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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening for the first time.
Speaker 4: Award winning investigative journalist M William Phelps reveals the identity
Speaker 4: of Raven, the serial killer who co starred with him
Speaker 4: on Dark Minds, and tells the story of his intriguing
Speaker 4: with one of America's most disturbing killers. In September twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: M William Phelps made a bold decision that would change
Speaker 4: the landscape of reality based television and his own life.
Speaker 4: He asked a convicted serial killer to act as a
Speaker 4: consultant for his TV series under the code name Raven,
Speaker 4: the Murderer shared his insights into the minds of other
Speaker 4: killers and helped analyze their crimes. As the series became
Speaker 4: an international sensation, Raven became Phelps's unlikely confidant, ally and friend.
Speaker 4: In this deeply personal account, Phelps traces his own family's
Speaker 4: dark history and takes us into the heart and soul
Speaker 4: of a serial murderer. He also chronicles the complex relationships
Speaker 4: he developed with Raven, from questions about morality to Raven's
Speaker 4: thoughts on the still unsolved brutal myrdal of Phelps's sister
Speaker 4: in law. The author found himself grappling with an unwonted, unexpected,
Speaker 4: unsettling connection with a c old, blooded killer. Drawing on
Speaker 4: over seven thousand pages of letters, dozens of hours of
Speaker 4: recorded conversations, personal and Skype visits, and a friendship five
Speaker 4: years in the making, Phelps shed's new light on Raven's
Speaker 4: bloody history, including details of an unknown victim, the location
Speaker 4: of a still buried body. In a jaw dropping admission,
Speaker 4: eye opening and provocative, dangerous ground is an unforgettable journey
Speaker 4: into the mind of a charming, manipulative psychopath that few
Speaker 4: would dare to know and the determined journalist who did
Speaker 4: just that. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 4: Dangerous Ground, My Friendship with a Serial Killer with journalist
Speaker 4: and author and television producer M William Phelps. Welcome back
Speaker 4: to the program, and thank you very much for a
Speaker 4: Greenness interview. M William Phelps, Dan, how you doing.
Speaker 3: Thank you call me Matthew. Good to be back.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you very much Matthew for joining us
Speaker 5: once again. This I've called it one of your, if
Speaker 5: not your most important book. I just incredible journey you
Speaker 5: were going to take us on this evening as you've
Speaker 5: taken me in reading of this book, Dangerous Ground. You
Speaker 5: talk about this book being somewhat of a hybrid. So
Speaker 5: tell us why this is a hybrid and in what
Speaker 5: way is it a mix of styles of true crime
Speaker 5: and memoir.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's a hybrid because I you know, I
Speaker 3: never set out to write this book. This book kind
Speaker 3: of developed as I got to know Raven aka Keith jesperson,
Speaker 3: a happy face killer, better and better, and I realized
Speaker 3: that having access to a serial killer such as Jessperson,
Speaker 3: who trusted me one hundred percent that I could ask
Speaker 3: him anything I wanted. So over the course of many years,
Speaker 3: you know, I interviewed him and I grew into this
Speaker 3: collection of information that I needed to do something with,
Speaker 3: and so what do I do with it? And what
Speaker 3: I decided was ever since the Dark Mind Daring on
Speaker 3: ID in twenty eleven, I believe it started, people been
Speaker 3: asking me about my sister in law's case, and you know,
Speaker 3: she was five months pregnant, she was thirty six years old.
Speaker 3: She was strangled to death with a pillowcase over her head,
Speaker 3: telephone quote around her neck, and my brother subsequently died
Speaker 3: several years later. And thinking about that story, always ask
Speaker 3: me how I got into true crime, writing my journey,
Speaker 3: and people asked me my own story. So I figured
Speaker 3: this was a great opportunity to tell all those stories
Speaker 3: and kind of use Jessperson's story as the backdrop for it.
Speaker 3: So the first section of the book is called friends,
Speaker 3: the second section is called family, and the third section
Speaker 3: is called faith. And you know, the friends is a
Speaker 3: loose term, but you know, I talk about our relationship there,
Speaker 3: and in the middle I talk about his family, his background,
Speaker 3: him as a child and me as a child did
Speaker 3: we go back and forth and then the end is faith.
Speaker 3: It's how I lost faith and how he has had
Speaker 3: faith in me to tell his story.
Speaker 5: Now, you talk about first contacting him in September twenty eleven,
Speaker 5: So tell us just a little bit about how you
Speaker 5: wrote him, what you included in that to convince him,
Speaker 5: and what was his response. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about that correspondence.
Speaker 3: Initially, Well, it started when the first season of Dark Minds,
Speaker 3: we had a killer on the show that we referred
Speaker 3: to as thirteen. That was his code name. And that
Speaker 3: guy was not Raven, he was not Jefferson. He was
Speaker 3: another guy that I won't name because it's not my guy.
Speaker 3: If you will, it's John Kelly. John Kelly's my forensic
Speaker 3: psychologist that was on the show with me, and that
Speaker 3: was his guy. Well, at the end of that season,
Speaker 3: Kelly says, you should develop your own guy, you know,
Speaker 3: And so in late twenty ten, I started writing to
Speaker 3: different serial killers, and John Kelly's one who suggested really
Speaker 3: Jess Person, Joel Rifkin, a couple others, and I wrote
Speaker 3: to these guys and I began to get letters back
Speaker 3: and jess person just struck me as a kind of
Speaker 3: guy who wanted to talk and talk and talk, and
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who really wanted to impress me.
Speaker 3: He knew my work, he had read my work, and
Speaker 3: he was impressed by what I had done. He really
Speaker 3: respected me as a writer, and I started to receive,
Speaker 3: you know, an abundant letters from him, and then we
Speaker 3: started talking on the phone, and I realized right away that,
Speaker 3: you know, he's the guy we need for the show.
Speaker 5: Now. There was two things going on though, in that
Speaker 5: you had him as a consultant on the show Dark Minds,
Speaker 5: and tell us what you what his role was in
Speaker 5: terms of that involved with the series for those that
Speaker 5: didn't see it, but also what was what was unfolding
Speaker 5: beyond that or besides that at the same time.
Speaker 3: Well, dark Minds is the way it was pitched is
Speaker 3: the silence of the Lambs meets catch me if you can.
Speaker 3: And what that means is when I created the show,
Speaker 3: I wanted I wanted to look at unsolved serial killer cases.
Speaker 3: There's many unsolved serial killer cases throughout the United States,
Speaker 3: Zodiac being one of the most famous. You know, the
Speaker 3: original night Stalker case down in California, the Texas Killing Fields, Florida.
Speaker 3: I mean, I could go on and on, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to look at those cases and bring some exposure
Speaker 3: to those cases because those a lot of those cases
Speaker 3: are just collecting dust. And so the way I design
Speaker 3: the show was I go out, I investigate, I do
Speaker 3: my own work, I interview cops, I inter members of
Speaker 3: the victims and so forth. But then I go back
Speaker 3: to John Kelly, my forensic psychologists, and kind of build
Speaker 3: a profile with him as the guy we might be
Speaker 3: looking for the unsubs as we call them, and unidentified subject.
Speaker 3: And then we go to a serial killer on the phone.
Speaker 3: We don't expose who he is, we disguise his voice,
Speaker 3: and we'd get his opinion after I said the case
Speaker 3: that I'm looking at that particular week, that episode, and
Speaker 3: the way I'd explained it's no different really than using
Speaker 3: Phil Simms from the New York Giants to comment on
Speaker 3: the Giants game on Sunday on CBS. I mecause it's
Speaker 3: really the same concept. You know, you're going to an
Speaker 3: expert in the field for expert analysis of what you're doing,
Speaker 3: and there's no better expert to quality to help you
Speaker 3: catch the serial killer than a serial killer. So that's
Speaker 3: what that's the premise of the show. And and for
Speaker 3: your listeners, you can go to YouTube and just google
Speaker 3: Dark Minds and you come up with probably fifteen of
Speaker 3: the twenty two episodes we filmed. And and you'll hear
Speaker 3: Raven and and you know, so I would ask him,
Speaker 3: you know, to give any example, Dan, I would, I
Speaker 3: would say, you know, I'd send him information about a
Speaker 3: killer and a case, and he'd look at he'd got
Speaker 3: the victims, he'd look at the way the bodies were found,
Speaker 3: he'd look at all the everything, and he'd relate it
Speaker 3: back to his own mind and what he would do
Speaker 3: in this certain situation. And he'd give that analysis. And
Speaker 3: it helped. I believe it helped.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about this, the incredible amount of letters
Speaker 5: and pages of letters, and the numerous calls and there
Speaker 5: was phone calls so many that at certain times you
Speaker 5: did not answer him. But over this five year period,
Speaker 5: But tell us about your visit at the Oregon State
Speaker 5: Penitentiary in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first time I went out and seen him. Wow,
Speaker 3: for many reasons, it was a devastating experience. In many ways,
Speaker 3: talking to him for about a year. By then he
Speaker 3: had been consulting on Dark Minds. He had written so
Speaker 3: many letters to me. I couldn't even tell you how
Speaker 3: many during that year. Is seven more than seven thousand
Speaker 3: pages over the course of the five years I received
Speaker 3: from him as far as letters go, I have probably
Speaker 3: fifty or sixty letters right now sitting on my desk
Speaker 3: in my office that are unopened that I just I
Speaker 3: can't keep up with the guy amazing. So I went
Speaker 3: out there and I was with my crew from Dark Minds.
Speaker 3: We were actually shooting in Oregon at the time. Uh.
Speaker 3: And I went out there and I sat with him,
Speaker 3: and you know, and he's a massive man. I mean
Speaker 3: he's six seven at the time, he was over three
Speaker 3: hundred pounds. And you know, we sat chair chair, and
Speaker 3: I mean inches away from each other. And I sat
Speaker 3: and I'm a pretty solid guy. I'm a big guy,
Speaker 3: and you know, he was just massive. And he's sitting
Speaker 3: there in front of me, and his two hands were
Speaker 3: on his knees and his hands were maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: eighteen inches away from me. And the first thought I
Speaker 3: had was, those are the same hands that strangled eight women,
Speaker 3: you know, And here they are just inches away from
Speaker 3: my own throat. So I said to him, I said,
Speaker 3: I said, I said, I called him Ray, you know,
Speaker 3: I called him Raven or jesperson. I said, could you
Speaker 3: kill me? Could you kill me? Because at this time
Speaker 3: we had become he had he had, he had begun
Speaker 3: to really start to trust me. I was his confident.
Speaker 3: I mean, he really really liked me at this time,
Speaker 3: a year into it. And he said, if I had to,
Speaker 3: he said, I wouldn't want to, but if I had to,
Speaker 3: I could. I could easily kill you if you were
Speaker 3: in the way. And so so, you know, thus began
Speaker 3: our personal relationship there physical we were right in front
Speaker 3: of each other, and we just began to talk and
Speaker 3: I began to just develop them as a source. And
Speaker 3: what was the devastating part about the day was not
Speaker 3: only everything he said, but when I left there, I left,
Speaker 3: I left the prison kind of in a daze, you know.
Speaker 3: And so me and my crew we go down the street,
Speaker 3: we go to the Kinko's, We go to the coffee shop,
Speaker 3: and someone broke into our vehicle and stole my bag
Speaker 3: and I got stuck in Oregon. We were on our
Speaker 3: way to Vancouver. It was a nightmare. It just turned
Speaker 3: into a nightmare and it and really, Danny, it goes
Speaker 3: back to something John Kelly, my forensic psychology just warned
Speaker 3: me about before I embarked on this journey. Because John
Speaker 3: Kelly had been talking to serial killers for many, many years,
Speaker 3: John Wayne Gacy, many many famous serial killers he'd interviewed,
Speaker 3: and he said to me, he said, Matt, listen. He said,
Speaker 3: you're a tough guy. You know, you're strong, You're solid.
Speaker 3: You're a Catholic. I mean you're not only are a Catholic,
Speaker 3: but you go to Mass four or five times a week.
Speaker 3: You know you you think you've got control of everything.
Speaker 3: You've written thirty books about murderers. You've written six seven
Speaker 3: books about serial killers, he said. But let me tell
Speaker 3: you something. He said, if the devil knocks on your
Speaker 3: door and you let them in, you better be ready
Speaker 3: to dance with him, because if you're not, he's going
Speaker 3: to get inside your head. And I kind of laughed
Speaker 3: at Kelly in my own little funny way that we
Speaker 3: joke around, and I said, come on, Kelly, you're talking
Speaker 3: about Phelps. Man. I'm tough, rock solid. No one's gonna
Speaker 3: crack me. But boy, you read that book Dan and
Speaker 3: he broke me and broke me.
Speaker 5: You talk about that, But it's a big process. And
Speaker 5: as John Kelly warned you is do not let your
Speaker 5: guard down. And part of that you believed in not
Speaker 5: letting your guard down was to keep your personal life
Speaker 5: to yourself.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: How was it then that you did share this stuff?
Speaker 5: How explain as you do in the book the process
Speaker 5: that those lines get, the professional lines and the personal
Speaker 5: lines get blurred as they did.
Speaker 3: It's you know, the metaphor that just came out of
Speaker 3: me while I was I started doing this this this
Speaker 3: media tour. Is that is that you know, I live
Speaker 3: in Connecticut. So the coastline is the water. Whether it's
Speaker 3: August or July or September, the water's freezing at sixty degrees.
Speaker 3: You jump in that ocean water in sixty degrees and
Speaker 3: it's jarring. It shocks your body. But you know what
Speaker 3: happens after you stay in it a while, you get
Speaker 3: used to it. Now the temperature of the water has
Speaker 3: not changed, You've just gotten used to it. And so
Speaker 3: so this is what happened over the course of the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was talking to this guy happy face.
Speaker 3: So much. I was reading his letters, and at one
Speaker 3: time the prison decides, okay, you guys want to start skyping,
Speaker 3: You're welcome to do that. So we start skyping. So
Speaker 3: this guy's infected every part of my life. And you know,
Speaker 3: here's an example. Here's a small example, because Kelly always
Speaker 3: told me, John Kelly, he said, matt He said, when
Speaker 3: you pick up that phone, be ready psychologically. You always
Speaker 3: have to be em William Phelps. When you pick up
Speaker 3: that phone. You can never be Matthew. He calls me, Matthew,
Speaker 3: you can never be that guy, that husband, that father.
Speaker 3: You can't be that guy. You gotta be em William Phelps.
Speaker 3: So here's an example of how it would go. We'd
Speaker 3: be talking and talking about, you know, all these clinical things,
Speaker 3: these serial killer stuff, and I'd say, listen, man, I
Speaker 3: got to go. My daughter's got a volley I'll talk
Speaker 3: to you tomorrow or next week or whatever. Bang hang up.
Speaker 3: And I'd stop and I'd say I slipped, because the
Speaker 3: next time I would talk to him, this is how
Speaker 3: the conversation would begin. How did that volleyball game turn out?
Speaker 3: With your daughter? And I'd get pissed and I'd say, listen, man,
Speaker 3: you don't have the right to ask me about my
Speaker 3: personal life. And he'd say, well, you invited it, you know,
Speaker 3: you mentioned it, So I just thought it was okay.
Speaker 3: So little things like that begin to slip, and then
Speaker 3: you begin, you know, that slips farther and farther until
Speaker 3: you realize it. So that's how that went.
Speaker 5: You talk about the first year or more of the
Speaker 5: one issue that Raven harps about and wants you to
Speaker 5: do his bidding in regards to re examining or reinvestigating this.
Speaker 5: So tell us what he wants you to do about
Speaker 5: Tyina Bennett and what you do end up doing on
Speaker 5: his behalf.
Speaker 3: So one of the things he banged on about, I
Speaker 3: mean obsessively. I mean he must have rode a thousand
Speaker 3: pages about the case. In the hundreds of hours of
Speaker 3: audio that I have recorded with half, if not half
Speaker 3: a third, is about Tanya Bennett. And Tanya Bennett was
Speaker 3: his first murder or in the state of Oregon. It
Speaker 3: was his first murder overall. It happened in Portland. And
Speaker 3: what happens is with Tanya Bennett is in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: he kills Tanya Bennett, dumps her body like near the
Speaker 3: Vista House outside of Portland, and two people are subsequently
Speaker 3: arrested for that murder, tried and convicted while he is
Speaker 3: now becoming this serial killer. So he's watching his process
Speaker 3: unfold as he's killing other people, other women. He sees
Speaker 3: two people and put in prison for murder he committed,
Speaker 3: and he's at first he's laughing about it. It's funny
Speaker 3: and wow, I've gotten away with it. Not only have
Speaker 3: I gotten away with it, but two people are in prison.
Speaker 3: And then we fast forward to I think it's nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, and he's arrested, he's put in prison for life,
Speaker 3: and he's in his cell and an article it comes
Speaker 3: out in the La Times, a big, huge article. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know how many words it was, but it's
Speaker 3: eleven pages long or something Internet page is long, by
Speaker 3: Barry Siegel. I believe the big time journalist, big time
Speaker 3: article about happy face and this tiny Bennett case and
Speaker 3: how two people could be wrongly convicted of this crime.
Speaker 3: And Jefferson reads this article and he gets in. He
Speaker 3: claims he has an epiphany that oh my god, God,
Speaker 3: not only were two people wrong, you know wrongly, you know,
Speaker 3: convicted and tried and convicted and put away. But I
Speaker 3: believe the prosecutor and the cops knew that they had
Speaker 3: the wrong people, and they still prosecuted them anyway. And
Speaker 3: if there's one thing about jessperson that he is obsessive about,
Speaker 3: it's the fact that he's admitted his wrongs. So everybody
Speaker 3: else must cough up and admit their wrongs, and if
Speaker 3: they don't, he's going to do it for them. So
Speaker 3: he wanted me to reinvestigate the entire benecase and write
Speaker 3: about it and in proof that they knew, that the
Speaker 3: cops knew, and that the prosecutor knew they had the
Speaker 3: wrong people, but they went ahead with it anyway. And
Speaker 3: his contention at the time was all the cops fed
Speaker 3: them information in order for them to know certain details
Speaker 3: about the murder, you know, but the cops knew that
Speaker 3: they were not the right people. So I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I'll give you that promise. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't have to I don't have to promise you anything,
Speaker 3: but I promise that I'll look into that and I
Speaker 3: will write about my findings whatever they are. Be prepared
Speaker 3: for what I find. And so thus I looked into it.
Speaker 3: I began to reinterview most of the people involved and
Speaker 3: look at the case, and you know, I came to
Speaker 3: a conclusion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Now you talk about other than the Dark
Speaker 5: Minds consultation, because that ends, as you write about, in
Speaker 5: three years and there's not a fourth season. You don't
Speaker 5: tell them right away that there isn't this fourth season.
Speaker 5: Tell us why, but what are your other plans to
Speaker 5: do with this correspondence? What else will you do with
Speaker 5: this correspondence?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it was. It was a tight rope for
Speaker 3: me knowing that. Well, first of all, I should say
Speaker 3: that the show was so personal to me. The show
Speaker 3: was beginning to make strides in cold cases. It was
Speaker 3: a one of a kind show. It and actually the show,
Speaker 3: my work through the show has created three tasks task
Speaker 3: forces to reinvestigate some of these serial killer cases. And
Speaker 3: not only that, but you have twenty something cases that
Speaker 3: are reopened that we're just collecting dust. That's good work.
Speaker 3: And I was it was, I wrote in Dangerous Ground
Speaker 3: in my book, I write it was like a death
Speaker 3: to me when they canceled that show. I mean, the
Speaker 3: general manager of ID is the one who broke the
Speaker 3: news to me, because he knew how hard it was
Speaker 3: going to be. All shows are ultimately canceled, but I
Speaker 3: felt that I had more work to do. Nonetheless, I
Speaker 3: get over that and I think to myself, I think
Speaker 3: I can't tell him. I got to keep him going
Speaker 3: because I need his help and need his help on
Speaker 3: many different levels. And one of the levels was I
Speaker 3: wanted to maybe do a documentary on all the stuff
Speaker 3: that I had collected from him. I mean all the audio,
Speaker 3: the Skype recordings I recorded, all the all the skype
Speaker 3: interviews on GoPro I have, you know, and those will
Speaker 3: be coming out them. I'm going to be I'm going
Speaker 3: to be premier in some of that video on Doctor
Speaker 3: Oz in September. And and I actually just signed a
Speaker 3: deal for the rights to the book to make a
Speaker 3: documentary with a with a big company, and and so
Speaker 3: that that was what I had in mind. But the
Speaker 3: other thing was I didn't want to tell him because
Speaker 3: I didn't want him to come out and start saying
Speaker 3: he was raven. That was one of the reasons too,
Speaker 3: because he was itching to get some notoriety out of this.
Speaker 3: It really it really irked him that he couldn't he
Speaker 3: couldn't take part in the notoriety of being raven. Here
Speaker 3: he is on TV every week, national TV, I mean
Speaker 3: international or really the show aired him, I don't know,
Speaker 3: twenty countries. So here he was, and he couldn't take
Speaker 3: credit for it. And for a serial killer not to
Speaker 3: be able to take credit for some is very you know,
Speaker 3: that's a blow to their ego, you know. So there
Speaker 3: were many different reasons why I didn't tell him right away.
Speaker 5: You explore his early life. I've read other material, but
Speaker 5: you go into areas and get him to talk about
Speaker 5: areas that no one has ever This is unprecedented territory, definitely,
Speaker 5: And you talk about again not making conclusions, but certain
Speaker 5: events and things in his background, his relationships with his father.
Speaker 5: Just tell us a little bit of give us a
Speaker 5: little glimpse of his early life and what you I
Speaker 5: think concluded to a certain degree on what was important
Speaker 5: in that triggering and his anger later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean really, when you look at the whole
Speaker 3: picture of his childhood, his early adulthood, and his relationship
Speaker 3: with his dad, you see a picture emerge. You see
Speaker 3: kind of a clear picture emerge of where the anger
Speaker 3: is deep seated. If you ask him, he blames dad
Speaker 3: for everything. And he even says Dad killed somebody and
Speaker 3: told him that story and that that made it okay
Speaker 3: and Dad got away with it. So that's how he learned.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know about that story. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, it's in the book and it's it's in
Speaker 3: quotes from him, and you know, there's no one else
Speaker 3: to dispute it because by the time I got out,
Speaker 3: was on my way out to talk to Les Jefferson,
Speaker 3: his father, he had died. He had passed, so I
Speaker 3: couldn't do that. But yeah, I mean his childhood was
Speaker 3: one of you know, he was the he was the
Speaker 3: kid in the family that everybody kind of pushed around,
Speaker 3: that every according to him, that everybody kind of not
Speaker 3: only his siblings but his dad and people at school
Speaker 3: kind of made fun of because of his size, kind
Speaker 3: of kind of said, you know, you're dopey, you're stupid,
Speaker 3: you know. I think his brother started calling him igor uh.
Speaker 3: And and in school he was kind of ridiculed a
Speaker 3: little bit, and he was always to blame for everything.
Speaker 3: He told me. You know, he banged on about this
Speaker 3: a lot that everybody blamed me for everything. My dad.
Speaker 3: My dad would lie and about things and and and
Speaker 3: put the blame on me. Always my fault, always my fault,
Speaker 3: always my fault. So you know what I look for
Speaker 3: as a as a as a when I put my
Speaker 3: clinical hat on and I start to look at stuff
Speaker 3: as a serial killer expert and researcher, I begin I
Speaker 3: try to look for a couple of things in serial killers,
Speaker 3: addictions and and sexual abuse. And I and for for
Speaker 3: the life of me, I couldn't figure out his addiction
Speaker 3: because he wasn't addicted to drugs, He wasn't addicted to alcohol,
Speaker 3: any of that. And I'm like, there's got to be
Speaker 3: an addiction there, because all serial killers are addicted to
Speaker 3: something sex. I thought maybe it was sex for a while,
Speaker 3: and then bang, it comes late gambling. He admits to
Speaker 3: me that he had a gambling addiction. The sexual abuse
Speaker 3: I could never get out of him really the idea
Speaker 3: that he was sexually abused. Jack Olsen wrote a book
Speaker 3: called I Creation of a serial Killer in which he
Speaker 3: talks about about Jesferson, in which he talks about a
Speaker 3: neighbor kind of not necessarily sexually abusing him, but maybe,
Speaker 3: you know, sexually confusing him, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 3: I didn't find no real outwardly sexual abuse. But the
Speaker 3: one thing that stood out in all of it to
Speaker 3: me was really sobering in many ways, and he didn't
Speaker 3: really want to get too deep into it. He wrote
Speaker 3: me a manifesto at one time of his life, from
Speaker 3: the eighteen hundreds up until the day his last murder,
Speaker 3: and that what I mean by manifesto is this was
Speaker 3: different from the letters. He took three thick, two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty page notebooks and he wrote out his whole
Speaker 3: life for me, and in all those seven hundred pages
Speaker 3: or whatever they were, and that that particular manifesto, I
Speaker 3: think he mentioned his mother once And I asked, I said,
Speaker 3: do you realize you mentioned mother once in this whole thing?
Speaker 3: And I said, that's very telling to me. Why And
Speaker 3: he didn't have an answer for it. So I believe
Speaker 3: there's something deep seated there between him and his mouth.
Speaker 3: What it is, I don't know.
Speaker 5: You also talk about his ex wife, Rose, and he
Speaker 5: thought maybe this ex wife was a focal point of
Speaker 5: a psychosis. Tell us a little bit about what he
Speaker 5: said about his ex wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely something there. I don't know
Speaker 3: if his story is as one hundred percent accurate. But
Speaker 3: what happens is, you know, they ultimately divorce, and the
Speaker 3: divorce is what sends him out of the house, sends
Speaker 3: him to go live with Roberta Ellis, another woman, and
Speaker 3: then Roberta takes off with a trucker while they're living
Speaker 3: together on him, but before he takes off with before
Speaker 3: he leaves the house from his divorce, you know, there's
Speaker 3: a couple of years there where's he doesn't have sex
Speaker 3: with his wife. He's not having any sex with his wife,
Speaker 3: and he talks about that as something that really bothered him,
Speaker 3: you know, and he talks about how Rose would say
Speaker 3: things to the nature of, you know, when he made
Speaker 3: an advance, he'd say, go stick it in a keyhole
Speaker 3: something like that, or go masturbate or something like that.
Speaker 3: And he didn't like that. He didn't take particular he
Speaker 3: wasn't too particularly fond of that kind of talk. And
Speaker 3: he really develops some anger toward not only Rose, but
Speaker 3: women in general, I believe from that. And so so
Speaker 3: we have this guy who's who's now divorcing, but he's
Speaker 3: living there and for a couple of years there where
Speaker 3: he was having sex with his wife, he was getting prostitutes,
Speaker 3: And what he began to tell me was that he
Speaker 3: believed that Rose and other women he didn't like it
Speaker 3: when they used him, and he said, most women will
Speaker 3: use men, most women would use me. And he really
Speaker 3: was angry about this. And then there's a connection between
Speaker 3: his first victim, Tanya Bennett, where she makes he claims
Speaker 3: she makes an advance at him at the bar. He
Speaker 3: brings her home there there and then he makes an
Speaker 3: advance at her and she tells him go stick it
Speaker 3: in a keyhole, and he said, that was it. I
Speaker 3: snapped punched her and I didn't stop. But if you
Speaker 3: look at all his victims the way he describes them
Speaker 3: to me, you'll see that in each one of the
Speaker 3: cases he believes that woman used him in some way
Speaker 3: and that was it. That was it for her.
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Speaker 5: go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. You were talking
Speaker 5: with happy face Keith Jesperson, but at this time you
Speaker 5: when he talked about the murder of Tanya Bennett, he
Speaker 5: also went on to justify why these other murders happened.
Speaker 5: And he also talked about, as you described in the book,
Speaker 5: how murder got easier and as you describe, how his
Speaker 5: murders got more brutal and more settlement masochistic. So tell
Speaker 5: us some of the revealing conversations that he begins to
Speaker 5: convey to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is you know, and this is a bit
Speaker 3: this gets into a bit of where I begin to
Speaker 3: break down. Uh, as as you as you saw or
Speaker 3: read in the book. Throughout this process, I begin to
Speaker 3: experience bouts with anxiety that put me in the er.
Speaker 3: I begin to experience, you know, sleepless nights. I begin
Speaker 3: to get on some medication. You know, a lot of
Speaker 3: things start happening to me physically, spiritually, psychologically. And it's
Speaker 3: all because of this. I mean, there is no other reason.
Speaker 3: It just it. It starts, it starts to work on me,
Speaker 3: and I don't even realize it really. Going back to
Speaker 3: the metaphor of the water, I just I'm kind of
Speaker 3: used to it. And in one of those instances, it's
Speaker 3: it's Angela Sabrieze is Andrews. Sabrieze was victim number six
Speaker 3: or seven, I believe, and with Angels Sabrize, I asked him,
Speaker 3: you know, I said, listen, you know the story about
Speaker 3: you Ty and Angelus to breeze to the bottom of
Speaker 3: your truck and dragging her down the highway for twelve miles.
Speaker 3: I said, no one's really ever asked you, you know.
Speaker 3: And I might digress him in and say I was
Speaker 3: amazed at the questions that were never asked of this guy.
Speaker 3: And he, you know, by other journalists. So I asked him,
Speaker 3: I said listen, I said, man, I said, was she
Speaker 3: alive or was she dead when you tied her underneath
Speaker 3: that truck? And he started laughing. He said, it would
Speaker 3: make a much better story for you if she was alive,
Speaker 3: but I think she was dead, and he would chuckle,
Speaker 3: you know, and I'd say, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: I mean, what do you mean, what are you trying
Speaker 3: to say? You know? Are you are you? Are you
Speaker 3: trying to leave it ambiguous for me? And he's like, no, look,
Speaker 3: I think she was dead and he'd laugh, you know.
Speaker 3: And so it was images like that of perhaps a
Speaker 3: woman still alive being dragged unerneath the truck that would
Speaker 3: wake me up in the middle of the night and
Speaker 3: I'd be staring at my ceiling and thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 3: what did this woman go through? What did any of
Speaker 3: these women go through? I mean, you know, he was
Speaker 3: the kind of killer that you said the wrong thing,
Speaker 3: and that was it you had. If you were a woman,
Speaker 3: you had these hands around your throat and he was
Speaker 3: strangling you to death, and he was looking at you
Speaker 3: in the eyes, staring into your face. You know, bitch,
Speaker 3: you should have never said that, you know, why did
Speaker 3: you say that? And he would justify it by blaming
Speaker 3: the victim. He would talk about karma. It was always karma.
Speaker 3: These women crossed my path. They were meant to die.
Speaker 3: I was meant to kill them. You know. That sort
Speaker 3: of stuff, and that sort of stuff really began to
Speaker 3: bother me, you know, because I know it's all bullshit.
Speaker 3: That's what I know. You know, this guy is a
Speaker 3: cycle path and cycle paths they don't care. I mean,
Speaker 3: they have no empathy. You know, they don't care. You know,
Speaker 3: if you cross your path and they want you dead,
Speaker 3: you're dead.
Speaker 5: Now. During this five year period, there becomes a point
Speaker 5: where you're not, for lack of term, you're not shying
Speaker 5: away from asking him hard questions, and in fact, you're
Speaker 5: not shying away from condemning him and ridiculing him as
Speaker 5: a killer. I found that one of the most incredible
Speaker 5: parts of this exchange between you two, what are the
Speaker 5: kind of things that you finally, in frustration, after hearing
Speaker 5: so much of like you called someone's ridiculousness, and just
Speaker 5: on and on and on, what do you what are
Speaker 5: the kinds of things you finally say to him in
Speaker 5: this kind of confrontation and what's his response back?
Speaker 3: Well, again, we you know, we talked about Angela Sabrieze
Speaker 3: many times and I would say, you know, one time
Speaker 3: I said to him, I said, you know, was she
Speaker 3: alive or was she dead? It's a simple question. And
Speaker 3: he says to me, what kind of person do you
Speaker 3: think I am? I said, what what? What do you mean?
Speaker 3: What kind of person do I think you are? What
Speaker 3: he was saying was, you know, you don't think i'd
Speaker 3: tie it a live person underneath my truck, do you?
Speaker 3: And I said to him, you are an effing serial killer,
Speaker 3: So I'll bets off. Dude, anything is possible with you.
Speaker 3: That's a fair question. And I would hang up the phone.
Speaker 3: I would hang up the phone, and he'd call back
Speaker 3: a couple of days and he'd say, listen, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: And I'd say, listen, man, you know, if we're going
Speaker 3: to do this, we're going to do this. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to sit here and get angry at you on
Speaker 3: the phone, you know, and and and hang up on you.
Speaker 3: That's not the way this is going to work, you know.
Speaker 3: He you know, he had no trouble answering questions as
Speaker 3: long as the question didn't challenge him in a way
Speaker 3: that he felt betrayed a confidence between us. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so as long as he felt that his narcissism and
Speaker 3: his ego could uh could blossom during the answer, he
Speaker 3: was fine. But when I hit him hard, you know,
Speaker 3: he'd get mad. He'd get mad.
Speaker 5: To talk to describe, I guess just to basically, in
Speaker 5: one short story, basically encapsulate what Jesperson was all about.
Speaker 5: You talk about the woman that he had known previously
Speaker 5: before that he picks up again at a truck stop.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about this, because it does
Speaker 5: illustrate most dramatically the character of Jesperson.
Speaker 3: You're you're spot on with that. Dan Julie win winning him.
Speaker 3: He picks her up, and I believe they go even
Speaker 3: visit her mom. And and you know he had dated
Speaker 3: her before, or you know, or went out with her
Speaker 3: a few times. They knew each other. So he picks
Speaker 3: her up on a Friday, I believe it is, and
Speaker 3: she's in the truck with him, and they're driving and
Speaker 3: and and Julie's saying, you know, listen, man, listen, Justferson Keith,
Speaker 3: I got a court date Monday, and I'm gonna get
Speaker 3: a dw I and I'm gonna get put in jail
Speaker 3: and you got to get me out. You got to
Speaker 3: bail me out. And he said, I don't have to
Speaker 3: bail you out. I'm not bailing you out. That's you know,
Speaker 3: that's your problem. And here we go with the with
Speaker 3: that trigger for him. The trigger for him was you
Speaker 3: know you're using me, right, that's the trigger. If he
Speaker 3: thinks you're using if he thinks he's being used by
Speaker 3: a woman, watch out, that's the that's the switch that's
Speaker 3: gonna flip. So she begins to really really gnaw at
Speaker 3: him with this you gotta get me out of jail,
Speaker 3: you gotta bail me out. Listen, we're gonna be together.
Speaker 3: And she starts talking about let's get engaged, and she's
Speaker 3: talking about all this off and he's like he's just
Speaker 3: listening and listening and listening, and he's telling her no, no, no,
Speaker 3: no no, and this is not how it's going to go.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you how it's going to go. You
Speaker 3: go to jail, then you're on your own. I got
Speaker 3: to take this load of steel across country. I can't
Speaker 3: be bothered with you. And she's like, you don't understand.
Speaker 3: You got to get me out of jail. And he goes,
Speaker 3: you know what, I got a way to get you
Speaker 3: out of jail, and he grabs her by the neck
Speaker 3: and he brings her in the back of his cab
Speaker 3: and he strangles her to death. And then he looks
Speaker 3: at her and he says, now you're out of that
Speaker 3: court date. You don't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 3: And so there it is. There's the psychopath, there's the
Speaker 3: happy face to kill her. That he had had enough,
Speaker 3: he felt he was being used and so this person
Speaker 3: had to die. That's his answer death.
Speaker 5: What does he you talk about just a characteristic of
Speaker 5: jessperson after the killing. Tell us about the his eating
Speaker 5: and sleeping habits after that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in many instances, the guy would kill
Speaker 3: the woman strangle her to death, which is one of
Speaker 3: the most personal ways you can kill somebody is strangling
Speaker 3: them to death, because it doesn't it doesn't come off
Speaker 3: like it does in the movies. It takes four or
Speaker 3: five six minutes, even for a guy his size. It
Speaker 3: takes a long time to strangle somebody to death, and
Speaker 3: it's very personal. You're staring at them the whole time
Speaker 3: he would strangle a woman and leave her in the cab.
Speaker 3: And one of his things was he'd like to go
Speaker 3: to Burger King of McDonald's and get some fries hamburg
Speaker 3: and sit down and eat, and then come into the
Speaker 3: cab and push her aside and take a nap, either
Speaker 3: dump her off on the side of the road or
Speaker 3: push her aside. In a couple of instance, he took
Speaker 3: a nap right near the body. I mean that, you
Speaker 3: know that that exemplifies the type of person that he is.
Speaker 3: He's a psychopath. He does not care best stuff does
Speaker 3: not bother him. In one instance, which which actually I
Speaker 3: have a skype video of him describing this. In one instance,
Speaker 3: he brings the cheeseburger back into the truck and he
Speaker 3: and he and he even says to her and when
Speaker 3: he was telling me this, he's laughing. And on film
Speaker 3: I have it on some where he's laughing while he's
Speaker 3: describing the scene. He's like, I was telling her, if
Speaker 3: she was a good girl, she could have had some
Speaker 3: of this burger, but she wasn't a good girl. And
Speaker 3: he laughed about it, so, you know, and that's type
Speaker 3: of stuff where you know, I'm the journalist I'm there,
Speaker 3: you know, and and and I'm like, I write it,
Speaker 3: I write in dangerous ground, I write, you know, objectivity,
Speaker 3: no such thing for a journalist. That's that's all bullshit.
Speaker 3: You can stay objective to a certain point, but object objectivity.
Speaker 3: I'd be sick to my stomach when he would tell
Speaker 3: me stories like that, you know. And sometimes I would
Speaker 3: tell them, I would say, man, you know, you have
Speaker 3: no respect for the victims of your crimes, even now
Speaker 3: later after you've been arrested, and you need to show respect.
Speaker 3: You know. He almost never called them by their names.
Speaker 3: They were always victim one, two, three, or it or they.
Speaker 3: He would never personalize them.
Speaker 5: Now you say, at this time, too, is it, as
Speaker 5: you go through this incredible process, that you see this
Speaker 5: as a trade off that you need to continue with
Speaker 5: this for a higher goal than obviously just a television
Speaker 5: series or another book or journalism itself, the institution. You
Speaker 5: have a higher goal and an objective in continuing to
Speaker 5: talk to them. So tell us how you do continue
Speaker 5: despite the your incredible pain in your in your literally
Speaker 5: in your guts from talking to this guy. But what
Speaker 5: is your big goal? What would you like to do
Speaker 5: with it?
Speaker 3: It's funny because Dan, I had doctor Catherine Ramslin. You
Speaker 3: might have had her on your show. She's gone on
Speaker 3: all the crime shows. She's written fifty books. I think
Speaker 3: I had Catherine, who's a friend, read the manuscript for
Speaker 3: me for a comment, you know, for a blurb. And
Speaker 3: one of the things she asked me was, you know,
Speaker 3: while she was halfway through, was you know, why did
Speaker 3: you stay in this? Why would you stay in this
Speaker 3: if it's affecting you like that? Well, I'm going to
Speaker 3: go back to the metaphor that you know, before you
Speaker 3: realize that you have hypothermia in that cold water, and
Speaker 3: because you're used to the water at this point, you
Speaker 3: don't realize your body is cool enough, so you get hypothermia.
Speaker 3: So that is a metaphor. One of the things that
Speaker 3: kept me in this was he had a couple of
Speaker 3: cases that I was really interested in from the very
Speaker 3: get go. One of them is a Jane Doe in Florida,
Speaker 3: and the Jane Doe in Florida is a woman who
Speaker 3: he picked up in Tampa who strangles maybe five hundred
Speaker 3: miles into the journey, three hundred miles into the journey
Speaker 3: and dumps her body along the I ten on the
Speaker 3: Panhandle in Florida. She's found a couple of years later.
Speaker 3: When he's arrested, he admits to killing her, tells them
Speaker 3: all the information he can about her. Her name was Sue,
Speaker 3: Suzanne Susette. He doesn't really know, you know, where she
Speaker 3: was coming from, where she was heading Lake Tahoe, Reno,
Speaker 3: that area, and you know, that's about all I know.
Speaker 3: And for twenty years, while he's in jail, Florida law
Speaker 3: enforcement is writing to him and they're saying, can you
Speaker 3: help us because we can't identify her. We put her in,
Speaker 3: we put our DNA into the into codis, into the databases,
Speaker 3: and nothing pops up, you know. And I'm a victim's advocate.
Speaker 3: I mean, murders affected my family, and I'm thinking, this
Speaker 3: poor woman is a box of bones in a forensic
Speaker 3: lab in Florida. Her whole legacy is a number on
Speaker 3: a box. This woman needs to be in the ground
Speaker 3: in the town where she's from, with her name on
Speaker 3: a tombstone so her family members can memorialize her and
Speaker 3: think about her and remember her that way. And that
Speaker 3: kind of made me sad. That kind of drove me,
Speaker 3: and I said to myself I said, I can maybe
Speaker 3: help here. Now. He would send me all the mail
Speaker 3: that he would get over the years. He sent me
Speaker 3: all the letters from Florida law enforcement. And he told
Speaker 3: me flat out, he said, I'm not helping them. And
Speaker 3: he said, you know, if I help them, what's going
Speaker 3: to happen is we identify her, her family comes forward,
Speaker 3: they want to press the case. I end up in
Speaker 3: court in Florida, and then I get the chair and
Speaker 3: then I'm dead. And there's one thing serial killers do not.
Speaker 3: Like most serial killers that I've interviewed and I've written about,
Speaker 3: and I've written seven books about, they're afraid of dying.
Speaker 3: They're afraid of death. Serial killers have no trouble dolling
Speaker 3: out death. But boy, you put it in their doorstep,
Speaker 3: in front of their face, and they get scared. So
Speaker 3: he was afraid that the family, you know, that he
Speaker 3: would end up. And so he's like, I'm not helping them.
Speaker 3: In the DA, nobody will give me immunity, you know
Speaker 3: if I help. So I said to him, I said, well,
Speaker 3: let me see what I can do about that, and
Speaker 3: maybe me and you can work on it together. That'd
Speaker 3: be something we can do together. So I went behind
Speaker 3: his back, and I started talking to Florida and I
Speaker 3: talked to them for I don't know how long a year,
Speaker 3: maybe six months before before he even knew. But to
Speaker 3: backtrack even more. I after I told him that I was,
Speaker 3: let me see what I can do. I waited a
Speaker 3: couple months and I got him on the phone and
Speaker 3: they said, listen, man. I spoke to the DA in
Speaker 3: Florida and they gave me. They gave me verbal confirmation
Speaker 3: that they looked me in the eye and shook my
Speaker 3: and said, we're not going to prosecute him for this case.
Speaker 3: We just want to identify the woman. He gave me
Speaker 3: a guarantee that there's no way you'll be prosecuted for
Speaker 3: the case. And he goes, really, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: they guaranteed it. And at this time, I don't know,
Speaker 3: four years into our relationship, he trusts me one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: My word is gospel to him. Whatever I say to him,
Speaker 3: he does and he believes. And I lied. It was
Speaker 3: a lie. I never spoke to the prosecutor. I never
Speaker 3: spoke to anybody. And I'm like, what do I care
Speaker 3: if I lie? What do I care if he's prosecuted?
Speaker 3: Down there, I hope he is. So thus begins what
Speaker 3: Florida tried to do for twenty years. Now I'm able
Speaker 3: to facilitate. I'm able to facilitate him. Who he's an
Speaker 3: artist at this point, he's become a really well groomed,
Speaker 3: well trained artist. I get him to start drawing a
Speaker 3: picture of her. He looked in her eyes, he strangled
Speaker 3: at her death. There's one thing serial killers, you know,
Speaker 3: don't forget, and that's they're victims. Excuse me. So then
Speaker 3: I tell him, I said, listen, why don't I give
Speaker 3: Florida call and let me let me put you in
Speaker 3: contact with the forensic art artists who's been trying to
Speaker 3: get a hold of you and trying to work with you.
Speaker 3: And he goes, yeah, do that, knowing that I had
Speaker 3: been talking to these guys for six months already, and
Speaker 3: and and kind of saying, listen, I'm going to get
Speaker 3: him to help you. What do you want? What do
Speaker 3: you questions? What can I ask him? And I had
Speaker 3: gotten all the reports, and I questioned him on everything
Speaker 3: and about this case, him not knowing that I had
Speaker 3: the reports, and his answers were, you know, he was
Speaker 3: telling the truth. According to reports, so so I put
Speaker 3: it all together. I put, I put, facilitated the whole thing,
Speaker 3: and kind of acted as the liaison between the two.
Speaker 3: And we came up with a composite, a really great
Speaker 3: picture that he drew from memory, and then a composite
Speaker 3: made from her skull, and boy, when we put the
Speaker 3: two together, they overlapped, they matched. So his memory in
Speaker 3: this skull matched in the last trip I made down
Speaker 3: the Florida really Palmach County Sheriff's obviously actually actually gave
Speaker 3: me a replica of her skull which sits on my desk,
Speaker 3: Jane Doe, an exact replica. And yeah, because of all
Speaker 3: the work I did in that case, So that was
Speaker 3: kind of driving me a little bit, you know that.
Speaker 3: In another case, it was kind of driving me to
Speaker 3: there could be some redemption in this whole madness for me,
Speaker 3: you know, there could be something good that comes out
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 5: Exactly. Now, as we mentioned, this is part memoir and
Speaker 5: it's also a very very personal story. As we had
Speaker 5: spoken in the introduction, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: your brother and addiction. As you do, you talk about
Speaker 5: your experiences as well and the effect this addiction had
Speaker 5: on your family. And also about, of course his murdered wife, Diane.
Speaker 5: Just tell us how on earth the raven Jasperson helped
Speaker 5: you to come to grips with this very personal aspect
Speaker 5: of your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that, I appreciate the question. I mean,
Speaker 3: in many ways, there's a major part of this book
Speaker 3: that is an addiction memoir. I mean, my brother's addiction
Speaker 3: to heroin is there in the opening pages of the book,
Speaker 3: in the prologue, he's on methodon and those opening pages,
Speaker 3: my addiction to alcohol, my sobriety, Diane, my sister in law,
Speaker 3: her addiction with my brother to drugs, hard drugs, and
Speaker 3: how even my grandfather, of whom I never met, his
Speaker 3: addiction to alcohol, and how he died, and how it
Speaker 3: all really manifests in our lives, and and and I read.
Speaker 3: You know, I got to say that if you're a
Speaker 3: writer and you write books for a living, whatever kind
Speaker 3: of books you do, right, ultimately you're going to tell
Speaker 3: the story of your own life. It's going to happen.
Speaker 3: You're gonna end up doing it. And for the life
Speaker 3: of me, I never, for one minute ever thought that
Speaker 3: when I told my story and it stared back at me,
Speaker 3: what would happen. Because when you when you when you
Speaker 3: remember something child'sood trauma, a good memory, when you remember
Speaker 3: it in your head and you think about it, it's
Speaker 3: there's a narrative of it in your head and there's
Speaker 3: pictures in your head. And everybody goes through that. But
Speaker 3: let me tell you something, Dan, you write it down
Speaker 3: on paper and you begin to think about it in
Speaker 3: a different way. As I wrote in the author's note
Speaker 3: in the book, I didn't sit down and dredge up
Speaker 3: memories to write this book. What I did was wherever
Speaker 3: I was at the time and the memory came in
Speaker 3: to my head about something that I want to include
Speaker 3: in a book. I wrote it on my iPad, I
Speaker 3: wrote it on my iPhone. I just wrote notes about it.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't forcing myself to come up with memories
Speaker 3: as I sat down every morning to write. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to do that. A lot of times I would
Speaker 3: be in bed in the middle of the night, I'd
Speaker 3: wake up and I'd start writing about something so so
Speaker 3: so through all of that, you know, jessperson, while I'm
Speaker 3: I'm writing that type of stuff. I didn't tell him
Speaker 3: about any of that stuff, but he kept asking when
Speaker 3: am I going to help you with your sister in
Speaker 3: law's murder? And I'd be like, man, you know, let's
Speaker 3: keep that out of it. You know, how can you
Speaker 3: possibly help me with her unsolved murder? And he said, well,
Speaker 3: I've been helping you with the Dark Minds cases. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know those cases until you give me the
Speaker 3: information I could maybe help you with hers. And you
Speaker 3: know what, he was right, I mean, he didn't know
Speaker 3: any of these case is until I sent them the
Speaker 3: research to look at and then he could analyze and
Speaker 3: comment on him. And so I broke down a little
Speaker 3: bit and kind of began to explain to him about
Speaker 3: her case and what our family went through and all
Speaker 3: of that, and he had a revelation. It really made
Speaker 3: a sobering point that because of the person she was,
Speaker 3: you know, we're talking nineteen ninety six, she was murdered.
Speaker 3: I mean, here it is twenty one years later, and
Speaker 3: you know, every freaking year we hear the same thing
Speaker 3: from the state police and the prosecutors. Many of these
Speaker 3: people I know I've written books about, and I know
Speaker 3: we hear the same thing. Oh we're waiting for DNA, Well,
Speaker 3: you're waiting for DNA twenty years later, you're waiting for
Speaker 3: tests to come back. I mean, And he said, they're
Speaker 3: just telling you that, man, they don't care about your
Speaker 3: sister in law's case, just like the girls I murdered.
Speaker 3: They don't care, don't care. There's certain girls that they
Speaker 3: care about and certain they don't and and and and
Speaker 3: In the book, I kind of I I kind of
Speaker 3: put a name on it. I call it the Natalie
Speaker 3: Holloway effect. So if you're a blonde haired, blue eyed,
Speaker 3: white girl with with a family who's got some money
Speaker 3: or whatever, and you go missing, well, Jesus, the satellite
Speaker 3: trucks are at your door and the cases everywhere. But
Speaker 3: if you're a Hispanic girl from you know, Hartford, Connecticut
Speaker 3: or Wooster, or you're my sister in law from from Hartford,
Speaker 3: and you're you know, you're you're not the most upstanding citizen,
Speaker 3: forget it. Man. There's nobody, you know, satellite trucks at
Speaker 3: your house helping you. And he made that point to
Speaker 3: me clear, and he was right. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, when you talked about the this book, a book
Speaker 5: possibly about this correspondence and a documentary, it's interesting as
Speaker 5: you write, what he immediately does and sends you just
Speaker 5: to show you how of his interest.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's that's that's great, isn't it. Yeah. So I
Speaker 3: tell him, I tell him, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 3: do a documentary. I'm going to do a book. He
Speaker 3: kept asking me, and he's like, yeah, excellent, that's now.
Speaker 3: Now he's speaking my language. And you know, a week
Speaker 3: or two later, what do I get it? In the man?
Speaker 3: I get, I get this this long letter, and he
Speaker 3: sketches the whole thing out. He sketches each chapter, what
Speaker 3: what should be in each chapter, how how it should go,
Speaker 3: what I should do. He sketches out the documentary. Oh,
Speaker 3: this is okay, this is what you need to interview
Speaker 3: the and he just tries to take control of the
Speaker 3: whole process. And I get him on the phone and
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, you're not writing this book. I'm writing
Speaker 3: a book about my experience. Is about you, dark minds.
Speaker 3: I made a promise to you about the Tany Bennet case.
Speaker 3: That's going to be in it, and it's going to
Speaker 3: be about my life. You're not gonna sketch out my
Speaker 3: book for me. And I kind of heard the air
Speaker 3: come out of his bullown a little bit but he
Speaker 3: went along, you know, and he's like, Okay, whatever you
Speaker 3: want to do, I'm behind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now you had to And you speak about this
Speaker 5: in the book, inevitably breaking this communication with him. Tell
Speaker 5: us how you did that or if you did that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I could say that it's it's complete.
Speaker 3: But doing the media stuff, I've kind of kept him
Speaker 3: on the line at a distance. Now I speak to
Speaker 3: him maybe twice a month instead of three or four
Speaker 3: times a week, five six times a week. So I
Speaker 3: speak to him maybe twice a month now. If I
Speaker 3: need him, I can leave him a voicemail, believe it
Speaker 3: or not. If I need you know, suppose I need
Speaker 3: him tomorrow, I leave him a voicemail. He'll call me.
Speaker 3: But one of the interesting things was when I went
Speaker 3: out there for that last visit that I write about
Speaker 3: in the book, was what I get in the mail
Speaker 3: after I come back from him. I get a certified,
Speaker 3: you know, letter, notarized. He's given me his body. He
Speaker 3: wants to, you know, when he dies. He wants me
Speaker 3: to claim his body. And I'm like, I don't want
Speaker 3: your body. All I want is your brain. And that
Speaker 3: might sound bizarre, but I want to donate the brain
Speaker 3: to the research I talk about and I support that's
Speaker 3: in the book The Research That's going on in England
Speaker 3: by Adrian Rayne that psychopaths are born. So psychopaths are born.
Speaker 3: The part of the brain where you're supposed to have
Speaker 3: empathy sympathy is not there. So I'm hoping that he
Speaker 3: can at least do one of these good things and
Speaker 3: give us some scientific research from his brain. At the
Speaker 3: in the end, you.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to mention too. You add the confessional
Speaker 5: letter the would be suicide note that he sends to
Speaker 5: his brother Bruce, which is just incredibly fascinating. I wanted
Speaker 5: to ask one last question, what insummation would you say
Speaker 5: was the most profound thing that you took away from
Speaker 5: this whole experience.
Speaker 3: Oh that you know, that's a great question. I mean,
Speaker 3: the one thing that can I confirmed is that people
Speaker 3: underestimate the word psychopaths. They underestimate the lack of morality, sympathy,
Speaker 3: the lack of emotion. They people underestimate the fact that
Speaker 3: a psychopath cannot love. They cannot love, and and and
Speaker 3: I experienced it for five years. I experienced that on
Speaker 3: basically a daily basis, that lack of empathy, that coldness,
Speaker 3: without the person trying to be that person. It's just
Speaker 3: who they are. It's not any fault of their own.
Speaker 3: It's not any And look, that might sound bizarre, that
Speaker 3: might sound weird, but that's the truth. It's of no
Speaker 3: fault of their own. It's this is who they are,
Speaker 3: you know. And yeah, and that was a revelation to me.
Speaker 3: You know that we want to blame the person, you know,
Speaker 3: And yes, we can blame them for the murders they
Speaker 3: committed stuff, but for being who they are. That's who
Speaker 3: they are. They can't change who they are.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Incredible, And as you write in this book of
Speaker 5: you've uncovered every scrap of information you possibly could in
Speaker 5: this correspondence and your research over and beyond that to
Speaker 5: bring us the most complete portrait of one of the
Speaker 5: most frightening kills in American and all of true crime history.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you very much, em William Phelps
Speaker 5: Matthew for coming on and talking about dangerous ground. For
Speaker 5: those that might want to look at your other work,
Speaker 5: do you have a website? You do have a website,
Speaker 5: Facebook page. Tell us how they might contact you or
Speaker 5: look at your other work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Emwilliam Phelps dot com. That will put you in
Speaker 3: touch with my Facebook and at em William Phelps for Twitter.
Speaker 3: You know, you can just google em William Phelps Facebook
Speaker 3: and get on my Facebook's Facebook is where I do
Speaker 3: most of my communicating with people, and I'm very I
Speaker 3: talk to fans all the time, so fans know me
Speaker 3: as someone who's always communicating with them. So yeah, you
Speaker 3: can find all my stuff there.
Speaker 5: And you talked about the documentary. Can you tell us
Speaker 5: the status of that so far?
Speaker 3: Beginning stages of that. We just signing a deal and
Speaker 3: getting started, and yeah, it's going to be comprehend says,
Speaker 3: It's going to involved. It's going to involve something we
Speaker 3: didn't talk about, which is in the book, and that
Speaker 3: is I believe, and I think I've proven without a
Speaker 3: doubt that one of the victims he's on the books for,
Speaker 3: Cynthia Rose, he did not kill, and a victim he
Speaker 3: did kill should still be buried where he put her.
Speaker 3: So that's going to be a major part of the documentary,
Speaker 3: I believe, is trying to find that woman. I know
Speaker 3: where she is and to show that he did not
Speaker 3: kill this woman, Cynthia Rose.
Speaker 5: Oh, incredible fantastic work. Matthew, thank you very much for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about dangerous ground, your friendship with
Speaker 5: a serial killer. Thank you very much. Hope to talk
Speaker 5: to you against pleasure. Dan, thanks for having me, Thank you,
Speaker 5: good night,