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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 6: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupanski. Good Evening, the newest installment
Speaker 6: in the New York Times best selling series of tales
Speaker 6: of America's most notorious criminals and the crimes that shape
Speaker 6: the places we call home. This time, you'll have no
Speaker 6: better guide through the darkest side of Iowa than Katherine Ramslin,
Speaker 6: one of America's most legendary true crime authors and researchers.
Speaker 6: Doctor Ramslin is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author and
Speaker 6: one of my favorite authors in any genre. She digs in,
Speaker 6: deep in and covers things that others before her has
Speaker 6: simply missed. With each story, she gives readers a look
Speaker 6: deep into the heart of darkness Iowa style. A parent
Speaker 6: murdering teen, an axe wielding serial killer, a school shooting
Speaker 6: on campus, killer, brothers posing as police, and many more
Speaker 6: notorious Iowa criminals. The book they're featuring this evening is
Speaker 6: Heartless Notorious USA, Iowa, with my special guests, journalist and
Speaker 6: author Professor Kathryne Ramslin. Welcome to the program. Thank you
Speaker 6: very much for Greenda's interview.
Speaker 2: Katherine Ramslin, Hello, thanks for having me. Good thank you an,
Speaker 2: thank you very much for joining us once again with
Speaker 2: this very interesting collection called Heartless. Let's get right into
Speaker 2: this because we won't have the time to cover all
Speaker 2: of these stories, but it's amazing. Some of these stories
Speaker 2: sound so similar, but we've never heard of these ones
Speaker 2: in particular. Let's tell us how you came to selecting
Speaker 2: the stories for this collection called Heartless.
Speaker 7: Well, first, the Heartless is strictly about Iowa, and that
Speaker 7: Iowa is part of a trilogy that I called Heartland Horrors,
Speaker 7: and the trilogy is part of a larger project that
Speaker 7: crime writer Greg Olsen is sort of steering. I think
Speaker 7: this is I think I've done at least thirteen of
Speaker 7: these now, of thirteen different states, and so he wants
Speaker 7: to have crime stories for each state and he tends
Speaker 7: to package them three or four together under themes. So
Speaker 7: that was the first thing, is just to get a theme.
Speaker 7: This package is Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, so that's you know,
Speaker 7: the heartland, and that's partly what led to the title,
Speaker 7: and also the kinds of crimes that I selected. I
Speaker 7: already knew of Balliska because I'd done a lot of
Speaker 7: work on that one with the actual the place that
Speaker 7: runs the tourist you know, industry there in Valliska, Iowa.
Speaker 7: So I already knew about that one, and I knew
Speaker 7: that John Wayne Gacy as Seria Killer had some associations
Speaker 7: and actually a number of Syria Killers had associations with Iowa.
Speaker 7: And then from there I started looking for other ones
Speaker 7: that I thought would be intriguing, like there's a Haunted
Speaker 7: graves to Hoe one, and there are a few that
Speaker 7: are kind of classick love triangle gone bad types of stories,
Speaker 7: but they definitely represent the sense of being in the Midwest,
Speaker 7: and especially you know the deep Midwest, where like you know,
Speaker 7: where sometimes very hard to exist, where people can be
Speaker 7: in isolation, where legends grow up around certain incidents, sometimes
Speaker 7: ghost stories, sometimes stories about how murders happened, unsolved murders
Speaker 7: and whatnot. So there's a special way that I think
Speaker 7: Midwesterners tend to tell stories and then pass them along,
Speaker 7: and I wanted to capture that kind of thing for Iowa.
Speaker 2: Let's just go through, maybe just a brief description of
Speaker 2: the stories, starting with mystery Boys, and before we delve
Speaker 2: into a couple specific stories that we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about this evening.
Speaker 7: Well, the Mystery Boy actually came from I was driving
Speaker 7: across from Michigan, actually another Midwestern state. I was driving
Speaker 7: there and I was listening to a podcast called Criminal
Speaker 7: and they had uh mentioned the uh the unique aspect
Speaker 7: of this story being that an eleven year old boy
Speaker 7: had murdered his parents and went to prison, but had
Speaker 7: the wherewithal to figure out how to to craft appeals
Speaker 7: and to get out of prison and actually end up
Speaker 7: doing very well for himself. So that was a really
Speaker 7: interesting story, and it was it was Iowa, so so
Speaker 7: for me that absolutely went into the collection because it's
Speaker 7: such a unique story. You don't hear about eleven year
Speaker 7: olds not only killing their families. I mean, I have
Speaker 7: heard of that a couple of other times, but you
Speaker 7: don't hear about, uh, somebody who ha who has the
Speaker 7: kind of person and the ability to teach himself things
Speaker 7: about the law and politics and whatnot and write these
Speaker 7: appeals for himself and he won people over. I thought
Speaker 7: that was a really interesting story. Some of the others,
Speaker 7: there's a mass murder on the campus grounds. There's a
Speaker 7: you know, a slaughter of some kids in sort of
Speaker 7: a hiking area that was pretty famous. Let's see say
Speaker 7: something about every single one of them, or do you
Speaker 7: do you want to just how do you want to
Speaker 7: do this?
Speaker 2: Well, we could just we could talk about some of
Speaker 2: them specifically. I think like we talked about Velliska, Iowa,
Speaker 2: and you said you had done some research before on
Speaker 2: this and this is a particularly horrifying story, So maybe
Speaker 2: we can talk about June twelfth, nineteen twelve in Velaska.
Speaker 7: And uh okay, Well that I mean when I was
Speaker 7: writing for the Crime Library, which was part of Court TV.
Speaker 7: When Court TV was around, the people at the Liska,
Speaker 7: which is currently run as a sort of a museum
Speaker 7: and some you can pay to stay overnight if you're
Speaker 7: a ghost hunter type of person who wants to experience
Speaker 7: the vibes. They had actually contacted my editor at the
Speaker 7: Crime Library and wanted the piece done, so they gave
Speaker 7: me a lot of materials to work with. And the
Speaker 7: point was it remains unsolved. Although there are certainly people
Speaker 7: who believe it solved because they have their own theories,
Speaker 7: which I mentioned in this in my rendering, it is
Speaker 7: currently unsolved. And although the theories are out there, like
Speaker 7: Jack the Ripper, you know, there's over three hundred people
Speaker 7: named for Jack the Ripper, and yet that is still
Speaker 7: not solved. But in the minds of the people who
Speaker 7: have their theories, it's solved. I wasn't convinced by any
Speaker 7: of the theories thus far, so to my mind, this
Speaker 7: still remains a really creepy murder where not just a
Speaker 7: family of six, but two young girls who were staying,
Speaker 7: you know, doing a sleepover with their friends were also
Speaker 7: slaughtered in this house by one person apparently with an axe,
Speaker 7: who had some peculiar habits like covering over the windows,
Speaker 7: and there was a you know, a hunk of bacon
Speaker 7: sitting out and the lamp, the glass cover for the
Speaker 7: lamps they were using, you know, seem to have been
Speaker 7: placed in an odd place, and there were just a
Speaker 7: number of strange elements of this crime. And also they
Speaker 7: didn't necessarily have any enemies, and even if, even if,
Speaker 7: you know, the father might have because he was a
Speaker 7: well to do men and he had he had a
Speaker 7: rival in business, and maybe he had some enemies, but
Speaker 7: why would you slaughter the whole family over something like that?
Speaker 7: So it's really a mystery. There was some sense that
Speaker 7: whoever had done this might have been spying on them
Speaker 7: from their own barn, because it was kind of it
Speaker 7: looked like there was an indentation in the hay and
Speaker 7: a little peep hole that would have given this person
Speaker 7: some pretty good sense of their movements. But it really
Speaker 7: wasn't about watching their movements and learning their routines and whatnot.
Speaker 7: He happened to come in very late at night on
Speaker 7: a Sunday after they'd all been to church for a
Speaker 7: special church program for the kids, and slaughtered them. So,
Speaker 7: for all we know, that was just simply you know, luck.
Speaker 7: He might or might he, or they might or might
Speaker 7: not be related to a number of other axe murders
Speaker 7: in neighboring states over a few years, and some of
Speaker 7: them had behavioral similarities such as the glass cover and
Speaker 7: the lamp and the way the house is entered, and
Speaker 7: things like that so possibly, even probably, I would say
Speaker 7: Bliska wasn't an isolated incident, probably has some relationship to
Speaker 7: a few of those. Does it have a relationship to
Speaker 7: fifty or sixty or two hundred, No, it doesn't, but
Speaker 7: people have certainly made it stretch to that many.
Speaker 2: You write about something very very interesting that I've never
Speaker 2: read before, a superstition, that something that happened in death
Speaker 2: involving the retina and the superstition. Please explain this.
Speaker 7: During a certain period of time, there was a notion
Speaker 7: that are you talking about the image left in the eye. Yes,
Speaker 7: you mean there was a certain idea that if if
Speaker 7: people saw their killer coming at them, that as they
Speaker 7: were dying, the retina would retain the killer's image, and
Speaker 7: so what needed to be done. And they did believe
Speaker 7: that one of the although the rest seemed to have
Speaker 7: been killed in their sleep, one of the girls appeared
Speaker 7: to have struggled a bit and there looked to be
Speaker 7: a l you know, the potential there for some sexual
Speaker 7: assault or moistation, and if she had her eyes open
Speaker 7: and as she was dying, the idea was that we
Speaker 7: could somehow get the image of the killer off her retina,
Speaker 7: that is a superstition. It's not true, but it was
Speaker 7: in the context of those times, people did think that
Speaker 7: was a possibility.
Speaker 2: With this case, this brought up again confessions and they
Speaker 2: thought they had the culprit at one point or some points.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit with that.
Speaker 7: Well, there was this really weird minister who confessed to
Speaker 7: the crimes. He went in and he heard about it.
Speaker 7: I think he was from a neighboring town, and he
Speaker 7: liked to ride the trains and whatnot, and he muttered
Speaker 7: a few things on the train to make people think
Speaker 7: that maybe he had something to do with it. And
Speaker 7: he went in and managed to get himself into the
Speaker 7: house while it was still being under investigation, which wasn't
Speaker 7: uncommon in those days. People tramped through murder scenes all
Speaker 7: the time, And so he did get himself into the
Speaker 7: house so he could see things, which of course means
Speaker 7: that if he's not the killer but he wants to confess,
Speaker 7: he would have seen the layout and seen where everything
Speaker 7: had happened, and heard law enforcement talking and whatnot. This
Speaker 7: also was really way before anybody from the FBI, for example,
Speaker 7: would have known what to do with something like this.
Speaker 7: This is a very unusual kind of crime in a
Speaker 7: in a town that's relatively quiet, where they really don't
Speaker 7: have much in the way of law enforcement that knows
Speaker 7: how to do murder investigations. So anyway, so this guy
Speaker 7: interesting kind of psychology are people who will falsely confess
Speaker 7: to things, and we've seen that a few times in
Speaker 7: our own time, like the guy John Mark Carr who
Speaker 7: wanted to be the one who killed John beIN a
Speaker 7: Ramsey even though he wasn't anywhere near the blades at
Speaker 7: the time. There are people who like to associate themselves
Speaker 7: with sensational crimes, and sometimes it's because they feel guilty
Speaker 7: over something else, or sometimes just because they get so
Speaker 7: excitable when something like this occurs that they just want
Speaker 7: to be part of it so much that they're willing
Speaker 7: to confess. Even when you have something like not just
Speaker 7: conviction but the death penalty in place, they still sometimes
Speaker 7: will falsely confess. We have a lot of research for
Speaker 7: that now to understan then the mindset of somebody who
Speaker 7: might do that. But anyway, so he you know, he
Speaker 7: was an odd guy. So that was that kind of
Speaker 7: made people realize maybe he's you know, he's not for real.
Speaker 7: And there were things that he didn't get right, and
Speaker 7: he couldn't have been there at the time he said
Speaker 7: he was there, et cetera, et cetera. That he then
Speaker 7: pretty much ended up not being He was the primary
Speaker 7: suspect for a while, but then in the end he
Speaker 7: wasn't the guy. But the fact that he confessed is
Speaker 7: so weird, and that continues to be something that people,
Speaker 7: you know, investigate today.
Speaker 2: And with this story, it doesn't end there because you say,
Speaker 2: there's another fan of the murders and a man named
Speaker 2: Andy Sawyer, and he also came under suspicion, and that
Speaker 2: this is in nineteen nineteen seventeen, So what happens with that?
Speaker 2: And then you talk about another another confession, because it's
Speaker 2: not just one confession. And after that, so tell.
Speaker 7: Us about this, Yeah, well we actually have. When you
Speaker 7: have a famous murder, and this obviously became quite quite
Speaker 7: famous and sensational, you do get a number of confessions.
Speaker 7: I would suspect wasn't just these two. I would think
Speaker 7: there's probably more that we just don't know about, because
Speaker 7: the Lindbergh kidnapping case, for example, had over two hundred confessions.
Speaker 7: The Black Dahlia had quite a few confessions even including
Speaker 7: a guy who had hadn't even been born at the
Speaker 7: time she was killed. So what is it that drives
Speaker 7: people to falsely confess, Well, they get it. They get
Speaker 7: very obsessed with something. They're already mentally unstable in some
Speaker 7: odd way. And this guy, Andy Siwyer that you mentioned,
Speaker 7: he'd purchase the newspaper with the headlines about the crime.
Speaker 7: So there there we go. He's he sees the big
Speaker 7: scary headlines. He liked to sleep with his acts, which is,
Speaker 7: I don't know, I think that's an odd habit. Maybe
Speaker 7: I'm wrong about that, but I think that's a very
Speaker 7: odd habit. And then he would start to kind of
Speaker 7: mumble about the murders. He already was kind of an
Speaker 7: odd guy. So odd people often come under suspicion is
Speaker 7: you know that they're you know, who knows what they're
Speaker 7: capable of doing? Kind of thing. He he got so involved,
Speaker 7: like after reading about in his paper, we got so
Speaker 7: involved that he actually would demonstrate reconstructions of how he
Speaker 7: think it might have happened, how the guy could have
Speaker 7: gotten away. So so someone like that is actually a
Speaker 7: pretty viable candidate because why is he why is he
Speaker 7: trying to show people how how this all took place,
Speaker 7: and how the killer might have gotten away. But there
Speaker 7: there really wasn't any evidence at all. Now I'm not
Speaker 7: going to say he's not the guy, but there wasn't
Speaker 7: anything that linked him to it, aside from his own
Speaker 7: kind of obsessed with his ruminations about it.
Speaker 2: But then you talk about a reverend JJ Burris from Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: He testified before a grand jury they he'd heard a
Speaker 2: confession in nineteen thirteen from a young blacksmith in Montana.
Speaker 2: Nothing case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and that's similar to this whole confession thing, I
Speaker 7: mean the Lizzie Borden thing. The maid who had been
Speaker 7: in the Lizzie Bordon house and her deathbed supposedly confessed
Speaker 7: that she knew what had happened and that Lizzie had
Speaker 7: been in it, and why did it take her so long? Well,
Speaker 7: part of it. The reason it took her so long
Speaker 7: is she had made a money deal. I mean, they
Speaker 7: had paid her off to say nothing, and then finally
Speaker 7: she wanted to tell it to a minister who then
Speaker 7: later wrote the story and said she had confessed to him.
Speaker 7: So why are people confessing so long afterward? Well, first
Speaker 7: of all, all we have is this report. We don't
Speaker 7: know that this person didn't confess earlier. He might have
Speaker 7: and nobody took him seriously, or nobody reported it, or
Speaker 7: the reports were lost. So sometimes we get in this
Speaker 7: in the habit of thinking only only documents we have
Speaker 7: access to, that's that's the whole of the story, when
Speaker 7: in fact we don't know that he didn't confess earlier.
Speaker 7: But even if he didn't, that wouldn't matter, because people
Speaker 7: do get very caught up in these these kinds of cases.
Speaker 7: It's a mystery. People love solving them, people love having
Speaker 7: some association with them. I mean, we're having a lot
Speaker 7: of people now come out of the woodwork about you know,
Speaker 7: I met Ted Bundy along the roadway or or not.
Speaker 7: You know, how many years has it been since Ted Bundy?
Speaker 7: And suddenly people are starting to say, hey, I knew him.
Speaker 7: You know, you can get a book deal to saying
Speaker 7: you knew Ted Bundy basically.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 7: So it's an odd psychological thing that people get so
Speaker 7: attached to a particular story and then in some way
Speaker 7: think they either they're either responsible or they know someone
Speaker 7: who is responsible. But in this story, in this case,
Speaker 7: nothing came of it. I mean, he said he heard
Speaker 7: a confession from a young blacksmith. Well, where's who's who
Speaker 7: was it? Where is he? What? Did he say anything
Speaker 7: specific or was he just general? We don't know. We
Speaker 7: don't have details about it.
Speaker 2: It continues with other with another confession as well. But
Speaker 2: do you you talk about a a officer that gets
Speaker 2: involved mcclowry and he he puts a pattern together. You
Speaker 2: mentioned another jurisdictions that there's similar similarities to other murders,
Speaker 2: and especially in the idea of covering up the bodies,
Speaker 2: covering up the wind goes, and the idea of the lamps.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about just this pattern
Speaker 2: that he thinks he has and then what he does
Speaker 2: with that assumption or that theory.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, he's doing what we call linkage analysis, long
Speaker 7: before behavioral profiling has ever even entered anyone's lips. So
Speaker 7: he's trying to figure out if these other axe murders
Speaker 7: in other jurisdictions. One's Colorado Springs where six were killed,
Speaker 7: and now there is an Illinois, another ones in Kansas,
Speaker 7: when there's actually several in Kansas. There were two in Kansas.
Speaker 7: There was one instance where it was two side by
Speaker 7: side houses and both houses everyone was killed. There were
Speaker 7: similarities there. So then that came from nineteen eleven to
Speaker 7: nineteen twelve and he heard about this guy, Henry Lee Moore,
Speaker 7: and Henry Lee Moore is actually the person a lot
Speaker 7: of people think is the killer. I just saw it
Speaker 7: in another book that he definitely is the killer, even
Speaker 7: though there's nothing proven that he's the killer, but quite
Speaker 7: a few people believe that. I think it's on Wikipedia
Speaker 7: that way and whatnot. Anyway, so Moore had killed his
Speaker 7: mother and grandmother with an axe because he wanted to
Speaker 7: inherit the house because he had promised it to some
Speaker 7: woman that he had gotten involved with it. So because
Speaker 7: he had used an axe, which by the way, was
Speaker 7: very common in those days as a murder weapon, that
Speaker 7: wasn't in any way than usual. So because he was
Speaker 7: he had murdered with an ax, he was convicted. This
Speaker 7: mcclathory decided that he had to be the guy. He
Speaker 7: knew that Moore had been or had kind of wandered
Speaker 7: around and you know, been in some of these other states.
Speaker 7: So if he could be tied to them, that would
Speaker 7: close twenty six cases. The only thing is it wasn't
Speaker 7: a very good linkage analysis, because really, the way Moore
Speaker 7: went about killing his mother and grandmother, I mean, first
Speaker 7: of all, he faked his name, and he stayed in
Speaker 7: a hotel under a false name, and his whole approach
Speaker 7: to it wasn't like this sneaky entering at night and
Speaker 7: then exiting. There was very little in common between how
Speaker 7: he had actually killed his mother and grandmother and the
Speaker 7: way these other murders were carried out, aside from it
Speaker 7: being an axe. But mcclawfree was convinced, even though he
Speaker 7: couldn't get more to confess, he was convinced he had
Speaker 7: the right guy, and he tried to present this but
Speaker 7: nobody in Valliska was interested. So nothing really happened with
Speaker 7: this case to tie it to more. Even though he
Speaker 7: had the same last name as the you know, JB. Moore,
Speaker 7: the murder victim, they had no relationship to each other.
Speaker 2: And you continue to write that there's other people the
Speaker 2: father daughter, author of sports actual writer decided to take
Speaker 2: upon this and as you write in the book, come
Speaker 2: to conclusions that they shouldn't have come to and make assumptions.
Speaker 2: Tell us about what they ended up writing about.
Speaker 7: Well, they actually kind of played off of what someone
Speaker 7: had done for this Smithsonian magazine, doing a different kind
Speaker 7: of linkage analysis and linking. And it wasn't too more.
Speaker 7: It was too They had another suspect, Paul Mueller, and
Speaker 7: a fairly good suspect. You know, it wasn't totally out based.
Speaker 7: But what ended up happening is which I've seen before,
Speaker 7: is they began to think that almost every potential similarity
Speaker 7: had equal weight, which is a mistake that people make
Speaker 7: when they participate in what we call confirmation bias. You
Speaker 7: have an idea and you just start looking for anything
Speaker 7: that will support it, and it's very easy to see
Speaker 7: what you want to see when you've decided that this
Speaker 7: person who's riding the trains in fact, went from one
Speaker 7: side of the country to the other over a period
Speaker 7: of quite a few years and ended up, you know,
Speaker 7: massacring a bunch of people. I can't remember how many
Speaker 7: they had, but it was a lot. And by the
Speaker 7: end of the book, I was like everybody who aside
Speaker 7: from Lizzie Borden's parents, basically everybody killed with an axe
Speaker 7: seems to be linked together, even though they were dramatic dissimilarities.
Speaker 7: But what happens with confirmation bias when you're doing linkage analysis,
Speaker 7: as you have a hypothesis and you begin to that
Speaker 7: hypothesis puts weight on those factors that support your hypothesis
Speaker 7: and minimizes those factors that don't. And that's not really
Speaker 7: a fair way of doing a behavioral analysis. It's not
Speaker 7: based on real probability. It's based on you see things
Speaker 7: that you want to see, but but you don't realize
Speaker 7: that's what you're doing because you're getting so excited about
Speaker 7: all these great connections you're making and and you've discovered
Speaker 7: one of the world's worst serial killers ever ever to behold,
Speaker 7: you know, and I've seen that before people who just
Speaker 7: start going, Wow, this guy was over here and over
Speaker 7: here and over here, Oh my god, he's he also
Speaker 7: killed John F. Kennedy and John Benny Ramsay and the
Speaker 7: Black Dahlia. And by the end of the day when
Speaker 7: you're when you're reading some of these accounts, it's like
Speaker 7: they have no stop gap measures, they have no real methodology.
Speaker 7: Their methodology is simply, while somebody killed with an axe,
Speaker 7: it wasn't very far from a railroad track. Uh, let's
Speaker 7: let's put them into the mix without looking at the
Speaker 7: genuine and dramatic behavioral differences that would put that person
Speaker 7: out of the loop. And that's what I saw was,
Speaker 7: Oh my god, there's just there's so much going on
Speaker 7: here without seeing that the things that make it not
Speaker 7: work in your scenario are simply ignored or minimized for
Speaker 7: no particular reason. So that that does happen when you
Speaker 7: get people who who don't really have much experience in
Speaker 7: the in the criminal justice field, and they start getting
Speaker 7: very excited about their theory and wanting to show, Wow,
Speaker 7: this is this is one of the biggest stories ever
Speaker 7: that no one's ever realized before. Reason they don't haven't
Speaker 7: realized it before is because it just isn't all it's
Speaker 7: correct up to be according to the way you're you're
Speaker 7: looking at the data. So that's what I have to
Speaker 7: say about that.
Speaker 2: When you looked at the linkage evidence, when you looked
Speaker 2: at some of the similarities in other states, what was
Speaker 2: your conclusion. I mean, you said that Adam Sawyer probably
Speaker 2: wasn't wasn't a bad suspect, But well.
Speaker 7: I think were you able to I think Adam ended
Speaker 7: up being in a different town or something at the
Speaker 7: time with also no evidence. I I don't know who
Speaker 7: it is, and I don't really speculate on who it is,
Speaker 7: but I do think that Balliska isn't an isolated incident
Speaker 7: because of certain very specific behaviors, being the handling of
Speaker 7: the the glass. I don't know what do you call that,
Speaker 7: the thing that's on top of the glass, chimney, the
Speaker 7: handling of the glass him needs very very odd and
Speaker 7: very specific. That would be what we call signature behavior,
Speaker 7: really distinct, really unusual that you don't see in all
Speaker 7: of these, but you do see in a few, and
Speaker 7: they're neighboring stakes, like the couple in Kansas. I think
Speaker 7: we're probably and I think mcclawfrey's linkage is fairly good,
Speaker 7: so I would agree with him, except that he took
Speaker 7: it too far by deciding that Henry Lee Moore and
Speaker 7: the way he killed his mother and grandmother is similar
Speaker 7: to these other ones, and it isn't at all. So
Speaker 7: he did that same thing because it was an ax
Speaker 7: he's good for these and he and that isn't correct,
Speaker 7: because his entire approach to killing his mother and grandmother
Speaker 7: was so distinctly different from these others that you have
Speaker 7: to consider. You know that just because you want him
Speaker 7: to be the guy, doesn't make him the guy. But
Speaker 7: I do think mcclaffrey was correct in the fact that
Speaker 7: these were neighboring states pretty close together. And I'm not
Speaker 7: sure i'd put the I might not put the Illinois
Speaker 7: one in, but but the ones in Kansas, Colorado, and Iowa,
Speaker 7: I think we're pretty good. But I don't really speculate
Speaker 7: as to who it could have been, because it can
Speaker 7: so easily be somebody who's not who never even got
Speaker 7: on the record at all. It could just be a
Speaker 7: you know, an anonymous person just like Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 7: could be maybe all the suspects that have been named,
Speaker 7: none of them, is it?
Speaker 2: What I found interesting for the time was that this
Speaker 2: signature of opposing and displaying a victim that early was
Speaker 2: quite interesting.
Speaker 7: What what do you mean? I mean displaying a victim
Speaker 7: is has different purposes, but a lot of times that's
Speaker 7: that's sexual. And I mean we've seen that, you know,
Speaker 7: into history. But what is it that you found interesting
Speaker 7: about it?
Speaker 2: Well? I just that that he had so many unique
Speaker 2: features in a signature. For that, I don't know, I
Speaker 2: just I just attribute sort of the interesting and unique
Speaker 2: features to more modern serial killers.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing with the with
Speaker 7: the hunko, I guess there's a pound of bacon or
Speaker 7: something sitting out was it weird? And then something with
Speaker 7: the mirror was also I can't recall exactly what it was,
Speaker 7: but he it's clear this guy has mental health issues,
Speaker 7: not just because he's a mass murderer, but he's got
Speaker 7: some other kind of mental instability because he does have
Speaker 7: rituals and weird, seemingly weird superstitions. He it looks as
Speaker 7: if he did a bit of sexual molestation one of
Speaker 7: the girls in the Baliska house. But when he goes
Speaker 7: up and he seems to know the layout of the house,
Speaker 7: that's that's sort of peculiar too. He knows exactly who's
Speaker 7: who's where and what bedrooms. He goes right for the
Speaker 7: parents and you know, murders them really fast. So there's
Speaker 7: there's definitely something odd about him and about.
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Speaker 7: Behaviors which is what helps us to at least theoretically
Speaker 7: link them to some of those others in Kansas and Colorado,
Speaker 7: because the more peculiar behavior is that and shows up
Speaker 7: in something else, the more likely it is its attributable
Speaker 7: to the same person. So we do have distinct ones there.
Speaker 7: But just because it's near a railroad track and an
Speaker 7: AX is used, that to me, that's MO. That's the
Speaker 7: method of operation. That isn't signature.
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Speaker 2: Hire Catherine another book, Another pardon Me. Another story in
Speaker 2: the book that's incredible and I'd like to share that
Speaker 2: with the audience is the story of the Getchee Girl. Okay,
Speaker 2: and this is in Gitchi, Manitou State Preserve. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three and five teens went out one autumn evening
Speaker 2: tell us about teens were doing in South Dakota in
Speaker 2: this Lion County in the state Preserve.
Speaker 7: Well, I think when you know kids have nothing much
Speaker 7: to do, they find places where they can go hang out.
Speaker 7: They were just going to go kind of smoke some
Speaker 7: dope and listen to music and just hang out and
Speaker 7: you know, do something instead of stay home and do nothing.
Speaker 7: And as they were they set up, they got firewood,
Speaker 7: they had a campfire, and they start to sing, and
Speaker 7: their music attracts some guys who are actually in that
Speaker 7: area illegally poaching or trying to poach. I guess they
Speaker 7: didn't do a very good job that day. And they decided, okay,
Speaker 7: you know this at least according to the way this
Speaker 7: reconstruction is because who knows what acts happen, but they
Speaker 7: decide to have a little fun and it gets out
Speaker 7: of hand. It was just ugly away from the start.
Speaker 7: They came down. It was three brothers. They threatened the kids,
Speaker 7: shot one of them right away, and the rest of
Speaker 7: them took off. And these are like, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 7: they're young kids. They don't know what this is about,
Speaker 7: why anybody is accosting them like this. And then they
Speaker 7: make them They shoot another and wound him, and they
Speaker 7: make them go back up to where their van is,
Speaker 7: their car and where these brothers truck is, and there
Speaker 7: they shoot the boys. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 7: essentially a mass murder site and they take the girl
Speaker 7: what was the name, Sandra, I think her name was.
Speaker 7: They take her for basically like over the border into
Speaker 7: into around where they live, and then eventually bring it
Speaker 7: back drop her off, and she has no idea that
Speaker 7: her friends are dead, she says, because they had assured her, Oh,
Speaker 7: you know, they're not really dead. They're you know, we
Speaker 7: hit them with darts or whatever, they'll they'll be okay,
Speaker 7: And so she believes that, and she doesn't realize that,
Speaker 7: you know, the families of these boys are looking for them,
Speaker 7: and she's the only survivor. So when the bodies are found,
Speaker 7: of course she find she's told and the sheriff wants
Speaker 7: to talk to her. You know, how is it that
Speaker 7: you survived and they all got killed? Which is what
Speaker 7: makes it such an astonishing story because she also doesn't
Speaker 7: have the answer to that question. Also, does she know
Speaker 7: where they took her? Well sort of, I mean it
Speaker 7: wasn't like again, you're she's thirteen. Who's paying attention? Sosnight,
Speaker 7: who's paying attention? She's scared, she's traumatized. Trauma does a
Speaker 7: lot of stuff to memory. But but bizarrely enough, she
Speaker 7: thinks she sees the place, and then the sheriff is
Speaker 7: going doing this a lot. It's it isn't just a
Speaker 7: one hit wonder here that he keeps taking her out
Speaker 7: to see if something comes back, and eventually she thinks
Speaker 7: she sees the place because she does remember some key
Speaker 7: things about it. When when the one brother she was
Speaker 7: with had stopped and at that point that he drives
Speaker 7: by in the truck. So they got him. You know
Speaker 7: what a bizarre coincidence. So another aspect of the Getche
Speaker 7: thing is is just that that happened, because it could
Speaker 7: easily have been that she just never was able to,
Speaker 7: you know, definitively say this is the place. But they
Speaker 7: did get him, They got all three of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Hard. What we failed to, I think explain to
Speaker 2: the audience is that they realized when they were playing
Speaker 2: the guitar and singing, these kids were smoking pots. So
Speaker 2: they realized, Okay, we're gonna have a little bit of fun.
Speaker 2: He went back to tell his brothers and then they
Speaker 2: posed this police officers. So Sandra at that age and on,
Speaker 2: all of the boys believed that they were police officers.
Speaker 2: And then when Sandra was taken away from him, she
Speaker 2: saw the boys alive, and just thought that they were
Speaker 2: all going to be reprimanded and said see on Monday,
Speaker 2: and thought you'd get in a little bit of trouble.
Speaker 2: And then this, and then you write that the nightmare
Speaker 2: isn't over for her once she said she noticed this
Speaker 2: this red gasoline tank, and then the farmhouse was nearby,
Speaker 2: so she does do this incredible she was able to
Speaker 2: help the police locate them, and like you say, just
Speaker 2: out of a movie, just a very movie esque, the
Speaker 2: one the one person, and that brought her home. That
Speaker 2: was about the Raper, as you write in the book, right,
Speaker 2: was about the Raper decided to bring her home, I
Speaker 2: guess foolishly. Now he drives by in that same blue truck,
Speaker 2: as you say, coincidences of all coincidences.
Speaker 7: So but there are definitely people didn't believe her story. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and that's because it does sound very far fetched, especially
Speaker 7: that these now the brothers. Yeah, it was about getting
Speaker 7: the pot in a way, but also because they were
Speaker 7: so upset that they had invested so much time and
Speaker 7: not and we're coming back empty handed. So for them
Speaker 7: it was well, we're going to get something out of
Speaker 7: this trip. The fact that one of those brothers with
Speaker 7: that kind of attitude would actually have this girl alone
Speaker 7: and not rape her, I think was I think people
Speaker 7: just didn't believe that. And I find it hard to
Speaker 7: believe too, because it's not like these guys had any sense,
Speaker 7: you know, any moral center or anything. So why would
Speaker 7: he have done that? I'm not sure. I don't know
Speaker 7: that we do have the whole story here.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about Sandra's PTSD, and you talked about
Speaker 2: just what happened after in terms of people not believing her.
Speaker 2: So she dropped out of school and got married. But
Speaker 2: this did not leave her. This stink of guilt did
Speaker 2: not leave her ever, did it right?
Speaker 7: And it isn't even I mean, they blamed her like
Speaker 7: as if somehow she had attracted these guys and because
Speaker 7: of her, if only she hadn't been with them, they
Speaker 7: would still be alive, which is absurd. Nobody knows if
Speaker 7: that's the case or not. And it's not as if,
Speaker 7: I mean, who knows. She might have been singing along
Speaker 7: and maybe they heard a girl's voice and said, no,
Speaker 7: there's a girl down there, let's let's get her. Maybe
Speaker 7: that's true, but we don't know that that's true. But
Speaker 7: she was blamed. She was ostracized and it did certainly
Speaker 7: affect her for a long time.
Speaker 2: You have in this book also you talk about Iowa
Speaker 2: in a certain position in terms of position basically in America,
Speaker 2: where it has been an important place for serial killers
Speaker 2: such as John Wayne Gacy, and you mentioned other serial killers.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about i was important to John Wayne Gacy.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, Gasey had married gotten married and was working
Speaker 7: in Iowa. Let me see if I can find it.
Speaker 7: I can't remember the exact town, but let me see
Speaker 7: if I can find it. He was working there and
Speaker 7: this is the first place where he begins to molest boys.
Speaker 7: So it's kind of is the start of a criminal life,
Speaker 7: but also it's the start of his ability to to
Speaker 7: persuade people. He's a good guy, and you know, he's
Speaker 7: very civic minded. He's very involved in stuff. He his
Speaker 7: father in law thought he was just going to be
Speaker 7: a loser. So now he's proving himself by by being
Speaker 7: invited into several things and you know, like lions clubs
Speaker 7: and whatnot. So he uses these excuse me, he uses
Speaker 7: these positions, you know, some status to invite boys over
Speaker 7: and you know, offer them liquor and drugs. And whatnot
Speaker 7: to you know, show how cool he is. But at
Speaker 7: the same time, he's using it to to get some
Speaker 7: of the boys into compromise positions so he can molest them.
Speaker 7: And he manages to succeed apparently with some but but
Speaker 7: others turn on him. And this is the this is
Speaker 7: the first point at which he gets arrested and he
Speaker 7: goes to trial and he's convicted and he actually gets
Speaker 7: a prison sentence for doing this. This is in Iowa.
Speaker 7: So the the interesting thing is it became a big
Speaker 7: deal after he was unmasked as a serial killer in
Speaker 7: Chicago because he had gotten a ten year sentence, but
Speaker 7: he was let out after just over two years, and
Speaker 7: he had kind of this record was it wasn't secret,
Speaker 7: it wasn't wasn't locked away, but states didn't have much
Speaker 7: to do with each other's jurisdictions. And so he's so
Speaker 7: but somebody does find out he's got a record, you know,
Speaker 7: when when Rob Peacete was really the disappearance of a
Speaker 7: boy named Rob peaste was really what started that in Chicago,
Speaker 7: and they start looking into his past, into Gaycy's past,
Speaker 7: because Gaysey appeared to be the last person to have
Speaker 7: seen him when he supposedly was offering him a summer
Speaker 7: job in construction. There was no reason why Rob Peace
Speaker 7: would have run away. There was every reason I believe
Speaker 7: he'd say he was about on his way home. And
Speaker 7: so somebody really started looking into Gasey because he already
Speaker 7: was at the center of a number of other young
Speaker 7: men's disappearances, all of which he was able to explain away.
Speaker 7: And in part he acquired this talent in Iowa being
Speaker 7: able to talk his way through these things and to say,
Speaker 7: you know that he's a good guy. How could anybody
Speaker 7: suspect him of doing anything bad. He's, you know, a
Speaker 7: family man, he's well placed in the community. Does the
Speaker 7: same thing in Chicago. I mean, he's politically well connected,
Speaker 7: he's got a thriving construction business. He dresses like a
Speaker 7: clown to go entertain sick kids. In my mind, that's
Speaker 7: enough call it the serial killer personally.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 7: That's just me at any rate. So then they look
Speaker 7: back and find out he does in fact have a
Speaker 7: prison record, and it is for molesting boys. Now they
Speaker 7: have real reason to be worried about Rob Peaste and
Speaker 7: some of these other boys and young men who've disappeared.
Speaker 7: So now they're really taking it seriously and they're putting
Speaker 7: surveillance on him, and that eventually breaks the case. But
Speaker 7: he got his start in Iowa doing this stuff.
Speaker 2: You also say too, the stay in Iowa after he
Speaker 2: was convicted, and he made a decision before he went
Speaker 2: to Chicago that he was going to do things differently,
Speaker 2: didn't he.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, and that's something we see commonly in sex
Speaker 7: offenders who get caught convicted in a prison sentence is
Speaker 7: when they do get out, they decide there will be
Speaker 7: no witnesses, so now it's not going to just be
Speaker 7: about molesting them. They have to die too.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You have a story in this book. The namesake
Speaker 2: of the book it's called Heartless, and the story is
Speaker 2: called Heartless with Brian Hatman and his and his mistress
Speaker 2: Sidney good Rich Rutledge. Very very interesting story, Heartless.
Speaker 7: I think that's funny. I thought the most weird story
Speaker 7: of the book was the weird suicide. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 7: I could talk about by Ray Hatton. It's a classic
Speaker 7: love triangle, is very similar to one I wrote about
Speaker 7: when I did The Michigan One, which became a Jimmy
Speaker 7: Stewart movie. The Anatomy of a murder. It's very similar
Speaker 7: to that because we have a woman who is kind
Speaker 7: of you know, her husband's a workaholic. Uh she and
Speaker 7: he's older than her. Let's see his his name is
Speaker 7: Byron Hatman and so Sydney. Oh sorry, you get these
Speaker 7: these Let me get my name straight. So Byron Hatton
Speaker 7: moves from Pennsylvania to to Saint Louis to work in
Speaker 7: Saint Louis, and they go to cedar Rappids. His wife
Speaker 7: is Sydney, and she is younger than him, and she
Speaker 7: has a master's degree, and she's you know, sexy and
Speaker 7: and restless and uh so she starts looking around to
Speaker 7: have some fun while her workaholic husband is is you know,
Speaker 7: just not around. She wants to play and she she
Speaker 7: meets a guy who has a boat and our yacht
Speaker 7: her he brings it to the yacht club and and
Speaker 7: she starts really flirting with him. And then the story
Speaker 7: gets very very strange because she she ends up getting pregnant.
Speaker 7: She claims she was raped again. It's very it's very
Speaker 7: sim much to that story in the in the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 7: Claims she's raped. So her husband now has to do
Speaker 7: the right thing, and and it's just a strange story
Speaker 7: because of the way the kind of constant back and
Speaker 7: forth between the two men. Her husband thinks he's gotta,
Speaker 7: you know, do the right thing and and defend her
Speaker 7: honor and whatnot. But but he doesn't really have to
Speaker 7: do anything. That's the bizarre thing. He doesn't really have
Speaker 7: to act the other The other guy moves away and
Speaker 7: he's working, you know, in a different town altogether. But
Speaker 7: Sydney's husband can't let it go. So I'm not sure
Speaker 7: where you have me to go with it. To me,
Speaker 7: it's a typical love triangle gone bad and with a
Speaker 7: lot of misunderstandings that ends in murder, you know, and
Speaker 7: a murder I think didn't have to take place, just
Speaker 7: because it was so weirdly arranged and organized. But I'm
Speaker 7: not sure why what it is you're wanting to go
Speaker 7: after with this story.
Speaker 2: I just thought it was just the namesake of the book,
Speaker 2: and it really does. I mean, it doesn't encapsulate anything
Speaker 2: more than just it really was heartless and that what
Speaker 2: she had done to the husband when she's discovered, she
Speaker 2: never owns up to anything at all, and the poor
Speaker 2: guy ends up killing this person for the wrong, like
Speaker 2: you say, the wrong reason it could have been avoided.
Speaker 2: It was his own, I guess, sense of pride. And
Speaker 2: then at the end he even leaves a note, a
Speaker 2: pathetic note too, that just forget about him and move
Speaker 2: on and she'll have a bright future.
Speaker 7: So it's again, yeah, I mean one of them was
Speaker 7: so the husband, Rutledge would it said that they were
Speaker 7: constantly being harassed, although they weren't. There was some kind
Speaker 7: of there were hints that there was an extortion. You know,
Speaker 7: if you'll pay me, I'll leave you alone. So Rutlers
Speaker 7: was going over there supposedly to pay him, and and
Speaker 7: Manhattan ended up dead, fatally stabbed. So the whole thing
Speaker 7: was so bizarre the way it happened. Yet and yet
Speaker 7: it is considered I think because it was kind of
Speaker 7: a high society one. It was considered a real classic
Speaker 7: Iowa crime and a lot of the stuff that I
Speaker 7: saw about it, you know, people talked a lot about it,
Speaker 7: and I think because it does fit in that kind
Speaker 7: of noir ish atmosphere of you know, flirtatious married women
Speaker 7: who lead a man on and the man you know,
Speaker 7: goes ahead and gets involved with them. So to me,
Speaker 7: it was a pretty typical kind of story like that,
Speaker 7: but it was sad because of the way it ends. Obviously,
Speaker 7: I think so much of what happened was easily avoided.
Speaker 7: But you know, in part it was about her, and
Speaker 7: she didn't want to own up to the take responsibility
Speaker 7: for her own behavior, so part of it was really
Speaker 7: about her, and she in the end, I think she's
Speaker 7: the only one who kind of survived and thrived out
Speaker 7: of it in a way.
Speaker 2: You talk about the story of Glenn Beck and it
Speaker 2: is truly bizarre. Story. Tell us about this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is weird because I do a lot with
Speaker 7: suicideology and I when I came across this story, I
Speaker 7: just thought it seems so outlandish. So so Glenn Beck,
Speaker 7: who had an association with the police department, he calls
Speaker 7: the sheriff's office in the county where he lives and
Speaker 7: he reports that his wife has killed herself. Now, the
Speaker 7: weird thing is she's a quadruple amputee, So what how
Speaker 7: does a person do that? And it is bizarre. First
Speaker 7: of all, how she got to be a quadruple amputee
Speaker 7: has to do with the fact that she had a
Speaker 7: tendency to get very depressed and one day in the
Speaker 7: middle of winter, so here we have that whole heartland,
Speaker 7: the harsh winter's kind of of tone to this. So
Speaker 7: she just went out, you know, without any protection. They
Speaker 7: ended up finding her and she had frozen, but she
Speaker 7: was still alive, but she lost her arms and legs.
Speaker 7: So here she not of the way to cure depression
Speaker 7: by any means. So now she's back in the house.
Speaker 7: He's caring for her, but it's obviously quite a burden.
Speaker 7: He does have people come, you know, nurses and whatnot
Speaker 7: come in and check on her. And at one point
Speaker 7: he had found her. Somehow she managed to maneuver her
Speaker 7: way out of bed. And it isn't just out of
Speaker 7: bed and across the floor. She has to go out
Speaker 7: of bed down a step and up and whatnot. But
Speaker 7: she had maneuvered her way over to the table where
Speaker 7: the medications were and pulled with her teeth on the
Speaker 7: tablecloth to pull the medications out because she was trying
Speaker 7: to overdose. He got her back into bed, according to
Speaker 7: his story, but that incident showed that it was possible
Speaker 7: that she had committed suicide. So what we have here
Speaker 7: is probably an assisted suicide. I'm guessing again here she is.
Speaker 7: He had left the medications on the table, they without
Speaker 7: the caps on. He said accidentally that that part to
Speaker 7: me is that isn't any accident because he already knows
Speaker 7: she has done this before. But it's clear she wants
Speaker 7: to die. It's clear to him she wants to die.
Speaker 7: And also he's got other ideas for his wife. He's
Speaker 7: not going to want to do this his whole life.
Speaker 7: But anyway, so she so he finds her having accomplished
Speaker 7: this again without arms and legs, got herself off the bed,
Speaker 7: across the floor, down the step over to the table, pulled,
Speaker 7: pulled the tablecloth of the chief and there's apparently water there.
Speaker 7: So that supposedly the medication had dissolved into the water. Again,
Speaker 7: what a Barbett's story, you know, I don't believe that
Speaker 7: for a second. But so supposedly, you know, she just
Speaker 7: lucked out and it had to and so she's able
Speaker 7: to lap it up and die from an overdose. Wow,
Speaker 7: what a weird, bizarre story, you know. And it doesn't
Speaker 7: end there because you know, they find out he's involved
Speaker 7: with another woman, and so now it looks like it's
Speaker 7: potentially murder. But the fact that he's in this compromised position,
Speaker 7: and he's also associated with law enforcement. One of the
Speaker 7: das who would have used him feels like, well, I
Speaker 7: can't use him at all, and he's the one who
Speaker 7: insists there needs to be an investigation of this incident.
Speaker 7: But the other DA. So that the weird part is
Speaker 7: the jurisdiction issues. The other das doesn't know, you know,
Speaker 7: I accept the story. I'm not going to press charges.
Speaker 7: So then the Iowa Attorney General gets involved, and he
Speaker 7: also thinks, oh, you know, any inconsistencies we have here,
Speaker 7: and there were quite a few, by the way, any
Speaker 7: inconsistencies or just misstatements, and we're not We're just going
Speaker 7: to leave it as a suicide. We're not going to
Speaker 7: do anything about this. Uh and and so it really, again,
Speaker 7: it does remain a bit of a mystery because there
Speaker 7: were inconsistencies. He said at one point it sounded like
Speaker 7: she like there was some kind of like a squawking
Speaker 7: in the background when he's on the phone with someone.
Speaker 7: He said it was his peacock, long before they were
Speaker 7: comfort peacocks. By the way, he said it was his peacock,
Speaker 7: and that was weird. He claimed that one of the
Speaker 7: people the aides who came in had not come in.
Speaker 7: She said yes, she had. So there were a lot
Speaker 7: of inconsistencies in his statements, and I think it's I
Speaker 7: think it's pretty clear that he definitely made sure if
Speaker 7: she wanted to die, she could accomplish it. But I
Speaker 7: also think he probably helped her along a bit as well.
Speaker 7: But I think it was a strange story. The idea
Speaker 7: that a person with no arms and legs could commit
Speaker 7: suicide is just so out there, and I just had
Speaker 7: to have this for this book, because who's ever heard
Speaker 7: of something like that.
Speaker 2: What I found odd was that they actually could have
Speaker 2: to get a nurse to say, well, a couple months earlier,
Speaker 2: or to someone to testify that, yeah, that she had
Speaker 2: done this before. This lapping up the drugs. You know
Speaker 2: that that was the most incredible part of the story,
Speaker 2: and yet they had somebody to say that this had
Speaker 2: happened before. I thought that was incredible. You also write
Speaker 2: that because he had a duel, he was a police chief,
Speaker 2: or he had a role in one jurisdiction and in
Speaker 2: another county he was a police chief and in that
Speaker 2: other county it didn't sit well with him. And he
Speaker 2: wrote letters to all kinds of officials trying to get
Speaker 2: this case at least to be prosecuted or look into further.
Speaker 2: But he failed, didn't he Yeah, because.
Speaker 7: The county where it would have had to have been opened,
Speaker 7: they said, no, we're accepting it. So did they know something?
Speaker 7: You wonder, because I think there are plenty of good
Speaker 7: reasons why something this should have been reopened, just some
Speaker 7: of the odd contradictions. Why not go through and really
Speaker 7: do an investigation. But you know what, I've seen that
Speaker 7: kind of investigation in my own state, where it's so
Speaker 7: obvious this needs to be further explored, but they just
Speaker 7: don't want to.
Speaker 2: And you know, to add even more credibility to what
Speaker 2: you're saying, this man married his alleged mistress as well.
Speaker 2: Just if you're talking motive at all, we.
Speaker 7: Had plenty of motive. First of all, what a burden.
Speaker 7: First of all, he's got a woman who's so depressed
Speaker 7: she wants to die, and she walks out the door
Speaker 7: when day and they find her in the ditch, you know, frozen.
Speaker 7: Now he's got to deal with, you know, paying for
Speaker 7: help to come in, worrying about you know, someone's got
Speaker 7: to come in and turn her, feed her, do all
Speaker 7: kinds of stuff. So his life became a nightmare. And
Speaker 7: then he, you know, gets involved with someone else, and
Speaker 7: now he sees a way out. But that way out
Speaker 7: is not going to happen unless you know, his wife
Speaker 7: is allowed to go ahead and do what she wants
Speaker 7: to do in his mind, I'm sure it seems justified.
Speaker 7: How involved he was is not clear, but it's it
Speaker 7: is pretty clear that he knew what was going to happen,
Speaker 7: wanted it to happen, and did some help along the way.
Speaker 2: And it does seem incredible, Like you say that the
Speaker 2: authorities would not prosecute, would not convene a grand jury,
Speaker 2: would not look at this. It looked like he was
Speaker 2: getting a pass.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think what would have happened is her
Speaker 7: history of depression, her earlier as suicide attempt, heared telling
Speaker 7: people she wanted to die. I think all of that
Speaker 7: would have come in and very likely been you know,
Speaker 7: pretty persuasive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I you could be right too. The prosecutor
Speaker 2: just could have said, this has got too many it's
Speaker 2: very very difficult, so it might be not worth prosecuting.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's one of those cases right on the edge.
Speaker 7: It's like it's like the tennis ball on the net,
Speaker 7: which which side is it going to be on? And
Speaker 7: I think a prosecutor would see, oh my god, this
Speaker 7: is going to be so full of holes either way
Speaker 7: that it's going to be difficult to take this on.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to thank you Catherine for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about Heartless. How many stories are are in
Speaker 2: this Heartless collection?
Speaker 7: Actually didn't out. It looks like there's a a dozen one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 7: Yeah about that. Each each of the books has about
Speaker 7: that many stories. I mean, the fun is that you're
Speaker 7: really trying to get the character of the state that
Speaker 7: you're writing about, so you want to really get a
Speaker 7: central story, but the others have to radiate around that
Speaker 7: same theme. Some of the states I had lived in
Speaker 7: and was familiar with. Iowa is not one of those.
Speaker 7: But I did know the Balliska case pretty well.
Speaker 2: And what is the next installment of Notorious that you'll
Speaker 2: be involved with.
Speaker 7: I don't know. I did thirteen so far. I haven't
Speaker 7: actually talked to Greg about the next one. He has
Speaker 7: a number of them, like Caitlin Rother has done a few,
Speaker 7: and Kevin Sullivan has done a few and Greg has
Speaker 7: done a few, so I don't even know where it
Speaker 7: is at this point. I think I think all the
Speaker 7: good states they are kind of taken. I wanted Utah
Speaker 7: and California, but I think somebody's already working on them,
Speaker 7: and Greg did Oregon, where I had lived once, so
Speaker 7: I'm not really sure. I'd have to look at what's
Speaker 7: left to see what I want to do.
Speaker 2: Oh, there you go, But there's thirteen so far.
Speaker 7: There's thirteen in my collection.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely for those fans it might just want
Speaker 2: to take a look at. Do you have a website
Speaker 2: or Facebook page? Tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Catherine, it's Facebook. I kind of let my website go
Speaker 7: because the amount of time it took to work on
Speaker 7: it I wanted to use to write. So most days
Speaker 7: do Facebook. I do. I have a one for me.
Speaker 7: I have a fans of Katherine Ramseling page, and I
Speaker 7: have my personal page. Any of those people can get
Speaker 7: on easily and see what when I'm up to.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much, Catherine. It's been a pleasure,
Speaker 2: as it always is talking about Notorious USA Iowa. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much for your time.
Speaker 7: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Have a great evening.
Speaker 7: Thanks, thanks for your interest.
Speaker 2: Bye, thank you, good night.