Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Minde a Murderer. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: And welcome to today's episode and a true crime news
roundup right before the holidays. It is Desummer twenty third,
and it is a lovely and frigid day here in
coastal Virginia. How's it looking up there in the icebox
of Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Mister Thomas, lovely and frigid? It was two degrees yesterday
morning and six degrees this morning. That's fahrenheit for our
international visitors.
Speaker 3: That's disgusting.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cold.
Speaker 3: That's gross.
Speaker 2: Not only was it two degrees, but it was quite windy,
so the word brisk comes to mind.
Speaker 3: Was it two actual degrees or two degrees with windshill?
Speaker 2: No? Two actual degrees?
Speaker 3: Oh yack.
Speaker 2: I think by the time we got out there it
was like a booming six degrees.
Speaker 3: That's so gross. Why would you do that to yourself.
Speaker 2: I didn't choose the tempts.
Speaker 3: But you chose the town.
Speaker 2: This is true, and even though global warming is real,
the Ice Box of Connecticut is proving to be true
to its nickname.
Speaker 3: How many fireplaces do you have in your house to
keep you warm? Though? Because it is a beautiful airbnb,
so tell our listeners a little bit about your fireplaces.
Speaker 2: We have three working fireplaces in our house, although we
usually only use the one in the living room.
Speaker 3: You've got one in your library too, correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the podcast studio Slash Library has a working fireplace.
I'm staring at it. It's right next to the Christmas tree,
and we have another one upstairs in our main guest room.
Speaker 3: Do you have a nice roaring fire in the podcast
studio right now. I'm trying to picture this this room
all lit up with Christmas cheer and a roaring fire
and a beautiful twinkling tree.
Speaker 2: No, yes to all the above, except no roaring fire
in this particular fireplace.
Speaker 3: We want to welcome everybody to this episode and go
ahead and start at the top by wishing you a
very happy holiday, no matter which holiday it is that
you happen to celebrate, and we are looking forward to
bringing you this episode of True Crime News Roundup. We
wanted to cover two cases in particular today, the sentence
scene in the Delphi case and then the capture of
CEO murder assailant Luigi Mangione, which is possibly the most
Italian name I've ever heard ever.
Speaker 2: And if all goes according to plan, this podcast should
run on Monday, December thirtieth, Happy almost New Year.
Speaker 3: It will be the last podcast of twenty twenty four,
and in twenty twenty five we will be turning five
years old.
Speaker 2: Yes, which means technically we're starting our sixth season the
next day.
Speaker 3: I think we've stopped demarketing season. I wouldn't even know
what to tell people when they ask what season of
your podcast are you currently on? I don't know. I
just go out its episode four hundred something.
Speaker 2: I don't know this episode should run as podcast episode
number four thirty five in Mind Over Murder. Wow.
Speaker 3: But we've been at it for five years, yes, six seasons.
I never thought our plucky little podcast would live to
be the ripe old Age of five or half of
the decade, but here we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we want to go ahead and start talking today
about what I think is a welcome sentence, and that
is the sentencing of Richard Allen in the Delphi case
for the twenty seventeen murders of Abby Williams and Libby Jerman.
Richard Allen received a sentence of sixty five years for
each murder to run consecutively. That means a grand total
of one hundred and thirty years in prison. And I
really cannot stress enough how much I think he deserves.
Speaker 2: That couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Speaker 3: If he did not react to the sentence in the courtroom.
But the families of both girls spoke out afterward. Now
that the gag order that prevented the families commenting during
or after the trial had been lifted, there was some
excellent reporting from, of course, a number of news outlets.
The best that we saw came from ABC News and
from WISHTV reporter Jay Adkins. They actually ran the complete
text of the German family's victims impact statement. I wanted
to spend a little bit of time quoting from them
because it really is important, I think, to give those
victims impact statements their due, to carry forward the experience
that these families have had over this long and tortuous
road from the murder of the girls in twenty seventeen
all the way to this trial. And it has taken
them a long time to.
Speaker 2: Get here, far longer than it should have. And of
course we'll get into some more detail as we go along.
You may recall that Richard Allen was working at CBS
in the same town where the girls had been murdered.
As we've discussed before, Kristin, he looked like the sketch
of the man they said they were looking for five years.
He was a clerk at CVS and he would sometimes
work the register, so he would have been actually checking
out members of the investigative team as they made purchases
at CVS. I am still completely blown away by the
fact that Richard Allen was permitted, through error and circumstance,
to continue living his life literally under the noses of
the investigators. As if this loss of these two beautiful
young preteen girls wasn't enough. This whole thing has gotten
so protracted between five years that Richard Allen somehow went
unnoticed and then this lengthy trial that they've been through.
So there's a lot of frustration, which is completely understandable
on the part of Abby and Libby's families.
Speaker 3: What I'm going to do is I'm to read portions
of the victim's impact statements. They are quite lengthy, and
to give the entire text of all of them would
be to take up far more time than we have,
but I chose what I thought were some of the
most impactful passages. This first victim's impact statement is from
Carrie Timmins. She is Liberty German's mother. There was quite
a bit of statement before this section, but this is
the section that really tore in my heart. So this
victim's impact statement was given on December twentieth, the day
of the sentencing, and the portion that I am reading
starts here. The last twenty eight hundred and sixty seven
days have been absolute hell for Libby's and Abby's friends
and family. Next week we should be celebrating our birthdays together.
December twenty fifth and December twenty seventh. Libby would be
twenty two. She should be here. I quit celebrating after
her fourteenth and my thirty ninth. I can't help but
to see her grin at that, understanding the anxiety that
she knew I had about turning the dreaded forty. That
broke my heart. It's so awful to hear that it's
so hard for them to mark the birthdays that they
just stopped doing that. It makes me choke up in
a really terrible way.
Speaker 2: You can see how mother and daughter had a little
bit of a running joke going there, because, like a
lot of people, Mom had become obsessed with turning forty,
and now that I've turned forty, it doesn't seem like
that big a deal. But she's harkening back to something
which is clearly like an in joke between mother and daughter,
and that part made me smile, but at the same
time it's completely heartbreaking. The other thing that was really
surprising to me was Libby would be twenty two. Years old. Now,
they were quite young at the time of the murders,
but so many years have gone by now that Libby
would be twenty two years old, which it's because they're
frozen in amber we've talked about before, where they'll be perpetually,
these young teenage girls. It's hard to picture Libby as
a twenty two year old young woman exactly.
Speaker 3: I know for you, Kathy is forever twenty seven. But
how old would Kathy be.
Speaker 2: Now, I'd have to stop and think about it for
a second.
Speaker 3: Sixty five Well, it has to be a little jarring.
When I saw that number, that certainly threw me a
little bit. Twenty two years old. It's been eight years, yeah,
and she would most certainly be on her way not
only through college, but maybe onto her first career, maybe marriage.
It's really jarring to see that.
Speaker 2: When you see those numbers, that begins to remind you
of how much the victims and the families have lost,
how much more life has gone on since then. We
were just talking about Kathy. For Kathy to be sixty
five years old now and you think to yourself, oh
my gosh, thirty eight years of living has been and
lost to her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and one of the things that I found in
reading those victims' impact statements is the parents and grandparents
and family members all hearken to this idea a number
of times. Of what has been lost, not only children,
but grandchildren and great grandchildren. There's a whole generation that
is wiped out, essentially because the girls were wiped out
at such an early age, and that's something that's clearly
on this family's mind. Is very sad to see that.
Another section of the victim's impact statement from mis Timmins reads,
I honestly don't know how to process the fact that
a husband and father is capable of the horrendous acts
of brutality inflicted upon our beautiful children. I was totally
blind to the fact that such evil actually existed. I
don't know which is worse, knowing or not knowing. I'll
never understand how he was able to get away with
it for so long? How can such evil hide in
plain sight, continuing to walk down streets line with his picture,
making a mockery of law enforcement, the families, the community,
and especially Libyan Abbey. For nearly six years. Only Richard
Allen has those answers. He has claimed remorse and a
need to apologize. I will not hold my breath waiting,
but I do deserve those answers. Libyan Abbey, deserve the
whole truth to come out, and I am all ears.
Speaker 2: My sense is that, regardless of whatever garbage Richard Allen
has spewed over the last several years, I don't think
there's ever going to be an explanation or any sort
of meaningful apology.
Speaker 3: I don't know that any explanation would ultimately be satisfactory.
If you were to hear the reasoning air quotes behind
what happened to Kathy, it wouldn't matter, would it.
Speaker 2: No, it's not going to bring your loved one back,
and there's never going to be a sensible explanation. It
isn't two guys got in a fight in a bar
and things went too far and person ended up dead.
You could see someone remorsefully wanting to apologize and explain
what happened and ask for forgiveness. But in these examples,
whether it's the Colonial Parkway murders or the Delphi case
or many others, these are strangers, mostly men, lashing out
at people that are strangers to them, often but not
always women, and in this case quite young. Really, girls,
there's no adequate explanation for what drives someone like this.
It's completely senseless, and we've talked about it on the
podcast before. We're trying to apply logic to inherently illogical acts.
Speaker 3: Well said. The final selection from her victims and hec
statement that I wanted to read is the final paragraph.
While there will never really be justice or closure and
nothing will bring my daughter back, I am so very
proud of her for not only exposing her Abby's killer,
but also bringing much needed attention to so many cases
near and far. This tragedy hasn't completely stopped Libby from
accomplishing at least one dream from beyond the grave. Her
courage and strength will live on as she guides us
through this lifetime until we meet again. She is my sunshine.
Carrie Timmins, mother of Liberty German.
Speaker 2: That's very well spoken, and I'm glad she's finding some
positives here and some reason to take pride in a
daughter she clearly loved very much.
Speaker 3: The foresight that Libby had to take the video of
the bridge guy, there are grown adults who wouldn't think
to do that. That she was able in whatever moment
of fear that she was undergoing to think, let me
turn on my camera, let me do this video. I
wouldn't have that foresight. I couldn't do it. I would
probably end up utterly frozen in fear. I really can't
imagine how much bravery it took her to be able
to do that one simple act. And I would say
that without that video, they probably would never have found
Richard Allen.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're probably right, especially with all of
the other problems in this case and in this prosecution,
I think without that video they would have been completely stalled.
Speaker 3: Another portion of a victim's impact statement that I wanted
to outline for you all comes from Mike Patty. He
is Liberty German's grandfather. He took an interesting tack in
his victim's impact statement in that he addressed not only
the defense team, which had multiple issues, the family has
multiple I think, very very obvious grievances against them. He
also addressed Richard Allen himself. Again, this is not the
entirety of that victim's impact statement, but I do want
to address each portion of it because I feel these
are very important for people to reflect on as we
look back on what happened in the Delphi case. About
the middle of the statement, after addressing each person in
the room that judge, the prosecution, and so on and
so forth, Mike Patty addressed the defense lawyers. He says, defense,
I understand the role you need to play, but I
cannot connect the ways of our legal system to allow
so many things to interfere with the truth and facts
to simply be brought before a jury. I cannot imagine
our forefathers ever envision the attempts to suppress and divert
the facts would ever be part of our justice system.
One should reflect and review their position to support truth,
justice and the American way. Your inept ability to protect
some of the most personal facts in this case, the
crime scene photos, and making statements that you really didn't
care they were out there. My family will forever have
to explain how these are available for people to search.
What do I say to my kids' grandchildren and great grandchildren, Well,
will you tell your grandkids? I hope you tell them
the truth. I surely will. For this I will never forget.
Speaker 2: Mike's reference is to the fact that the defense was
so careless with these graphic crime scene photos of the
two young girls after they'd been murdered. They had these
all spread out in a conference room which was not secure,
so that an individual who had done some work for
them in the past had come into their office and
had wandered into the conference room where he saw these
graphic photographs, and then my recollection is that he took
pictures of the photographs as displayed in the conference room.
There's no effort whatsoever to keep those photos under lock
and key, and that's how those photos ended up being
very unfortunately leaked, and the Murder Sheet podcast, if I'm
not mistaken, had run those photographs put them up on
the internet. I think this is absolutely grotesque and what
a failure on the part of the defense team, who
have a job to do and a very important role
to play. Just seems so uncaring and even negligent in
terms of how they handled these crime team photos. It's
just grotesque. It seems beyond heartless. It's like they didn't
care and they just left them out there in their
conference room. And this isn't a place that had proper security,
so that this man is just allowed to wander in
there and start snapping pictures with his cell phone.
Speaker 3: Again because in the Colonial Parkway murders. We have also
seen the leak of crime scene photos, graphic ones related
to your sister, Robin Edwards, David Knobling, Anna Maria Phelps,
Daniel Lauer, and Keith Collin Cassada Haley's cases. We of
course understand where this is coming from. I just I
cannot fathom someone who would see that and their first
impulse is I'll take pictures because everybody else has the
right to see that too. There is no one who
has the right to see what that absolute monster did
to savage those two girls. No one deserves to see that.
That is not anything that lends itself to an understanding
of what happened in this case. The only people who
should have seen that were investigators and maybe eventually the jury.
The fact that now that is available out there on
the Internet and will always be out there because the
Internet is forever. You can't take this stuff back. I
feel terrible for these families, I truly do.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, in the Colonial Parkway murders,
the FBI is directly responsible for these photos leaking because
they failed to secure the photos, which were then stolen
by an FBI photographer. The thing that I'm still amazed
by is every once in a while, someone will reach
out to me and they'll ask me the other of
a murder victim where they can see the crime scene
photos from the Colonial Parkway murders. And my attitude is,
I don't think so. I've seen those photographs, and I'm sorry.
I've seen those photographs, and the rest of the world,
in my opinion, doesn't need to see those graphic photographs.
Should our case ever go to a trial. I understand
that they may be used, and that jurors and judges
and attorneys would have to see the crime scene photos.
I see no reason for those photos to be out
there on the internet, particularly highly graphic crime scene photos
like we've seen in the Colonial Parkway murders and the
Delphi case and so many others.
Speaker 3: Say, for anybody who is out there right now thinking
that they really do want to see crime scene photos,
like that's the thing that's going to enrich their life, No,
it's not. It really is not. As Bill has said,
he wishes he could unsee those photos. Take it from me,
I wish I could unsee them as well. And you can't.
They live rent free in the back of your head
for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter how
old the case is. There are still people out there
who will look up the Manson photos or the photos
from Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman's case. You don't
want to see these the people who are out there
for the prurient interest of it. I don't understand you.
I don't. It's very distressing. Mike Patty then took a
moment to address Richard Allen himself. I applaud the fact
that he does not refer to him by name. He
just calls him the convict, which good for him, Yeah,
really good. He doesn't deserve another name. He starts this way,
he says, convict. I will never understand how you could
have conducted such an atrocity. You killed my granddaughter nearly
eight years ago and have only thought of yourself. Your
attempts of self preservation are a result of how you
really are once you committed this crime. You could have
been a man, stood up and taken accountability, but you didn't.
At any time during these proceedings, you could have stood
up and taken responsibility, but you didn't, and were only
concerned about yourself and tried to get away with murder.
Actions always speak louder than words. By being so selfish,
you continue to punish and hurt my family. For this,
I will never forget. Your act of murder has tested
my faith. I am still not ready to provide forgiveness.
When I am able to, it will be for my
faith and conscience, not yours or this I will never forget.
Speaker 2: I understand how he feels.
Speaker 3: I cannot imagine what this does to someone who has
a deep seated religious belief in conviction. I am more
of a spiritual person than I am a religious person,
but I don't know how I would possibly deal with
what this would do to my own faith if this
were something that I was directly impacted by. I feel
nothing but compassion and sorrow for these families to have
to be dealing with this. He continues, I've never felt
such hatred and should not be this way toward another
human being. What you've done is impacted so many people's lives.
We will heal with the help of our pastor. I'm
lucky to have a great family and will enjoy the
rest of my life helping and watching all of them grow,
from our kids to our great grandchildren. This is something
you will not get to take away. You will never
get to experience such joy and love as what my
family has. Lastly, I hope the rest of your days
are spending as much fear as the girls had to
experience the last part of their lives, and hope those
moments haunt you for the rest of your days. You
deserve no better. Now is the time to stand up
and take accountability, put a stop to any future attempts
at appeal, so we can let Libby rest in peace.
Said mister Patty.
Speaker 2: I wonder if he'll appeal. Most likely he will. Usually
you do see appeals in most murder convictions. I hope
his appeals go nowhere, because, as near as I can tell,
this convict, as Mike Patty refers to them, has been
and given every opportunity to prove his innocence and has
failed to do so.
Speaker 3: I really do. The fact that he does not give
Richard Allen even the dignity of his own name. I
think that was a great move on his part. And
the fact that he and any of the other family
members are able to stand up in court and face
him speak to him in this way. This is an
act of bravery, of which I don't think I would
be capable. I have nothing but admiration for these families.
Speaker 2: I saw an interesting article earlier today where they were
discussing these recent commutations of federal death penalty sentences, and
one of the things that the author said in the
article was he was referencing specific cases, but he talked
about the victims. In this case, there were multiple victims.
These were people that have been killed in multiple murder incidents.
He made a point of saying he was not going
to mention the names of the offenders. Difference the case
is so in ways that you were very clear who
you were talking about. He refused to use the names,
and I actually thought something we should probably all try
to do that a bit more than we have.
Speaker 3: That is something that I first picked up on from
the folks of Real Crime Profile, who always make a
point of saying the offender's name as few times as possible.
Laura Richards, for example, really made a point when I
was listening to their coverage about Nicole Brown Simpson and
Ron Goldman of never referring to it as the OJ
Simpson case, which most people did, yes and still do.
It is not the OJ Simpson case. It is the
Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman case because they were the victims.
His name needs to be out of the narrative entirely.
And so I think that's really important, and that's something
that I'm hoping as a culture, as a true crime community,
that's something that we're going to try to spend a
little bit more time focusing on really making sure that
we don't give the offenders any more of a voice
than they deserve to have.
Speaker 2: I think we should all be trying to refer to
the case we're discussing at this moment as the Delphi
case or the Liberty German Abby Williams case. Let's try
not to give the offenders in this and many other
cases a voice because they deserve obscurity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. And that statement there, Bill, I think is
actually something that is going to play into our next
point of discussion, the next case that we're discussing here.
Very shortly, I want to finish up with a selection
from the victim's impact statement from Becky Patty, and she
is Liberty German's grandmother. It addresses not only the loss
to their family in the terms of the things that
the girls will no longer have or be able to experience.
And it also discusses further the consequences of the crime
scene photo for her family, which her husband referenced in
his impact statement. This is from Becky Patty and she
is speaking about the loss of Abby and Libby. Our
lives turned upside down that day, never to be the
same again. Abby and Libby two young teens with their
entire futures ahead of them. They never got the opportunity
to make their marks in the world. He stole that
from them. Libby never got to go to prom, graduate,
go on dates, go to college, get married, or start
a family. She never got to be the best aunt ever.
He robbed us. All the world was robbed of what
could have been all the while he went on living
his life. He was able to walk his daughter down
the aisle and give her away at her wedding. I
wonder did he think of the girls at all while
walking her down that aisle. Our families will never get
the privilege of watching Libby or Abby walk down the aisle.
He took that away from us.
Speaker 2: I had forgotten that. I was reading her impact statement
that came back to me that I forgot his daughter
had gotten married and that he had walked through down
the aisle. I was shocked. How I must have put
some of that out of my mind, because of course
I tried not to think about him too much. I
was mostly focused on the girls and their families and
hoping that the would be justice at the end of
this process. I'd forgotten that this guy is a father,
and it just somehow it makes it even more creepy
that he was walking his daughter down the aisle between
the time that the murders took place and this eviction
was announced on December.
Speaker 3: Twentieth, It just boggles the mind.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
mindover Murder.
Speaker 3: And as Patty talked about the impact of the crime
scene photo Elite in the same way that her husband did,
this is the last portion that we're going to share
with you all from that impact statement. The impact of
Richard Allen's choices made that day has haunted our families
for almost eight years and continues even now. Because of
choices he made and subsequent arrest. He was appointed two
lawyers to defend him. Those lawyers have done nothing but
twist the knife around and around in our wounds Richard
caused that day. Because of one lawyer's sloppiness, sealed crime
scene photos of Libby's naked and mutilated body were left unattended,
allowing images to be taken and spread around to people
on the internet. As recent as this week, those crime
scene photos were still being shared on the internet for
no good reason but entertainment by many. Sharing those photos
changes nothing. It doesn't solve the crime, it doesn't bring
the girls back. So now, because of Richard Allen's choices
that day and his lawyer's sloppiness, the impact has now
become generational for us. One day, when Libby's nieces or
nephews decide they want to learn more about their aunt Libby,
they may be faced with those horrible crime scene photos
that were so carelessly taken care of. I wonder if
his lawyer would have been so careless with those photos
if they were photos of one of his children.
Speaker 2: You pick up on the anger and the hurt. She's
right about every aspect of this. These lawyers were horrible.
They have a job to do, as we talked about,
but leaving crime team photos displayed out and on display
in your conference room for any visitor to see is
just unbelievably sloppy.
Speaker 3: The word that I thought was most interesting to me
was this concept of generational trauma, because it does become
that this echoes down through generations. The one thing that
I really recall from this past October when we dedicated
Keith Call's monument at the Rosewelt Cemetery in Gloucester, I
recall meeting Keith's siblings and then their children as well,
but really did pit home for me. This doesn't just
affect one generation of people. It carries on and on.
I know you have a son, Bill, and I assume
that at some point or another, if he has children,
he'll have to explain to his kids this is what
happened to Kathy. And that's not a conversation that anybody
should relish. It must be awful to think.
Speaker 2: About, no question about it. And this idea of a
generational trauma is very real. These crimes have that ripple effect,
like dropping a pebblon a pond, and it just ripples
out further and further, obviously having the greatest impact on
the people that were closest to that lost loved one,
but the entire community is impacted by these things. It's
heartbreaking to see Libyan Abbey's families go through this, and
as painful as the process has been, it's situations like
the leak of the crime scene photos and some of
the incompetence of the law enforcement investigation which allowed this
case to stretch on far longer than it should have.
It's worth mentioning that this case wouldn't have broken if
it weren't for a clerk going back through crime scene
evidence and finding a misfiled report that gave a clear
indication that the suspect put himself at the bridge on
the day of the girl's little murder. Unfortunately, that very
important interview was misfiled. It was not filed I think
under his name, which is what it should have been.
It was filed under the street name. If I'm not mistaken.
I just read an article about this in the last
twenty four hours and they were highlighting the fact that
this clerk is responsible for not the misfile but finding
that very important piece of information five years after the fact,
that if she had not found that file, it might
never have surfaced because there were so many documents and
hundreds of interviews. Law enforcement was scrambling to try to
move this case forward, and unfortunately mistakes happened. This misfile
was something that led directly to this multi year delay
in identifying Alan as a suspect, and they mentioned that
within a month or so of the discovery of this
missing interview, they realized that he was a very likely
suspect and they began looking into him and it was
within a matter of weeks they matched shells found at
the scene to a gun that he owned, and they
began to build a very strong case with a lot
of evidence. That five year gap between the murder of
the two girls and discovery this information was so critical
and as a result of this clerk's review, the case
began moving forward again.
Speaker 3: I did find a couple of quotes from Abby's grandmother,
Diane Erskin. She commented that the sentence scene was a
day of great sadness for their family. She said, we
will not be going home to celebrate with champagne. She
also said, and it also speaks a lot, I think
to her bravery. The last words that Abby spoke on
Libby's phone, and I'm assuming that's the video depicting Bridge Guy.
Her last words were, don't leave me up here. Her
grandmother opted not to leave the Delphi trial, even during
moments of really emotionally wrenching testimony, because she did not
want to leave her granddaughter up there, and that just
broke my heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she said, I will never be the same
person I was before Abby's murder. And we'll link to
the full impact statements, which are thoughtful and beautifully written,
and we'll include those in our show notes.
Speaker 3: Our second topic that we really want to delve into
is the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by
suspect Luigi Mangione. Mangione is a twenty six year old
Ivy League educated gentleman with a wealthy family who murdered
Thompson on the street outside the New York hotel where
he was attending a conference. And that is seemingly out
of a personal vendetta against the health insurance system. When
this came to light, what two three weeks ago, maybe
it's all running together. In that frantic period leading up
to the holidays, it sounded like something out of a movie.
Someone assassinating someone right on the street in New York,
a man hunt chasing down all the CCTV leads. It
was pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: I have to be complementary of the NYPD and the
law enforcement agencies that were involved. We've talked about situations
where law enforcement does not seem to trust the American public,
and this was a situation where it was by putting
out the information and very importantly the images of this
suspect that led directly to his being arrested a fairly
short few days later. There's so many more cameras out
there in the world.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I thought was very smart
on the part of law enforcement in the murder of
Brian Thompson was they put out photographs almost as they
found them. So the initial shots were dark and blurry,
was early morning, but you could see the suspect walking
up behind mister Thompson and shooting him, but they didn't
show the suspect's face particularly clearly. What I thought was
very smart was within twenty four hours, suddenly there were
more photographs turning up as they retraced this man's steps.
And then the next thing you know, you've got a
photograph where he wasn't wearing the surgical mask which he'd
been wearing in the I'll call it an assassination. So
the next thing you know, we've got some photographs where
he's smiling at the clerk at the hostel where he
was staying. They said that he had stopped to flirt
with this young woman who was behind the register that
resulted in him taking off his mask. A couple of
days later, they had photographs of him in the back
seat of the cab, and of course I'd forgotten nowadays
there are cameras in cabs, and so there was a
very clear picture of him peeking through the gap where
the little window is between the front seat and the
back seat in a New York City cab. So they
were able to put together a pretty good chronology of
where the suspect had gone. He'd hopped on a city
bike and had ridden into Central Park. Then they found
a backpack that matched the backpack and the photographs and
monopoly money, which is a very sort of odd detail.
CCTV cameras showed him exiting Central Park further to the
north and onto the west side. Then he jumps in
a cab, which I think was a huge mistake. By
the way, Oh yeah, because here he is in the
back seat of a cab and his face is clearly
showing up on the dashcam of the cabby. By putting
those photographs out there and providing more and more information
and fairly quickly to the American public, that meant that
people all over the country we're looking for this guy.
No one knew he was going to end up in Altoona, Pennsylvania,
a couple of hours away from New York City. By
putting out those photographs and getting them out on the
internet national media, that allowed the public to play a
role here. I know there's been some people who have
expressed sympathy for the shooter, which I think is pretty absurd.
A guy at least is charged with being a brutal
murderer murdering a complete stranger. While I understand the frustration
with the insurance industry, and I have my own stories
about that, it doesn't make gunning down a father of
two and a CEO of a company any more acceptable.
Even though I think many of the business practices of
America's insurance companies are completely reprehensible, I don't think gunning
down the CEOs of those companies is really moving us forward.
Speaker 3: No, I agree, and this sort of elevation to folk
hero status that some people have compared him to. He's
getting compared to Robin Hood and so on and so forth.
I want to come back to that in a minute,
because I do think exploring this concept of absurdity, which
is what it is, is really important. One of the
things that I was really intrigued by. When I was
sitting down to do my research for this episode, I
came across some excellent reporting from the CNN Crime and
Justice Team, and they did a quite extensive article about
trip from Huntington, Pennsylvania, where Mantani had been, and the
trip that took him into New York for his first
set of courtroom appearances. It was very interesting to me
the way that they approached this particular attempt at transporting
this guy. So I want to lay out what exactly
happened and get your feeling. Is somebody who did live
in New York for a while, I would love to
know your thoughts on why precisely NYPD did this the
way that they did. This Thursday the nineteenth, he was
taken from Huntington, Pennsylvania, where he had been since his arrest,
and was transported to Manhattan. The CNN Crime and Justice
Team noted that there was an unusual amount of pomp
and circumstance behind this, including a ride in a New
York Police Department helicopter from from Islap, New York. He
arrived at a heliport on Wall Street in said NYPD
helicopter tourists were seen taking photos of him. When he arrived,
CNN quoted as saying he was surrounded by a swarm
of gun toting NYPG officers in a slow, lengthy purp
walk from the helicopter into a black van, with cameras
catching every step. It was almost Hannibal Lecter esque. Defense
attorney Jeremy Saland told CNN and as soon as I
started seeing photos of Mangione surrounded by police officers doing
the sort of purp walk, I was like, Oh, that's
exactly what it feels like. That moment in Silence of
the Lambs when they're moving Lector from the Baltimore and
Sane Asylum to Brushy Mountain State Prison and meet with
the Senator to trade information about Buffalo Bill. That's really
what it looked like. It actually sent chills down my spine.
The CNN Crime and Justice Team wanted to get into
that Purp Walk, and so they discussed the fact that
right behind the New York Police Department officers escorting him
were the Mayor Eric Adams and the New York Police
Department Police Commissioner. Eric Adams was quoted as saying, we
wanted to personally be here to show the symbolism of
leading from the front. Another CNN correspondent on the ground said,
I've never seen anything like this, but they want the
photo opportunity to show what they believe we got our guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Eric Adams has had his share of bad publicity
in recent months, so I think he had his own
reasons for wanting to be in those photographs. The whole
Purp Walk thing has always baffled me. Law enforcement in
New York and lots of other cities and towns across
the country is very big on. As they move an
offender who at that point hasn't been convicted of anything,
He's only a suspect. From point A to point B,
there is an effort made to parade this person before
the public. I'm not saying I've never been interested in
seeing Sometimes I am very interested in laying eyes on
a particular suspect. This one included, but it strikes me
as very strange. And then this lengthy walk from point
A to point B, the whole thing just strikes me
as very odd. But usually you'll see some even a
suspect in a capital murder investigation with maybe a police
officer on either side of them, not surrounded by everyone
under the sun, all heavily armed, including the mayor and
the police commissioner. Given the amount of negative publicity surrounding
Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD, I think they were
looking for some good news, as they say.
Speaker 3: I was really interested in this quote from a law
enforcement and intelligence analyst at CNN. His name is John Miller.
He said, the security around Manngione is because of what
they've been seeing in terms of the public support for
him and their security worries about someone not trying to
attack him, but to try and free him from law enforcement.
That blew my mind that would even cross their mind
that somebody might try to free this guy's jail break
him in the middle of this big, splashy purp walk.
Speaker 2: I've never met John Miller, but I've been watching him
on television for decades because, of course I lived in
New York and he was the longtime spokesperson for the
NYPD in addition to being an on camera reporter in
New York. He knows what he's talking about, though, in
terms of his sources inside law enforcement are impeccable because
he knows so many people and has been around for
so long. I thought that was an interesting observation that
their concerns were about someone trying to break him out.
I'm not sure that the parading of suspects, as I said,
from point A to point B, is really necessary. It
actually strikes me as fairly risky.
Speaker 3: And prejudicial as well. One of the justice correspondents on
CNN said, you are obviously, like right there, really highly
prejudicing any potential jewelry pool against them because you've given
them this big public spectacle, and.
Speaker 2: You could load a suspect into a van, for example,
inside a police garage and we would never see the suspect.
This seems almost unnecessary. They do it all the time,
so much so that it has that name perp Walk.
Speaker 3: The fact that there was a lot of really heavy,
especially on social media of course, support for what this
man did to the CEO of United Healthcare, it absolutely
baffled me. I have friends who I count to be
very decent, moral people who were actually applauding the fact
that he had plugged Brian tom send their words in
the middle of the street. I said, are you absolutely
kidding me? You're fine with somebody murdering another person in
cold blood? And they said, Brian Thompson wasn't another person,
he was a CEO scumbag who runs United Healthcare.
Speaker 2: Gobsmacked me the frustration. But I sure, I don't see
how that rises to the level we're all going to
be applauding someone who's a brutal murderer who shot this
man to death.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would. I think it's safe to say that
we both have our own issues with health insurance in
this country, as probably most people do. But I do not,
in any way, shape or form, support any form of
vigilanteism to show your dissatisfaction with the system as a whole.
It's not something that you do in a civilized society.
We don't stoop to vigilanteism. We just don't. The fact
that there were people that I knew and liked who
were like, you know what, it's totally fine that guy
got what was that guy got what was coming to
him really upset and disturbed me, and still continues to
disturb me.
Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to see what else comes out at trial.
Recent articles I've read indicate that I'm not even sure
that Manchione actually had selected Brian Thompson some of the
articles I've read more recently, and I think we'll see
a lot more of this in the coming weeks and months.
I think he may have been willing to kill any
CEO of any healthcare company, most of whom were attending
that investor's conference that particular day. But I think this
is a conversation that we'll have to continue.
Speaker 3: So that is going to do it for this final
episode for twenty twenty four of mind Over Murder. From
our families to yours. Have a happy and healthy holiday season.
Join us again in the new year as we start
our fifth year of the mind Over Murder podcast, and
we are committed to continuing to bring you excellent content.
Thank you so much for listen name We'll see you
next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.
Speaker 3: No cont