker 3: What is her description of this person? And you introduced
Speaker 3: this person as John Calvin Russell, So what is her
Speaker 3: description of this person? And you give the background of
Speaker 3: this person now looking much different than previously.
Speaker 2: Well, Rastus Russell was a handsome man. And not only
Speaker 2: was he handsome, he was very muscular, especially for nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine, where you know today there's a gym on
Speaker 2: every corner, but back then that wasn't really the case.
Speaker 2: Working out wasn't really a big mainstream thing back then,
Speaker 2: and to what extent Russell worked out or not, we
Speaker 2: don't know. But he was definitely a muscleman and had
Speaker 2: movie star good looks. Supposedly also had a lot of charisma,
Speaker 2: so his appearance was very disarming when you first meet him.
Speaker 2: When you first see him, so this is the guy
Speaker 2: that pulls up in their driveway and and Norman are
Speaker 2: not aware of his background, which rastus. Russell is a
Speaker 2: well known name in Penellas County and in particularly Palm Harbor,
Speaker 2: which is right outside of Crystal Beach. It's kind of
Speaker 2: the surrounds Crystal Beach. Russell is for the most part
Speaker 2: small time hoodlum, thief, car thief. He has done a
Speaker 2: lot of thefts, breaks into stores and steals things. He's
Speaker 2: known to local police. Is a local hoodlum. But he
Speaker 2: has been away for about seven years because he left
Speaker 2: the state. We get into that later. He's been in
Speaker 2: and out of prison, He's been in and out of
Speaker 2: mental institutions. He has a violet streak. He's by this
Speaker 2: time he's already attacked different people. He's arrested after he
Speaker 2: leaves the state, He's arrested up in Illinois for car theft,
Speaker 2: and he spends some time in prison there. They send
Speaker 2: him to a mental institution because he's pleaded insanity a
Speaker 2: couple times to different crimes, which depending on who evaluates him,
Speaker 2: some determine him and saying Others say no, he's perfectly normal,
Speaker 2: and others present an interesting theory which I happen to
Speaker 2: subscribe to, that Russell had a jeckyal Hyde personality, which
Speaker 2: means he's saying most of the time, but there are
Speaker 2: brief periods where he can slip into moments of insanity,
Speaker 2: And based on what I've studied about him and how
Speaker 2: he behaves, this seems to match up with what his
Speaker 2: condition seems to be based on his behavior. But when
Speaker 2: he pulls up an Ann and Norman's driveway, they have
Speaker 2: no idea this is his background. He's just this handsome
Speaker 2: stranger that visited them a few months earlier and seemed
Speaker 2: very cordial and polite.
Speaker 3: You're right that he spends quite quite some time at
Speaker 3: the home, over three hours, talking about all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: He sits there and speaks with him and has coffee,
Speaker 3: shares coffee with him, and then you say that in
Speaker 3: the area there are deadly rattlesnakes and among other wild
Speaker 3: creatures that people defend themselves against with weapons like shotguns.
Speaker 3: So Norman has a couple of shotguns and one of
Speaker 3: them happens to be in the washroom. After speaking for
Speaker 3: a while, you.
Speaker 2: Write that.
Speaker 3: Rastus goes into the washroom, and when he emerges, what happens.
Speaker 2: Rassus goes into the washroom after talking with them for
Speaker 2: three and a half hour. And I don't want to
Speaker 2: skip over, because I think that's a critical part of
Speaker 2: the story. Dan is, if you're showing up at someone's
Speaker 2: house to rob them, do you sit at their dining
Speaker 2: room table and talk to them for three and a
Speaker 2: half hours over coffee and take he took Norman to
Speaker 2: get a newspaper and they go back. If one of
Speaker 2: you don't know them, and two if you're there with
Speaker 2: intention of robbing them, that part never added up to me,
Speaker 2: and it sheds a lot of suspicion on the Brown's
Speaker 2: former knowledge of him. But and I hope I'm not
Speaker 2: over elaborating here, but I do you brought up rattlesnakes.
Speaker 2: I want to tell you one quick story about when
Speaker 2: I lived there, and this was probably twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Right,
Speaker 2: there's a Rattlesnake Road. Doesn't exist anymore. It's been made
Speaker 2: into another more modern road, but it's still traces part
Speaker 2: of Rattlesnake Road. And that's how I would drive to
Speaker 2: my house to get home. And I'm coming home from
Speaker 2: work one day and there I talked about rattlesnakes can
Speaker 2: grow six feet down there there's a six foot rattlesnake
Speaker 2: in the middle of the road, sprawled out. It had
Speaker 2: been run over. Its head was run over, but the
Speaker 2: rest of it was still there. It must have just happened,
Speaker 2: and it was right in the spot where their house sat.
Speaker 2: So that's what almost you know, almost six seventy years later,
Speaker 2: there's still rattlesnakes back there. So that's part of the story.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But to answer your question, Russell, after three and a
Speaker 2: half hours, he excuses himself. He goes into Norman Brown's
Speaker 2: bathroom and he comes out holding Norman's shotgun which is loaded,
Speaker 2: and he points it at Norman's chest and Norman says,
Speaker 2: you know what's going on here? What are you doing?
Speaker 2: And at this point he is her whole personality shifts,
Speaker 2: he changes, He screams, I'm a desperate man. He smashes
Speaker 2: the coffee cup out of Norman's hand, and he tells
Speaker 2: them this story about how he's he's part of a
Speaker 2: drug gang from Chicago and they better do what he
Speaker 2: says or his drug friends are going to take care
Speaker 2: of it, take care of them, and he wants their money.
Speaker 2: It's where's the money now. Keep in mind this is
Speaker 2: all according to Anne Brown, and she's the only witness,
Speaker 2: so this is her version of what happened. But they
Speaker 2: keep saying we don't have any money. Where people are
Speaker 2: limited means we don't have any money. Russell doesn't believe them.
Speaker 2: He orders he tells him he's going to tie them up.
Speaker 2: He asks them where they would prefer to be tied up,
Speaker 2: in their bedroom or the garage, and then, without letting
Speaker 2: them decide, he marches them out to the garage. He
Speaker 2: ties them their bounds, their ankles, their wrists, and then
Speaker 2: he puts a rope over the beams out in the garage,
Speaker 2: which is called the garage. It's really just a storage shed,
Speaker 2: dirt floor, woodn't but he ties them up so their
Speaker 2: hands are over their heads hanging from those beams, and
Speaker 2: then he goes back in the house and they hear
Speaker 2: him tearing through the house, tearing things up, looking supposedly
Speaker 2: looking for money, and if for some strange reason, he
Speaker 2: gets in his car and leaves. And at this point
Speaker 2: they think the ordeal's over. So they're left in their
Speaker 2: garage thinking he's gone, but they still have to get
Speaker 2: out of these ropes.
Speaker 3: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop. They hear these messages.
Speaker 3: Now they think maybe they're in the clear. They're uninjured.
Speaker 3: They think maybe this madman is gone, so they are
Speaker 3: trying to untie themselves. What do they do in this pursuit?
Speaker 3: And what happens maybe ninety minutes.
Speaker 2: Later, Well, Norman manages to free himself from the ropes
Speaker 2: and he unties Ann and he finds a hack saw
Speaker 2: in the shed, and Rastus has locked the shed from
Speaker 2: the outside, so there's a there's a steel hasp and
Speaker 2: he puts a I guess there's a dead bolt around it.
Speaker 2: So Norman's sticking that saw through the two barn like
Speaker 2: doors on the front of this set, and he's trying
Speaker 2: to saw through that hasp, but it's it's given him
Speaker 2: a hard time. It's a thick hasp. So as he's
Speaker 2: doing this, Erastus has gone about an hour and a
Speaker 2: half and they think, well, we got robbed, but we're okay.
Speaker 2: We just got to get out of the shed and
Speaker 2: call the cups. So Norman's working on this thing. Keep
Speaker 2: in mind it's it's summer in Florida, which, if you've
Speaker 2: never been summer in Florida, it is brutal. You know,
Speaker 2: it's ninety typically ninety to ninety five degrees every day,
Speaker 2: skyrocketing humidity. It's like being in a sauna. And they're
Speaker 2: locked in this garage. They're older people, you know, seventy five.
Speaker 2: That's that can be very taxing. So he's trying to
Speaker 2: get out of here, and all of a sudden, they
Speaker 2: hear that engine whining back up Rattlesnake Road at that ford,
Speaker 2: and ann Brown looks out through the crack and she says,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Norman, he's coming back. And you know,
Speaker 2: she must be terrified. They both must be terrified if
Speaker 2: this guy's coming back. So Norman starts freaking out, and
Speaker 2: he starts kicking on his door, trying to break the
Speaker 2: door open to get out. So Russell pulls up, pulls
Speaker 2: up behind the house. He gets out of the car.
Speaker 2: He comes and he sees them. He sees Norman trying
Speaker 2: to kick the door open, and this just enrages him.
Speaker 2: He flies into a rage. And at this point he
Speaker 2: has his own shotgun with him now, which is a
Speaker 2: sowd off twelve gage. He brings that gun. He throws
Speaker 2: the door open, and so angry, he smashes Norman in
Speaker 2: the head with the butt of that sawed off shotgun.
Speaker 2: And Norman goes down and he's bleeding. He's holding his
Speaker 2: head and Anne Brown starts screaming and again this, according
Speaker 2: to her, is another strange part of the story. She
Speaker 2: looks at Rastus and says, go inside and get my
Speaker 2: medical kit. So he does. He goes inside, he gets
Speaker 2: the medical kit and brings it back to Anne, so
Speaker 2: she can tend to Norman. You know, just a strange
Speaker 2: he's a strange individual, and he shows bits of this
Speaker 2: throughout the story. So she tends to Norman. Eventually he
Speaker 2: gets them up and he's marching them back in the
Speaker 2: house because he still wants this money. He thinks he's
Speaker 2: convinced there is money in this house, right, So he
Speaker 2: starts marching them back in the house. And this is
Speaker 2: where things start to get rough, because at this point
Speaker 2: Norman he's not happy. You know, he's he's seventy five,
Speaker 2: but he's still a man and he was, you know,
Speaker 2: he was a enough rough and tumble kai back in
Speaker 2: his day that he doesn't want to put up with this.
Speaker 2: So this guy's walking him back in, and for some
Speaker 2: reason he looks the other way and Norman takes off running.
Speaker 2: Takes off running, but he's little woozy from being hitting
Speaker 2: the head, and instead of running out towards the driveway
Speaker 2: into the road, he runs into his yard, which is
Speaker 2: fenced and it's a barbedire fence. He runs up against
Speaker 2: his barbedire fence. Erastus sees this and he's just, you know,
Speaker 2: he loses it. He goes storming out after him, and
Speaker 2: he just goes into a profanity that profanity laced tirade
Speaker 2: and starts beating and kicking Norman and ashing and what's
Speaker 2: the shotgun? And he's really really don't damage. So by
Speaker 2: this point Norman is, you know, he's pretty beat up.
Speaker 2: So rassues grabs him, starts dragging him back to the
Speaker 2: house and that's that's when they stain into the bedroom.
Speaker 3: You're right that he gets some cords, some from a radio,
Speaker 3: some from a clothes line, and first he ties Rome
Speaker 3: Norman spread eagled on the bed, and then and as well,
Speaker 3: spread eagled and tied to their couple's twin beds in
Speaker 3: the bedroom.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, it's a really uh, it's a nightmare
Speaker 2: like scenario when you see. You know, back in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine, they they took pictures and murder scenes and
Speaker 2: put them in a newspaper, so it's not like today
Speaker 2: where they tried to edit it from the public. And
Speaker 2: when you see those pictures, which I do have some
Speaker 2: of them featured in the book, it is it's just chilling.
Speaker 2: It's it's so disturbing to see see the tied up
Speaker 2: and helpless like that. But yeah, he ties and both
Speaker 2: spread eagle to the bed, and then he starts demanding
Speaker 2: money again, and when they still won't give it up,
Speaker 2: that's when it starts to get a little bit ugly.
Speaker 2: And Rastus goes out into the kitchen and he gets
Speaker 2: a butcher knife and he comes back in and he says, now,
Speaker 2: you tell me where the money is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also just is fed up and stabs Norman.
Speaker 3: He had prone sheets over them, and then Norman says,
Speaker 3: he's cutting my wrists, So first he slashes his wrists,
Speaker 3: Norman's wrists, and then plunges a knife into his chest.
Speaker 3: You introduce a couple characters that around the same time
Speaker 3: have plans to meet up with the family with and
Speaker 3: and Norman tell us about the Thelma and Miles Crumb.
Speaker 2: Sure, Thelma and Miles Crumb run the local I don't
Speaker 2: want to call it a grocery store. It was kind
Speaker 2: of a sundry store, but they had a little soda
Speaker 2: bar there in Crystal Beach where they also sold various supplies.
Speaker 2: The small amount of groceries. It was a big gathering
Speaker 2: place for Crystal Beach and they had ice cream, sodas.
Speaker 2: A lot of the kids hung out there. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a central point of Crystal Beach. So Miles and
Speaker 2: Thelma Crumb know everyone in town and they are good
Speaker 2: friends with the Browns. In fact, Miles and Thelma are
Speaker 2: on their way to the Browns that afternoon to drop
Speaker 2: off their little daughter, Judy Crumb, who at this time
Speaker 2: just a baby. She's eight months old, and they're dropping
Speaker 2: them off so Missus Brown can baby sit while they
Speaker 2: go swimming at the beach. That Sundays are one day
Speaker 2: off from the store and they like to go swimming,
Speaker 2: so they're on their way up. And just to back
Speaker 2: up a minute, Russell didn't just stab Norman. I mean
Speaker 2: he kept them in there for an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: Gradually he would give Norman a shot with the knife
Speaker 2: every time. He wouldn't tell them where something was. So
Speaker 2: Norman's got all these little stab wounds all over his
Speaker 2: legs and arms and stomach, but none of them were
Speaker 2: fatal yet. And when he finally gets fed up with
Speaker 2: Norman when he can't find it, he's looking. This goes
Speaker 2: on for an hour and a half where they're tied up.
Speaker 2: That's when he again that pattern of losing his temper
Speaker 2: and he loses his temper and just yeah, he goes
Speaker 2: berserk on Norman with the knife and that's when that happens.
Speaker 2: But by the time the crumbs pull up, Rastus is
Speaker 2: sitting out on the front porch. He's got the sod
Speaker 2: Off shotgun in his lap. He's killed Norman. He hasn't
Speaker 2: killed ann He's cut her up and he's hit her
Speaker 2: with the gun, but for some reason he let her live,
Speaker 2: and I speculate on that later in the book as well.
Speaker 2: But when the Crumbs pull up to drop off Judy,
Speaker 2: Rastus is sitting out on the front porch, it's a
Speaker 2: screened in front porch with a sawed off shotgun in
Speaker 2: his lap.
Speaker 3: They see this man. They see that he looks Latin
Speaker 3: or of Greek descent, very thick muscular, but he has
Speaker 3: blood on his shirt and a menacing look on his face.
Speaker 3: And as you say, he's holding a shot of sawd
Speaker 3: off shotgun.
Speaker 2: And what does he do from there? Well, he's sitting there.
Speaker 2: So the Crumbs pull up and they're driving a jeep
Speaker 2: and they have the baby and they get out, you know,
Speaker 2: they're walking to the front poor to drop the baby
Speaker 2: off with the Browns, and Miles Crumb immediately sees Russell
Speaker 2: on the porch. So there's this stranger with a sod
Speaker 2: off shotgun and there's blood on him, and Miles immediately
Speaker 2: knows something isn't right here. Now. Miles is no pushover himself.
Speaker 2: Miles uh serve time in the military. He's he was
Speaker 2: discharged a couple of years earlier. That's when he started
Speaker 2: the store off of Gilne. And he's young. He's young,
Speaker 2: He's three years younger than Rastus. Rastus is thirty four,
Speaker 2: Miles is thirty one. So Miles goes up on the porch.
Speaker 2: Here's this stranger on his friend's porch with a shotgun,
Speaker 2: bloody shirt. He says, what's what's going on here? And
Speaker 2: Russell points a shotgun at his head and says, get
Speaker 2: in the house. And he's standing right in front of him.
Speaker 2: So Miles and initially acts like he's going to comply,
Speaker 2: and then as this is a brave thing, and if
Speaker 2: you put yourself in a situation, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I would have done this, But Miles got a family
Speaker 2: to protect. His friends are obviously been injured. He grabs
Speaker 2: a shotgun and pushes it away, and him and Russell
Speaker 2: fall to the ground and they're fighting over this shotgun,
Speaker 2: and he says himself, I almost got it away from him,
Speaker 2: almost got it away from him. If he would have
Speaker 2: done that, the rest of this story probably wouldn't even
Speaker 2: have happened. But as they're struggling, Rastus gets the upper hand.
Speaker 2: He pulls a shotgun away and Miles steps back, and
Speaker 2: as he does, Russell drops to one knee and he
Speaker 2: fires the sawd off shotgun and he hits Miles right
Speaker 2: in the gun, and Miles stumbles backwards, back off the
Speaker 2: porch and collapses out into the yard, and Thelma crumbs
Speaker 2: there and she just starts screaming, runs over to his side.
Speaker 3: Yes, you say, He points the gun at her face
Speaker 3: and then pulls the trigger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. He then approaches Thelma now she's still
Speaker 2: holding the baby, and he points the gun at Thelma's face,
Speaker 2: and as he does, she drops instinctively pushes the baby
Speaker 2: away because she doesn't want the baby to get shot.
Speaker 2: So her account is she dropped the baby. The newspaper
Speaker 2: says she gently rolled the baby. When I interviewed a
Speaker 2: friend of Miles Crumb for this book, Miles passed away
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago, but this gentleman actually lived with
Speaker 2: the Crumbs for a while as sort of an adopted son.
Speaker 2: He told me Miles told him one night, as they
Speaker 2: were having a late night conversation on the porch, that
Speaker 2: Thelma threw the baby up in the air out of fear,
Speaker 2: and she never was able to forgive herself for that
Speaker 2: lived with that the rest of her life. But Thelma
Speaker 2: throws the baby, drops the baby wherever you want to
Speaker 2: call it. Russell points the shotgun at her face and
Speaker 2: pulls the trigger and nothing happens. There's a click, and
Speaker 2: either the gun jammed or there was only one shell
Speaker 2: in it. Either way. Russell then takes the shotgun, grabs
Speaker 2: it by the stock, and smashes thelm over the head
Speaker 2: with it with the barrel. She collapses. She's out cold,
Speaker 2: she's unconscious. So Miles, he has managed to crawl back
Speaker 2: to the deep. His entire abdomen's ripped open. His intestines
Speaker 2: are coming out of his belly, so he's he's pushing
Speaker 2: them back in with his hand as he crawls up
Speaker 2: in the jeep. He starts the jeep up and it
Speaker 2: turns over and he's trying to slam it into gear
Speaker 2: with his one good hand while he's holding his testines
Speaker 2: in with the other. He gets it into gear, he
Speaker 2: hits the gas. What he does not realize dan is
Speaker 2: that Thelma has dropped the baby right in front of
Speaker 2: the jeep's right tire, right front tire, and Miles slams
Speaker 2: on the gas because Russell's now standing right in front
Speaker 2: of the jeep. So Miles is thinking to how I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get this guy now? You know, he's gonna slam
Speaker 2: on that gas and run over Russell. Instead, he's accidentally
Speaker 2: in his wounded stack eight. Fortunately for the baby, slammed
Speaker 2: it into reverse instead, and when he hits a gas
Speaker 2: that the jeeps goes skidding into reverse, back plows into
Speaker 2: Norman's fence, and then he manages to shift it back
Speaker 2: into gear and he drives off down the road. So
Speaker 2: he leaves, and that's one of the points of the
Speaker 2: story too. Is a lot of people ask, well, boy,
Speaker 2: he left his wife and baby there, why did he
Speaker 2: do that? I don't know. I speculate on it in
Speaker 2: the book. It could just be he was, you know,
Speaker 2: in shock. You got shot in the gut with a shotgun,
Speaker 2: you're probably going to be in shock. And maybe he's
Speaker 2: just reacting at that point. He says later he thought
Speaker 2: they were dead. Who knows. Who knows, But he does
Speaker 2: leave in the jeep and goes driving down the road.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 3: these messages. Now, a person named Robert Cotton, He and
Speaker 3: his wife live two blocks west. He hears a blast,
Speaker 3: here's a woman screaming, and then he sees his friend
Speaker 3: Miles Crumb with his intestines hanging out of his body.
Speaker 3: Tell us about what James Cotton sees and does as
Speaker 3: a result.
Speaker 2: Robert Cotton is cutting fish in his backyard and he
Speaker 2: hears the shotgun blast, so he's not sure what it is.
Speaker 2: And then he hears a woman screaming, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: oh my god. So he's already on alert. He's looking around,
Speaker 2: and a couple of minutes later, here comes his friend
Speaker 2: Miles Crumb, wheeling into his front yard in his jeep
Speaker 2: holding his gut. And Cotton goes out and there's Crumb
Speaker 2: in the jeep and he's saying, call the police, call
Speaker 2: an ambulance. Is the guy shot the Brown's you know,
Speaker 2: he's giving them all the details. And then he passes out,
Speaker 2: and that's when Cotton notices, you know, his entire fronts
Speaker 2: covered in blood. Guts are coming out. So Cotton tells
Speaker 2: his wife and kids to go upstairs. They do call ambulance.
Speaker 2: They call police back then there's no nine one one,
Speaker 2: so you've got to call direct the operator and get
Speaker 2: the direct number to the police and hope somebody picks up.
Speaker 2: But they do. An ambulance is on the way, and
Speaker 2: while they're waiting for that, here up through the woods,
Speaker 2: comes out of the woods and into Cotton's yard comes
Speaker 2: Thelma and she's holding the babies. You know, she's covered
Speaker 2: in blood. Her head's covered in blood. She been hit
Speaker 2: on the head, covered in sweat. She just ran through
Speaker 2: about what the equivalent of two city blocks of Florida woods,
Speaker 2: which in the summertime, it's undergrowth, it's wet, there's mosquitoes everywhere,
Speaker 2: it's hotter than hell, and the snakes and everything else
Speaker 2: are living in here. She's just run through that, through
Speaker 2: that thicket, and she's arriving and she's hysterical, and missus
Speaker 2: Cotton comes out. They take Thelma inside, the baby inside,
Speaker 2: and fortunately shortly after that, the first ambulance arrives on scene.
Speaker 3: I introduce from Tarpon Springs, a constable for Panelas County
Speaker 3: District four. Walter Carey gets involved in this story and
Speaker 3: this case. What does he know about the suspect? John
Speaker 3: Calvin Russell.
Speaker 2: Walter Carrey is probably one of my, if not my
Speaker 2: favorite character in this book. He is an old school lawman.
Speaker 2: He is described as low key, very fair. He's very
Speaker 2: popular amongst the community, but he's also not to be
Speaker 2: trifled with. Carrie has seen his share of rough play.
Speaker 2: He's been in the military, He's seen his share of gunplay.
Speaker 2: Some of the stories his I interviewed his grandson for
Speaker 2: the book, and some of the stories his grandson told
Speaker 2: me made me think I could write a book just
Speaker 2: about Walter Carey. But Carrie has an interesting history with
Speaker 2: Rastus Russell in that one. He probably knows him just
Speaker 2: through his reputation in Palm Harbor. Carrie's the head lawman
Speaker 2: for this part of the county, so certainly probably knows
Speaker 2: Rastus Russell given all the times he's been arrested. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: about eight years before this, Carrie wasn't constable yet. His
Speaker 2: brother Rufus was the constable at that point. And Rufus
Speaker 2: responds to a call one night where somebody is assaulting
Speaker 2: an eighty two year old man in Palm Harbor. Well,
Speaker 2: he shows up and it's Rastus Russell who has attacked
Speaker 2: this eighty two year old man with a bottle, probably
Speaker 2: trying to rob him. And Rufus shows up on scene.
Speaker 2: Rufus is a big, tall guy as well, and he
Speaker 2: goes to arrest Russell and Russell decides he's going to
Speaker 2: fight him and ends up in this brutal brawl where
Speaker 2: somehow they get up fall down a whole flight of steps,
Speaker 2: fighting and beating each other. Eventually, Rufus gets the better
Speaker 2: of Russell and he arrests him, but he's, you know,
Speaker 2: he's pretty banged up. And Russell goes you know, into
Speaker 2: the system after that. But Rufous interesting and he dies
Speaker 2: six months later. He has tuberculosis and he has this
Speaker 2: episode in a car while he's driving a suspect to jail,
Speaker 2: and he bleeds to death through the mouth. He just
Speaker 2: starts coughing and he hemorrhages and dies right there in
Speaker 2: the car. So Walter, who was a fisherman's sponger before this,
Speaker 2: that's how he gets into law enforcement. He takes Rufus's
Speaker 2: place as constable, so he knows very well who Rastus
Speaker 2: Russell is. Now. He does not know Russell's the killer.
Speaker 2: All as he knows is there's a there's been a
Speaker 2: shooting in Crystal Beach and the Sunday afternoon it's pretty quiet.
Speaker 2: He's at his home relaxing in tarp And Springs, and
Speaker 2: so he starts heading down to Crystal Beach to find
Speaker 2: out what's going on. And that's kind of where at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: He grabs a state patrolman, Carr Castles, and also Special
Speaker 3: Deputy Dewey Adair and his son Harold and another person
Speaker 3: named Leonard Rodgers, and they head to the Browns and
Speaker 3: they storm through the front door.
Speaker 2: What do they find? Well, when they get to the
Speaker 2: brown The only reason he knows this is because he
Speaker 2: catches up to Miles Chrome as they're pulling him into
Speaker 2: the tarp And Springs hospital and Chrome tells him there's
Speaker 2: a killer Crystal Beach, you know. He gives him the
Speaker 2: address the Brown's house. So yes, at that point, Carrie knows, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is for real. He grabs a couple of the
Speaker 2: Special Deputies picks him up along the way and they
Speaker 2: get to the Brown's house with Castle, and they don't
Speaker 2: know what's waiting for them inside all as they know
Speaker 2: there's been a shooting and from what Miles Chrome tells them.
Speaker 2: So he positions a couple of the deputies outside and
Speaker 2: him and Castles, who is a highway patrolman Castles is
Speaker 2: in uniform. He's got a you know what we know
Speaker 2: is a regular police car, and he's got a regular uniform.
Speaker 2: Carrie works in playing clothes cars his own, so none
Speaker 2: of these other guys have police uniforms on Castle does.
Speaker 2: They storm through the front door, and at first they
Speaker 2: don't see anything. They're running. The thing they notice is
Speaker 2: the house is ransacked, stuff laying everywhere. They run upstairs,
Speaker 2: they don't see anything up there. They come back down
Speaker 2: and they notice a blood trail on the floor and
Speaker 2: they follow it. It's into the first floor bedroom, and
Speaker 2: that's where they find Norman and Ann still tied to
Speaker 2: the bed, and they're just even for see seasoned lawmen.
Speaker 2: They're taken aback. It's just a sickening scene. There's blood everywhere,
Speaker 2: tied to the bed, it's like a scene out of
Speaker 2: a horror movie. And they at that point think both
Speaker 2: of them are dead and they're getting ready to investigate
Speaker 2: two bodies, and all of a sudden, Anne moves, she groans,
Speaker 2: and they realize Anne's still alive. Wow, And that's where
Speaker 2: they cut Anne loose at that point and start getting
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: Now what is the story? She tells them, but he
Speaker 3: has a bombshell that she tells him regarding the license
Speaker 3: plate number.
Speaker 2: Yes, through the ordeal, when they were in the garage,
Speaker 2: Anne had the clear clearness of mind she saw the
Speaker 2: license plate on Russell's car as he was taking him
Speaker 2: into the garage, and she scrawled that license plate on
Speaker 2: the wood inside the shed where they were tied up,
Speaker 2: and she tells that to Carrie, and by the time
Speaker 2: the rest of law enforcement gets there, Carrie has a
Speaker 2: license plate, so they have something to go on. At
Speaker 2: that point, you.
Speaker 3: Say that Carry the lead investigator teams up with Panela's
Speaker 3: county share of Todd Tucker, and their next move is
Speaker 3: to Tucker orders roadblocks. And what's very, very interesting is
Speaker 3: the posse that forms.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's one of my favorite parts of the story is,
Speaker 2: you know we described Crystal Beach earlier. It's a very
Speaker 2: small community in Palm Harbor itself is a small community.
Speaker 2: So as this news starts getting around, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is just horrific, unheard of news in this type of
Speaker 2: little village. Nothing like this. You know. The biggest thing
Speaker 2: that ever happens is maybe somebody has a little too
Speaker 2: much to drink on a Friday night or somebody's cat
Speaker 2: gets stuck in a tree. That's about it. So something
Speaker 2: this intense happens, it just goes through the community like wildfire.
Speaker 2: So you have not only people from Crystal Beach showing up,
Speaker 2: but people from Palm Harbor showing up. And they're two things.
Speaker 2: One they're frightened and two they're angry. So they want
Speaker 2: to find this person that did this. And this is
Speaker 2: just after World War Two. A lot of these guys
Speaker 2: have been in the military. A lot of these guys
Speaker 2: have seen combat, so they are not intimidated in the least,
Speaker 2: and they're very comfortable with weapons. Most of them own weapons, rifle, shotguns, pistols,
Speaker 2: So they're showing up with their own guns and they're
Speaker 2: ready to hunt this guy down. And some of it's
Speaker 2: organized by the police where they're directing the more to search.
Speaker 2: Others of these they're just forming on their own and
Speaker 2: they're going off on their own looking through the woods.
Speaker 2: Most of the big part of Panels County at that
Speaker 2: point is orange groves, so they're going row bi row
Speaker 2: through orange groves looking for tracks, looking for anything they
Speaker 2: can find. Some of them don't have guns. There's boys
Speaker 2: showing up, there's teenagers, but ones that don't have guns.
Speaker 2: The law enforcement is passing out guns, some of them
Speaker 2: Thompson's submachine guns. They're handing to just members of the
Speaker 2: public to go want this guy. So there's hundreds of
Speaker 2: people now combing the woods in the area around Crystal Beach.
Speaker 2: This is the night and day after the murder looking
Speaker 2: for the murderer, who they still don't know who he
Speaker 2: is yet.
Speaker 3: You say, based on the initial investigations and interviews with
Speaker 3: Ann Brown and Miles Crumb, police contemplayed a Chicago link
Speaker 3: with these drug gang that he spoke of. You talk
Speaker 3: about that nineteen forty nine, the theory of a drug
Speaker 3: crazed lunatic does not need much embellishment, and you write
Speaker 3: about the nineteen thirty three Lakata murders at his home
Speaker 3: residents where this person, Victor Locata, was deemed mentally ill
Speaker 3: and one night he went on a rampage and killed
Speaker 3: his entire family with an axe, and they attributed the
Speaker 3: rampage to marijuana use. And you say that based on
Speaker 3: the initial interviews with Anne Brown, the media took that
Speaker 3: as that and there was a rumor that a marijuana
Speaker 3: joint or a half smoke joint was found at the
Speaker 3: crime scene. You say that took the media into a
Speaker 3: narrative that included the dangers and the horrors of marijuana.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, Dan Well. In nineteen thirty three, they pounced
Speaker 2: on the Lakata story, which I'm not I don't want
Speaker 2: to give away or plug my second book, but Victor
Speaker 2: Locatta is a very interesting story in and of itself,
Speaker 2: but we'll save that for another time. But the media
Speaker 2: pounced on that story like a frenzy. And as it
Speaker 2: turns out out, you know, the cottum may not have
Speaker 2: even smoked marijuana at all that night, so it's hard
Speaker 2: to say, but the media is always looking for a
Speaker 2: story like that, and that had become such a sensation.
Speaker 2: The movie Re for Madness came out partially as a
Speaker 2: result of that case, which really started to turn the
Speaker 2: public tide against marijuana. So nineteen forty nine, that's still
Speaker 2: fresh in their mind. And as soon as you say
Speaker 2: drug gang, once the media gets ahold of that, they
Speaker 2: just go with it like wildfire. And that was the
Speaker 2: initial theory which Walter Carey seemed convinced of initially, and
Speaker 2: then the next day he abruptly reverses himself and says, no,
Speaker 2: that's not the case. So, no, there was no marijuana
Speaker 2: found that the scene. It's even suspect whether Russell even
Speaker 2: drank anything. He probably was stone cold sober when this happened.
Speaker 2: Don't know for sure, but based on everything I read,
Speaker 2: that's probably the case.
Speaker 3: So this Todd Tucker Sheriff Todd Tucker becomes a central
Speaker 3: figure in this story, as well as Walter Carrey. How
Speaker 3: do they plan the police to proceed with this? How
Speaker 3: do they proceed with this investigation?
Speaker 2: The first thing they do, as you said, they put
Speaker 2: up roadblocks everywhere because they think that'll Penell's County is
Speaker 2: a peninsula, and so they figure they can seal off
Speaker 2: the peninsula. Yeah, they'll steal off the bridges, they'll seal
Speaker 2: off the exits that they'll keep them in, and then
Speaker 2: eventually he'll surface. So while they're doing that, Carrie starts
Speaker 2: getting on this license plate trying to find out who
Speaker 2: the owner of the license plate is. You have to
Speaker 2: keep in mind in nineteen forty nine, they don't have
Speaker 2: computer system where they can just sit down and pull
Speaker 2: it up on a screen. A lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: has to be done through phone calls and looking through
Speaker 2: paper files and looking up old court records in a
Speaker 2: basement somewhere. So there's the law enforcement is a lot
Speaker 2: less efficient than it is today. A lot of things
Speaker 2: takes a lot of elbow grease. So Carrie is known
Speaker 2: as a top detective as well as being the constable.
Speaker 2: So he starts doing his thing and studying. Tucker is
Speaker 2: heading up the search. So Tucker's taking control of the
Speaker 2: law enforcement that are looking for this guy, and he
Speaker 2: seals off the county and he thinks they're eventually going
Speaker 2: to find him that way through these search parties. So
Speaker 2: that's how the investigation begins.
Speaker 3: Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: Now you introduced some important characters. Sam Crane a forty
Speaker 3: one year old citrus plant worker two miles outside of
Speaker 3: Palm Harbor, White Flora and three sons and three daughters,
Speaker 3: including Dorothy Jean tell us about the Crane family and
Speaker 3: a relationship to Rastus Russell Well the Cranes.
Speaker 2: He has a large family, their family of seven at
Speaker 2: the time, and Crane's oldest son is often the military
Speaker 2: Sam Crane, but he lives just outside of Palm Harbor,
Speaker 2: and yes, he's a citrus plant worker. That's the biggest
Speaker 2: employer in the county at that point. As I said,
Speaker 2: it's mostly orange groves and citrus groves, so the main
Speaker 2: industry there is one picking them and two working in
Speaker 2: the plants where they're processing him and putting them in
Speaker 2: boxes and shipping them and all that. So that's what
Speaker 2: Crane does. That's where his sons is two oldest or
Speaker 2: two of his three oldest sons work with him. They're
Speaker 2: in a citrus plant so they're also they work hard,
Speaker 2: honest guys, but at the same time they're known as
Speaker 2: they like to go out and raise a little hell
Speaker 2: on the weekends as well, and the bars and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So there, you know, there are no
Speaker 2: angels themselves, but there's nothing to suggest they're criminals. But
Speaker 2: somehow the three of them are at least the two
Speaker 2: sons meet Rastus Russell in Palm Harbor and they become friends,
Speaker 2: and Russell starts coming to their house this summer of
Speaker 2: forty nine, actually in the spring of forty nine when
Speaker 2: he starts coming to the house, and they all work
Speaker 2: on cars, so they work on cars, get to know
Speaker 2: each other. That way, probably hang out at the bars,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. And through this, Russell's older than them,
Speaker 2: he's thirty four. And the oldest son of Sam is oh,
Speaker 2: you stump me, Dan. I believe he's twenty one, but
Speaker 2: his name's Ferrel. And through visiting them, Rastus Russells gets
Speaker 2: to know their sixteen year old sister, Dorothy Jean. And
Speaker 2: you know, Dorothy Jean's a pretty girl and Rastus is
Speaker 2: a handsome man, and a little flirtation starts to develop. Eventually,
Speaker 2: according to Sam Crane, Russell just shows up one day
Speaker 2: and takes Dorothy and they leave. Now that's Sam Crane's story. However,
Speaker 2: everything after that suggests Dorothy left with him willingly, and
Speaker 2: they're gone. They're gone for two months, nobody knows where
Speaker 2: they are. Sam Crane calls the police says she's been kidnapped,
Speaker 2: and they put out a warrant Russell, who they don't know.
Speaker 2: His name is John Calvin Russell. He uses an alias
Speaker 2: with them, so they they He tells him his name's
Speaker 2: Jim Sullivan, so they think his name's Jim Sullivan, so
Speaker 2: they put out a warrant on Jim Sullivan. Well that's
Speaker 2: not a real guy, so it doesn't really hold much.
Speaker 2: They're gone. They show up two months later, this is
Speaker 2: in June of forty nine, and for some reason, they're
Speaker 2: just welcomed back into the Crane home. They have dinner,
Speaker 2: Good to see you, Dorothy, and then they leave again
Speaker 2: and go over to stay with Russell and his aunt
Speaker 2: in Tampa. So that doesn't sound like a kidnapping to me.
Speaker 2: So Dorothy is a very interesting character in this story.
Speaker 2: Theories about her reigns from she was in on his
Speaker 2: crimes to a Bonnie and Clyde type deal to she
Speaker 2: was completely innocent and was being held against her will,
Speaker 2: which she claimed. I think the truth is, I don't
Speaker 2: think Dorothy was involved in any of his crimes. I
Speaker 2: definitely don't think she was involved in the murders. But
Speaker 2: she may have known some of the things he did.
Speaker 2: But what's she gonna do. She's sixteen years old, is
Speaker 2: the thirty four year old man? So Dorothy's girl. That
Speaker 2: sounds like she might have just got in a little
Speaker 2: bit over her head and sixteen year old girls. He's
Speaker 2: looking for adventure and excitement and bit off a little
Speaker 2: bit more than she could chew.
Speaker 3: Before we get to Miles Crumb and Thelma and Judy
Speaker 3: and their condition at hospital and them eventually being a
Speaker 3: questioned when they can by police. You spoke about Maud McCord,
Speaker 3: Russell's aunt in Tampa. Tell us about her and where
Speaker 3: this black forward vehicle had come from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maud McCord was the sister of Russell's mother, which
Speaker 2: was Maud Baker McCord, and Maud took Russell in when
Speaker 2: Russell came back from Illinois. His mother had died in
Speaker 2: forty two and he was very close to his mother,
Speaker 2: so Maud took him in. Maud was a widow herself,
Speaker 2: had just lost her husband six months earlier. For whatever reason,
Speaker 2: she lets Russell stay at his house. Well, while Russell's
Speaker 2: staying at his house, he's doing odd jobs as a mechanic,
Speaker 2: picking oranges, things like that, but he's also doing crimes
Speaker 2: on the side, so he's a very experienced car thief.
Speaker 2: And on the night before the murders, Russell steals the
Speaker 2: nineteenth He steals the black Ford from a grocery store
Speaker 2: in Tampa. The parking lot of a grocery store. He
Speaker 2: steals the black Ford, and Russell preferred seems to prefer
Speaker 2: the Fords for the big engines. The same reason. Clyde
Speaker 2: Barrow like the Fords, they have the big V eight engines.
Speaker 2: He can typically outrun police cars, and his car theft
Speaker 2: patterns seem to show he prefers the Ford with a
Speaker 2: big engine.
Speaker 3: Tell us about the condition of Miles and Thelma and
Speaker 3: Judy and the questioning about their attacker.
Speaker 2: Well, Miles, they don't think he's going to live. They
Speaker 2: only give him a ten percent chance of living when
Speaker 2: they brought him in, and they were just trying to
Speaker 2: make him comfortable until he passed. And Miles surprised everyone
Speaker 2: by making it through the night, and he starts to
Speaker 2: improve a little bit, and they you know, he had
Speaker 2: to go through several surgeries and had to eat through
Speaker 2: a tube for a while. Thelma, they think she just
Speaker 2: has a concussion, but they don't know, so they're keeping
Speaker 2: her for observation. But she's you know, she's still incapacitated.
Speaker 2: She is still having a hard time. I mean she's
Speaker 2: still been shocked, still kind of hysterical. Judy, they initially thinks,
Speaker 2: all right, a little baby. They put her in the
Speaker 2: crib and think she just got bruised. There would eventually
Speaker 2: be shown wrong about that, but that's the initial condition. Miles.
Speaker 2: Actually he's still fighting even in his state. Is able
Speaker 2: to give a statement to police, and he says he
Speaker 2: can identify him if they find him. So Telma, she
Speaker 2: can't talk at all. She's just hysterical at this point.
Speaker 3: Now back at the Cranes, there is the story that
Speaker 3: hits the front page headline. Story tell us about Sam
Speaker 3: Crane and his reaction to reading that story.
Speaker 2: Well, at this point in time, Russell and Dorothy have
Speaker 2: been moving back and forth. They stay at Sam Crane's
Speaker 2: house sometime, and in some of the time they stay
Speaker 2: with his aunt maud over in Tampa. So they kind
Speaker 2: of happened shifting back and forth between where they're living.
Speaker 2: But on this night, Russell is there at Sam's house.
Speaker 2: Him and Dorothy stayed there that night, and Russell has
Speaker 2: his own room there, his own bedroom. He tells authorities
Speaker 2: that he rented the room to Russell, which may or
Speaker 2: may not be true. But anyways, that morning, Sam is
Speaker 2: down in his breakfast table and he's eating bread and
Speaker 2: he's reading the morning paper and he's reading about this
Speaker 2: horrible murder right up the street from him in Crystal Beach,
Speaker 2: which just a couple miles up the road, and you know,
Speaker 2: like everyone else, he's just shocked that this could happen
Speaker 2: in their community. And when he starts reading the details,
Speaker 2: he starts putting things together. One Russell had returned home
Speaker 2: yet yesterday on Sunday in the afternoon, and he walked
Speaker 2: up to the porch and he had a bloody hand
Speaker 2: and Sam was sitting on the porch with his sons
Speaker 2: and he said, well, happen to your hand? He said, oh,
Speaker 2: I slammed it in a car door. So he remembers that.
Speaker 2: But last night Russell asked him to take him over
Speaker 2: to Tampa to drop off a car he had borrowed
Speaker 2: from a friend. So Sam Crane follows him all the
Speaker 2: way to Tampa and Russell just leaves this car in
Speaker 2: the parking lot of the grocery store where he stole it,
Speaker 2: and he starts loading all this stuff out of the
Speaker 2: car into Sam Crane's car. He's loading groceries, he's loading
Speaker 2: bags of flour, and then he loads two shotguns. Apparently
Speaker 2: Sam Crane wasn't suspicious that Russell's carrying around a sod
Speaker 2: Off shotgun and another shotgun along with all these all
Speaker 2: this stuff in this car that he apparently borrowed from
Speaker 2: a friend, and he just leaves the car in the
Speaker 2: parking lot, right, So that part is suspicious too. I
Speaker 2: don't know if there's anybody in this story that's totally clean,
Speaker 2: but it's hard to prove any of the stuff. So
Speaker 2: the next day Sam reads the paper and he reads
Speaker 2: about his murder and he remembers these shotguns and the
Speaker 2: guy got shot with a shotgun that's in the paper,
Speaker 2: and he's putting two and two together. He's got a
Speaker 2: bloody hand. He's loading these two shotguns into his room
Speaker 2: and the shotguns are still up in Russell's bedroom. So
Speaker 2: he calls his friend he works with at the plant,
Speaker 2: the guy by the name of Oscar good One, and
Speaker 2: they he tells him what he thinks, and they start
Speaker 2: comparing notes and they say, well. He says, I don't
Speaker 2: want to call the police right now. My wife's pregnant.
Speaker 2: If the police do a raid on this house, there's
Speaker 2: going to be people here, there's gonna be media here,
Speaker 2: the CoP's going to be here. They could upset my wife,
Speaker 2: something could happen to the baby. So Oscar says, well,
Speaker 2: you know, let's let's do this first. Let's make sure.
Speaker 2: Let's go up and search his room. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: Russell's here. You know, the guy's here at the house.
Speaker 2: So they devised this plan that they're measuring the rooms
Speaker 2: because they're going to be doing some home improvements. So
Speaker 2: him and Oscar are going through the house with their
Speaker 2: pencils and measuring tape, and Russell's there, but he doesn't
Speaker 2: really paying attention to them. So they go in his
Speaker 2: room and act like they're measuring it, and they find
Speaker 2: these bags of flour, They find these groceries that he
Speaker 2: he stole from the Browns. But then they find the
Speaker 2: two shotguns there. But then what they also find is
Speaker 2: a pile of bloody in the corner. So Russell doesn't
Speaker 2: even bother to throw these away or burn them, or
Speaker 2: he leaves them in a corner in his bedroom. They're
Speaker 2: still bloody. So they're convinced at this point, Wow, this
Speaker 2: guy's the murder and he's living under your roof, Sam.
Speaker 2: So Sam might have known some things about Russell, but
Speaker 2: he probably didn't know he was a killer. And at
Speaker 2: this point, you know, he knows it is enough. I'll
Speaker 2: put up with some of this, but you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not putting up with a killer. So they devise his
Speaker 2: plan because he doesn't want the police coming to his house,
Speaker 2: and that plan is what eventually proves the undoing of Russell.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 3: these messages.
Speaker 2: Yes, you say, now.
Speaker 3: There is a man hunt, and so police employ bloodhounds
Speaker 3: search dogs. This you introduce dogs name Flip and Flop.
Speaker 3: Tell us how they proceed with this manhunt.
Speaker 2: Well, as they're looking for Russell that day. Yes, Flip
Speaker 2: and Flop are kind of comic relief in the story.
Speaker 2: I found is I researched the story, people seem to
Speaker 2: get a smile on their face when they talked about
Speaker 2: the dogs, and so I kind of introduced them that
Speaker 2: way in the book and talk about them that way.
Speaker 2: But they're tracking dogs there now I forget the name,
Speaker 2: it's on the tip of my tongue. But they don't
Speaker 2: bark there. They're quiet. They sniff and they point. But
Speaker 2: they're not like on TV where you hear the bloodhounds,
Speaker 2: you know, or over through the through the yard. That's
Speaker 2: not what it is. They're very specialized dogs. They track
Speaker 2: sense and they have to come all the way from
Speaker 2: Plant City, which is the other side of Tampa. But
Speaker 2: by now the dogs are not going through the woods
Speaker 2: around Crystal Beach trying to find a scent for Russell
Speaker 2: and all these This whole search is going on all
Speaker 2: day while Sam Crane is coming to his revelation here
Speaker 2: that the killer might actually be in his house.
Speaker 3: And so with that in mind, the police go to
Speaker 3: the home and of course he's gone. So now they
Speaker 3: proceed with You talk about a huge law enforcement response
Speaker 3: along with all kinds of spectators and aposseus for him.
Speaker 3: So tell us about them catching up with him eventually.
Speaker 2: What does he do?
Speaker 3: How does he get away for a time?
Speaker 2: Well, he's while they're looking for him. He's most likely
Speaker 2: at Sam Crane's house. Now, how he gets to Tampa
Speaker 2: and all the way back the night of the murders
Speaker 2: when there's supposedly roadblocks everywhere. I have no idea. Maybe
Speaker 2: I had no idea how he did that, the sheriff says,
Speaker 2: all he knows all the back roads. Okay, maybe, but
Speaker 2: it just seems strange that he was able to avoid
Speaker 2: all the roadblocks. There's not that many roads leading off
Speaker 2: Panels County at that time, but he's at the Crane's house.
Speaker 2: So that's why they're not finding him because he's not
Speaker 2: out in the woods. He's in a house. He's back
Speaker 2: where he lives, so that's why they're not finding him.
Speaker 2: The law enforcement. You have to remember at the time, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was murder, and you know Tampa Bay at that point,
Speaker 2: it's like other big city, but this is a little
Speaker 2: small town out on the edge. And the media response
Speaker 2: to this because of the viscera parts of it, the
Speaker 2: pictures of the guy tied to the bed, but the
Speaker 2: gag in his mouth, I mean, the horrificness of it,
Speaker 2: it's like the Manson murders. It generates that type of
Speaker 2: media response. So there's media from Ollwarre, the state, and
Speaker 2: eventually it gets picked up on the AP wire and
Speaker 2: it's going worldwide. And so this was big news in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine and the public is demanding find this guy.
Speaker 2: They're all in the woods looking. So when Sam Crane
Speaker 2: finally calls police as I got to kill her, I
Speaker 2: know where he is. They come from everywhere. They come
Speaker 2: from as far away as Tampa. You have Tampa Sheriffs
Speaker 2: or Tampa police. You have Hillsboro County. You have Panellis County,
Speaker 2: you have tarp and springs, clear water Downeed and they
Speaker 2: all have their own little police forces and they all
Speaker 2: kind of work together. So they're all swarming here to
Speaker 2: Palm Harbor to where Sam Crane tells them that killer
Speaker 2: is and he's lured Rastus into a trap using his
Speaker 2: daughters and sons.
Speaker 3: Yes this is these take them on a scalloping journey
Speaker 3: and then police are watching. They see them through binoculars.
Speaker 3: There's two teams of three people in each group. And
Speaker 3: then finally they zero in on Rastus and he is
Speaker 3: on the run.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They Sam Crane gets his children to Dorothy and
Speaker 2: his two sons to take Rastus scalloping out in what's
Speaker 2: called the Dunedin Flats, and it's this shallow area of
Speaker 2: the bay. There's it's just at the time. You can
Speaker 2: wait out there. It's a very popular thing to do.
Speaker 2: You take a tub and you pick up scallops. And
Speaker 2: Rastus thinks nothing of it, so he goes out with them,
Speaker 2: and Sam Crane calls the police and says, this is
Speaker 2: your guy. I think I got him scalloping down there
Speaker 2: in the flats. He won't be able to get away
Speaker 2: because he can't run through water, and they just swarm
Speaker 2: around the flats. So there's over one hundred law enforcement
Speaker 2: people there, not to mention the media, not to mention
Speaker 2: the public, who has also shown up armed. So they're
Speaker 2: all standing around this bay looking out and they can
Speaker 2: see figures out there. Carrie finally shows up on the
Speaker 2: scene and he leads a couple of deputies out into
Speaker 2: the water, and the first three comes to the cranes,
Speaker 2: the two oldest crane boys and Dorothy, and he waves
Speaker 2: them in, you'll get into the shore. So there's three
Speaker 2: more out there. Now. We still don't know who the
Speaker 2: other people are, but Rastus is out there scalloping with
Speaker 2: two other people. They may have just been random people
Speaker 2: that we're out there scalloping on their own. But Carrie's
Speaker 2: yelling at him, get in, come on in. We got
Speaker 2: you surrounded, and Russell takes off swimming. He's an expert swimmer.
Speaker 2: He dives into the water and he starts swimming offshore.
Speaker 2: There's an island offshore called Honeymoon Island. It's still there today,
Speaker 2: very popular for weddings and everything else. Beautiful place. Rastus
Speaker 2: takes off and he's swimming towards it somehow, thinking he's
Speaker 2: going to get away. Well, Carrie isn't about to dive
Speaker 2: in and start swimming after him, so he waves the
Speaker 2: shore and says, we need a boat. So Tucker's back
Speaker 2: on shore. Tucker grabs some deputies, They run down, they
Speaker 2: get a boat. They go to tearing out through the
Speaker 2: bay after Russell. When they see him as he starts swimming,
Speaker 2: somebody starts shooting at him. We don't know where the
Speaker 2: shots came from. Probably it was one of Walter Carey's deputies.
Speaker 2: Whether Carrie ordered him to shoot or he just started
Speaker 2: acting on his own, who knows. But he misses him,
Speaker 2: but there's bullets landing all around Russell as he's swimming. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Tucker and his deputies catch up to him in the boat.
Speaker 2: They pull up to him the boat. They got guns
Speaker 2: drawn on him, and Russell knows they got him, and
Speaker 2: he stands up on a sandbar and puts his hands up,
Speaker 2: so they drag him in the boat. They drive him
Speaker 2: back to shore, and that's where they get him off
Speaker 2: the at the dock there that duned in flats, and
Speaker 2: that's where they take a kind of a famous picture
Speaker 2: of him. That goes national That picture featured in the book,
Speaker 2: but it's a picture of them unload him off the
Speaker 2: boat on the dock and dun Eden.
Speaker 3: Yes, very dramatic photo you include in the book as well,
Speaker 3: and national media and local media of course. Frenzy, you
Speaker 3: talk about that some of the Crane family, the Cranes
Speaker 3: are still in custody as material witnesses.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yes, they take Dorothy and her two brothers,
Speaker 2: Ferrel and Alan, and they're holding them as material witnesses.
Speaker 2: They eventually they release Alan that night. He's the younger
Speaker 2: of the two brothers. They keep Ferrell, Furrel, and Dorothy
Speaker 2: as material witnesses. Now they're saying that, but at the time,
Speaker 2: from the comments Tucker makes, Tucker has a suspicion that
Speaker 2: their relationship with Russell might run deeper, and he wants
Speaker 2: to make sure that they are not involved in this
Speaker 2: or any other of Russell's crimes before he lets them loose. Eventually,
Speaker 2: he does let Furrel after about nine days. He releases
Speaker 2: Furl after they've interviewed them several times. He keeps Dorothy,
Speaker 2: and I think Tucker still has his suspicion of how
Speaker 2: much Dorothy was involved with Russell and the months leading
Speaker 2: up to this. But he says he's keeping her as
Speaker 2: a material witness because he's afraid if he lets her loose.
Speaker 2: You know, the Cranes are terrified of Russell. Now they
Speaker 2: probably might not want to testify. Who knows. Tucker doesn't
Speaker 2: want to take the chance that he lets Dorothy free
Speaker 2: and the Cranes take off and leave town. They don't
Speaker 2: own their home. Their homes provided by the orange packing plant,
Speaker 2: so they can really pick up and leave whenever they want.
Speaker 2: They have no roots to hold them here, and Tucker
Speaker 2: doesn't want to take that chance. So that's his reasoning
Speaker 2: for keeping Dorothy as a material witness.
Speaker 3: Now, what's the situation at the jail, And you say
Speaker 3: the sheriff Tucker warns the jailers to be very wary
Speaker 3: of their prisoner. So what does how does Rastus respond
Speaker 3: in jail and what was his behavior there like and
Speaker 3: what was he planning?
Speaker 2: Well, Russell was a charmer when he wants to be.
Speaker 2: As I said, he is known to be very charismatic.
Speaker 2: He's popular with the other prisoners. He shares a cell
Speaker 2: with three other accused murderers and they have their own
Speaker 2: little group there, but he's also during the daytime, they
Speaker 2: have a common area where all the prisoners are let
Speaker 2: out on that cell block and mingle, and he's in
Speaker 2: there with about twenty other prisoners. He's popular with the
Speaker 2: other prisoners, he's popular with the guards, chats them all up,
Speaker 2: and you know, at times they even take him to
Speaker 2: help out with chores around the jail. He's help helps
Speaker 2: move boxes from the basement and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2: by all accounts, he's a well behaved model prisoner. They
Speaker 2: you know, the media is constantly asking about him, what
Speaker 2: you know, because he's this is big news now. They
Speaker 2: want to know every detail. They say he eats like
Speaker 2: a horse. He eats more than three prisoners combined. And
Speaker 2: but they say he's you know, submissive as a kitten.
Speaker 2: He's been the model prisoner.
Speaker 3: So what happens one Sunday night when Russell has assessed
Speaker 3: who might be the best guard to be able to
Speaker 3: pull off this escape with his new team devote and partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Russell, unbeknownst to everybody, he's bodying his time. He's
Speaker 2: not the fun, harmless guy they you know, the charming,
Speaker 2: cool guy they think he is. While he's been making
Speaker 2: friends with these guards. He has been sizing them up,
Speaker 2: which one's weakest, what their habits are, He gets their schedules,
Speaker 2: and Tucker tells them repeatedly, don't trust this guy. This
Speaker 2: guy's an escape artist. We looked up his past. He's
Speaker 2: escaped mental institutions, He's escaped prison in Illinois. He knows
Speaker 2: how to escape. Don't trust him. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Well,
Speaker 2: on that Sunday night, there just happens to be a
Speaker 2: hurricane that has blown through Panelas County from the east.
Speaker 2: It's not as powerful as being head on with it,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless it's knocked out a lot of the power.
Speaker 2: It's knocked out a lot of the phone lines, and
Speaker 2: the deputies are busy responding to things. Normally, there are
Speaker 2: at least two jailers who double his deputies at the
Speaker 2: jail most of the time. On this night, the head
Speaker 2: jailer is on vacation. He's out. The guy that usually
Speaker 2: works nights, he doesn't work Sundays, he doesn't work on
Speaker 2: the Sabbath, so he's at home. So the only guy
Speaker 2: that is there to work the jail is a new
Speaker 2: guy by the name of Brian Curry. He's been on
Speaker 2: the job six weeks, he's still kind of learning the ropes,
Speaker 2: and they figure, well, he'll be there with another deputy,
Speaker 2: he'll be okay. Well, this hurricane has just blown through,
Speaker 2: so the other deputy is out answering calls for whatever
Speaker 2: the power is out, you know, whatever is going on,
Speaker 2: and he leaves this new guy at the jail by himself.
Speaker 2: Figures so you know, Sunday night is quiet. You know,
Speaker 2: none of these guys are going to be a problem.
Speaker 2: So he's just getting ready to wind down the night. Well,
Speaker 2: Russell knows all this. Russell knows who's on vacation, he
Speaker 2: knows what night it is, he knows who doesn't work,
Speaker 2: and more than anything, he knows there's just been a
Speaker 2: hurricane and the powers out. So he knows this is
Speaker 2: his chance. He's befriended a younger inmate, a sixteen year
Speaker 2: old kid named Ray McClory, and he's he's been a
Speaker 2: influence on this kid, just like he was on Dorothy.
Speaker 2: Jean tells him these stories how they're going to escape
Speaker 2: and they're gonna get out in the Midwest, and he'll
Speaker 2: show him how to do all these things, and he
Speaker 2: paints his big idyllic picture for him. So McClory signs
Speaker 2: on and says, okay, you know what do you want
Speaker 2: me to do? So on this night, a prisoner calls
Speaker 2: up for an aspirn Curry, who's a new guard. He
Speaker 2: comes up the steps. He violates every single protocol is
Speaker 2: he leaves the gate unlocked behind him. Instead of opening
Speaker 2: the little past the past the aspirin in, he forgets
Speaker 2: the key downstairs. So he says, well, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's almost bedtime. I'll just open the door, you know,
Speaker 2: and throw the aspirin in. Somehow Russell has seen him
Speaker 2: do this before. So Russell is waiting behind the door
Speaker 2: with a it's called a blackjack and it's a it's
Speaker 2: a piece of rebar wrapped in pape for a handle.
Speaker 2: And how Russell gets that big mystery as well. But
Speaker 2: Russell's waiting back there, McClory's with him with two bars
Speaker 2: of soap inside a sock and they're waiting inside the
Speaker 2: door for Curry to open the door.
Speaker 3: That Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: Needless to say, they escape this prison and there is
Speaker 3: a man hunt called and makes the other men hunt.
Speaker 3: The previous man hunt look small. Now there is a
Speaker 3: definite panic and terror. Tell us the police response and
Speaker 3: the public response and the media response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is and this is even bigger than the
Speaker 2: initial one because now they know who he is, so
Speaker 2: they know not only is he a murderer knife murder,
Speaker 2: but he's got his background of escape and violence and
Speaker 2: mental institution, all this stuff. And now he's escaped. Now
Speaker 2: he's on the loose, and he has sworn apparently inside prison,
Speaker 2: he's sworn vengeance against the Cranes for what he sees
Speaker 2: is betraying him. So and he's also sworn vengeance against
Speaker 2: the law enforcement officers that arrested him and everything else.
Speaker 2: So everybody's terrified. You know, the Cranes pack up their
Speaker 2: stuff as soon as they find out he's escaped jail,
Speaker 2: and they go to a friend's house because they you know,
Speaker 2: they don't know if he's coming for them or not.
Speaker 2: And now he's not in little Crystal Beach. He's in
Speaker 2: downtown Clearwater, which is a you know, it's not big
Speaker 2: like it is now, but it's still a bigger town.
Speaker 2: And he's on the loose. He's running through the town
Speaker 2: and you've got law enforcement from around the state that
Speaker 2: shows up. Tucker calls out the National Guard. The National
Speaker 2: Guard shows up. They're shooting light up star starburst flares
Speaker 2: into the sky. So it's it's bursting like you ever
Speaker 2: see the movie Titanic where they're shooting up the flares
Speaker 2: and lighting up the whole sky. That's what it's like.
Speaker 2: So it's got this surreal feel to it. There's cops
Speaker 2: going through the streets, there's citizens going through the streets
Speaker 2: with rifles. People are standing out on their curbs because
Speaker 2: they're terrified to be inside. You know, they're huddling in groups.
Speaker 2: And this goes on all night. This goes all on
Speaker 2: all night in downtown Clearwater. You know that in itself
Speaker 2: is a major dramatic event to the whole story.
Speaker 3: You write that, meanwhile, what we haven't spoken about is
Speaker 3: the desperate attempt by prosecutor McMullen to have this case
Speaker 3: go to a grand jury, to be able to get
Speaker 3: an indictment in a preliminary hearing and get this case
Speaker 3: in front of a jury, because this is a death
Speaker 3: penalty case and can aid in anybody's political ambitions. But
Speaker 3: also that the public is clamoring for justice with this case.
Speaker 3: At the same time that there's this serious manhunt, Sheriff
Speaker 3: Tucker and Prosecutor McMullen are at the courthouse dealing with
Speaker 3: the grand jury and that response legally to what Russell
Speaker 3: has done so.
Speaker 2: Far, well, yeah, that comes. That's later when they finally
Speaker 2: get to the grand jury. But at this point mullin
Speaker 2: is he's under the gun because this is a high
Speaker 2: profile case and he got to make sure it sticks.
Speaker 2: He's got to send Russell to the electric chair. Nothing
Speaker 2: else is going to do. And he's got a lot
Speaker 2: of hoops to jump through to do that. First of all,
Speaker 2: he's got to get in front of a grand jury.
Speaker 2: With the grand jury is just broke for break and
Speaker 2: they're not scheduled to reconvene until December. Well, he wants
Speaker 2: him now. Yeah, he wants to get this done now.
Speaker 2: He wants to get this in front of a grand jury,
Speaker 2: get an indictment, get this thing to trial, and put
Speaker 2: Russell in the electric chair. McMullen has political ambition and one,
Speaker 2: you know, putting this guy in the electric chair is
Speaker 2: going to be a big feather in his cap, not
Speaker 2: only for name recogniz but you know, establishing him as
Speaker 2: a crime fighter, but also there's public outcry, so he's
Speaker 2: he's under a lot of pressure to make this stick.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's he's been working behind the scenes. So
Speaker 2: Russell's escaped now puts that in jeopardy. And it also
Speaker 2: makes Sheriff Tucker look look bad because it's his jail
Speaker 2: Russell escaped from. So Russell has just made two guys,
Speaker 2: two very powerful guys, look very bad and very stupid,
Speaker 2: and they don't like that.
Speaker 3: You take us to this very dramatic scene in Thano, Tusasa,
Speaker 3: where Russell had grown up, and you've described this as
Speaker 3: this extreme wilderness area and he is a desperate man,
Speaker 3: a haggard looking man on the run and knows some
Speaker 3: residents from this area from when he was a kid.
Speaker 3: Tell us what happens as law enforcement closes in and
Speaker 3: this desperate man becomes even more desperate.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, yeah, Russell eventually after several days on the run,
Speaker 2: which is an interesting story as well, but he ends
Speaker 2: up in Fanota, Sassa, which is a tiny town about
Speaker 2: sixteen miles outside of Tampa, very small, very rural, beautiful place,
Speaker 2: but it's very sparsely populated. Russell spent the first ten
Speaker 2: years of his life here with his grandparents, so this
Speaker 2: is home for him. His mother's buried here. He likely
Speaker 2: visits his mother's grave, he says that's a reason one
Speaker 2: of the reasons for going back there. But he takes
Speaker 2: refutes in an orange grove there where he feels safe.
Speaker 2: He's isolated. He's out in the middle of nowhere. He
Speaker 2: knows this country. So Russell sets up a little camp there.
Speaker 2: He's got his car parked, he's got a little clothes
Speaker 2: line up, he's got swimming trunks. He's got the lake
Speaker 2: so he can bathe. He has drinks king water. Now
Speaker 2: he's managed to steal some supplies from some stores from
Speaker 2: his run on the way over here, and Russell's getting
Speaker 2: ready to make a run for the state line. So
Speaker 2: he's got the car, he's got food. He's just biding
Speaker 2: his time. He's getting a little more supplies and then
Speaker 2: he's going to make a run for the state line
Speaker 2: because once he gets out side the state of Florida
Speaker 2: law enforcement isn't as coordinated as is today. There's a
Speaker 2: lot lower chance they're going to find him. So he
Speaker 2: thinks he's comfortable there. What happens is just by chance.
Speaker 2: There happens to be an Orange grove worker that's driving
Speaker 2: through checking the status of the trees after the hurricane,
Speaker 2: and he sees this strange car parked out in the
Speaker 2: middle of the grove with a camp around it, and
Speaker 2: he calls Hillsborough County Sheriffs and he's whether he knows
Speaker 2: it might be Russell or not, or he's just reporting
Speaker 2: a suspicious vehicle. By the time the sheriff show up,
Speaker 2: they already have an apb out on the car. They
Speaker 2: have an ap b out on Russell on the car
Speaker 2: he's stolen, and they know immediately this is the car.
Speaker 2: So as soon as they know, the word goes out.
Speaker 2: And again you have officers from around the state, you know,
Speaker 2: flooding in for this search. So there's and Tucker and
Speaker 2: McMullin are in the grand jury this day, so they
Speaker 2: can't leave. But Tucker dispatches a big bunch of his
Speaker 2: deputies and they head over there. Hillsboro deputies are there,
Speaker 2: Tampa PD's there, and they're all in this big search party.
Speaker 2: They're combing the woods well out of this Hillsborough County
Speaker 2: Sheriff Hugh Calbreath calls in his best detective. So Spooner
Speaker 2: is this larger than life character six'. Four he's got
Speaker 2: A John wayne, Voice John wayne, personality and that's how
Speaker 2: he enforces a. Lot Like John, Wayne he's that type of.
Speaker 2: Character he Is callbreast's best. Deputy he's a rising star
Speaker 2: in The Hillsborough County Sheriff's. Office and, he Like, russell
Speaker 2: has grown up in the woods Of Theanota. Sassa So
Speaker 2: russell may think he has an advantage in the orange
Speaker 2: groves and, swamps But spooner has grown up in these
Speaker 2: woods as, Well So spooner knows the woods every bit
Speaker 2: as well as rast As. Russell so they send In.
Speaker 2: Spooner they send In Officer Harvey fraser Of Plant City,
Speaker 2: police And fraser is the one that has the dogs
Speaker 2: flip and. Flop So spooner And fraser start following the.
Speaker 2: Woods the rest of these they're following the dog's. Trail
Speaker 2: the dog picks up a scent Of russell and they're
Speaker 2: tracking him through this orange. Growth the rest of the
Speaker 2: officers that are dozens on scene now they're combing the.
Speaker 2: Groves they're home in the swamp looking for. Him spooner
Speaker 2: And fraser are following a. Dog so the dogs go
Speaker 2: tearing off through the. Woods actually just have one, Dog
Speaker 2: they just have flip and flips flips on the Scind
Speaker 2: so they track him for about an hour and the
Speaker 2: trail keeps doubling, back doubling. Back russell's trying to lose the.
Speaker 2: Dog by doubling, Back russell knows the dog's on his.
Speaker 2: Trail they finally track him to this big tree and
Speaker 2: the dog's going crazy And fraser's trying to hold it.
Speaker 2: Back and by this time the dog is barking because
Speaker 2: he sees, him and he's straining and he's flips trying
Speaker 2: to get to the, tree And fraser's holding him back
Speaker 2: makes him heal and they see a figure peek from
Speaker 2: behind the, tree and they Immediately fraser draws his. Weapon
Speaker 2: spooner has a twelve gage. Shotgun he levels a shotgun
Speaker 2: and he, says come out from behind a tree or
Speaker 2: we're going to kill. You And russell's looking a. Cigarette
Speaker 2: he steps out from behind a, tree doesn't put his hands,
Speaker 2: up but he doesn't charge. Either, well they're under orders
Speaker 2: to shoot to, kill So spooner fires his thirty eight
Speaker 2: three times right Into. Russell you, Know, russell you asks
Speaker 2: him to. Surrender he didn't, Surrender he stood. There fraser shoots,
Speaker 2: him hits him a couple times with the thirty. Eight
Speaker 2: russell becomes, enraged pulls out a switchblade knife and charges.
Speaker 2: Them well as he, Does spooner fires three blasts from
Speaker 2: his shotgun and virtually just cuts him in, half And
Speaker 2: russell goes. Down they go running up to, him and
Speaker 2: as he's, Dying russell, says You fellas killed, me And
Speaker 2: i'm glad you, did and that's directly From spooner And
Speaker 2: fraser is to his last, words and then he dies
Speaker 2: and he's. Yeah the place becomes like a media, frenzy you,
Speaker 2: know they've Killed Rastus, russell and people come from all
Speaker 2: over the place and they're taking, pictures taking pictures with the,
Speaker 2: body taking, souvenirs taking pieces of, dirt just like when
Speaker 2: they Killed bonnie And.
Speaker 3: Clyde and a very interesting scene as well is That
Speaker 3: Todd tucker at that time at the courthouse gets a
Speaker 3: message That Rastus russell is.
Speaker 2: Dead, exactly And russell announces to the grand jury and
Speaker 2: they break out into. Applause everybody's happy because this guy's a.
Speaker 2: MONSTER i, mean he's considered a. Monster they're chasing a,
Speaker 2: viperous horrible, monster and the fact that he's dead is
Speaker 2: just such a relief to. Everyone even the grand, jury you,
Speaker 2: know is happy to hear. It tucker disappointed he wasn't
Speaker 2: the one there to get, him he spent so much,
Speaker 2: time but he's got to be pleased that they did
Speaker 2: get him and he's not going to have to live
Speaker 2: with this story of this guy escaping his jails his legacy.
Speaker 3: Absolutely in the, afterword you write that this book became
Speaker 3: more of an examination of human nature, itself with everyone
Speaker 3: and everything being called into, question nothing or no one
Speaker 3: being one hundred percent good or, bad and a hell
Speaker 3: of a lot of unanswered. QUESTIONS i want to thank
Speaker 3: you so much for coming on and talking about this incredible,
Speaker 3: book and there is so much more to discover with
Speaker 3: this book story than we could got into in this ninety.
Speaker 3: Minutes BUT i want to ask you for people that
Speaker 3: might want to find out more about this story and your,
Speaker 3: book can you refer them to a website or any
Speaker 3: social media you do.
Speaker 2: Sure my website is mfgross dot. Com you can also
Speaker 2: email me at author at mfgross dot. Com we are
Speaker 2: are working on a screenplay right, now AND i have
Speaker 2: already talked to some line producers about a possible indie,
Speaker 2: Film so if you have any interest in, that feel
Speaker 2: free to email me as. Well BUT i really appreciate
Speaker 2: having me on, Today Dan, well thank you so.
Speaker 3: MUCH i really appreciate this. Interview thank you so much For,
Speaker 3: madman the incredible true story Of John Calvin Rastus, russell
Speaker 3: the heinous crime and sensational manhunt the Terrified Central florida
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty. Nine thank you so, Much michael for this,
Speaker 3: interview and you have a great evening and good.
Speaker 2: Night