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Speaker 1: After details Radio. You are now listening to True Murder,
Speaker 1: The most shocking killers in true crime history and the
Speaker 1: authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The
Speaker 1: Nightstalker BTK every week another fascinating author talking about the
Speaker 1: most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True
Speaker 1: Murder with your host, journalist and author.
Speaker 2: Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. From nineteen twenty six to nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight, Gordon Stewart Northcott committed at least twenty murders
Speaker 2: on a chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. His thirteen
Speaker 2: year old nephew, Sandford Clark, was the sole surviving victim
Speaker 2: of the killing spree. Forced to take part in the murders,
Speaker 2: Sandford carried tremendous guilt all his life, yet, despite his
Speaker 2: youth and the trauma, he helped gain some justice for
Speaker 2: the dead in their families by testifying at Northcott's trial,
Speaker 2: which led to his conviction and execution. It was a
Speaker 2: shocking story. Perhaps the most shocking part of all is
Speaker 2: the extraordinarily ordinary life Clark went on to live as
Speaker 2: a decorated World War II VET, a devoted husband of
Speaker 2: fifty five years, a loving father, and a productive citizen.
Speaker 2: Using never before heard information from Sandford's son, Jerry Clark,
Speaker 2: Flacco tells the real story behind the case that captivated
Speaker 2: the nation. In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in
Speaker 2: American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how
Speaker 2: Sandford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he'd encountered,
Speaker 2: offering the ultimately redempt the story of one man's remarkable
Speaker 2: ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact. The book
Speaker 2: that we're featuring this evening is Road Out of Hell,
Speaker 2: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders
Speaker 2: with my special guest, journalist and author Anthony Flacco. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to the program, and thank you for agreeing this interview.
Speaker 2: Anthony Flacco, Thank you, Dan, I appreciate being here today. Well,
Speaker 2: thank you very much. And I got a like I
Speaker 2: said to you in the just before, I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell people to fasten their seatbelts, because this one is
Speaker 2: an extraordinarily horrifying tale and like I say, where fiction
Speaker 2: is trumped by nonfiction hands down. So let's get right
Speaker 2: to this. What brought you to this story?
Speaker 7: Well, Jerry himself had sought out a writer and had
Speaker 7: interviewed I believe several and I sent to him as
Speaker 7: one of the people he talked with my take on
Speaker 7: how I thought the story ought to be told, and
Speaker 7: so he decided to do it with me, and we
Speaker 7: partnered up and I interviewed him over over months of time,
Speaker 7: and then sat down and wrote this book, this astounding
Speaker 7: story which was touched on in some newscasts that I'd seen,
Speaker 7: and part of it was done, of course by Clint
Speaker 7: Eastwood in the film Changeling, but that movie focused on
Speaker 7: the murders and the murder farm and never really told
Speaker 7: you anything about what about the kid who was put
Speaker 7: through it all and what happened to him. And that's when,
Speaker 7: through Jerry, I got this amazing story of this guy,
Speaker 7: which is in my mind so powerful because Sandford Clark,
Speaker 7: who went through this in the age of twelve to fourteen,
Speaker 7: was just a completely ordinary person. He wasn't stupid, but
Speaker 7: he wasn't brilliant. He wasn't ugly, but he wasn't handsome.
Speaker 7: He was kind of small statuted, he was kind of
Speaker 7: quiet in his demeanor. He's someone who could pass through
Speaker 7: a crowd unnoticed. He could be anybody. And yet when
Speaker 7: it came down to this hellish goolog that he was
Speaker 7: dragged through for two years, he found a reservoir of
Speaker 7: determination to be well, to get back on his feet
Speaker 7: that was so astounding. It puts on that level. He was, like,
Speaker 7: you know, a brilliant musician playing at their best. He
Speaker 7: encountered this talent for survival that I believe makes the
Speaker 7: story so interesting because obviously, if he can do it,
Speaker 7: so can you, and so can I. We spend our
Speaker 7: lives detached from that ability, because you know, God forbid
Speaker 7: we have to actually call on it. But it exists,
Speaker 7: and you can watch it happen here in this very
Speaker 7: ordinary boy. And then how he went about living the
Speaker 7: next half century later and without not without great great
Speaker 7: pain and sacrifice. He wasn't able ever to shrug this off.
Speaker 7: He was able to carry it and endure and flourish
Speaker 7: in spite of, you know, like a heavily handicapped person
Speaker 7: of any kind does when they meet their determination with reality.
Speaker 7: So to me, that's what captured me in the story,
Speaker 7: and it was the only reason I could endure learning
Speaker 7: about and then even worse, having to write about his
Speaker 7: two years on the murder farm. But it was an
Speaker 7: early choice I made in one of the things I
Speaker 7: said to Jerry when we were first talking about the
Speaker 7: project was, if you're going to tell this story, you
Speaker 7: can't backpedal on what happened. You can't make it politically correct,
Speaker 7: you can't soften it in any way, because if you
Speaker 7: do that, you're already lying. The boy didn't go through
Speaker 7: a softened version, and until we understand what the cave
Speaker 7: he was pulled through for those two years, I don't
Speaker 7: believe you can appreciate his recovery as well, because you
Speaker 7: can't really measure the distance otherwise. So that's why we
Speaker 7: spend a fair amount of time on that murder farm
Speaker 7: in this story, because I think in that way, it's
Speaker 7: like any medieval torture situation, like Auschwitz or any other
Speaker 7: place where it's so horrible you have to say what
Speaker 7: it is. You have to describe what it is because
Speaker 7: you can't sanitize it. The very act of sanitizing. It
Speaker 7: seems somehow a little obscene, given the fact that this
Speaker 7: boy didn't get anything sanitized. And yet, and yet, and yet,
Speaker 7: many years later, when he finally meets his love he
Speaker 7: stayed with forever, and they marry and find out they
Speaker 7: can't have kids of their own. What does he do.
Speaker 7: He goes to the orphanage and adopts two of their
Speaker 7: hard adopt older boys, three and six years old, because
Speaker 7: he has been so filled with empathy for what it's
Speaker 7: like to be stranded, and he doesn't want those guys
Speaker 7: stranded in an orphanage the way he was stranded on
Speaker 7: that farm. I mean, that's a hint as to how
Speaker 7: he transposed his torment into success. And I say again,
Speaker 7: I don't mean to make anything blithe about this. You
Speaker 7: know that it was at easy at all, or that
Speaker 7: he had any ability to wall it off, which he didn't.
Speaker 7: You know, he suffered with it. But that's an example
Speaker 7: of how he physically transformed the energy he was carrying
Speaker 7: into something good in his present day life.
Speaker 2: Now let's go back to how you start this book.
Speaker 2: We introduced the characters that are in this tragic play.
Speaker 2: You introduced his sister Jesse. Yes, again, won't too much away,
Speaker 2: but this is such a heroic character. His sister is
Speaker 2: seventeen years old. You said Sandford is twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 7: Yes, and you can correct me on that age when
Speaker 7: it starts.
Speaker 2: And then it's his mother Winnie and her husband John Clark.
Speaker 2: So before we start, as you start in the book,
Speaker 2: you have uncle Gordon Stuart Northcott, and you have this
Speaker 2: conversation about Uncle Stuart taking little Sandford to go to Regina.
Speaker 2: Tell us about this conversation and how it transpired, what
Speaker 2: did Uncle Stuart really want? And tell us about the
Speaker 2: dynamic between Winnie and John, who really wears the pants
Speaker 2: in the family, and what does Winnie really like in
Speaker 2: terms of her character. Tell us about this as you
Speaker 2: do in the book. Describe this very very vivid scene.
Speaker 7: Well, Gordon Stewart Northcott was Sandford Clark. Uncle Sandford is
Speaker 7: twelve at Northcott at that time is only twenty. He's
Speaker 7: not quite twenty one yet, but he's already living on
Speaker 7: his own and he's driven up to Canada from Los Angeles,
Speaker 7: where he and his family have lived for the last
Speaker 7: two years. Even though they're Canadians. The reason they left Canadian.
Speaker 7: They'd fled their home neighborhood because there were all sorts
Speaker 7: of bad rumors about their son, Gordon Stewart Northcott and
Speaker 7: his conduct around the little children, and so they went
Speaker 7: to escape to America. But after two years he shows
Speaker 7: up back in Canada at his sister Winnie's house, and
Speaker 7: Whinnie is Sandford's mom. He and when he's his older sister,
Speaker 7: but they're extremely close. They have this incestuous relationship which
Speaker 7: I don't know or nor do I claim there was
Speaker 7: a sexual component, but there was certainly a hugely inappropriate
Speaker 7: intimacy between them, like two giggling lovers, and they would
Speaker 7: carry this out underneath her husband, John's nose, because Winnie
Speaker 7: was already basically a poorly contained psychopath and John had
Speaker 7: just been bitched into silence. This guy just wanted to
Speaker 7: get through the day without having his ear chewed off
Speaker 7: and have dinner. So in terms of being any protection
Speaker 7: to Sandford against Winnie, he was inert. He was a
Speaker 7: piece of furniture. Unfortunately, now Stuart shows up, Uncle Stuart
Speaker 7: and says he's got this grand plan. He's going to
Speaker 7: start a chicken ranch out outside Los Angeles, down near
Speaker 7: his parents' place, and he needs for Sandford to come
Speaker 7: along to help him work on the ranch and get
Speaker 7: it started. And after all, Sandford's not doing well in
Speaker 7: school and they figure it's time for him to learn
Speaker 7: a trade. And he actually talks Sandford's mom into letting
Speaker 7: him put Sandford in the car, and of course they're
Speaker 7: crossing the border illegally and drives straight down into La
Speaker 7: and outside La in the little town of Wineville, which
Speaker 7: was this irrigated part of the desert where they were
Speaker 7: growing some grapes. Back then. He had this three acres
Speaker 7: of land his parents had bought for him, raw desert
Speaker 7: scrub with a little fence around it, and these two
Speaker 7: guys were to transform it into a functioning chicken ranch.
Speaker 7: And the thing is, she let him go, even though
Speaker 7: the whole family knew why they had had to flee
Speaker 7: Canada in the first place two years earlier, and he
Speaker 7: was back there by himself, without a kny oversight at all.
Speaker 7: But she let him go, and Sandford right away knew
Speaker 7: it was trouble and objected and didn't want to go
Speaker 7: and was basically dragged into the car, and shortly after
Speaker 7: they got on the road, virtually as soon as Sandford
Speaker 7: was completely under Uncle Stuart's control is when the beatings began.
Speaker 7: By the time they even reached California, he had already
Speaker 7: taken a lot of violence enough to know that he
Speaker 7: was in real trouble. So they get to Uncle Stuart's
Speaker 7: parents' house in LA before they go on out to
Speaker 7: the Chicken Ranch area, and he thinks, well, now finally
Speaker 7: there's other people around and he'll stop this. And it
Speaker 7: turns out their household is just as crazy and violent
Speaker 7: as his own, which kind of tells you where the
Speaker 7: man who would become Gordon Stewart Northcott grew up and
Speaker 7: why he grew up the way he did. Because there
Speaker 7: again the woman is a completely toxic, psychotic woman who
Speaker 7: has completely beaten her husband into silent submission, and she
Speaker 7: winds up driving a lot of the murder story herself,
Speaker 7: and then later participating and trying to help her son
Speaker 7: escape once the whole thing unravels two years down the road.
Speaker 7: So these two guys, Gordon Stewart Northcott and Sanford Clark,
Speaker 7: were both trapped between two highly psychotic, dominant female figures
Speaker 7: who just had their own demons and like some kind
Speaker 7: of magnetism. They were drawn together, this group of people,
Speaker 7: a psychotic magnetism, and for Sandford found himself caught in
Speaker 7: the middle of that. I'm losing my train of thought.
Speaker 7: But oh no, they got pups of They go out
Speaker 7: to the desert and they pitch a tent and literally
Speaker 7: begin building this chicken ranch from scratch, building the chicken coops,
Speaker 7: building a small two room house to be the main
Speaker 7: home there, and they do over time get it built.
Speaker 7: Sandford winds up doing much of the work while Uncle
Speaker 7: Stuart overseas, and it isn't too long during their time
Speaker 7: out on the ranch before Sandford takes his first knockdown
Speaker 7: beating rape from Uncle Stuart. These rapes then continue throughout
Speaker 7: the rest of his time there, and shortly after that
Speaker 7: he brings home his first boy to lock into a
Speaker 7: chicken coop and force Sandford to be his jailer.
Speaker 2: Now, just a little bit, you talk about that Stewart
Speaker 2: was trapped between these two psychopaths, but to be fair
Speaker 2: for our audience, we really haven't talked about how bizarre
Speaker 2: his behavior is and some of the things that he
Speaker 2: tells Sanford almost immediately about his utopia and about trash
Speaker 2: and about half Wits and about Hollywood. So there's some
Speaker 2: real ratings that Sanford also realizes that this guy's very crazy,
Speaker 2: and so he needs to adapt his behavior so that
Speaker 2: he gets less of a beating, which he knows is
Speaker 2: going to come anyway. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: more about distinctively Stuart's behavior, right.
Speaker 7: He instinctively starts taking on a classic victim stance, which
Speaker 7: is to modify your behavior to keep your tormentor as
Speaker 7: quiet as you possibly can. And I think it's just
Speaker 7: it must be instinct among us that we do that,
Speaker 7: you know in some Yeah, I think you can see
Speaker 7: it with animals around a dominant animal, the way they
Speaker 7: curtail their behavior. And he started learning that right away,
Speaker 7: even before the actual so called teaching began emphasized with beatings.
Speaker 7: But what, yes, and what. Uncle Stuart may have been
Speaker 7: born as a normal person, but with the family he
Speaker 7: was in, you're almost guaranteed to come out crazy. And
Speaker 7: by the time Sandford was in his care from the
Speaker 7: age twenty on of Uncle Stuart, he was already a
Speaker 7: full blown psychopath. And to me, when I say psychopath,
Speaker 7: I'm not a doctor. I'm not using any kind of
Speaker 7: a psychiatric term. That the distinguishing mark I draw when
Speaker 7: I'm interpreting any character or any person as a psychopath
Speaker 7: is it's not enough that they don't care if they
Speaker 7: hurt you. There's something in them that needs to hurt
Speaker 7: you while they're getting done whatever it is they're getting done.
Speaker 7: That even if they could steal your money, that's okay,
Speaker 7: But it's not enough unless they steal your money and
Speaker 7: hurt you, or steal your money and kill you. That
Speaker 7: need to do harm to the innocent on top of
Speaker 7: whatever you're stealing or whatever's going on, that need to
Speaker 7: me is the element of psychosis. And Gordon Stewart Northcott
Speaker 7: had it in spades, and you're right. Shortly after getting
Speaker 7: in the car, Stuart, excuse me, Sanford, he knew he
Speaker 7: was in deep trouble, deep deep trouble. But part of
Speaker 7: it is a sign of the times. It's nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 7: Then what is he going to do? The only communication
Speaker 7: is a telephone, and most people still don't have one.
Speaker 7: Once you're out of sight, once you're out of shouting distance.
Speaker 7: Back in those days, you are gone. And he was gone,
Speaker 7: and now he's an illegal alien in a country. He's
Speaker 7: not supposed to be in where they have no connections,
Speaker 7: no friends other than one toxic family of psychotics in
Speaker 7: Los Angeles. This boy had invisible bars around him from
Speaker 7: the moment he left Canada. And of course Stuart doing
Speaker 7: the thing that so many dominating people will do in
Speaker 7: a situation like that, to assert dominance immediately makes Sandford
Speaker 7: paranoid about what would happen if the Americans caught him
Speaker 7: down there illegally, and how he would go to prison,
Speaker 7: and what they do to boys in prison, and graphically
Speaker 7: describing gang rape to him ironically while he's doing this
Speaker 7: as they're driving down, as if this is the way
Speaker 7: to avoid all of that. It was actually getting close
Speaker 7: to the beginning of that very thing for Sandford himself,
Speaker 7: at the hands of his uncle.
Speaker 2: Now, one other thing before we talk about while, we
Speaker 2: should just talk about the depths of depravity from Sandford
Speaker 2: right now, because it's key to him being silent and
Speaker 2: not wanting to escape and not having the confidence in
Speaker 2: so many areas it's certainly not confidence instilling whatsoever. But
Speaker 2: there was also again when we talk about sadism, sadism
Speaker 2: when we're talking about rape, but also sexual assault with
Speaker 2: weapons and objects, and so it's added to the humiliation.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure when this occurs, but he has
Speaker 2: this huge scar on his back, which becomes very very
Speaker 2: important later with his sister, but where he is scalded.
Speaker 2: So any little thing he is beaten for. But tell
Speaker 2: us about how the sexual assault is perpetrated on the
Speaker 2: boy and some of the things, horrendous things that he
Speaker 2: does to him.
Speaker 7: Now, I have to tell you, Dan, I've been asked
Speaker 7: the question before, and I just won't go into the
Speaker 7: details of it in an interview, which is only my
Speaker 7: way of trying to say it's that awful. You know,
Speaker 7: it is written down, it's in the story part of it,
Speaker 7: need to know, But in an interview, I just I
Speaker 7: don't even like repeating that stuff. The energy is too sick.
Speaker 7: Suffice it to say your worst nightmare about being captive. Now,
Speaker 7: let's set the scene a little better. This chicken ranch
Speaker 7: is in what's now even now is it kind of
Speaker 7: a remote suburb of Los Angeles. But back then was
Speaker 7: an isolated little desert town with that California sun, big
Speaker 7: desert stretching in all directions around him, or some equally
Speaker 7: dry desert mountains on the other side, even if he ran,
Speaker 7: that's what he was running too. He was afraid to
Speaker 7: knock on doors because he'd been indoctrinated about what would
Speaker 7: happen because he was there illegally, and how he would
Speaker 7: wind up in prison. There was no telephone anywhere in
Speaker 7: the area. Residences didn't have them except for wealthy people
Speaker 7: back then. And once, after months of abuse and terror,
Speaker 7: he finally risked just running just I think his instinct
Speaker 7: made his legs run. But once he got out in
Speaker 7: the desert realized there was nowhere he could go, he
Speaker 7: turned around and came back, and you know, was thrown
Speaker 7: in a chicken pit for days for his trouble. So
Speaker 7: it's a lesson too, on the psychological breakdown a person
Speaker 7: goes through under this kind of captivity. When we sit
Speaker 7: and say, well, why didn't you run, you know, we're
Speaker 7: being really ignorant of what they're up against. That his
Speaker 7: world at that time was so crushed and so distorted,
Speaker 7: and help was absolutely remote. Help was a fantasy to him,
Speaker 7: the only escape he ever had. He had been a
Speaker 7: voracious reader, even though he was a poor student in school,
Speaker 7: and he had brought down a stash of his favorite
Speaker 7: westerns which he loved to read, and so he would
Speaker 7: use the fact that he could read and these Okay, round.
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Speaker 7: Story is to get some measure of escape. But you
Speaker 7: you think back. That's all that he had. Once in
Speaker 7: a while, they had access to a radio that they
Speaker 7: could listen to, but the radio is powered by the
Speaker 7: car's battery, which means you can't listen to it for
Speaker 7: very long. This was their only contact with the outside world.
Speaker 7: And he was twelve, and much of those two years
Speaker 7: from twelve to fourteen, he was in some state of
Speaker 7: injury from his latest beatings. So he's starving, he's intimidated,
Speaker 7: and he's constantly recovering from one injury or another and
Speaker 7: the related illnesses and infections of those injuries. And this
Speaker 7: kid was under a personal holocaust all his own.
Speaker 2: Now the only relief that he has in this nightmare
Speaker 2: is going to be little relief for him at any
Speaker 2: time later in his life, but it's still as a
Speaker 2: measure of some relief. And that comes in Uncle Stuart
Speaker 2: leaving the ranch and going some where and finding another victim.
Speaker 2: So tell us about what happens with the young Mexican boy.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, there's an odd kind of piece that he
Speaker 7: would get. The only piece he would get was once
Speaker 7: in a while Stuart would go into town or off
Speaker 7: who knows where. But it quickly became a dangerous piece
Speaker 7: that a quiet that had no peace to it, I
Speaker 7: should say, because on one of those early trips out,
Speaker 7: Stewart comes back home with a bucket and a cloth
Speaker 7: over the top, and he makes Sandford come and look
Speaker 7: in the bucket, and Sandford thinks it's an animal that
Speaker 7: he's killed, until he gets a closer look and sees
Speaker 7: it's a human head. And Uncle Stuart gives him some
Speaker 7: absolutely off the wall explanation about how this was a
Speaker 7: Mexican worker he was going to maybe hire, but the
Speaker 7: guy tried to rob him and he was going to
Speaker 7: shoot him, and so he had to kill him, and
Speaker 7: he threw his body out in the desert, but he
Speaker 7: kept the head for whatever reason, and now they had
Speaker 7: to dispose of the head. And he made Sandford build
Speaker 7: a big fire pit out back and put the head
Speaker 7: in it and burn it and keep the fire burning
Speaker 7: under it for many hours, and then take the skull
Speaker 7: and put it in the pail and pound it with
Speaker 7: a fence post until it was broken up like rocks.
Speaker 7: Supposedly to keep Uncle Stuart from being prosecuted for a
Speaker 7: murder that was nothing more than self defense. And so
Speaker 7: not only did it, it introduced this horror, just like
Speaker 7: you know, waking you with cold water out of a
Speaker 7: sound sleep. On one hand, it also demonstrated Uncle Stuart's
Speaker 7: modus operandi for the rest of those two years, which
Speaker 7: is that he would come to you. What he was
Speaker 7: posing is a perfectly logical explanation. Any fool could see
Speaker 7: this is how it is, and then proceed to recite
Speaker 7: some piece of twisted madness that no sane person is
Speaker 7: going to go along with, such as it was self defense,
Speaker 7: so I had to cut off his head and hide
Speaker 7: his body and burn the skull. But you're expected to
Speaker 7: go along with him as if he's sitting there like
Speaker 7: your personal accountant, giving you facts and figures instead of
Speaker 7: absolute twisted nonsense. That's what he demanded that Sandford do.
Speaker 7: Not only did he help him, but participate as if
Speaker 7: this is what you do in such a situation. That
Speaker 7: contrast of obvious lying with obvious sickness became a theme
Speaker 7: for the next two years.
Speaker 2: Dad insult injury too. There was a sense of humor
Speaker 2: attached to this that Sandford really never found humorous, did he, Well, yes.
Speaker 7: I mean the humor of mockery is all that, and
Speaker 7: anyone who's been bullied would understand that how a bully
Speaker 7: is kind of like a lightweight psychopath. They're not psychopaths,
Speaker 7: but they're leaning in the same flavor of seasoning. Because
Speaker 7: there again, they're not happy unless they are watching themselves
Speaker 7: make you miserable or unhappy or uncomfortable or afraid. They
Speaker 7: are somehow taking a charge and getting a nice puff
Speaker 7: of air and their sails by seeing you depleted in
Speaker 7: some way. And I think that's what makes a person
Speaker 7: a bully. It isn't being big or strong or using violence,
Speaker 7: though it can be all these things. It's the same
Speaker 7: reason that mean girls in a great school class can
Speaker 7: still be bullies too, as small as they are, because
Speaker 7: there'll just be those who have the personality that needs
Speaker 7: to belittle others. And this was constant with Uncle Stuart,
Speaker 7: that for him it was almost like breathing. You constantly
Speaker 7: treat sin as though everything he did was wrong and
Speaker 7: everything he said was foolish, and every thing about him
Speaker 7: was an irritating problem, so that it's like rubbing someone
Speaker 7: with sandpaper all day long, that in addition to whatever
Speaker 7: torments he might inflict, the ordinary neutral, the idling engine
Speaker 7: of his craziness needed to just sandpaper your face twenty
Speaker 7: four hours a day. And of course Sandford had nowhere
Speaker 7: to go to get away from it. There is no
Speaker 7: one to turn to. It's a two room house in
Speaker 7: the middle of a baking desert, stinking of chicken crap,
Speaker 7: and he spends his day gathering eggs and cleaning up
Speaker 7: the cages. And that was what he knew of what
Speaker 7: it meant to be a human being and to be alive.
Speaker 7: That was his experience. If he had died, that would
Speaker 7: have been what he found this life to be. And
Speaker 7: I think as we get to that, then the real
Speaker 7: element of horror it starts to It's like the theme
Speaker 7: from Jaws. It just starts to follow you and grow larger.
Speaker 7: And the reason that we do that, the reason the
Speaker 7: story proceeds in that way, is because this is exactly
Speaker 7: what happened to Sandford himself. It's as much as he
Speaker 7: knew he was in trouble from day one. Man, the
Speaker 7: news just kept getting worse and worse and worse. It's
Speaker 7: difficult to stay with. And yet, like I said, you
Speaker 7: can't just say, wow, he had a bad time for
Speaker 7: two years, because once you see how far down he is,
Speaker 7: you then get to watch the process of what are
Speaker 7: you're going to do. You haven't died, You've gone through
Speaker 7: the legal side of this thing. You've gone through the trial.
Speaker 7: They put you in juvenile home, which they did until
Speaker 7: he reached eighteen. But the juvenile home was the healthiest
Speaker 7: place he'd ever been, and he flourished there. It was
Speaker 7: a place where you're treated kindly, by the way, was
Speaker 7: not a prison, and he was never tormented or harmed
Speaker 7: while he was there. Somebody goes back to Canada and
Speaker 7: now you're eighteen years old, your whole family's gone. The
Speaker 7: town you go back to, they all know what happened.
Speaker 7: And you know how gossip is. Even though there was
Speaker 7: no Internet back then, gossip was very effective at something
Speaker 7: like this. It was far too juicy to not be known.
Speaker 7: And this is where you're supposed to go to start
Speaker 7: a new life. Well, when we see the depth of
Speaker 7: the quicksand he'd already pulled himself out of just to
Speaker 7: cross that border again back into Canada, just to step
Speaker 7: back into Saskatoon one more time. The last time he'd
Speaker 7: seen that he was twelve, and now he's coming back
Speaker 7: after on the flip side of all of this, and
Speaker 7: to me, this is when this story becomes truly fascinating. Yes,
Speaker 7: the murder Farm episode is horrifying, but something really fascinating
Speaker 7: about it in itself. It's just violence and psychosis. For me.
Speaker 7: The element of fascinating that looms, the thing that counters
Speaker 7: the theme from Jaws, that counters that sense of dawning
Speaker 7: horror and begins to shrink it is now when it's
Speaker 7: what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: Time?
Speaker 7: What are you going to do? And you watch this
Speaker 7: guy with no miracles. That happened. Nobody stepped in and
Speaker 7: waved any kind of magic wand to make it easy
Speaker 7: for him, he went back to working odd jobs around
Speaker 7: the town of a few people who'd take pity on
Speaker 7: him and hire from town to time to time until
Speaker 7: the war broke out and he immediately enlisted there, trained
Speaker 7: with the army, became a certified a gunnery officer commanding
Speaker 7: a cannon crew, and goes out to war with all
Speaker 7: this on his head. And the extraordinary thing about that,
Speaker 7: and another tip I'll give to the listeners about how
Speaker 7: he specifically was able to carry this burden to transform
Speaker 7: into positive energy. It's like this one of the things
Speaker 7: he was noted for among his crew was. The guy
Speaker 7: had no fear. Remember now, as an artillery cannon operator,
Speaker 7: you're under a field of artillery fire. That means shells
Speaker 7: are going off all around you, over your head. Unless
Speaker 7: you're in a pit or something like that. They're shrapnel.
Speaker 7: It's tearing people to bits. You can feel the explosions
Speaker 7: in your chest. Men, good men's strong men, brave men
Speaker 7: will wet their pants and not even know it. It's
Speaker 7: so horrifying an inhuman and environment. And he would stand
Speaker 7: there helping the guys load and calling out to them
Speaker 7: and joking with them and whistling and stuff, and no
Speaker 7: one could believe it. But the way he would keep
Speaker 7: up the morale, well, it wasn't just John Wayne balls,
Speaker 7: That's not what it was. It's that this guy had
Speaker 7: already been in hell. This guy had been thrown in
Speaker 7: pits that were smaller than a casket and left there
Speaker 7: for days. So in an artillery fire, why he knows,
Speaker 7: even if they do his you'll be here once second
Speaker 7: and gone the next. No one's going to torture you.
Speaker 7: You know, you're not going to be alone and despairing
Speaker 7: in an agony. Now, you're just not going to exist, anymore,
Speaker 7: and that was okay with him, and that's how he
Speaker 7: got through. So where you might imagine that he would
Speaker 7: be unable to take that kind of stress, he was
Speaker 7: actually able to process that kind of stress because of
Speaker 7: the torment he'd had to endure. And that, to me,
Speaker 7: is the miracle of this story. And that's the thing
Speaker 7: I think the book really offers to readers is bits
Speaker 7: like that where you actually see it in action, because
Speaker 7: it's easy to put it out like the self help
Speaker 7: book and say, oh, you put one foot in front
Speaker 7: of the other, and you know, throw some slogans at
Speaker 7: you and say that's how he did it. But we
Speaker 7: all know that's crap, and we all know the slogans
Speaker 7: don't work. So what did he do? And to me,
Speaker 7: that's the real gift of the book that brings to
Speaker 7: the readers kind of like these examples I've put out here, Yeah,
Speaker 7: here's what he did ABCD, and here's how it worked.
Speaker 7: And the reason I believe that's so valuable is the
Speaker 7: random horror that fell on him. Then your news feed
Speaker 7: is full of that today, different causes, but the same
Speaker 7: kind of random horror dropped on innocent people and can't
Speaker 7: do anything about that, but we can strengthen the message
Speaker 7: to people that we all have resources and reserves that
Speaker 7: we can't imagine until they're called upon. I think the
Speaker 7: purpose of a story like this, the positive purpose of
Speaker 7: a story like this, is to not just remind you
Speaker 7: of that message, but to show you how it works
Speaker 7: in action, because it will fortify us just a little
Speaker 7: bit more against the random crap that drops on all
Speaker 7: of us from time to time. That's the thing that
Speaker 7: just got me locked onto the story from day one
Speaker 7: was the chance to kind of do an autopsy on
Speaker 7: someone's recovery from being in hell and say, beyond the
Speaker 7: slogans and the self help bumper stickers, what do you
Speaker 7: really do? If that's you, What are you really going
Speaker 7: to do tomorrow tomorrow morning, and then tomorrow afternoon and
Speaker 7: then tomorrow night. What are you going to do when
Speaker 7: you carry this kind of burden? And here's what he did,
Speaker 7: and here's how he kept on his feet.
Speaker 2: Now, I think I don't disagree with you that the
Speaker 2: most important part of this story is obviously his survival
Speaker 2: and how much he did do with his life and
Speaker 2: how much he squeezed out of his life despite the
Speaker 2: horror that he endured. But the thing is, for our audience,
Speaker 2: we haven't gone into some of this horror and how
Speaker 2: he really came to the point where his character changed.
Speaker 2: And the person that was a crucial and important figure,
Speaker 2: which is his sister Jesse. When originally he left Regina,
Speaker 2: she was suspicious, she had her questions. Will say the
Speaker 2: father protested, but very mildly, like you say, he was
Speaker 2: not dominant in that relationship whatsoever. But let's talk about
Speaker 2: the first kinds of things that Sanford sees and experiences,
Speaker 2: because we're talking about a few boys that he did save,
Speaker 2: a whole family that he did save. But before that,
Speaker 2: he was helpless to help the people that his twisted
Speaker 2: uncle brought onto that farm. So what horror did he
Speaker 2: have to endure that he had to carry with him
Speaker 2: his entire life, that it took special people in his life,
Speaker 2: and then years of self realization, I imagine, So what
Speaker 2: you talk about in that he could not blame himself,
Speaker 2: not think of himself as worthless. Let's talk about the
Speaker 2: horror and then that pivotal moment, that crucial event that
Speaker 2: created the opportunity that he could get out of hell.
Speaker 7: Well throughout their time there, the bullshit story about he's
Speaker 7: down there to help his uncle work a chicken ranch
Speaker 7: and that he would be attending school in the daytime
Speaker 7: and stuff. His uncle Stuart had to maintain that illusion,
Speaker 7: so he would force Sandford to write letters home saying, oh, yes,
Speaker 7: I'm in school and I'm doing fine, and I'm helping
Speaker 7: Stuart in the afternoons and he looks out for me,
Speaker 7: and just utter garbage. But he'd have to send them.
Speaker 7: Every few weeks, he'd send another one. Now, the family
Speaker 7: was indifferent to the letters, except for his sister Jesse.
Speaker 7: His older sister Jesse. She was seventeen when he left
Speaker 7: and then nineteen when it ended. But so she was
Speaker 7: at the end of her teenage years and chomping at
Speaker 7: the bit to get out of the house herself, even
Speaker 7: back in those days when young women tended not to
Speaker 7: do that. And she would read his letters very carefully
Speaker 7: and then write responses and ask him questions, well, how
Speaker 7: about this, and are you doing that? But the next
Speaker 7: letter he would never answer any of her questions, just
Speaker 7: pretend they'd not been asked, and tell another story that
Speaker 7: was so rosy it made her suspicious, because, after all,
Speaker 7: this is uncle Stuart she knows who he is, and
Speaker 7: it's hard for her to believe he's all of a
Speaker 7: sudden the boy scout leader and you know, taking Sanford
Speaker 7: through this lovely life of work in school. So she's
Speaker 7: kind of not buying the concept to begin with. Then
Speaker 7: these letters come, she writes back, she's not getting responses,
Speaker 7: and then after a period of time, she notices that
Speaker 7: although Sandford braggs about going to school and doing well,
Speaker 7: his handwriting isn't getting any better, and she wonders why
Speaker 7: that is. And finally she becomes so suspicious that after
Speaker 7: she has moved out of the house at eighteen and
Speaker 7: taken a little job as a secretary working in town,
Speaker 7: living in a rooming house on her own, she scrapes
Speaker 7: up just enough money for a train to the coast
Speaker 7: and then a boat down to Los Angeles, which she does.
Speaker 7: She shows up out at the ranch just there's a
Speaker 7: phone call from the parents in LA that she's there,
Speaker 7: and she's headed out, and a couple hours later she's
Speaker 7: out at the ranch in a car and Stuart, Uncle Stuart,
Speaker 7: tries to put on a show of oh, yes, here's
Speaker 7: the ranch and here's what we're doing and keeping up
Speaker 7: an illusion. But right away she sees her brother and
Speaker 7: one of the things that stops her cold is it's
Speaker 7: been a couple of years now. He hasn't grown at
Speaker 7: all in that time. It has actually lost quite a
Speaker 7: bit of weight.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 7: I don't know about your listeners, but when I was
Speaker 7: between twelve and fourteen was sort of my big growth
Speaker 7: spurt time. That's when I think I grew more in
Speaker 7: those two years than any other part of my life.
Speaker 7: And yet he didn't grow at all, which gives you
Speaker 7: the sheer force of the trauma of day to day life.
Speaker 7: I think had just shut down his system. And then
Speaker 7: when they're one night, they're sort of lying on the
Speaker 7: sofa talking, she runs her fingers along Sandford's back and
Speaker 7: through his undershirt she feels all these pebbly kind of
Speaker 7: scar tissue on his back, and that's the thing that
Speaker 7: finally makes her. She pulls him aside late at night
Speaker 7: when Uncle Stuart is asleep and she try, had tried
Speaker 7: a couple of times, and Sandford would refuse to talk,
Speaker 7: and she, finding this, coroners him and says, look, what
Speaker 7: is going on? You tell me now, I'll go in
Speaker 7: there and I'll wake up Stuart. I'll make him tell me.
Speaker 7: And that freaks out Sandford because he goes, no, he'll
Speaker 7: kill you. You can't, you can't do it. And he
Speaker 7: finds it, and he breaks down and tells her that
Speaker 7: Stuart's been beating him, that the scar tissue she feels
Speaker 7: comes from boiling water that was poured on his back
Speaker 7: as punishment for some irritation or another and healed. All
Speaker 7: he was ever given was vasolene to rub over the burn,
Speaker 7: and so of course he had all that scar tissue there.
Speaker 7: And this horrifies her to the point she's about to
Speaker 7: go grab Stuart right now, and Sandford just implores her,
Speaker 7: you can't. You can't. You don't know what he is,
Speaker 7: you don't know what he'll do, and he makes her leave.
Speaker 7: She gets in the car says, all right, I'm going
Speaker 7: to go, but you can bet i'll be back. We're
Speaker 7: we're not going to stand for this. But she's also
Speaker 7: in America illegally. She's afraid to just call the police. Now.
Speaker 7: The truth is back then, even as I think at
Speaker 7: their worst, the authorities would not have done anything bad
Speaker 7: to these guys if they had caught them. At worst,
Speaker 7: they might have been deported back to Canada, and maybe
Speaker 7: not even that, but they had this, their family had
Speaker 7: this terrible fear of what would happen. Is she wasn't
Speaker 7: much more rational about it than her brother Sandford was.
Speaker 7: So what she does is immediately reach turned to Canada
Speaker 7: and alert the authorities there, who then going through them,
Speaker 7: they go back to the sheriff back down in California,
Speaker 7: and they eventually get authorities out to the ranch, getting
Speaker 7: ahead of myself. But that's why Jesse is such an
Speaker 7: important and heroic figure of the story. And I'm grateful
Speaker 7: that she's there because otherwise you got these two psychotic
Speaker 7: mothers and it seems like we're coming down on the
Speaker 7: females here and we're really not. That's just the way
Speaker 7: this family dynamic was structured. And our feminine hero and
Speaker 7: Jesse is just fabulous because think about this again. Remember
Speaker 7: it's nineteen twenty eight now, she's just turned nineteen. She's
Speaker 7: traveling thousands of miles by herself, she's got no money
Speaker 7: down to a place where she's got no friends or
Speaker 7: contacts of any kind except you know, Psycho Ma and
Speaker 7: say nothing Pa. And with that she's supposed to work
Speaker 7: on finding out what's wrong. With her brother. So the
Speaker 7: sheer courage and grit that she displayed in doing this,
Speaker 7: I just think is phenomenal. And it was only because
Speaker 7: of that that the dime got dropped on Stewart at
Speaker 7: last and the authorities came in. So yeah, she's a
Speaker 7: fabulous figure. And it just it kills me that she
Speaker 7: died shortly before we had begun work on the book
Speaker 7: and I never got to interview. I would love to
Speaker 7: have met this woman, because there again, there's a quality
Speaker 7: of grit in these people who were otherwise ordinary people.
Speaker 7: They could be anybody, and yet boy, she had love
Speaker 7: that drove her and gave her courage and gave her
Speaker 7: determination up against a guy who would cheerfully have killed
Speaker 7: her to keep her quiet if that's what he thought
Speaker 7: he needed to do. So you figure, even once she's
Speaker 7: found out what's going on from Sandford, she still had
Speaker 7: to face Stuart out there on the ranch for the
Speaker 7: a day or so before they finally left and keep
Speaker 7: him from suspecting that she knew, although otherwise the game
Speaker 7: is up. So yeah, Jesse, sister, Jesse, what a woman,
Speaker 7: and what a young woman, What a powerful young woman
Speaker 7: for the day. It's easy now I think to say, oh,
Speaker 7: you go girl as a strong woman, But remember they
Speaker 7: had nowhere to turn to be a strong woman with
Speaker 7: anyone else. There were no other females supporting her. Women
Speaker 7: didn't do things like that. Young woman didn't do things
Speaker 7: like that back then. And she did it anyway because
Speaker 7: her little brother was down there and she didn't know
Speaker 7: what was wrong. But she finally got to the point
Speaker 7: said this is whatever, this is crap, and we have
Speaker 7: to find out what's going on with Sandford. And as
Speaker 7: it turned out, the condition of his health and his
Speaker 7: just slow starvation was such that I don't believe he'd
Speaker 7: have lived physically much longer anyway if she hadn't come.
Speaker 7: So she saved his life on a couple of different levels.
Speaker 7: And let's hear it for having a great big sister him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was definitely fearless and drew and Sandford wasn't
Speaker 2: very very compliant all those years of being beaten down
Speaker 2: and abused, didn't She really had to reach him and
Speaker 2: reach out to him. So it was an incredible story too.
Speaker 2: That part of the horror as well, it's right out
Speaker 2: of a Twilight Zone episode, is where the family really
Speaker 2: the grandma psychopathic grandma and the docile grandfather kind of
Speaker 2: see the writing on the wall and nowhere to run.
Speaker 2: And that's part of this as well, brought on by
Speaker 2: Jesse coming into the picture and confronting all of them.
Speaker 2: And really Stuart had this bizarre relationship right out of
Speaker 2: psycho in that he would curl up with his mother
Speaker 2: and cry, and again she would us that the Mexican
Speaker 2: boys that could couldn't be traced back to them, that
Speaker 2: was okay. And as we skipped over as well, she
Speaker 2: was a participant in a murder on the farm itself.
Speaker 2: So again, really truly, who needs fiction type story with
Speaker 2: the whole.
Speaker 7: Family not just a participant, but she was. She did
Speaker 7: it with a hand ax, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 7: so much colder than pulling a trigger on someone. But
Speaker 7: there again, that's the depth of depravity that Sanford was
Speaker 7: alone with out there finally here because Uncle Stuart was
Speaker 7: in a continually disintegrating state by then. You see over
Speaker 7: these two years his psychosis evolving that I think in
Speaker 7: order to get his high from the crazy behavior, he
Speaker 7: had to push the risk farther and farther each time,
Speaker 7: kind of like a gambler who has to keep raising
Speaker 7: the stakes to get that rush, and he was becoming
Speaker 7: more and more careless. He stopped picking up the Mexican boys.
Speaker 7: And the reason they were important is these were boys
Speaker 7: who were here illegally to work and labor, whose families
Speaker 7: were back in Mexico. That made them easy pickings as
Speaker 7: victims who they would simply disappear in the family would
Speaker 7: never know. But he graduated into picking up the local kids,
Speaker 7: white kids in town who have a history in the area.
Speaker 7: And then at one point brings home young Walter Collins,
Speaker 7: who actually he's had some contact with the family in
Speaker 7: the past, and Sanford's is freaking over this. And then
Speaker 7: finally he brings home an entire family, mom, pop and
Speaker 7: two kids, all one evening, under the guise of their
Speaker 7: coming there to interview to be managers of the chicken ranch,
Speaker 7: to live there and be managers of the chicken ranch.
Speaker 7: Of course, this is nineteen twenty eight. People starting to
Speaker 7: get desperate for work out in that part of California,
Speaker 7: and it was easy to get them to come. But
Speaker 7: once he brings them there, he then springs the news
Speaker 7: to Sandford He's going to kill the whole family. I
Speaker 7: guess now to get his rush, he needs multiple murder
Speaker 7: and enlists Sandford to keep the kids busy out supposedly
Speaker 7: looking at how you candle eggs out in the sheds
Speaker 7: while he takes care of the parents in the house.
Speaker 7: And this point was finally for Sandford. This was his
Speaker 7: straw that just broke his back where he finally decided
Speaker 7: he didn't even care if his uncle killed him. He
Speaker 7: was not taking another step like this, and he wouldn't
Speaker 7: help him keep the kids separate from the parents because
Speaker 7: Uncle Stuart was sure if he started killing them in all
Speaker 7: four were there, they would overpower him. That's why he
Speaker 7: wanted to separate them, divide them up that way. But
Speaker 7: Sandford wouldn't help, and so they wound up the family
Speaker 7: just concluding the fake interview, getting back in their car
Speaker 7: and leaving, having no idea they had come within just
Speaker 7: a hair's breadth of all being slow watered out there
Speaker 7: and being buried under the chicken pits with the other boys.
Speaker 7: And of course Sandford paid dearly in terms of retribution
Speaker 7: and beating, but they lived and he got them out
Speaker 7: of there. And I think too, this is a seminal
Speaker 7: moment for Sandford because it's the first time he truly
Speaker 7: asserts himself and asserts his goodness against the evil around him.
Speaker 7: He's been such a beaten and broken little mouse of
Speaker 7: a guy for so long. It's like suddenly watching him
Speaker 7: find the strength in his legs and to stand up
Speaker 7: straight and scream the word no and mean it. And
Speaker 7: of course Uncle Stuart actually kind of let it slip,
Speaker 7: just because he was so floored at this level of
Speaker 7: objection and an opposition from Sandford, who was usually his
Speaker 7: pliable little boy, that he flummoxed and allowed the people
Speaker 7: to drive away, Thank goodness. But that was the last
Speaker 7: of it in terms of Stuart's attempts, because they were
Speaker 7: busted shortly afterwards. But it also I think it illustrates
Speaker 7: this decomposition process Uncle Stuart was going through, and all
Speaker 7: serial killers do seem to share that thing. Bundy was
Speaker 7: the same way. They seem like they're getting stupider. But
Speaker 7: I don't think it's a thing of IQ. I think
Speaker 7: they are addicts. They need their fix. They're adrenaline fix.
Speaker 7: And what they find is if you did it this
Speaker 7: way last time, doing it this way again doesn't feel
Speaker 7: as good, it doesn't charge you as high, So they
Speaker 7: need to add something even sicker and even more twisted,
Speaker 7: or more victims, or some more horrible kind of violel
Speaker 7: that to keep just turning up the volume on the
Speaker 7: experience itself. I think that's where Uncle Stuart was. And
Speaker 7: even if there had been no Sandford at all, he
Speaker 7: would have quickly gotten to the point where he was.
Speaker 7: I don't killing people in public in front of witnesses
Speaker 7: or whatever. He thinks all he needed to do to
Speaker 7: get high, and that would have been his downfalling. Somebody
Speaker 7: would have finally stepped up, a man somewhere would have
Speaker 7: just taken him to the ground. But he was very,
Speaker 7: very clever about always isolating his experiences so that he
Speaker 7: was basically just around people younger and smaller or much
Speaker 7: older and weaker. He didn't like hanging around with people
Speaker 7: who might grab him by the throat and make him
Speaker 7: start talking.
Speaker 2: You know, now it's very interesting, and it's very again
Speaker 2: vivid picture is painted by you where they realize the
Speaker 2: gig is up, the grandparents and Uncle Stuart, and they
Speaker 2: take off and leave them there and say, oh, we're
Speaker 2: going to come back, but they just leave him there.
Speaker 2: So eventually they are caught and we'll fast forward to
Speaker 2: what happens again. He has this man that comes into
Speaker 2: his life, gets him examined by a doctor because he
Speaker 2: notices the abuse that he's had and physically the toll
Speaker 2: that it's taken, and as you mentioned, he puts him
Speaker 2: into a reformatory, which is the best thing that they
Speaker 2: could ever happen to him. And this person really believes
Speaker 2: in him and makes him feel like he has some
Speaker 2: self worth rather than he still despises himself basically for
Speaker 2: everything that he's witnessed and gone through and participated in
Speaker 2: and endured in terms of abuse. Still believes that lots
Speaker 2: of this is coming to him and nothing good should
Speaker 2: come to him, So let's also talk about that. But
Speaker 2: also his horror still is still not over because Uncle
Speaker 2: Stuart has the right to defend or had to defend
Speaker 2: himself and be his own lawyer. So right, well, tell
Speaker 2: us a.
Speaker 7: Little bit about it, you beg You began by mentioning
Speaker 7: that the male who's the real male hero of this story.
Speaker 7: The other men are the two beaten down fathers that
Speaker 7: were good for nothing, or Uncle Stuart the psychopath. But
Speaker 7: fortunately we don't just have a collection of broken men either.
Speaker 7: There's one real man in this story who's he comes
Speaker 7: in like a like a fresh wind boy when when
Speaker 7: this when he hits his name was Loyal Kelly. He
Speaker 7: had been a prosecutor with the local office, but was
Speaker 7: basically semi retired at the time. He literally came out
Speaker 7: of retirement back to the office, got signed back up
Speaker 7: on active duty just to prosecute this case, and in
Speaker 7: so doing he took care and custody of Sandford because
Speaker 7: from the beginning, Loyal Kelly understood that Sandford was a victim,
Speaker 7: even though at first Sandford had denied everything and stuff
Speaker 7: and he did the the Stockholm syndrome kind of thing
Speaker 7: for a couple of days. Loyal Kelly had this tremendous
Speaker 7: level of insight, like a trained FBI profiler might have today,
Speaker 7: but he just had it as a man, and on
Speaker 7: some level, clearly he had some background with something similar
Speaker 7: because he was so impassioned.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 7: I don't know what drove him, but something strong did.
Speaker 7: And he really made this his cause celeb not just
Speaker 7: prosecuting Gordon Stewart Northcott and seeing to it that he
Speaker 7: met justice, but seeing to it that Sandford was not
Speaker 7: swept up the cops would have arrested and prosecuted Sandford
Speaker 7: as an accessory for this, and of course life would
Speaker 7: have been entirely different, and a very real prison would
Speaker 7: have been his destination. But Loyal Kelly wouldn't allow him
Speaker 7: to be charged, kept him entirely away from the murder proceedings.
Speaker 7: They held him on the being in the country illegally thing,
Speaker 7: but that was just a roost to give him, keep
Speaker 7: him somewhere safe, and keep him fed and getting medical
Speaker 7: care to this broken boy because he had no family,
Speaker 7: and if they sent him back to Canada, he had
Speaker 7: nobody there to help him either. So from the first,
Speaker 7: get go Loyal Kelly. And what a great name for
Speaker 7: a character, Loyal Kelly. From the first he is on
Speaker 7: this case, he's on Sanford, protecting him as beautifully and
Speaker 7: as lovingly as any father anywhere ever could. But man
Speaker 7: on the other side of the coin, Loyal Kelly is
Speaker 7: one mean bastard and he is out to get Gordon's
Speaker 7: Stewart Northcott. There's one photograph I have, it's in the book.
Speaker 7: That's great. That just shows the courtroom and the lined
Speaker 7: up attorneys and stuff, and you can see Loyal Kelly
Speaker 7: right there watching Gordon Stewart Northcott, who's trying to grin,
Speaker 7: but you can already start seeing like the doom and
Speaker 7: fear on his face. He's starting to realize, even through
Speaker 7: his psychosis, that he's in it bad. So there's that
Speaker 7: great guy, and there again, he's a pleasure to write about,
Speaker 7: a pleasure to talk about, because and this is nineteen
Speaker 7: twenty eight. With a guy with this level of insight,
Speaker 7: we hear so many stories about crooked attorneys and crooked judges,
Speaker 7: and there was a lot of bigotry back then. You know,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of things you can look down on.
Speaker 7: But man, here was this one shining example of a
Speaker 7: fully awake human being firing on all cylinders, who just
Speaker 7: came into this situation said no, no, not on my watch,
Speaker 7: No no, no, you over here, you over there, and
Speaker 7: just started sorting it all out. So yet, the reason
Speaker 7: in fact that I think Sandford was able to even
Speaker 7: begin this long recovery process, it goes straight to loyal
Speaker 7: Kelly just coming in like a dad or like a
Speaker 7: big brother and basically saying, all right, you've suffered enough, Sandford,
Speaker 7: We're putting it into this. And so they did. So
Speaker 7: they did. But as you said, then the second part
Speaker 7: of your question was regarding the trial itself, because I
Speaker 7: think you already mentioned that it wasn't over for Sandford yet.
Speaker 7: This was just the murder farm was done, but the
Speaker 7: story was ramping up and changing lanes man because now
Speaker 7: not only does he of course have to testify, but
Speaker 7: Uncle Stuart, being a toxic narcissist who thinks he's smarter
Speaker 7: than everybody else else, demands his right to defend himself
Speaker 7: and loyal Kelly has to go back to Sandford and say, guy,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, but this is how the law works in
Speaker 7: our country. And he actually does to get to grill
Speaker 7: you on the stand in court, and we have to
Speaker 7: let him do it. And so Sandford has to go
Speaker 7: back to the court and spend I think it's two
Speaker 7: days under the gun all day, all afternoon of the
Speaker 7: man who has tormented him, raped him, raped him with
Speaker 7: foreign objects, forced him to kill other little boys, forced
Speaker 7: him to bury their bodies, forced him to grind up
Speaker 7: the broken bits of a burned skull, and mocked him
Speaker 7: steadily throughout that time. This guy is now prancing back
Speaker 7: and forth in a courtroom, throwing questions at him and
Speaker 7: since he's crazy Gordon Stewart. Northcott conducts himself almost as
Speaker 7: if this is his show and done for his pleasure,
Speaker 7: that he is so lost in the ability to speak
Speaker 7: and force other people to listen to him. And of
Speaker 7: course for him, this is heaven, having a captive audience.
Speaker 7: He's the original lover of captive audiences, and he's got
Speaker 7: Sandford captive again. And now he's got him captive in
Speaker 7: front of a whole room full of people. I don't
Speaker 7: doubt that at some level the satisfaction was sexual for him.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't be surprised if he had an orgasm in
Speaker 7: court while he was doing this, because it distilled down
Speaker 7: his need for control to such a refined degree and
Speaker 7: gave it such power. Here he was in this room
Speaker 7: full of judges and cops and detectives for the press, witnesses,
Speaker 7: the jury, and he gets to just hold forth hour
Speaker 7: after hour after hour. But Sandford, very quietly and very steadfastly,
Speaker 7: just stood there, stated his peace, would not be in imitated,
Speaker 7: wouldn't be turned away, wouldn't take it back. And the
Speaker 7: steadier Sanford remained, the more it seemed to begin dawning
Speaker 7: on Uncle Stewart that the whole game is now changed,
Speaker 7: and as much pleasure as he might be taking at
Speaker 7: first in his command of the case and his control
Speaker 7: of the courtroom, now he realizes, wait a minute, he's
Speaker 7: wrapping the rope around his own neck, and that's what
Speaker 7: everybody is actually watching him do, because suddenly now you
Speaker 7: see how he looks just crazy compared to this quiet,
Speaker 7: steadfast boy who just keeps testifying, stating the facts, not
Speaker 7: getting upset, not faltering, not having to ever backstep and
Speaker 7: correct himself. This was for Sandford Clark the moment to
Speaker 7: finally just get it out, and he did. Boy, he
Speaker 7: rose to the occasion.
Speaker 2: Yes, So it's very successful for him in terms of
Speaker 2: confidence as well, because he'd one of the features he
Speaker 2: had was that he would never be able to look
Speaker 2: at him and avert his eyes always, but in court
Speaker 2: he was. He had to. He demanded of him that
Speaker 2: he would look him in the eye. So there was
Speaker 2: a lot of confidence in this thing that he had
Speaker 2: a lot of trepidation. I'm sure this was very important
Speaker 2: for him to be able to do this, to face
Speaker 2: him and to defeat him.
Speaker 7: That's a great point, Dan, and it's something that I
Speaker 7: think none of the people who were watching the court
Speaker 7: could have even known, but that there was so much
Speaker 7: communicated without a single word between these two people. Simply
Speaker 7: to have Stuart Northcott step onto the floor, step close within,
Speaker 7: you know, a foot or two of Sandford's face, look
Speaker 7: him right in the eyes, and simply have Sandford continue,
Speaker 7: quite calmly looking right back in his eyes, not staring,
Speaker 7: not turning way, not crumbling, just quietly staring. I think
Speaker 7: that was like a wealth of information going back and
Speaker 7: forth between these two that nobody would even know. It
Speaker 7: just looks like, oh, two guys looking at each other.
Speaker 7: But what a radical thing. Yeah, Sandford's looking right at you, pal,
Speaker 7: Sanford's looking You're right in the eyes. How many times
Speaker 7: in the last two years had he even seen Sandford's eyes,
Speaker 7: you know, unless he was looking into his eyes to
Speaker 7: enjoy the hurt while he was abusing him. So yeah,
Speaker 7: huge turnaround, huge turnaround in the whole universe for Gordon
Speaker 7: Stewart Northcott simply to step up to that stand look
Speaker 7: this little victim boy in the eyes, this boy who
Speaker 7: was such an object of contempt, he was barely even
Speaker 7: treated as a human, And to have him just calmly
Speaker 7: look right back at you, this is what you did.
Speaker 7: Yes you did and no, no you didn't do that,
Speaker 7: you did this other and keep calmly correcting the lies
Speaker 7: and asserting the truths and not backing away. I would
Speaker 7: be willing to bet that there was this awful sinking,
Speaker 7: you know, that feeling in your gut of dread, when
Speaker 7: you just know you have massively screwed up. Of course,
Speaker 7: not to Nians ever have, but in whatever in life,
Speaker 7: where just your stomach knows it before your brain even
Speaker 7: knows it. You know that feeling, don't You just know?
Speaker 7: Gordon Stewart Northcott had it at that moment, standing in
Speaker 7: front of that case, looking at this little boy, and
Speaker 7: holy shit, all of a sudden, there's a calm human
Speaker 7: being staring right into my pupils and not wavering, and
Speaker 7: this re reorganized his whole world, his whole universe.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, there must have been an incredible amount of
Speaker 2: power as well, but there was a lot of forensic evidence,
Speaker 2: even though you know, technology wasn't very vanced at that time, obviously,
Speaker 2: but they had enough bits of bone and enough evidence
Speaker 2: to be able to convict him and then execute him.
Speaker 7: And fairly there was a wealth of physical evidence too, Yeah,
Speaker 7: there was. And at first, when Sandra was first arrested
Speaker 7: and tolding a story, of course, people initially didn't believe
Speaker 7: it because it was just too awful. But as soon
Speaker 7: as they sent the teams back there and began sifting
Speaker 7: through the chicken coofs, that's when they realized, all right,
Speaker 7: this kid's onto something. And that's when all the full
Speaker 7: resources went into the case and they really went out
Speaker 7: and combed the place, and you bet by the time
Speaker 7: they came back, they certainly had enough to put Gordon
Speaker 7: Stewart Northcott in prison. Whether or not they could have
Speaker 7: gotten him on a first degree murder and on a
Speaker 7: death penalty case, I don't know. Without Sandford Clark, I
Speaker 7: think that's why they were so insistent on having him testify,
Speaker 7: that this had to be a guy who didn't ever
Speaker 7: walk the streets again, no matter what you know, there
Speaker 7: can't be a judge in the future who decides to
Speaker 7: commute his sentence. We can't have that. And they it's
Speaker 7: like putting down a rabid dog has got to go,
Speaker 7: And so I think that's that was the real reason
Speaker 7: for Sanford there, that to put him in front of
Speaker 7: the jury and make the jury see specifically who this
Speaker 7: was that was put through that and had him tell
Speaker 7: of what he was made to do by the defendant.
Speaker 7: That's what starts making the jury get hungry for a rope,
Speaker 7: and which they were by the time the case went
Speaker 7: to trial. A very short deliberation.
Speaker 2: And it was a pretty short rope too. Apparently, Yes, right,
Speaker 2: he didn't die quickly, which might be a relief. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think that's called a short drop what they did.
Speaker 7: And the problem with a long drop, the problem with that,
Speaker 7: sometimes your head comes off a short drop. The problem
Speaker 7: with that your neck doesn't always break, in which case
Speaker 7: you just hang and strangle. Well, of course, even though
Speaker 7: it's nineteen twenty nine, by now, hangman have a very
Speaker 7: accurate rope tables, weight versus fall, versus distance, and they
Speaker 7: know the physics of exactly how long to make your
Speaker 7: rope to snap your neck if that's what they want
Speaker 7: to do in this case, because by now everybody knows.
Speaker 7: And to give you an idea, how traumatized the entire
Speaker 7: community was. They were called Wineville, then they dropped the
Speaker 7: name and changed it to miro Loma. They didn't even
Speaker 7: want to be called by the name of Wineville anymore,
Speaker 7: because they were just so mortified and horrified by this,
Speaker 7: by these boys, by all these boys, all these victims.
Speaker 7: Jeff forgot my point. I went off on Wineville, which
Speaker 7: is now miro Loma. The murder farm is still there,
Speaker 7: although it's been transformed into a pleasant little roadside house. Now,
Speaker 7: if you didn't know the story, you wouldn't have any
Speaker 7: reason to suspect the story. But when you stand in
Speaker 7: from that house, you're looking at the place. It was
Speaker 7: covered over with a cladding at some point in the past.
Speaker 7: But that's the building, that's the house where it all
Speaker 7: had happened. And without Sanford's testimony, yeah, he might have
Speaker 7: just gotten life. And back then that might have been
Speaker 7: in twenty thirty years, he'd have walked out with the
Speaker 7: young guy. He'd come out of prison at the age
Speaker 7: of fifty and been perfectly cable to kill a hundred
Speaker 7: more kids while he's at it. So they needed him dead.
Speaker 7: They did a short drop at his hanging, which didn't
Speaker 7: break his neck, so a guard ran out, grabbed on
Speaker 7: to his feet and hung onto them for twelve minutes
Speaker 7: while while the body strangled to death. Interesting in today's world.
Speaker 7: If someone did that, the guard would probably be prosecuted.
Speaker 7: Back then, it was part of the job, the idea
Speaker 7: being if a person can bounce and do the hangman's
Speaker 7: dance at the end of the rope, it might lengthen
Speaker 7: the amount of time it takes for them to strangle
Speaker 7: to death, although they'll still inevitably die, and that that
Speaker 7: in itself is cruel and un usual. So the best
Speaker 7: thing to do, the most humane thing to do, is
Speaker 7: hang on his feet so he strangles as quick as possible,
Speaker 7: And that would have been the reasoning put forth. But
Speaker 7: of course I think it was all just one big
Speaker 7: last up years to Gordon Stewart Northcott from this community
Speaker 7: that I mean, to this day feels stained by the
Speaker 7: depth of this little piece of hell that they had
Speaker 7: right out there, which is now a pleasant suburban neighborhood,
Speaker 7: but was then a piece of the Holocaust, right out
Speaker 7: there in the desert for these boys, for all these boys.
Speaker 2: What I found very, very profound was the idea that
Speaker 2: when he was put in a reformatory with the help
Speaker 2: of Loyal Kelly, that they were instructed that no one
Speaker 2: was to talk about any of the reasons why they're
Speaker 2: in there for all the kids that were in the
Speaker 2: boys that were in there, they weren't to talk about
Speaker 2: their crimes whatsoever. And the most profound part was when
Speaker 2: Sandford asked loyal Kelly, like, why are you doing this? Basically,
Speaker 2: I'm not really worth anything. You know, you know what
Speaker 2: I did? You know what kind of crimes I committed. So,
Speaker 2: mister Kelly, why are you even doing this? And what
Speaker 2: do you want in exchange? What's the payback? Tell us?
Speaker 7: Tell our audience, Well, I will tell them, And first
Speaker 7: I want to remind them this is nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 7: you guys. And this guy was so forward thinking that
Speaker 7: he would do this for this boy, to stick his
Speaker 7: neck out this way for this boy and be so
Speaker 7: careful to preserve some hope of a future life for
Speaker 7: the boy. And he said, here's how you repay me.
Speaker 7: Go out and make something of yourself, show that it
Speaker 7: was worth saving you, show that you can do it's
Speaker 7: right and what's good and kind and decent. And if
Speaker 7: you do that, paid me. And that wasn't just some
Speaker 7: nice piece of fatherly advice. Sanford took that as his gospel.
Speaker 7: He carved that in stone in some part of his
Speaker 7: own mind, and it guided him for the next more
Speaker 7: than half a century. And it is exactly what he
Speaker 7: did was slowly and steadily just slog forward and rebuild
Speaker 7: from nothing once again. Imagine carrying the burden he carried
Speaker 7: and finding a woman who loves you and knows what
Speaker 7: happened to you and still loves you, and staying good
Speaker 7: and married and faithful with her for fifty five years.
Speaker 7: Most people today, no matter how good their life has been,
Speaker 7: they can't do that. They can't blend with another person
Speaker 7: and well enough to keep it going for that long.
Speaker 7: And yet he did it with this kind of background.
Speaker 7: It's why I mean, I'm sorry if I sound like
Speaker 7: a broken record, but I keep going back to my
Speaker 7: own amazement at the quality of the power of survival
Speaker 7: and the power of determination, even an ordinary guy. We
Speaker 7: had this in us. And that's the lesson that Sanford
Speaker 7: brought through this. He did repay yal Kelly. He did
Speaker 7: exactly that, lived a life one could only admire even
Speaker 7: if nothing had ever happened to him in his youth.
Speaker 7: And yet he did it in spite of that. And
Speaker 7: you know, if he can, you can, and I can,
Speaker 7: and God forbid we should have to call on ourselves
Speaker 7: at that level, but it is there, and you get
Speaker 7: to watch this guy go through the process and see
Speaker 7: how he did it.
Speaker 2: We talk about the heroic figures and his wife and
Speaker 2: successful marriage of fifty five years. Those are the people
Speaker 2: you talk about. The two women would recognize like no
Speaker 2: one else would, the deep dark mood that Sandford could
Speaker 2: get into, that the funk that he could get into.
Speaker 2: This productive, positive person had his times where these two
Speaker 2: heroic figures in his life, with his wife again giving
Speaker 2: him that joy that most of us might not even enjoy,
Speaker 2: but also his sister as well, always maintained contact and
Speaker 2: knew tell us just a little bit about the demons
Speaker 2: that he did have.
Speaker 7: Well, there's no question. I mean, I think I should
Speaker 7: make sure people understand that this was not a guy
Speaker 7: who was capable of walling off the experience and going
Speaker 7: on with If some people have that ability to what
Speaker 7: they call compartmentalize and experience and and seal it off
Speaker 7: the way an oyster makes a pearl by wrapping up
Speaker 7: the little piece of gravel. But he didn't have that.
Speaker 7: This was a clear and present torment for him for
Speaker 7: the rest of his days. June was his wife, somehow
Speaker 7: saw through that to who he was. She saw the
Speaker 7: guy who was capable of going back and honoring loyal
Speaker 7: Kelly's request, and of living the good and decent and
Speaker 7: admirable life. She saw that instead of a crime victim,
Speaker 7: or even worse, of some depraved criminal, she saw it.
Speaker 7: I don't know how, but she obviously saw it clearly.
Speaker 7: Their their devotion was steadfast. And of course his sister
Speaker 7: Jesse remained a big part of his life. And but
Speaker 7: what happened even she moved some distance away, but would
Speaker 7: still come in regularly. Now as he went through his life,
Speaker 7: and particularly in the younger times when he was first
Speaker 7: trying to find his feet struggling, he would have these
Speaker 7: moments where it would all just come rushing back, and
Speaker 7: the flashbacks, and as anyone. Auschwitz survivors also talk about
Speaker 7: similar things, that a sense of smell, a sight of
Speaker 7: something that is similar to something from your time of trauma,
Speaker 7: will just throw everything right back on you. Not that
Speaker 7: you're hallucinating and thinking you're there again, but that it's
Speaker 7: more like an instant panic attack. Suddenly your body is
Speaker 7: filled with the terror and the need to get away,
Speaker 7: even though your mind sees I'm just walking down the
Speaker 7: sidewalk on a sunny day. He had that syndrome, and
Speaker 7: he would suddenly just kind of go lax and stare
Speaker 7: into space. June learned to recognize what that look meant,
Speaker 7: which was different than I'm steering the space thinking, or
Speaker 7: I'm remembering, or I'm daydre. I mean, this was I'm
Speaker 7: captive to visions I shouldn't have to have. And she
Speaker 7: developed this whole way of talking to him, forcing him
Speaker 7: to engage. She would call Jesse, the two of them
Speaker 7: would come over and they would play cards and talk
Speaker 7: and just keep him occupied, because you know, if they
Speaker 7: just keep him talking, it didn't even matter what they
Speaker 7: talked about. That was enough to kind of just break
Speaker 7: the spell and help him stay above the surface, stay
Speaker 7: in the here and the now. And they were like
Speaker 7: these two white witches in that way that they would
Speaker 7: bring this invisible form of very powerful healing back to him.
Speaker 7: If we had a video camera that we could watch,
Speaker 7: what you would see as three adults, two women and
Speaker 7: a man, playing cards and maybe drinking beer around a
Speaker 7: kitchen table. But what's really going on is these two
Speaker 7: women are reaching back down into that hell where he's
Speaker 7: just he's fallen into a manhole. He's back there again,
Speaker 7: and they are grabbing him and pulling him back out
Speaker 7: in the most ordinary of means, with daily conversation and
Speaker 7: contact with people who love you, where you know you're safe.
Speaker 7: And there's a picture in the book I have that
Speaker 7: I'm so grateful to obtain from Jerry that someone took
Speaker 7: once when Sanford is an older man, I think he's
Speaker 7: in his fifties at this point, had one of those
Speaker 7: episodes and he's just captivated and staring away, and we
Speaker 7: have the photo of his face. This was the expression
Speaker 7: June and Jesse learned to recognize, and they kept him
Speaker 7: from that. Otherwise, who knows, maybe despair and suicide would
Speaker 7: have overcome him. You know, he needed his human angels
Speaker 7: to take care of him here in this world. But
Speaker 7: there again, you can see step by step how they
Speaker 7: did it. And I'm so glad too to be able
Speaker 7: to tell the story about these two wonderful women because
Speaker 7: we've got these two toxic horror show women at the
Speaker 7: opening of the story. I would hate for readers to
Speaker 7: think that I've got it in for the females. You know,
Speaker 7: that's just who those two happened to be, And yet
Speaker 7: June and Jesse were as far on the opposite side
Speaker 7: of that spectrum as too. They show what a healing
Speaker 7: feminine power of love can be upon a broken male,
Speaker 7: and it's like water in the desert.
Speaker 2: Now, June couldn't have children, and you had mentioned about
Speaker 2: the adopted children that they went to the orphanage and
Speaker 2: they got not only they go to the orphanage to
Speaker 2: get some children to bring into their lives two separate times,
Speaker 2: but also they look for the troubled child, didn't they.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, I do want to tell about it. I'm
Speaker 7: concerned that do we have enough time. It seems like
Speaker 7: we've been going on for a long time. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 7: June was unable to have children, is how I understand it.
Speaker 7: It may be that Sanford wasn't able to have I'm
Speaker 7: not really sure. It doesn't matter is couldn't have kids
Speaker 7: on their own. So their solution, and here again perfectly
Speaker 7: in keeping with his oath to loyal Kelly, they went
Speaker 7: to the local orphanage and adopted first one and then
Speaker 7: a couple of years later a second boys from their
Speaker 7: quote hard to adopt unquote group, which means the kids
Speaker 7: who were in the toddlers stage, you know, adoptive parents
Speaker 7: like babies. So at the age of three, they brought
Speaker 7: home the guy who was to become Jerry Clark, who
Speaker 7: gave me this story for the book, and I think
Speaker 7: two or three years later brought home Jerry's brother. Both
Speaker 7: of them were from the orphanage, both of them from
Speaker 7: with him the older set. It brought home as toddlers
Speaker 7: and raised them as sons. And even though this is
Speaker 7: way back when parents didn't coddle children, and so he
Speaker 7: wasn't just like this doting dad from television. He was
Speaker 7: a strong and moral force who never forever physically struck
Speaker 7: his kids. Jerry was adamant about that. There was no
Speaker 7: fear of ever being even slapped in his house. But
Speaker 7: after the night that he finally told the son Jerry
Speaker 7: about this story, Jerry was seventeen, I think, and he
Speaker 7: told them especially about being trapped in those chicken pits,
Speaker 7: buried unto those boards, in spaces smaller than a coffin
Speaker 7: eight inches or so. You're lying there with his hands
Speaker 7: pressed up just above his chest, pressing against the boards,
Speaker 7: trying to relieve some of the pressure on his chest.
Speaker 7: Well Jerry was so struck by that. I mean, he
Speaker 7: went home that night and his father, Sandford, heard some
Speaker 7: noise from down in Jerry's room, went down his bedroom,
Speaker 7: opened the door and Jerry sound asleep, a sleepwalg is
Speaker 7: standing up in his bed, pressing up against the ceiling
Speaker 7: of the ah ah, pressing away. That's how profoundly he
Speaker 7: had been affected by the vision behind what his father
Speaker 7: had told him. Fortunately, they had agreed with each other
Speaker 7: they would talk it all through that night, that one time,
Speaker 7: and then that they would never speak of it again.
Speaker 7: And they never did. But you can see why this is.
Speaker 7: And I knew once. I knew a woman whose parents
Speaker 7: were both Holocaust survivors, and she said they and their
Speaker 7: other friends or relatives who were also survived, also shared
Speaker 7: the technique. None of them ever wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 7: That there are some things I think so awful that
Speaker 7: there's nothing therapeutic about going back over it. It just
Speaker 7: needs to be left alone and lived out. And that's
Speaker 7: what this was for him. He did tell him because
Speaker 7: he was afraid Jerry would hear it from someone else
Speaker 7: and get the wrong idea. And it was very important
Speaker 7: to him that Jerry understand what had happened and why
Speaker 7: he was caught up and all that. But having done that,
Speaker 7: having tried to protect Jerry from the misunderstandings of a
Speaker 7: gossipy public, he then said, all right, but that's done. Now,
Speaker 7: we're done with that. We're now we're gonna go back
Speaker 7: to living. And that's what they did. I don't have
Speaker 7: I don't have any wisdom beyond that. I mean, I
Speaker 7: think that this is a fairly uneducated guy who made
Speaker 7: an awful lot of highly educated, sensitive, smart decisions. And
Speaker 7: all credit, of course to Sandford Clark. But here again
Speaker 7: he was living out his oath to loyal Kelly, to
Speaker 7: earn it, you know, to show that nothing was wasted
Speaker 7: on you. This was the right thing to do. You
Speaker 7: were worth preserving. And hear all this goodness that rolls
Speaker 7: forth from your life that's there because of you, because
Speaker 7: you're here. I mean, the reader gets to see this guy, well,
Speaker 7: he's still is fairly just a labor work or this
Speaker 7: is before he even got his job as a post
Speaker 7: office worker and a mail carrier, which he did years later.
Speaker 7: Is building a little house on a two house lot
Speaker 7: that he's purchased. Who levels off the empty part of
Speaker 7: the lot and every winter freezes it over so the
Speaker 7: kids can come and play hockey with his sons, and
Speaker 7: his sons can have a placed ice hockey right there
Speaker 7: by the house. That's the kind of consideration and sensitivity
Speaker 7: he was still able to muster. And yet so all
Speaker 7: those kids play in hockey, they're enjoying the very thing
Speaker 7: that loyal Kelly was trying to save in the first place.
Speaker 7: You know, there's something that wouldn't be there if it
Speaker 7: weren't for Sanford Clark, and he did it. You know,
Speaker 7: he lived up to that obligation. I really think all
Speaker 7: those Jesus would come to the same conclusion.
Speaker 2: For all those people too that believe they understand what
Speaker 2: PTSD might. This is such a dramatic reversal of the
Speaker 2: kind of you think that this abuse would would make
Speaker 2: you docile or unsuccessful, or unlovable or unable to love.
Speaker 2: This is really a triumph of survival with just a
Speaker 2: couple people offering him the kind of love that all
Speaker 2: of us know about, you know, the forward thinking Kelly,
Speaker 2: loyal Kelly. But then his sister, because really his mother,
Speaker 2: there was nothing there, his grandparents, his uncle. I really
Speaker 2: didn't have anybody in the world, and yet he met
Speaker 2: this June. The community again was very profound in your
Speaker 2: book how you talk about the community accepted him and
Speaker 2: he was surprised that he didn't have to tell June
Speaker 2: about his past. She already knew and she didn't care.
Speaker 2: And so it was very very again amazing for that
Speaker 2: time that people, when both countries are so forward thinking
Speaker 2: and able to put things in the past. But to
Speaker 2: his credit, he really became such an upstanding man that
Speaker 2: there was never anything but little whispers that even he
Speaker 2: was not affected by That's right, that's right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: very dramatic story. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 2: for coming on and talking about Road Out of Hell.
Speaker 2: I know this is a book that your publishers diversion
Speaker 2: books with this. Can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about if people want to get this book or find
Speaker 2: out a little bit more about you. Do you have
Speaker 2: a website Facebook? How my people might contact you or
Speaker 2: find out at more about your work?
Speaker 7: Well, my website is just Anthony Flacco dot com and
Speaker 7: of course I'm on Facebook too, who isn't And uh,
Speaker 7: that's yeah, there's a contact page on the website, so yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm pretty easy to get in touch with I write
Speaker 7: back to anybody who writes to me in a civil fashion,
Speaker 7: but I ignore trolls is basically my policy, certainly.
Speaker 2: And so this is did this book originally? This is
Speaker 2: a re release with diversion and tell us a little bit.
Speaker 7: This is a re release. Yeah, it came out in
Speaker 7: this one. Did I do this two thousand and nine,
Speaker 7: I think, and a few years later than Division bought
Speaker 7: the rights from the publisher, and now they brought it out.
Speaker 7: I'm very grateful to say. I mean, you're always you're
Speaker 7: always grateful when that kind of thing happens. And it's
Speaker 7: just it's continued to find an audience around the world
Speaker 7: and been translated and been done well in Europe as well.
Speaker 7: So it's because you know, it's not a local story,
Speaker 7: and it's not even a crime story. It's a human story.
Speaker 7: And I think everybody everywhere wants to see how our
Speaker 7: human are, common human spirit functions under tremendous stress. And
Speaker 7: I believe that's the engine of success for the story.
Speaker 7: That it doesn't matter who you are, if you're a
Speaker 7: human being and you can read it has something to
Speaker 7: tell you. Yeah, I've got to end it with that.
Speaker 7: My voice is starting to go. Dan, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to thank you very much for taking
Speaker 2: the time to come on and talking about road out
Speaker 2: of Hell. Thank you very much and hope to talk
Speaker 2: to you again soon. Have a great night, Okay, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. Good night,