Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
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Speaker 1: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
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Speaker 2: Good evening.
Speaker 3: For all.
Speaker 2: Tom Markquart knew Capital Gazette just had an unhappy reader.
Speaker 2: What he didn't know was that the unhappy reader was
Speaker 2: about to become a mass murderer. Markquart, the former editor
Speaker 2: of Capitol Gazette newspapers in Annapolis, Maryland, was a target
Speaker 2: of a thirty eight year old loaner who sought to
Speaker 2: avenge a twenty eleven article that reported the reader's conviction
Speaker 2: of sexually harassing a former high school classmate. For years,
Speaker 2: the man sued the editor, the reporter, and the newspaper
Speaker 2: for defamation, then took to Twitter now x to lash
Speaker 2: out against the editor and the reporter. Representing himself in court,
Speaker 2: His lawsuit rambled and failed to persuade a judge who
Speaker 2: easily dismissed it. He spent the next three years silently
Speaker 2: plotting his attack on June twenty eighth, twenty and eighteen,
Speaker 2: he blasted his way through the locked doors of Capital
Speaker 2: Gazette offices and killed five employees. He called nine to
Speaker 2: one one to confess, then hid under a desk while
Speaker 2: waiting to surrender to approaching police. Marcourt spent two years
Speaker 2: reviewing police and court files, eyewitness accounts, the killer's interview
Speaker 2: with a state psychiatrist, and video footage to chronicle in
Speaker 2: stunning detail what led up to the crime and how
Speaker 2: the killer escaped detection. Press to Kill is a chilling
Speaker 2: account of the worst mass murder at an American newspaper,
Speaker 2: but more so, it is about the lives of those
Speaker 2: who died their heroism that day and the remarkable response
Speaker 2: from a community who rushed to its side. The book
Speaker 2: we're featuring this evening is Pressed to Kill, Inside Newspaper's
Speaker 2: worst mass murder, with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 2: Tom Marquard. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 2: much for this interview. Tom markquart Thanks, thanks Dad, good
Speaker 2: to be here. Thank you very much, and congratulations on
Speaker 2: this book, Press to Kill.
Speaker 3: Thank you right away.
Speaker 2: You take us to the origins of this story, and
Speaker 2: this is centered in Annapolis, Maryland, and you wright, it
Speaker 2: is the perfect place for budding reporters to launch their
Speaker 2: journalism careers, a bustling hub of political influence and an
Speaker 2: iconic city called Camelot on the Bay. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about the Capital Newspaper and before we talk
Speaker 2: about July twenty six, twenty eleven and Arundel County District Court.
Speaker 3: I lived in Annapolis for over thirty five years, but
Speaker 3: it was a fascinating city. As you say, it was
Speaker 3: called Camelot on the Bay by National Geographic that did
Speaker 3: a very big spread on the many years ago. It's
Speaker 3: a colonial city. It still has the original building that
Speaker 3: housed the Treasury Department. It is the oldest surviving state
Speaker 3: house still in use. George Washington resigned his commission there.
Speaker 3: Kunti Kentei landed at a city dock. The history is
Speaker 3: just endless. Home of the Naval Academy goes on and on.
Speaker 3: But part of that history is the Maryland Gazette, which
Speaker 3: is a forerunner to the newspaper we know today as
Speaker 3: the Capitol Gazette. The Maryland Gazette was in existence in
Speaker 3: the late seventeen hundreds was one of the first newspapers
Speaker 3: in the United States. It protested the Stamp Act. It
Speaker 3: was run by a fearless publisher who often ran a
Speaker 3: foul of the local residents. Is certainly the British, so
Speaker 3: it goes way back as far as history goes from
Speaker 3: a newspaper standpoint.
Speaker 2: Tell us just a little bit about Capitol reporter Eric
Speaker 2: Hartley before we talk about and take our listeners to
Speaker 2: Judge Jonas Legum's courtroom where a man was on trial
Speaker 2: for stalking a former schoolmate.
Speaker 3: So Eric Hartley was your classic reporter who came to
Speaker 3: the Capitol. Really was just a little bit of experienced
Speaker 3: paper one or two years at a smaller newspaper, looking
Speaker 3: to get his next job at a place that was
Speaker 3: the capital of Maryland. Also a place that was very
Speaker 3: active in news. I mean, there was just a lot
Speaker 3: happening in Annapolis. So it was a great stepping stone
Speaker 3: for any young reporter. Eric in particular was a very
Speaker 3: aggressive reporter, good understanding the news, a good writer. He
Speaker 3: knew how to ferret out a story, and we assigned
Speaker 3: him to the court beat originally, and then he impressed
Speaker 3: us with his writing and we felt we need a
Speaker 3: little bit more dimension to the paper, so we gave
Speaker 3: him a column that allowed him to roam freely around
Speaker 3: the city and address almost any kind of subject. That
Speaker 3: was really the start for Eric Cartley.
Speaker 2: Tell us about Lourie saunder Van and the case that
Speaker 2: is in Judge Jonas Legum's courtroom.
Speaker 3: So Laurie Saunderman was working at a local bank and
Speaker 3: one day got a Facebook message Throm a former high
Speaker 3: school classmate. They were out of school for probably a
Speaker 3: good fifteen years, so she didn't immediately recall him. So
Speaker 3: they started a conversation and he sent a photo of
Speaker 3: him just to remind her. She actually called a couple
Speaker 3: of other classmates to make sure he was a fellow classmate,
Speaker 3: and he was. He was just a very quiet one,
Speaker 3: you know, just being nice. She started up a conversation
Speaker 3: that was really more by email and a little bit
Speaker 3: of Facebook, but never a phone call or never a
Speaker 3: face to face meeting, but just being friendly talking sharing stories.
Speaker 3: They both had some mental struggles and so they shared
Speaker 3: that information with each other. But at some point he
Speaker 3: was getting a little too aggressive because she wasn't responding
Speaker 3: to his conversations quickly enough. She started backing off of
Speaker 3: that relationship. Feeling a little bit worried that he was
Speaker 3: getting a little too aggressive. He in the meantime, was
Speaker 3: hoping to strike up a conversation which they would meet.
Speaker 3: He became very up set when she wasn't responding fast
Speaker 3: enough and at some point just lit up and called
Speaker 3: her all sorts of names. Ceased communication and he became
Speaker 3: more aggressive. So what he did even called is per
Speaker 3: bank and said that she had some mentalism mental issues.
Speaker 3: She ended up getting fired or laid off on the bank.
Speaker 3: She suspected this was the reason called. Her parents kept
Speaker 3: pressuring her to keep the communication going and it didn't,
Speaker 3: so finally her only step was find a lawyer and
Speaker 3: press charges against him for stalking. He went before the judge.
Speaker 3: This was in twenty eleven. Judge heard the case and
Speaker 3: reduced the sentence to sexual harassment, which is very important
Speaker 3: because that reduction allowed him to buy a weapon. He
Speaker 3: wouldn't be able to buy a weapon if he was
Speaker 3: convicted of stalking because it would have been a felony.
Speaker 3: You know what, that was the case that went before judge.
Speaker 2: You say that that Sondivan reached out to her friend,
Speaker 2: which was an attorney named Brennan McCarthy McCarthy, and he
Speaker 2: had helped her to obtain tried to obtain a peace order,
Speaker 2: and he had said that he had found Ramon so
Speaker 2: frightening that he urged the judge to order psychological evaluation.
Speaker 2: But the judge denied that request, didn't he Yes.
Speaker 3: That's correct. I mean when Brenna McCarthy, who was a
Speaker 3: very strong lawyer and certainly not somebody who walks away
Speaker 3: from a fight easily said he may de sign of
Speaker 3: the cross when he met Jared Ramis because he was
Speaker 3: just a frightening person. Give them what he had done
Speaker 3: to his client. There were reasons to be concerned. So yes,
Speaker 3: he was very worried. He asked for a mental evaluation,
Speaker 3: which was denied to him.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us about the story that is written in
Speaker 2: the newspaper. In your newspaper, what is contained in that
Speaker 2: story before we talk about when Ramos realizes this and
Speaker 2: reads it and has a reaction.
Speaker 3: So Eric carry went into the courthouse and just was
Speaker 3: going through different cases. It's what he normally did to
Speaker 3: try and find something that would be of interest. And
Speaker 3: the courthouses are loaded with stories, you know, are neighborhood disputes,
Speaker 3: their domestic quarrels. There are people suing people for different reasons,
Speaker 3: but it's a great source for newsteps, and he came
Speaker 3: across this case, so he thought, you know, it's really
Speaker 3: your worst, your worst scenario of running across an old
Speaker 3: friend from the former school and sudden being chased by
Speaker 3: this guy and becoming scared. So he thought, well, this
Speaker 3: is something that people could resonate with. So he wrote
Speaker 3: the story, and it was really a story based on
Speaker 3: what had happened in the courthouse. Everything I just explained
Speaker 3: was laid out in detail with testimony from Laurie Sondervan.
Speaker 3: So the story just filed along the same courses with
Speaker 3: little elaboration. Really, we had tried to reach out or
Speaker 3: had he tried to reach out to Jared Ramis through
Speaker 3: the attorney because that was the only phone number he had,
Speaker 3: but his attorney said, I'm not going to talk to
Speaker 3: about my client about this. So Tory ran in twenty
Speaker 3: eleven with the headline that Sared said, Jared Ramis wants
Speaker 3: to be your friend.
Speaker 2: What happens when Ramos reads this in the newspaper? What
Speaker 2: is his reaction immediately?
Speaker 3: So he didn't come across the story for several days,
Speaker 3: and he was just putting his name in the search
Speaker 3: field and came across the story because he did not
Speaker 3: subscribe to the paper. When he reads it, becomes extremely upset.
Speaker 3: He immediately starts a blog on Twitter that issues his protests,
Speaker 3: starts making charges against the newspaper and the reporter and me.
Speaker 3: You know, he's very upset, in particular that his name
Speaker 3: was used and her name was not, so we don't
Speaker 3: use the names of victims in that case. He was
Speaker 3: also upset that he wasn't called. But as I said,
Speaker 3: we tried reaching him. We just were unsuccessful. He launches
Speaker 3: a protest that appears on Twitter largely, and he starts
Speaker 3: calling us names, the reporter. Eric. He looked at those
Speaker 3: tweets and he showed them to me, But we were
Speaker 3: confident that there really wasn't any audience for them. They
Speaker 3: were just really to himself and to Eric. He knew
Speaker 3: Eric was looking at them, but I didn't stop. He
Speaker 3: just it was his podium to get back at us
Speaker 3: for writing the story.
Speaker 2: Now, at that time, you were an editor at the paper,
Speaker 2: and you had read the stories obviously and found nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with that story whatsoever. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about your background at that time and the state of
Speaker 2: the newspaper business at that same time.
Speaker 3: So I had about forty years of experience, thirty five
Speaker 3: of which were at kaplic is at newspapers, so you know,
Speaker 3: I've been around a long time. I read the story,
Speaker 3: looked at and there was nothing, nothing at all that
Speaker 3: was alarming. There's certainly nothing that would constitute liable or
Speaker 3: defamation of character because all the information was out of
Speaker 3: a courtroom. When you use that information as law as
Speaker 3: is fact, you have nothing to worry about. So there
Speaker 3: really wasn't anything that was alarming in that story, you know.
Speaker 3: So I mean from a libel standpoint. I've been sued
Speaker 3: for libel before, so I understood libel, and I don't
Speaker 3: think there was anything that was alarming at all about
Speaker 3: the story.
Speaker 2: Now, what was the state of the security at the
Speaker 2: newspaper at that time? What things had you put in place,
Speaker 2: what had the previous management put in place regarding security
Speaker 2: at the newspaper.
Speaker 3: The office that Eric and I worked in was not
Speaker 3: the office where the incident happened. So in that office
Speaker 3: where we worked, we were always concerned about the safety
Speaker 3: of our employees, you know, for one thing when the
Speaker 3: when the office was built, which was in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: we were growing in circulation. We had our own press
Speaker 3: on the premise. We really wanted to be transparent to
Speaker 3: the community. So when you walked in the door, there
Speaker 3: were no walls. You could just see five or six
Speaker 3: departments just by walking into the lobby, so it was
Speaker 3: a very open office building. Eventually, we had a security
Speaker 3: system at the back door their employee entrance as well
Speaker 3: as the front door, because we did have an incident
Speaker 3: in which a convicted felon came back and talked to
Speaker 3: one of our people in the community news department, so
Speaker 3: we started we had guards at actually one time walking
Speaker 3: down the hallways, which we had to eliminate with budget cuts,
Speaker 3: but it was pretty secure. So that office building I
Speaker 3: thought was pretty secure. People just didn't walk around without
Speaker 3: being escorted or have an appointment. Fortunately they moved to
Speaker 3: a different office during the budget cuts. And this was
Speaker 3: at a time, you know, when our circulation was starting
Speaker 3: to decline. When I moved up to the publisher's position,
Speaker 3: we saw circulation plummeting. Advertising was dropping as a result.
Speaker 3: So he had the competition from Craigslist. He had a
Speaker 3: competition from the internet. It was not a good time
Speaker 3: for newspapers in general, and we were no exception. So
Speaker 3: at that point I was laying people off and trying
Speaker 3: to drop expenses. We closed our press mood to another facility,
Speaker 3: outsourced it, and there's some pretty dramatic cuts department by department,
Speaker 3: including the newsroom.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get back to Eric Hartley showing you these Twitter tweets.
Speaker 2: At that time, you said you didn't news Twitter, so
Speaker 2: he showed you the content of the tweets that Remos
Speaker 2: had already levied against the newspaper and Sounder Van. So
Speaker 2: tell us what your discussion was with Hartley regarding the
Speaker 2: content of those tweets.
Speaker 3: Well, initially we didn't understand them. They rambled, They made
Speaker 3: reference is to things we just didn't know about. You know,
Speaker 3: there were he called me evil, Tom, call me hit man.
Speaker 3: He had these strange icons pasted on our foreheads. He
Speaker 3: was he was rambling and he said, we're going to
Speaker 3: take you down. He's talking about poker games. We just
Speaker 3: didn't know what he was talking about. So it really
Speaker 3: didn't alarm us because we just thought he was deranged,
Speaker 3: really did it Just it was like, this guy's crazy.
Speaker 3: There wasn't anything initially that was alarming to a point
Speaker 3: where we felt threatened in any way. It was just
Speaker 3: a guy who was unhinged and just we didn't understand
Speaker 3: what his message was. So Eric and I would talk
Speaker 3: about it. Actually we probably laughed about it and said
Speaker 3: let's keep an eye on it because we didn't know
Speaker 3: where he was going. I mean, like you said, Twitter
Speaker 3: was new at that time. The reports were just starting
Speaker 3: to use it, and I was not on Twitter, not
Speaker 3: using it, so I was unaware. So I just said
Speaker 3: to Eric, I said, let's just keep an eye on
Speaker 3: this guy and let me know if there's anything more alarming,
Speaker 3: if it gets progressively worse, and it did.
Speaker 2: What was happening regarding Lorie Sondervan after she had confronted
Speaker 2: Well Raymonds in court, what was her experience after that
Speaker 2: court case.
Speaker 3: Well, it didn't get better, you know, And certainly that's
Speaker 3: what she had hoped, is that he would get the
Speaker 3: message and just go somewhere else and stop bothering her.
Speaker 3: But he was very careful. He would wait until the
Speaker 3: restraining order expired. He would start again, that he would
Speaker 3: send her messages by email. She had BlackBerry, so she
Speaker 3: was getting messages on her BlackBerry making veil the threats,
Speaker 3: and at some point she says, this has got to stop.
Speaker 3: So she talked to the police. She had some friends
Speaker 3: and the police, and she said, I'm going to get
Speaker 3: a weapon, and they cautioned her that there are a
Speaker 3: lot of laws that would restrict her from using it.
Speaker 3: You know, she would have to make sure there was
Speaker 3: no other place that she could escape to before she shot.
Speaker 3: He said, you know this is crazy. I'm gonna move
Speaker 3: to a state that has a loser protection lass. She
Speaker 3: decided to move. She had lost her job. She had
Speaker 3: family in Maryland, but she decided it was safer if
Speaker 3: she left the state. So she packed up. She got
Speaker 3: in her car and as she pulled out the driveway,
Speaker 3: she got a message from Jared Rayma say you can run,
Speaker 3: but you can't hide. She still has no idea how
Speaker 3: he knew that she was leading at that point, let
Speaker 3: alone where she was going. So she fled the state,
Speaker 3: changed her name. It's still changed her name. She moved
Speaker 3: twice actually, just to make sure that he could not
Speaker 3: follow her, but lo and behold, one day she appeared
Speaker 3: in a newspaper photo attending an event and was identified
Speaker 3: and he found it. I mean, he must have been
Speaker 3: searching the internet every day trying to find out where
Speaker 3: she went. All he knew is that she was in
Speaker 3: this area of South Carolina. You know, that was the
Speaker 3: end of that, but he continued to harass her as
Speaker 3: much as he could where she was.
Speaker 2: You found out his background, his professional background, his education,
Speaker 2: and what he was doing as employment at that time,
Speaker 2: which might explain his knowledge of everything about Lorie Sondervan.
Speaker 3: Right, And we knew at the time that he was
Speaker 3: a contracted employee with US Bureau Labor and Statistics, so
Speaker 3: he had clearance. His father had also security clearance, so
Speaker 3: it was easy for him to get an interim job.
Speaker 3: And he ended up getting this job that he would
Speaker 3: work at Knights, which I didn't realize he was working
Speaker 3: at Knights, but he had security clearance and it allowed
Speaker 3: him access through his office computer when nobody was around
Speaker 3: to do all his research. And that's what he was
Speaker 3: doing mostly on the job, was looking up his enemies.
Speaker 3: He was looking up Lorie Sondervan, He's looking up me,
Speaker 3: He's looking up Eric Hartley. He's looking up anybody who
Speaker 3: crossed his path, Brendan McCarthy, the judges, any reporter who
Speaker 3: worked at the newspapers. So all he did was just
Speaker 3: relentlessly dig up background about all of us.
Speaker 2: What was his legal profession, what things did he do
Speaker 2: in the legal arena, as his sense of revenge intensified.
Speaker 3: He's a pretty bright guy. He graduated thirteenth in his
Speaker 3: high school class. He scored well on his SATs. He
Speaker 3: went to a smaller college. But what he did on
Speaker 3: the side is that he says, you know, I know
Speaker 3: more about law than most lawyers, and so he began
Speaker 3: to research the law. He actually talked to a lawyer
Speaker 3: because he felt, you know, if he had a case
Speaker 3: against the capital, a lawyer would help would help him.
Speaker 3: But the lawyer took a look at the case and said,
Speaker 3: you know, you have really no case here. This is
Speaker 3: all a story that was taken out of a court trial.
Speaker 3: There's nothing here to sue for defamation or for libel.
Speaker 3: The lawyer said to him, if you're so persistent about it,
Speaker 3: why don't you just go ahead and represent yourself, And
Speaker 3: he said, you know, I think I could do that.
Speaker 3: So he studied law in his free time and researched
Speaker 3: as much as he could. He went down to the courthouse,
Speaker 3: took all the proper paperwork, filed it correctly, and then
Speaker 3: one day just sued us for defamation and libel.
Speaker 2: Tell us about what you found in terms of his
Speaker 2: psychological background and any therapy, psychologists or therapy that he
Speaker 2: was ordered by the courts for.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was ordered to seek counseling after his conviction
Speaker 3: for sexual harassment. He had already been seeing a therapist
Speaker 3: really for I guess what you call minor issues. He
Speaker 3: always felt he was pretty much a loner. He always
Speaker 3: felt he was abandoned as a child, and he held
Speaker 3: a lot of grievances against his parents. So he had
Speaker 3: some mental issues that he would see can counselate for.
Speaker 3: But now the court ordered counseling session began, and you know,
Speaker 3: he went to that trying to manage his anger more
Speaker 3: than anything else. He basically abandoned that after he could
Speaker 3: because he felt he no longer needed it. But you know,
Speaker 3: he showed the signs of narcissism. You know, he had
Speaker 3: other signs of just anger management. But you know, he
Speaker 3: was still living a life and going to his job
Speaker 3: and not showing any outward signs. He had no other
Speaker 3: legal issues than sexual harassment.
Speaker 2: You talk about all the reasons later on, and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about a possible motive obviously, the motivation for all
Speaker 2: of this, but you talk about the relationship with his
Speaker 2: sister and with his father. Tell us basically what you
Speaker 2: found from his relationships with his family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was very interesting because he had a memory
Speaker 3: that dated back to when he was five years old.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know about you, but I tell
Speaker 3: you what happened to me when I was five years old.
Speaker 3: But he remembers, and it was traumatic for him, he thought.
Speaker 3: But there would be things like he would recall that
Speaker 3: he was on his sled and he went down the
Speaker 3: hill when he wasn't supposed to and hit somebody, and
Speaker 3: so his dad got very mad and took him home.
Speaker 3: He remembers watching a movie with his mom and crying,
Speaker 3: and his mother chastised him for crying in the middle
Speaker 3: of a theater. He remembers hitting a kid with a
Speaker 3: croquet mallet and having to apologize to the kid. So
Speaker 3: there were some instances, including that one, that were a
Speaker 3: little bit more dramatic his mother and father split, so
Speaker 3: the divorce was probably pretty traumatic for him. He lived
Speaker 3: with his mother for a short period of time and
Speaker 3: then she decided to move and cut off all the
Speaker 3: utilities when she was ready to leave the house, and
Speaker 3: he saw that as a personal slight that she did
Speaker 3: that so he wouldn't be able to use his computer,
Speaker 3: So he basically separated himself from his mother. He was
Speaker 3: close to his grandparents, who took him to them all
Speaker 3: to play or bottom a bicycle. He's real close to them,
Speaker 3: but eventually they died and he didn't have really anybody
Speaker 3: but his sister to talk to, and so he kept
Speaker 3: him pretty good contact with his sister. His sister actually
Speaker 3: is reaching out to him more than the other way around,
Speaker 3: but eventually he felt that she didn't understand him and
Speaker 3: he separated from her. It's probably four years before the murders.
Speaker 2: With this escalating pension and these alarming tweets that you
Speaker 2: are kept abreast of, what do you decide as as
Speaker 2: an editor, what do you decide with your team as
Speaker 2: your options, and what do you elect to do to
Speaker 2: try to diffuse this and not accelerate anything and incite
Speaker 2: this person?
Speaker 3: Well, that was a real concern because we felt that
Speaker 3: we responded, it would only escalate the number of responses
Speaker 3: we were getting from him, and so he thought the
Speaker 3: best thing to do is to be cautious and monitor
Speaker 3: his tweets but not engage him. And he wanted us
Speaker 3: to print a letter to the editor, and he dared
Speaker 3: me to do that, and I decided not to after
Speaker 3: talking to our attorney because it was just bizarre. Here
Speaker 3: you have a case who has litigation against us, who
Speaker 3: wants to argue it in the newspaper, and we didn't
Speaker 3: know how it affected the case, and so I didn't
Speaker 3: really want to jeopardize that, so I refused to run
Speaker 3: the letter to the editor, which angered him a lot.
Speaker 3: But yeah, at that point, you know, I think Derek
Speaker 3: and I were only too another editor who were concerned,
Speaker 3: and we're just saying we got to monitor this, but
Speaker 3: not doing anything more than that because we really did
Speaker 3: not want to make it inflamed.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. So how does the newspaper proceed with this?
Speaker 2: And before we talk about your decision to retire from
Speaker 2: the newspaper, us about this litigation and what seems to
Speaker 2: be the final straw in terms of things for Ramos
Speaker 2: and no turning back.
Speaker 3: So he was making threats in his tweets that he
Speaker 3: was going to own us and that the litigation is coming.
Speaker 3: So we saw that as building up to a lawsuit,
Speaker 3: and just as limitations were about to expire, he sued
Speaker 3: us for libel. He filled out all the paperwork himself,
Speaker 3: which I'll get to in a second. He amended that
Speaker 3: to include defamation of character, which he had admitted it
Speaker 3: too late, but the judge allowed it anyways. And so
Speaker 3: at that point he was ratcheting up his threats on
Speaker 3: his Twitter account, basically saying he was going to own us,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to be fired and I'm going to
Speaker 3: journalism hell is what he was saying. Call me evil, Tom,
Speaker 3: I'm going to journalism hell. More worse things as to progressed.
Speaker 3: So he files a lawsuit against us. At this point,
Speaker 3: I'm about to retire. This is in twenty twelve, and
Speaker 3: so he students for fourteen million dollars. He asked for apologies.
Speaker 3: His lawsuit rambled so badly. You know, we didn't understand
Speaker 3: half of it. And even though it's cited all the
Speaker 3: right cases, and our attorney looked at it and said,
Speaker 3: it's properly filed, so we have to treat it as
Speaker 3: a real lawsuit. We didn't have any concern that we
Speaker 3: were going to lose that case because is pretty obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, a lawsuit that wasn't going to go anywhere,
Speaker 3: a frivolous lawsuit. So we were confident that we were
Speaker 3: going to win the case. So we didn't really even
Speaker 3: take that seriously. But we had to go through the emotions,
Speaker 3: which meant we had to put up a defense, had
Speaker 3: to make appearances in court, and we have to spend
Speaker 3: a considerable money. In the end, it cost us one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand dollars just to defend this nuisance suit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that was our approach. We just had to
Speaker 3: let the slow wheels of the judicial system take its course.
Speaker 2: You right that Ramo saw his sister for the last
Speaker 2: time April twenty and fifteen. You say that he was
Speaker 2: unemployed and he was broke, and he obtained a layout
Speaker 2: eight eight eight Bestgate Road, and there were no more
Speaker 2: tweets or lawsuits filed, and he was had racked up
Speaker 2: ninety thousand dollars in legal debt tell us what he
Speaker 2: does in February two thousand and seven regarding a reconnaissance
Speaker 2: mission at that address.
Speaker 3: Right, So, after he had lost all his legal pills,
Speaker 3: we won every step of the way. So he sued judges,
Speaker 3: He sued attorneys. Anything he could do in courk without
Speaker 3: costing on anything besides the filing piece, he took action.
Speaker 3: So he loses his job. After Brenda McCarthy reports his
Speaker 3: behavior to his supervisor, breaks off contact with his sister
Speaker 3: for all intensive purposes. He has nothing going on in
Speaker 3: his life, no contacts with people, no money, so he
Speaker 3: says and stews about it, and he has no legal recourse.
Speaker 3: So he thinks about his next step, and at some
Speaker 3: point he says, you know that, says to himself, the
Speaker 3: only thing I can do now is to get reaction
Speaker 3: at the end of a weapon. So he cases out
Speaker 3: the office. He goes there one cold day in February
Speaker 3: in which he can dress up with hoods and face
Speaker 3: masks so he won't be spotted, and he looks through
Speaker 3: the windows at night just to get the layout. He
Speaker 3: also at one point walks into the building through an
Speaker 3: unlocked employee entrance, takes film the only time he used
Speaker 3: a cell phone was to take film of the layout
Speaker 3: as he walked through this building. So he gathers all
Speaker 3: the evidence he's the security system and then goes back
Speaker 3: to his apartment where he downloads all his video onto
Speaker 3: his computer and.
Speaker 2: Plots you take us to this fateful day June twenty eight,
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. Tell us who's in the newsroom
Speaker 2: you are in Florida. Tell us his entrance, the killer's
Speaker 2: entrance into the office, what does he do and who
Speaker 2: does he encounter? Take us back if you could please.
Speaker 3: It was around two thirty when he pulls up his
Speaker 3: rented car to the building and he sees one reporter,
Speaker 3: John McNamara, having a cigarette outside the employee entrance, So
Speaker 3: he waits until John finishes a cigarette and retreats back
Speaker 3: to his office. He gets out of the car. He
Speaker 3: has a nice shirt with a top and his intention
Speaker 3: was to look normal as anybody would be walking into
Speaker 3: that building. He goes to the trunk of his car.
Speaker 3: He pulls out his Duffel bag. In the Duffel bag's a
Speaker 3: twelve gage pump action Mossberg shotgun amimal pouches in a tube.
Speaker 3: He has placed two Barracuda blocking devices, and he grabs
Speaker 3: the duffel bag with what's also smoker inades, and he
Speaker 3: walks into the employee entrance that is unlocked, and I
Speaker 3: should point out that was a complaint of the reporters
Speaker 3: was that that door didn't work. The lock didn't work right.
Speaker 3: So he proceeds into the office. There is a stairwell
Speaker 3: that is rarely used because most people use the elevator
Speaker 3: of this four story building. So he proceeds to take
Speaker 3: off his tie and his shirt. He puts on his
Speaker 3: ear protection, his eye protection, and he has a light
Speaker 3: that he puts on the scope, so he is now armed.
Speaker 3: Walks down the hallway. Now he sets off a smoke grenade,
Speaker 3: thinking that this is going to be a diversion for
Speaker 3: the police when they get there, that they won't be
Speaker 3: able to see through the smoke. But the smoke grenade
Speaker 3: doesn't have the effect that he wants, and so he
Speaker 3: decides not to set off any more smoke grenades. So
Speaker 3: he walks down the hallway, which is really only about
Speaker 3: maybe twenty feet and he gets to the front door,
Speaker 3: expecting it to be open, but it's locked. So he
Speaker 3: stands back and he pumps two rounds into the door,
Speaker 3: with shatters on the floor. He walks in and he
Speaker 3: turns right and he sees Rebecca Smith, who is the
Speaker 3: first one in the office, sort of the receptionist, and
Speaker 3: he misses her with those two shots. He proceeds to
Speaker 3: go to an empty boardroom, which he expected to find
Speaker 3: a group of people who usually meet on that day
Speaker 3: for a editorial board meeting which includes people from the public,
Speaker 3: and this being after the election day, he surmised that
Speaker 3: there would be people who won the election also in
Speaker 3: that room, and that's why he picked this day. But
Speaker 3: the editor had canceled that meeting because it was shortly
Speaker 3: after the election and so many people were going to
Speaker 3: be gone, so there is nobody there. So he proceeds
Speaker 3: down the hallway down the aisle, which is really in
Speaker 3: the middle of this office. It's an open office with
Speaker 3: some offices on the left, and now he sees Rebecca
Speaker 3: Smith who's trying to climb over the partition to get
Speaker 3: out the broken front door. He shoots her twice. He
Speaker 3: proceeds down the hallway the aisle and he encounters Wendy Winters,
Speaker 3: who had three days prior to that at taking a
Speaker 3: course invasive tactics. When confronted with the mass murder, well
Speaker 3: her last. He's supposed to hide. If you can't hide,
Speaker 3: you're supposed to defend yourself. Can't defend yourself, then you attack,
Speaker 3: and she knew that was her only step, so she
Speaker 3: grabs a waste paper basket and charges Jared Bramis, throwing
Speaker 3: the basket at him, but he fires twice to her
Speaker 3: and drops her kills her. At this point, walks farther
Speaker 3: down into the aisle, but Janet Cooley in the advertising
Speaker 3: department is hiding underneath the desk and sees him walk by,
Speaker 3: and besides, she's got to get out of there, so
Speaker 3: she escapes. She runs past him and jumps over Winnie
Speaker 3: Winter's body, gets to the front door, and Rebecca Smith,
Speaker 3: who's barely conch, is at the front door, and she
Speaker 3: slips but eventually gets out. She cuts her hand, but
Speaker 3: she eventually escapes. Jared Ramis walks farther down the aisle
Speaker 3: and come across Rob Hyson, whose desk was open to
Speaker 3: the newsroom and he had no place to hide, so
Speaker 3: he is underneath his desk. Jared Ramis shoots him twice.
Speaker 3: He goes further down and right next to Jared, right
Speaker 3: next to Rob Hyason was Gerald Fishman. He had a
Speaker 3: troll writer who watched and listened to all that, but
Speaker 3: was undetected by Jared Ramis. So Jared Ramis walks farther
Speaker 3: down the aisle. At this point, several of the reporters
Speaker 3: had a duck for cover to decide they got to
Speaker 3: get out of there, and they rushed to the employee
Speaker 3: entrance in the back of the office. Unfortunately, Jared Ramis
Speaker 3: had barricaded that door with his Barracuda device, which has
Speaker 3: slipped underneath. You can't get out right, So they bounce
Speaker 3: off that door and then go hide underneath the desk.
Speaker 3: So they go farther down. They're in the back of
Speaker 3: the office now, So Jared Ramis is walking down the
Speaker 3: hallway and sees John McNamara, who also had tried to
Speaker 3: get out that door and couldn't, but he was the
Speaker 3: last one to try and so he was more visible
Speaker 3: to him, So he shoots John McNamara. One other reporter
Speaker 3: at that point had also tried the door and was hiding,
Speaker 3: so they were at that point three reporters hiding him
Speaker 3: back when the photographer who was also hiding underneath the desk,
Speaker 3: heard him go by. He too, decided that his only
Speaker 3: opportunity was to run. He runs out the front door.
Speaker 3: He gets to the front door and Jared had hurt him,
Speaker 3: turned around and fired around a round of a volley throm.
Speaker 3: This weapon has six thirty three caliber bullets. Those bullets
Speaker 3: liz by Paul Gilespie's head. He hears them go by
Speaker 3: right his head, but he gets out to the front
Speaker 3: door and escapes. Ramus had set his clock his wristwots
Speaker 3: to five minutes, and that's the time he figured as
Speaker 3: he researched, this is all he had before the police
Speaker 3: start arriving. So he thinks he's really gotten everybody who's
Speaker 3: in that newsroom. Unbeknownst to him, Sell reporters were still hiding,
Speaker 3: so he drops his weapon and he goes to a
Speaker 3: photographer's desk to send out a last couple of tweaks,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately he didn't like the keyboard on that particular computer,
Speaker 3: so he goes over to another computer which is right
Speaker 3: next to Rob Hyacinth, and he sees Gerald Fisherman hiding,
Speaker 3: so he takes great comfort that he has found Gerald Fisherman.
Speaker 3: He recognizes Gerald Fisherman because he studied the photos of
Speaker 3: all the editors. He knew who's who. So Ramus goes
Speaker 3: through his weapon, captures it, goes back and shoots Gerald
Speaker 3: Fisherman point playing. So he decides that he's done everything
Speaker 3: he can. Now he takes great joy of shooting Gerald Fishman.
Speaker 3: There was a clock on the back that said Fisherman time,
Speaker 3: and he thought, oh, that's really bogus. This guy gets
Speaker 3: his own time, and so you know, it was an
Speaker 3: inside joke, but he ended up killing Gerald Fisherman for that.
Speaker 3: So he calls nine to one one from the phone
Speaker 3: and said, I'm your killer. I surrender, I give up.
Speaker 3: I did it. What he didn't know is that the
Speaker 3: phone system was connected to a Baltimore network because the
Speaker 3: newspaper's owned by the Baltimore Sun, so they shared the
Speaker 3: same phone system. So the nine one one call goes
Speaker 3: to the Baltimore office. The Baltimore office can't figure out
Speaker 3: what he's talking about, and he gives the address, but
Speaker 3: the address doesn't coincide with anything in their system, and
Speaker 3: Ramis is now trying to explain this to the nine
Speaker 3: one one operators, saying I'm in Annapolis, and she doesn't
Speaker 3: understand why he's calling Baltimore nine one one Minnapolis. So
Speaker 3: frustrated and now hearing the police sirens coming up, he
Speaker 3: decides to hang up. So he hangs up and goes hide,
Speaker 3: hides underneath the desk.
Speaker 2: That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: You're right that in less than four minutes, the killer
Speaker 2: had murdered four journalists, and Rebecca Smith died in hospital
Speaker 2: later that day. Let's talk about that his capture. Of course,
Speaker 2: you said that he put his gun down and waited
Speaker 2: to surrender. He had called and tweeted it, called nine
Speaker 2: one one. Let's talk about what happens post arrest in
Speaker 2: this case, the media, the family's reaction, the newspaper's reaction,
Speaker 2: tell us just the aftermath.
Speaker 3: Immediately, it was that you have to remember that Annapolis
Speaker 3: is a town of maybe fifteen thousand, so it's a
Speaker 3: small city, even though it is a state capital. So
Speaker 3: people love their newspaper and they love their community. So
Speaker 3: for something like this to happen in such a small
Speaker 3: community was jarring, and they immediately wanted to support their newspaper.
Speaker 3: So you know, the mayor, for instance, had a parade
Speaker 3: plan for July fourth, which is only a few days away,
Speaker 3: so he turned the parade into a parade for the
Speaker 3: First Amendment and had and asked the journalists to march
Speaker 3: in them. They were not willing to do that. They
Speaker 3: really didn't want to do that, but they realized that
Speaker 3: the community need to see that they were okay and
Speaker 3: that they were going to exist. So they did march
Speaker 3: in that parade and everybody stood alongside the sidewalk and
Speaker 3: just applauded and cried. I mean, there were flowers or memorials,
Speaker 3: there were speeches. You know. The coverage was intense, not
Speaker 3: just in Annapolis, but intense everywhere. They didn't expect the
Speaker 3: newspaper to come out the next day because they would
Speaker 3: understand that in the office the staff was decimated. They
Speaker 3: had lost by people and one was in the hospital
Speaker 3: with injuries, and most the other reporters were grieving. But
Speaker 3: they managed to get out of paper the next day,
Speaker 3: which was a miracle. But the newspaper wanted to do
Speaker 3: that to assure the public that they will move on
Speaker 3: from something like this. But it became intense. They moved
Speaker 3: to another office because they couldn't go back to that office,
Speaker 3: so they had temporary quarters and people volunteered office space
Speaker 3: that they could move to. They had guards inside that office,
Speaker 3: and every day people would bring by trays of food,
Speaker 3: trays of food, cards, so many cards that they put
Speaker 3: them up on the wall, and the tributes were just
Speaker 3: from across the nation were coming in at an incredible rate.
Speaker 3: This was the worst mass shooting in the newspaper and
Speaker 3: so it it reverberated throughout the journalism community, but also
Speaker 3: throughout the community as a whole.
Speaker 2: You chronicle, you're in Florida, you get a phone call,
Speaker 2: so your reaction, incredibly, you had no idea this it
Speaker 2: would escalate to anything like.
Speaker 1: This at all.
Speaker 2: So your reaction, other fellow reporters reaction Hudsle, Rick Hudsel,
Speaker 2: the editor was on vacation, So tell us about the
Speaker 2: people that just happened to not be at the office
Speaker 2: that day, and your reaction when you hear the terrible
Speaker 2: news to.
Speaker 3: My terrible news that just that five people had died.
Speaker 3: You know, first trying to figure out who wasn't that
Speaker 3: who died? I know these people, and you know what
Speaker 3: was the reason, who did it? You know it was
Speaker 3: right after a couple of days after the elections, so
Speaker 3: I had assumed it stemmed from a dysgruntled candidate who
Speaker 3: lost an election. You know, they often get angry, but
Speaker 3: not certainly at this point. And then my mind started
Speaker 3: wandering back to Jared Ramis, which was now three years,
Speaker 3: three to four years after we had left last heard
Speaker 3: from him. So you know, I kept thinking, well, I
Speaker 3: can't be can't be that old. I mean, he would react,
Speaker 3: took him that long to react. So I was sort
Speaker 3: of in disbelief until I got a phone call throm
Speaker 3: a reporter from me the Ely Times, who gave me
Speaker 3: his name, and that was the first time I had
Speaker 3: heard the name and just reacted. I just really broke
Speaker 3: down because I just couldn't imagine that this guy had
Speaker 3: done it, and this this was a guy that was
Speaker 3: after me. And I wasn't in that newsroom, and neither
Speaker 3: was Eric Cartley, but that's who he was. Truly after
Speaker 3: there were other people who knew exactly who it was.
Speaker 3: Eric Hartley by six o'clock that night had called the
Speaker 3: County Police Department and said, I know who it is.
Speaker 3: Brenda McCarthy, the lawyer for Laurie Sondervan had call police
Speaker 3: and said I know who it is. Lauris Sondervan had
Speaker 3: called and said I know who it is. So those
Speaker 3: people instantly came to his name when they heard of
Speaker 3: the incident. But the information was leaking out so slowly
Speaker 3: that it was taken forever for me to find out
Speaker 3: that the names of those who had died, and people
Speaker 3: were calling me with inside information. So I finally learned
Speaker 3: of it, but it was traumatic to say the least.
Speaker 2: Now you write about all the people being notified, and
Speaker 2: not all were notified as well as maybe the police
Speaker 2: would have wanted a neighbor notified. One Another person again
Speaker 2: saw something on television, so the dawning on everybody what
Speaker 2: had actually happened came. That terrible news didn't come in
Speaker 2: such reassuring ways, did it.
Speaker 3: No, it didn't. I mean, that was the unfortunate part.
Speaker 3: It leaked out, and so you know, there were people
Speaker 3: who were trying to reach the spouses and some of
Speaker 3: them just weren't available right away. So there were spouses
Speaker 3: and one in particular, John McNamara's wife being contacted by
Speaker 3: national media for comment on her husband's death, and she
Speaker 3: wasn't even told yet that her husband had died, so
Speaker 3: she was asking reporters what they knew, but they were
Speaker 3: uncomfortable saying anything, so she was just getting suspicious. But
Speaker 3: she says, well, maybe he's in the hospital. So like
Speaker 3: she gathered a bunch of clothes and some magazines and
Speaker 3: was prepared to go to a hospital to find out
Speaker 3: where he was because he wasn't answering his phone and
Speaker 3: she was yet not ready to admit that he had died.
Speaker 3: So I mean, yeah, the information is leaking out slowly.
Speaker 3: In case of winning Winters, her youngest daughter was the
Speaker 3: first to find out, and that was six hours after
Speaker 3: the murder, and she had to call all her siblings
Speaker 3: to let them know what had happened. So yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's how it works.
Speaker 2: Back to the newspaper, you say that so many people
Speaker 2: pitched in to make sure Other journalists volunteered to make
Speaker 2: sure that the Capital had an addition out that very
Speaker 2: next morning about something that concerned the newspaper itself. Tell
Speaker 2: us about that edition and the reaction by the community.
Speaker 3: That was just remarkable that they're able to put together
Speaker 3: a newspaper the next day. But they were getting calls
Speaker 3: from other media organizations who were willing to loan reporters,
Speaker 3: and they did, and a lot of reporters came out
Speaker 3: of retirement and came to Annapolis just just to help
Speaker 3: put out the newspaper for the next week. Because again
Speaker 3: you talk about a greeting staff, they were really incapable
Speaker 3: of getting back into a routine and putting on a
Speaker 3: newspaper every day. Now, fortunately the Baltimore Sun, its parent company,
Speaker 3: was able to bring in some people who were to
Speaker 3: design the paper as well as reported. But a couple
Speaker 3: of reporters that we're going to report this. This is
Speaker 3: our store. We're not letting some other newspaper do that.
Speaker 3: So without an office, without any kind of research material
Speaker 3: down the office phones, they huddled around the back of
Speaker 3: a pickup truck by one of the reporters and they
Speaker 3: worked the phones, and they had a photographer there who
Speaker 3: was starting to pull out photos from the file of
Speaker 3: the victims, shooting photos at the scene, you know, not
Speaker 3: knowing who died, and the buyers were still there. So
Speaker 3: these three reporters in particular were traumatized, but they were
Speaker 3: working off the back of a pickup truck to get
Speaker 3: the stories out, interviewing the reporters who had survived, interviewing
Speaker 3: the spouses, and the next day was the most comprehensive
Speaker 3: coverage of the event that any newspaper had.
Speaker 2: What was the public's reaction in terms of, you right,
Speaker 2: that a response to what happened, the massacre of the
Speaker 2: mass murder. What were some of the content of the protests,
Speaker 2: what they have to protest specifically about.
Speaker 3: I think the primary thing was the course of proliferation
Speaker 3: of weapons, and you know, the fact that somebody could
Speaker 3: get a weapon they had mental issues and get it
Speaker 3: legally to walk into the newsroom. I mean, that was
Speaker 3: the primary attention of focus, was to do something about that.
Speaker 3: John McNamara's wife in particular, was very strong about amounting
Speaker 3: a defense. And so they took to the streets. They
Speaker 3: marched up and down the streets, They had public forums
Speaker 3: at the city dock. They contacted their state legislators asking
Speaker 3: for stronger legislation, red flag laws among them, and so
Speaker 3: they worked at for a couple of years, but they
Speaker 3: were on national media talking to something has to be done.
Speaker 3: There's been way too many mass murders, and begged legislators
Speaker 3: and people not just to move on to the next
Speaker 3: mass That's what happened in a few days, That's what
Speaker 3: everybody did. They moved on to the next mass murder,
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety of them, by the way, after
Speaker 3: this mass murder.
Speaker 2: Now, in this legal in this legal fight, it ended
Speaker 2: up that the defense was chosen not criminally responsible as
Speaker 2: their responsible as their defense. And with that there was
Speaker 2: a psych evaluation. And this is where in this book
Speaker 2: there is the most comprehensive and disturbing information derived from Ramos,
Speaker 2: specifically from doctor Patel. Tell us about doctor Patel and
Speaker 2: that evaluation and that twenty hours of introspection from Ramos.
Speaker 3: I don't think there is any case in existence with
Speaker 3: mass murders. It has such an open mind to a
Speaker 3: depraved killer. I mean twenty hours. You really need to
Speaker 3: read the book to see all the passages that I
Speaker 3: can't I don't have the time to go into. But
Speaker 3: for twenty hours, this guy finally decided to open up,
Speaker 3: refuse to talk to police, to judges, to anybody. That
Speaker 3: he decides now is his chance to present his case.
Speaker 3: And he's hoping that if it goes to trial, that
Speaker 3: he'll see me on a stand, which I didn't have
Speaker 3: to go to. But in this twenty hours, he starts
Speaker 3: from his childhood and walks us through what happened to
Speaker 3: him and presents his case on why he was justified
Speaker 3: to do what he did. He makes these arguments that
Speaker 3: anybody in their right mind would look at and feel
Speaker 3: this is just idiotic, it's unreasonable, but in his mind,
Speaker 3: what he did was reasonable, and he walks you through
Speaker 3: every step of the way. You know, when he decided
Speaker 3: to kill, he knew what you know, what steps he took,
Speaker 3: he knew his motive, he knew when he enjoyed what
Speaker 3: he did, he knew you know, his regrets, principally that
Speaker 3: he didn't kill me. So there there has never been
Speaker 3: a mind exposed like this for everybody to see. And
Speaker 3: I think that's what's incredible here is that along the
Speaker 3: way you see the markings of the next mass killer.
Speaker 3: So anybody who takes a look at this will say, yeah,
Speaker 3: he has he he has all the right traits for
Speaker 3: somebody who's getting ready to kill. So it's it's words wisdom,
Speaker 3: unfortunately for people to recognize and prevent this from happening
Speaker 3: somewhere else. But it's also an open mind to someone
Speaker 3: who's very evil.
Speaker 2: You say that he fit the profile perfectly, and he
Speaker 2: was very forthright with doctor Purtel where he really didn't
Speaker 2: want to speak to anybody else. So fortunately Bttell was
Speaker 2: being able to derive this incredible confession about his motivation
Speaker 2: and his history and what may have shaped this person's
Speaker 2: murderous mind. And you say that he was inspired by
Speaker 2: columb So you write extensively in this book or somewhat
Speaker 2: about all of the mass murderers are in many cases
Speaker 2: copycat killers.
Speaker 3: That's correctly, and I mean that's the scary part is
Speaker 3: that they research are one of the traitses. They research
Speaker 3: shootings and they learn from other shooters what to do
Speaker 3: and what not to do. And he had research Stoneman,
Speaker 3: Douglas Columbine and other murders to determine how long it
Speaker 3: would take for police to respond on it and what
Speaker 3: their actions are when they get there. You know, what
Speaker 3: weapon do you use? What's the best weapon? Yeah, the
Speaker 3: copycat killers are definitely out there today, and they're reading
Speaker 3: the material. And the advice that we get from journalism
Speaker 3: schools and from criminal investigators and mental health professionals is
Speaker 3: not to use the name. So in my book, his
Speaker 3: name doesn't appear for that reason, because it just glorifies
Speaker 3: the killer rather than those who had died. But the
Speaker 3: traits other psychiatrists had looked at and said, all the
Speaker 3: traits were there for us to identify.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the trial. The jury only deliberates for
Speaker 2: a couple hours. They're trying to have a not criminally
Speaker 2: responsible defense and other words, in insanity defense. But you
Speaker 2: say that doctor Patel's testimony is especially compelling at this
Speaker 2: trial and not to the benefit of Ramos whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Right, So you know, I think Ramis was hoping for
Speaker 3: a comfortable hospital that in a mental institution in which
Speaker 3: he could use his computer and eek out his life
Speaker 3: and comfort. Patel, as well as other state psychiatrists, were
Speaker 3: able to show that he was responsible for his decisions.
Speaker 3: And that's the key thing. He was sane enough that
Speaker 3: he could make decisions such as filing his taxes, you know,
Speaker 3: such as plotting the way he did, the way he
Speaker 3: carried out his mission to record, a lot of forethought
Speaker 3: and planning. It's not the sign of an insane person.
Speaker 3: So while Ramis thought he was presenting a case for insanity,
Speaker 3: he was actually presenting a case for sanity because he
Speaker 3: was able to show that he was very competent and
Speaker 3: able to make the decisions that he did that led
Speaker 3: to the death of five people. So he lost his
Speaker 3: case very easily.
Speaker 2: You write that part of Ramos's plan to enact revenge
Speaker 2: on the newspaper and everybody involved, judges, Saunder, Van, all
Speaker 2: kinds of people, and especially including yourself as well. But
Speaker 2: in that a lawsuit, inevitable lawsuit he felt by the
Speaker 2: families to sue the newspaper was part of this plan
Speaker 2: for revenge, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: That's correct. I mean, you know, he failed in his lawsuit,
Speaker 3: but he wanted his case presented it the only way
Speaker 3: he could find justice was to kill people, and that
Speaker 3: would get everybody's attention that he was right all along.
Speaker 3: Obviously he wasn't, but I mean that was that was
Speaker 3: his reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you wanted to use this as a pulpit to
Speaker 2: be able to to demonstrate at this court case that
Speaker 2: he was right and everyone else was wrong and he
Speaker 2: had been wrong by the courts. But that's not the
Speaker 2: way it worked out with this lawsuit. He wanted the families,
Speaker 2: as he said in his tweets, he wanted your newspaper
Speaker 2: and you, by proxy, to suffer and be crippled and
Speaker 2: be destroyed.
Speaker 3: His motive was to make sure I had survivor's guilt,
Speaker 3: which I did, no question about that. Eric Carley, I'm
Speaker 3: sure he did as well. So in doing this, he
Speaker 3: wanted to read Kavic. He wanted the survivors to sue
Speaker 3: the newspaper in a civil case. You know, he filed
Speaker 3: They filed a civil suit against us, And it's just what,
Speaker 3: just exactly what he wanted. He wanted to bring financial
Speaker 3: room to the newspaper in a newspaper didn't make guilt,
Speaker 3: but they had an out of court settlement for the family,
Speaker 3: so he was winning. Along the way. He had me
Speaker 3: feeling guilty about what had happened and that I was
Speaker 3: not the one who was killed. So in many ways
Speaker 3: he got his justice. What he didn't get was an
Speaker 3: easy way out. He's serving five life terms without parole.
Speaker 2: But he had you have to defend the newspaper and
Speaker 2: exacerbate your own grief, didn't.
Speaker 3: He well, and Dan, that's why he decided to write
Speaker 3: the book. I mean, yeah, for years I lived with
Speaker 3: this thought, and I'm sure others did too, Like could
Speaker 3: we have done more, Did we miss the signs? Did
Speaker 3: we not protect our employees? I was determined to get
Speaker 3: to the bottom of it, and the only way I
Speaker 3: could do that was to dive into this book and
Speaker 3: spend years researching the case with the court files and
Speaker 3: viewing the film, which was not easy, the cameras that
Speaker 3: were on the cops and the cameras that were in
Speaker 3: the office that day. But yeah, I mean he took
Speaker 3: me down that path. You know. I thought at the
Speaker 3: end of the day that this was history for the city,
Speaker 3: This was history for journalism, and people need to know
Speaker 3: exactly how these crimes are perpetrated and maybe we can
Speaker 3: learn from that to prevent the next one.
Speaker 2: So in the end, you talk about how could this happen?
Speaker 2: Was was there anything you could have done, the newspaper
Speaker 2: could have done? Were you wrong in reporting on this?
Speaker 2: Tell us what you wrangled out of this in terms
Speaker 2: of what could have been done? And did the newspaper
Speaker 2: or yourself have anything to.
Speaker 3: Do with this? So, and this was unfolding, and the
Speaker 3: tweets were getting progressively worse. When he said I want
Speaker 3: to smash Eric Cartley's face into the ground until he's dead,
Speaker 3: I mean that to me was a threat when he
Speaker 3: said I want I want Tom Moricour to stop breathing
Speaker 3: and go to journalism hell and suffered the same fate
Speaker 3: of other people who have died. That was the threat
Speaker 3: that triggered us to talk to the police. So we
Speaker 3: went to the police before all this happened and said,
Speaker 3: can you do anything about this guy? Is he a threat?
Speaker 3: And the police walked away saying he is All these
Speaker 3: are rants. We don't see him as a threat, and
Speaker 3: so you know, that was incredulous when that happened. I
Speaker 3: said that to the police, I said that to my
Speaker 3: fellow employees. But the BOTMB line is that the police,
Speaker 3: who we thought were the professionals who could examine this,
Speaker 3: said there was no threat. What we learned later was
Speaker 3: that there are professional threat assessors who can examine all
Speaker 3: this and determine whll or not he's following the path
Speaker 3: with somebody who's ready to kill. We didn't know that
Speaker 3: kind of person existed, but we found out after that
Speaker 3: a threat assessor who was a friend of Brenda McCarthy
Speaker 3: had examined the case and informally said brandan get away
Speaker 3: from this guy. When that assessment was made well, prior
Speaker 3: to the murders, they didn't tell us. So you know,
Speaker 3: there were a lot of people who could have done
Speaker 3: something to prevent us. There is the state's attorney who
Speaker 3: looked at the case, who said, I don't see anything
Speaker 3: we can do to stop this guy. He's just ranting,
Speaker 3: he's not making any threats. There are the police who
Speaker 3: decided there wasn't anything to do here. There are mental
Speaker 3: health professionals who he was seeing who didn't report him
Speaker 3: as dangered anybody. So did we make a mistake? You know,
Speaker 3: we thought at the time we had done everything we could.
Speaker 3: We got a photo of the guy, we took around
Speaker 3: to all the employees and we said, beware a case
Speaker 3: this guy comes in the office. So we had done
Speaker 3: what we thought was good preventative measures to safeguard our employees.
Speaker 3: But and when he went silent for three years, we
Speaker 3: thought he went away. So I can't blame ourselves. Again,
Speaker 3: I was away from the newspaper at that point, but
Speaker 3: I can't blame anybody who was still there in charge
Speaker 3: for not doing more. Had we known there was a
Speaker 3: professional threat assessor, yeah, you know, we would have easily
Speaker 3: have contact to someone like that and maybe had presented it,
Speaker 3: but we didn't know anything like that existed.
Speaker 2: You're right that there has to be some blame. It
Speaker 2: seems on the courts not recognizing the threat that he
Speaker 2: could become and the threat that he was at the
Speaker 2: time that he appeared in court in front of several
Speaker 2: judges in different in different cases, and so there was
Speaker 2: no recognition. And also you say that the police, even
Speaker 2: though they were urged to, seemed to not monitor those tweets.
Speaker 2: And even though it's not that long ago, it seems
Speaker 2: that in that ensuing five years, six years, I think
Speaker 2: police would be wise to take a look at the
Speaker 2: angry tweets that someone or social media posts that people
Speaker 2: would endeavor to do like Ramos did.
Speaker 3: Well. As we know today, Dan, I mean, a great
Speaker 3: majority of these mass verds are forecast on social media.
Speaker 3: I mean, as they're going out the door, you know,
Speaker 3: as this guy did, he posted on social media. So
Speaker 3: the tea leaves are out there for us to identify,
Speaker 3: and the police in particular are probably paying more attention
Speaker 3: than they did back then. I mean we were talking
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, you know, and they did promise to monitors
Speaker 3: tweets and they did not. I mean, I followed up
Speaker 3: on that, and they did not, so the guy just
Speaker 3: went dormant for that period time. But if people really
Speaker 3: watch individuals around them, if they're a loner, you know,
Speaker 3: if they have a grudge, if they're collecting grievances and
Speaker 3: they're on social media complaining. I mean, those are the
Speaker 3: te leaves that we all need to identify, not just
Speaker 3: a place but everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that profile you say is saving grievance injustice collector
Speaker 2: taking things that seem to be very very petty slights
Speaker 2: and remembering them from the time you were four or
Speaker 2: five years old. So I think there's quite a bit
Speaker 2: to be learned from you say that, twenty hours of
Speaker 2: psychological evaluation and this mass murderer being very forthright and
Speaker 2: cooperating and weirdly enough, thinking that he was that this
Speaker 2: would be a proper defense for him in a court
Speaker 2: trial rather than a very good tool for the prosecution.
Speaker 3: That's correct. I mean, they have what they call legacy
Speaker 3: tokens and injustice collectors, and those injustice collectors they're out
Speaker 3: there going through life and it's not just one person,
Speaker 3: but it's a number of people who have done some
Speaker 3: injustice to them or perceived injustice and the legacy tokens.
Speaker 3: He had used the word legacy a number of times,
Speaker 3: so inadvertently, I think he had fed right into the
Speaker 3: personality trait of a legacy. And so they want to
Speaker 3: leave a legacy, which is the case of all masters,
Speaker 3: and so they want to be remembered for life. You know,
Speaker 3: those are things out there that that's the motive. What's
Speaker 3: driving these people is the legacy.
Speaker 2: You speak of a real legacy, and that is the
Speaker 2: memorial to the slain journalists and other victims. Can you
Speaker 2: tell us about this memorial?
Speaker 3: Yes, So the community got together and through some state
Speaker 3: grants and private contributions, were able to build a memorial
Speaker 3: for the Slang journalists at the City Dock area of Annapolis,
Speaker 3: and each year on the anniversary of the murder they
Speaker 3: have a ceremony for those people. But broadly speaking, after
Speaker 3: this happened, there was an effort to build a memorial
Speaker 3: in Washington, d c. For all slain journalists. So it's
Speaker 3: really for those who die. So that effort is underway.
Speaker 3: They've identified land for it. They're still trying to raise
Speaker 3: money through private donations to build it. But it's that
Speaker 3: foundation that all profits from my book will go to.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. I want to thank you so much Tom
Speaker 2: Markquart for coming on and talking about your incredible book,
Speaker 2: Us to Kill Inside Newspapers, Worst Mass Murder. For those
Speaker 2: people that might want to take another look or further look,
Speaker 2: can you tell us about a website or any social
Speaker 2: media that you do.
Speaker 3: I have a Facebook page as well as a website.
Speaker 3: The website is pressed to Kill dot com. There is
Speaker 3: a button there we can order the book, but it's
Speaker 3: available through all book outlets amazonbook dot Com, Barnes and
Speaker 3: Noble and other outlets, but in both paperback and hardcover.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for this interview. Press to
Speaker 2: Kill Inside Newspapers, Worst Mass Murder. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for this interview, Tom Marquart. You have a great evening,
Speaker 2: and thank you for this interview. And good night you too, Dan, goodnight.
Speaker 2: Thank you