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Speaker 5: Hostadi, you are now listening to True Murder, The most
Speaker 5: Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that
Speaker 5: have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 6: History and the authors that have written about them. Adam
Speaker 6: Leroy Lane was a trucker with a passion for morbid
Speaker 6: side trips at random trucks along the Inner States in
Speaker 6: America's northeastern States, Lane would leave his truck and, under
Speaker 6: the cover of darkness, prowl nearby neighborhoods in search of
Speaker 6: an unlocked door and a vulnerable woman. His first known
Speaker 6: victim would be Darlene O Walt, who was murdered on
Speaker 6: the back deck of her Pennsylvania home as she sat
Speaker 6: talking on the phone with a friend and her husband
Speaker 6: and sons sleeping inside. Monica Massero would be next, when
Speaker 6: living alone in New Jersey duplex. Monica would be the
Speaker 6: third to die at the hands of this nomadic serial killer.
Speaker 6: Lane's reign of terror would end when he crossed home
Speaker 6: in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. When he entered Shay's room, he wasn't
Speaker 6: counting on a teenage girl who was a fighter, a
Speaker 6: broken air conditioner preventing a deep sleep, or nearby parents
Speaker 6: willing to do anything to protect their daughter. The book
Speaker 6: This Evening that we are featured is caught in the
Speaker 6: act a courageous family's fight to save their daughter from
Speaker 6: a serial killer. With my special guest Jeanie MacDonough with
Speaker 6: her book while in the act from Genie McDonough with
Speaker 6: Paul Leonardo, but speaking with us via telephone. Thank you
Speaker 6: for agreeing to this interview, Gennie McDonough.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 6: Dan, thank you very much. I'm very looking forward to this.
Speaker 6: This is a great book from a totally unique perspective.
Speaker 6: This is a great book and I'm sure everybody will
Speaker 6: enjoy this interview, especially from your unique perspective. Now, first off,
Speaker 6: there's many ways we can go about explaining this incredible story,
Speaker 6: but let's first for the people there, let's describe the
Speaker 6: setting in Lexington, Lexington, Massachusetts, your home. What kind of
Speaker 6: community is this, what kind of size of this community
Speaker 6: is this community? And where for those people that don't
Speaker 6: know where this might be, where does it say in
Speaker 6: comparison to say Boston or the nearest bigger city that
Speaker 6: most people would recognize. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: this community such describe the setting for us. See.
Speaker 7: Well, first, let me just say I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Speaker 7: That's where I grew up. But when the crime happened
Speaker 7: on July thirtieth, two thousand and seven, we lived in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Speaker 7: That's okay, which is probably twenty miles from Lexington, max,
Speaker 7: maybe even just fifteen miles from Lexington. Chelmsford is on
Speaker 7: the New Hampshire border, very close to Nashua and New
Speaker 7: Hampshire on Rout three. Chelmsford is it's a working class town.
Speaker 7: It's a really nice community. You know, not a lot
Speaker 7: happens here, I mean as far as crimes go. In fact,
Speaker 7: that summer we were voted. I think I think I
Speaker 7: put it in the book. I think it was like
Speaker 7: the twenty first best place to live in the United States, ironically,
Speaker 7: but you know what, my perspective towards that has not
Speaker 7: changed because crimes of this nature can happen anywhere. Sure,
Speaker 7: it really doesn't matter where you live. It's a great community. However,
Speaker 7: where we live four five is an interstate and it
Speaker 7: runs behind our house. And you know, we never thought
Speaker 7: about the danger of living near a highway. Just the
Speaker 7: noise was the factor. We just never thought about safety
Speaker 7: being a factor.
Speaker 6: Right now, now, tell us about your family before we
Speaker 6: get into this story too much. Again, tell us about
Speaker 6: your family, your husband, Kevin, and your son and your daughter.
Speaker 6: Tell us what their their ages were at that time,
Speaker 6: which is just about four years ago, but it is
Speaker 6: four years ago. Tell us about their ages. Tell us
Speaker 6: what kind of I thought it was very interesting. Good
Speaker 6: aspect of a very interesting book is the You talk
Speaker 6: very candidly about the relationship that you did have. So
Speaker 6: tell us about the relationship you did have. You told
Speaker 6: us a little bit about the community. Tell us really
Speaker 6: about what your family was like at that time, the
Speaker 6: relationship you did have with your husband and your kids.
Speaker 6: Tell us about your family.
Speaker 7: Well, that summer, Ryan had just graduated from high school.
Speaker 7: He was eighteen at the time. Shae was fifteen and
Speaker 7: a freshman in high school. Actually, no, sorry, sophomore in
Speaker 7: high school, going into our junior year. It was a
Speaker 7: great summer. You know, Ryan had just graduated from high school.
Speaker 7: We had just come back from vacation down the Cape
Speaker 7: Cape Cod and had a wonderful time, and we came
Speaker 7: back and we were just getting back into the swing
Speaker 7: of going to work. And she was going to start
Speaker 7: swim practices Monday, early, Monday morning. It happened. Our home
Speaker 7: invasion happened Sunday night, July thirtieth, and Shye was going
Speaker 7: to start her swim practices Monday morning, bright and early
Speaker 7: at seven am. Our family very tight unit, you know,
Speaker 7: my husband, my two kids, they're my world. And it
Speaker 7: had been a great summer up to that point, nothing
Speaker 7: out of the usual until July thirtieth, Sunday night.
Speaker 6: Now, what was your What was your family like in
Speaker 6: terms of history, in terms of you don't describe your
Speaker 6: your family so much in terms of what had happened
Speaker 6: historically to your family. You've been involved in any kind
Speaker 6: of crimes, There wasn't anybody. Well, you know, I can
Speaker 6: just say right off the hop you you people were
Speaker 6: law abiding citizens. But just tell us historically how innocent
Speaker 6: or how unaccustomed you were to anything of any sort
Speaker 6: of nature like this to show the juxtaposition about what
Speaker 6: what really happens. But tell us about, you know, what
Speaker 6: kind of history did you your family have in terms
Speaker 6: of experience, How experienced were you?
Speaker 7: No experience whatsoever? Really, you know, everything that you see
Speaker 7: on TV and on the news happens to other people.
Speaker 7: It doesn't happen to us. You know, Kevin and I
Speaker 7: had been together since I was sixteen years old. You know,
Speaker 7: we certainly when we were young, we you know, I'm
Speaker 7: you know, we were your typical teenagers. But we never
Speaker 7: had any you know, run ins with the law, so
Speaker 7: to speak. So living in the community that we lived in,
Speaker 7: we never that nothing happens around here really for the
Speaker 7: most part, seemed like a lot seemed to happen that
Speaker 7: particular summer, but you know, we'd never had These type
Speaker 7: of things always happen to other people. They don't happen
Speaker 7: to people you know or yourself.
Speaker 6: Right now, what type of person was your This is
Speaker 6: going to be important a little bit later later, and
Speaker 6: I'm trying to to sort of unfold the story for
Speaker 6: people to realize the set, to get the setting, because
Speaker 6: you really do a great job of showing this little,
Speaker 6: you know, little town and just sweet, great little life
Speaker 6: that you've got going on here with your young children
Speaker 6: and your great husband and your great life. Tell us,
Speaker 6: just briefly, what kind of guy was your husband? How
Speaker 6: big is your husband? What kind of guy is he?
Speaker 6: A jock? He's he a guy that did a little
Speaker 6: bit of wrestling, some boxing. What kind of guy is
Speaker 6: your husband?
Speaker 7: You know, I think he did a little bit of
Speaker 7: wrestling in junior high school. He's very physically fit. He's
Speaker 7: a utility contractor alignment climbs telephone poles and does high voltage,
Speaker 7: you know, utility work. He's very physically fit. He's five
Speaker 7: nine and one hundred and sixty pounds, and he says
Speaker 7: in great shape, and he's he runs, and he's very
Speaker 7: agile and very he's very quick with his hands, very
Speaker 7: quick with his hands, and he's very strong and very
Speaker 7: sharp and intuitive and thankfully all of those things because
Speaker 7: if he wasn't. The the way things turned out that night,
Speaker 7: there's it just it would have been horribly different.
Speaker 6: Now, what was the what was your daughter?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: I know everybody says, well, she was a typical teenage daughter.
Speaker 6: And my daughter is eighteen years old, so you know,
Speaker 6: and I see other children so or young ladies, and
Speaker 6: certainly there's I don't know what typical means. So tell
Speaker 6: us what, you know, what was her state of mind
Speaker 6: at that at that summer? What was she She was
Speaker 6: looking forward to some things, but what was she like
Speaker 6: as an individual compared to say, some of her friends.
Speaker 6: Was she outgoing? Was she a tough kid? Was she
Speaker 6: a tomboy? What was she really like?
Speaker 7: Young? Young for her age? She was young for her grade.
Speaker 7: Most of the other kids in her grade were close
Speaker 7: almost a year older than she was.
Speaker 6: Right, She.
Speaker 7: Is very bubbly, great personality. Everyone liked her, and she
Speaker 7: just she's very warm hearted. She takes after her grandmother
Speaker 7: in that respect, and are just a sweet, sweet girl.
Speaker 7: But very young for fifteen, right, And that came into play, honestly,
Speaker 7: because I don't think that she had any hesitation in
Speaker 7: her mind that we were going to come in and
Speaker 7: help her that night. Thankfully we did, but I know that,
Speaker 7: you know, being the age that she was, and she's
Speaker 7: definitely young for her age, I think that she just
Speaker 7: thought right off the bat at fifteen years old, well
Speaker 7: it's okay because my parents are going to come in
Speaker 7: and everything's going to be okay. Thankfully we did, but
Speaker 7: you know that doesn't that's not always the scenario.
Speaker 6: Nice, So you had a very close relationship with your
Speaker 6: children despite teenage years. We'll say that much, because that's
Speaker 6: what you get from the from the book. Definitely before
Speaker 6: I get into that day in question, I wanted to
Speaker 6: because I wanted to let you know, people know as well,
Speaker 6: because this wouldn't have happened without a you know, I
Speaker 6: hate to use this word, but it's not such a
Speaker 6: derogatory word. That's what I was trying to say that
Speaker 6: I guess you people were a little bit naive, as
Speaker 6: anybody is first time victim. You're never going to be
Speaker 6: that naive again, you know, unfortunately. And and so what
Speaker 6: I'm what I'm trying to describe to is that I
Speaker 6: wanted to go back to the other victims because they
Speaker 6: do pre date everything. And of course you knew nothing
Speaker 6: at that time about any other victims, even though they
Speaker 6: weren't that far away in terms of proximity. I know,
Speaker 6: I know they're in other states. So let's just for
Speaker 6: the benefit of our audience not get into the day
Speaker 6: in question quite yet. But let's get back to what
Speaker 6: you did find out, and we'll just have a little
Speaker 6: different order here about a couple people, Monica Masso and
Speaker 6: Darlena Walt, and start in the in the order that this,
Speaker 6: of course everyone knows Adam Lee ory Lane is responsible.
Speaker 6: But tell us about the murders of these people by
Speaker 6: Adam Lee roy Lane, and then we'll get to the
Speaker 6: faithful day in July thirtieth when your whole life changed forever.
Speaker 7: Well, we certainly, as you were saying, Dan, we didn't
Speaker 7: find out about these other murders until after our home invasion,
Speaker 7: and it was it was three and a half weeks
Speaker 7: after our encounter that we learned about Monica Massara. And
Speaker 7: she was not the first victim. She was the second victim.
Speaker 7: Darlene Ewell was the first victim. But Monica was killed
Speaker 7: the night before he came to our house, twenty two
Speaker 7: hours before he came to our house.
Speaker 6: Well, tell us about Darlene and Walt first, and then
Speaker 6: tell us about Monica Masseri. Please.
Speaker 7: Darlene Ewalt was killed on July thirteenth. Darlene Ewalt was
Speaker 7: a mother, beautiful young mother, forty two years old, had
Speaker 7: two kids. Actually, my children's ages now nineteen and twenty two.
Speaker 7: She was sitting on her back patio talking on a
Speaker 7: cordless phone to a very close friend who happened to
Speaker 7: be a man, the husband of another friend of hers,
Speaker 7: and they were planning a vacation. It was a cruise
Speaker 7: that they were going to go on, and this couple
Speaker 7: they were best friends with Darlene and Todd Ewalt. They
Speaker 7: were going on this cruise with their two sons. But
Speaker 7: their two sons had gotten into trouble and so the parents,
Speaker 7: Chet and Pat had said, Okay, well you guys are
Speaker 7: not going to go, and so we're going to take
Speaker 7: someone else. And they had approached Todd and Darlene about
Speaker 7: going on this trip with them in their son's places.
Speaker 7: Todd Ewalt, Darlene's husband, is a youth football coach and
Speaker 7: it would have been right in the middle of his
Speaker 7: coaching season, his football season, so he didn't feel like
Speaker 7: he could take the time and go, but he told
Speaker 7: his wife, Darlene, feel free to go and take one
Speaker 7: of your girlfriends instead. So that was the plan. And
Speaker 7: she was sitting on her back patio that night talking
Speaker 7: to chat and working out the logistics of the trip.
Speaker 7: And who she was going to take and what they
Speaker 7: were going to need, and just you know, all the logistics,
Speaker 7: and it was a long conversation. She was out there
Speaker 7: from ten until two in the morning, and she was
Speaker 7: on our back patio. It was a very hot night,
Speaker 7: and Todd was inside sleeping. His son was inside sleeping
Speaker 7: in the basement. Todd was in the bedroom upstairs, right
Speaker 7: over the patio where Darlene was sitting. He had gone
Speaker 7: out around ten at night, I think he said to
Speaker 7: say good night, said good night. She said I'd be
Speaker 7: up in a little while and he said, yeah, okay.
Speaker 7: And I believe it was around two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 7: Adam Leroy Lane, this long haul trucker stepped out of
Speaker 7: the woods and sliced her throat and left you're on
Speaker 7: the back patio to die, which was fairly quickly because
Speaker 7: I mean he basically sliced her throat. So that was
Speaker 7: the first victim that we learned about.
Speaker 6: And she was still on the line with her friend
Speaker 6: as well, Yes, wasn't she?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 6: And the thing is what so police were immediately came
Speaker 6: to the scene. And this is a very very interesting
Speaker 6: aspect of your book. And we'll talk about what happens now,
Speaker 6: and I'll reserve it later for how interesting it is
Speaker 6: the later the speech that you have and then it
Speaker 6: was approved by police. You know the speech I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: But anyway, we'll talk about that later. But let's talk
Speaker 6: about Todd e Walt because he's a very very interesting
Speaker 6: character in this story for his reaction and for the
Speaker 6: ordeal that he went through, which was twice as bad
Speaker 6: as most people will go through. Because so tell us.
Speaker 6: So there's the phone call and then the police are called.
Speaker 6: So what happens after police come to the scene, What happens?
Speaker 6: How does that progress? How do they find? Do they
Speaker 6: find Adam Leroy Lane? What happened? And what?
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Speaker 7: I believe we're previted by loss he terms and conditions
Speaker 7: eighteen plus. But I didn't realize, and I know I
Speaker 7: put it in the book, and but I didn't realize
Speaker 7: it until later that Chet and Pat, who were speaking
Speaker 7: to Darling at the time, called nine one one when
Speaker 7: the line went dead and called nine one one and said,
Speaker 7: you know something, something's not right. We were just talking
Speaker 7: to our friend and the line went dead, so they
Speaker 7: called nine one one. They said, we're headed over to
Speaker 7: check on her. And they said, okay, well when you
Speaker 7: get there, call us back. Okay, so yeah, instead of saying,
Speaker 7: well then, well you know, we'll check into it right away.
Speaker 7: But I guess you know this is this is It
Speaker 7: was a very rural area and I don't know how
Speaker 7: things are done there. Thankfully they weren't done that way
Speaker 7: here in Chelmsbard. So they headed over and they were
Speaker 7: the first ones to come across Darlene on her patio,
Speaker 7: and it was a horrifying scene for them, you know,
Speaker 7: their best friend, and they come upon her body lifeless,
Speaker 7: and Todd is inside sleeping. He has no idea what's
Speaker 7: going on. So the police come and I believe Chet
Speaker 7: and his wife Pat left the premises, probably headed to
Speaker 7: the police station or home. I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker 7: they did. I'm sure they were traumatized beyond belief. And
Speaker 7: the police barged into Todd's home and routed him from
Speaker 7: a sound sleep. He was a sound asleep upstairs in
Speaker 7: his bedroom and they had their guns drawn in the
Speaker 7: flashlights on him, and he had no idea what he
Speaker 7: was woken from a sound sleep. I think he thought
Speaker 7: it was his son playing a prank. But then when
Speaker 7: he realized it was the police. It was It was
Speaker 7: just a horrible scenario for him, and he didn't find
Speaker 7: out about his wife's death for quite some.
Speaker 6: Time, and he was what we're talking about to this
Speaker 6: ordeal that begins for him obviously finds out that he
Speaker 6: slept through the murder of his wife. But this is
Speaker 6: just the beginning of the ordeal because as most police
Speaker 6: will say, that their first suspect becomes the husband if
Speaker 6: they can't find any evidence otherwise. And in this particular case,
Speaker 6: they were focusing on Todd Ewalt right.
Speaker 7: Because yeah, they were because you know what they found
Speaker 7: out early on that Darling was on her back patio
Speaker 7: talking to another man on the phone, and so their
Speaker 7: minds automatically went to the thought that, oh, okay, you
Speaker 7: know she's talking to another man on the phone. Todd
Speaker 7: went into a jealous rage. You know, whatever scenarios they
Speaker 7: were building in their head. I mean, I understand, I
Speaker 7: understand statistics, and I understand, but it's just the man's
Speaker 7: woken from a sound sleep. He's obviously a sound sleep.
Speaker 7: There's not you know, there's no evidence to point to
Speaker 7: him whatsoever. There's no blood anywhere inside it. I don't know.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, didn't you say, or least
Speaker 6: I think you actually stated in the book that what
Speaker 6: police thought was that the crime was seemed to be motiveless,
Speaker 6: and so since it didn't have any motive, why anyone
Speaker 6: would come over a fence and kill someone in the
Speaker 6: backyard and then run away without robbing the person of
Speaker 6: anything and had no sexual component?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 7: No, I know that's not typically the you know, they
Speaker 7: they tend to law enforcement tends to look at family
Speaker 7: members and acquaintances. No one in no one would expect
Speaker 7: that someone would come out of the woods. Yeah, it's
Speaker 7: just it's I mean, who would expect No one would
Speaker 7: expect it.
Speaker 6: I expect it. So, so Todd e Walt was undergoing
Speaker 6: his double trauma of a murdered wife and then and
Speaker 6: then the police and then uh shortly after, not too
Speaker 6: long after, Monica Massaro is attacked. So tell us about
Speaker 6: the attack of Monica Masso.
Speaker 7: Well, in between Monica Massarro was Patricia Brooks and she survived,
Speaker 7: And she was July seventeenth, and she survived.
Speaker 6: How was she attacked?
Speaker 7: She same way. He walked into the into her house.
Speaker 7: She was on the couch sleeping, and he sliced her
Speaker 7: throat and actually sliced her throat and her shoul right
Speaker 7: across her shoulder blade. Somehow she survived, she saw him,
Speaker 7: she survived. I think she played. I would tend to
Speaker 7: say that she pretended she was dead.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she did.
Speaker 7: I don't know, because I couldn't. I couldn't get her
Speaker 7: to speak to me. She's not spoken to anyone at all.
Speaker 7: So from new I took what I learned from news accounts,
Speaker 7: and she survived and was able to identify him. He
Speaker 7: was not wearing a mask at the time that he
Speaker 7: attacked her, so she was able to identify him, but
Speaker 7: it wasn't until later.
Speaker 6: Now, the other feature of this, and we'll get to
Speaker 6: the importance of this, and then i'll ask you why.
Speaker 6: And on July thirtieth, it was not typical for you
Speaker 6: to have the same feature. But one of the features,
Speaker 6: as I mentioned in the opening of the program, is
Speaker 6: that he was looking for unlocked doors. So so Monica
Speaker 6: Missera was another victim because of the unlocked door. Now
Speaker 6: you're saying Monica, then the then Patricia Brooks was attacked
Speaker 6: on July seventeenth, and then I guess July twenty ninth,
Speaker 6: then Monica Massara was attacked.
Speaker 7: Tell us about her attack, same same type of scenario.
Speaker 7: She lived in a small little borough in New Jersey,
Speaker 7: very quaint, adorable town. But at the end of the town,
Speaker 7: right at the end, because Kevin, my husband, and I
Speaker 7: drove through, which I'll get into later on, is a
Speaker 7: truck stop. It's it's a major truck stop where truckers
Speaker 7: people on the highway, you know, they stop, and it's
Speaker 7: right at the end of the main street where Monica lived.
Speaker 7: There's there's no barrier there whatsoever. It's it did shock
Speaker 7: me when I went through the town to see how
Speaker 7: close it is. Because to rest areas are on highways,
Speaker 7: they're not like right in a town. Well, this is
Speaker 7: like right at the end of the town. It's right there,
Speaker 7: and that's where he parked. And he went through the town.
Speaker 7: It was two o'clock in the morning, again early in
Speaker 7: the morning when people are sleeping. His he didn't, he didn't.
Speaker 7: He looked at for houses where he didn't see people awake.
Speaker 7: He wanted to surprise people, and he found a house.
Speaker 7: He saw the car in the driveway. For whatever reason,
Speaker 7: he looked in the windows of the car and saw
Speaker 7: a pocketbook and there. So he went to the house,
Speaker 7: checked the door. It was unlocked, went into the house,
Speaker 7: saw the keys on the coffee table, took the keys,
Speaker 7: went back out to the car, took the pocketbook out
Speaker 7: of the car, went back into the house, and he
Speaker 7: came across Monica Massara, who was sound asleep in her bedroom,
Speaker 7: and startled her. In the middle of the night. She
Speaker 7: heard him rummaging around and she used her she's she
Speaker 7: had a ceiling fan with a light in her bedroom,
Speaker 7: and so she pressed the button and turned the light
Speaker 7: on and saw him in there and was startled and screamed,
Speaker 7: and then he attacked her and and killed her in
Speaker 7: her bedroom and slid her throat and then sat there
Speaker 7: and watched her die.
Speaker 6: And I awful.
Speaker 7: I it's it's just awful because you know, as we'll
Speaker 7: get into later on, I've become very friendly with the families. So, yeah,
Speaker 7: the guy's a monster.
Speaker 6: He's just I'm absolutely absolutely now this uh. Obviously, the
Speaker 6: next day he came into your universe and changed your
Speaker 6: life forever. Tell us about the entire day of July thirtieth,
Speaker 6: two thousand and seven. How tell us about this typical
Speaker 6: day in the McDonough family. And you know this didn't
Speaker 6: happen till, like you say, four am or so. So
Speaker 6: tell us about the day and what progressed in the night,
Speaker 6: tell us what where your son Ryan was, and also
Speaker 6: tell us how it came to be that your door
Speaker 6: was unlocked.
Speaker 7: Oh sure, well there's just some it's a crazy scenario.
Speaker 7: But Sunday, Saturday night, the twenty ninth, we had gone
Speaker 7: out with my father in law and a bunch of friends,
Speaker 7: and he had rented a limousine and we went into
Speaker 7: Boston to have a great time. So we went into
Speaker 7: Boston and had dinner and drinks and you know how
Speaker 7: to fabulous time limousine driving us. So of course, you know,
Speaker 7: we aren't thinking about, you know, whether we should not
Speaker 7: have that last drink whatever, had a great night and
Speaker 7: came home. That was Saturday night. So the next morning
Speaker 7: we wake up and I say this just because if
Speaker 7: Saturday had been Sunday, everything would have been different. Sure,
Speaker 7: but I wasn't. Thankfully it wasn't. So Sunday we wake
Speaker 7: up and I think my husband went to play golf,
Speaker 7: which he's an avid golfer, and I just hung out
Speaker 7: by the pool. I have a pool in my backyard
Speaker 7: and I just hung out by the pool. Shay I
Speaker 7: think Shaye has spent the night at a friend's house.
Speaker 7: The night before, Ry was at his best friend's house.
Speaker 7: They were out, they were just doing their thing. So
Speaker 7: Sunday it was quiet, the kids weren't around, and Kevin
Speaker 7: and I said, let's go get an early dinner. So
Speaker 7: there's a little bestro in the town, a couple couple
Speaker 7: towns away from us, and we drove out and had
Speaker 7: dinner at this little beestro. It's great little place, and
Speaker 7: it was Sunday, so when we got there, I think
Speaker 7: we got there at like six o'clock. And there's a
Speaker 7: package store liquor store right next to this place. It's
Speaker 7: a byob place, but it was closed at the time
Speaker 7: that we got there. So we're like, oh, you know, bomber,
Speaker 7: I guess we'll just have lemonade or whatever with dinner. Key.
Speaker 7: That was absolutely key that we didn't have anything to
Speaker 7: drink that night. We were on our brights, so we
Speaker 7: had a nice dinner. We came home. It was early.
Speaker 7: I stayed up to watch the Red Sox game. Kevin
Speaker 7: went to bed early because he gets up at five
Speaker 7: o'clock every morning to go to work. So he went
Speaker 7: to bed early. And I'm a huge Red Sox fan.
Speaker 7: He is too, but he can't stay up late. It
Speaker 7: was the Red Sox were playing the Tampa Bay was
Speaker 7: the Tampa Bay Rays at the time, but it's the
Speaker 7: Rays now, so I stayed up to watch the game.
Speaker 7: It got over. It was a late night game too,
Speaker 7: and it got over late. Jay had called me and said, Mom,
Speaker 7: can I spend the night at her friend's house? And
Speaker 7: I said, Shay, you have swim practice for the next morning.
Speaker 7: I don't think that's a good idea. It's going to
Speaker 7: be a hassle. Just plan on coming home. So she did.
Speaker 7: She didn't give me an argument or anything. She said, okay,
Speaker 7: all right, fine. Then she said, well, it would it
Speaker 7: be all right if my friend Ashley spent the night.
Speaker 7: And I said, well, you know, if Ashley really wants
Speaker 7: to spend the night, but it's still going to be tough.
Speaker 7: What's Ashally going to do when you get up to
Speaker 7: go to swim practice at seven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 7: You know what's she going to do?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 7: She's like, yeah, okay, that's probably not a good idea.
Speaker 7: So she came home. Her curfew was twelve o'clock. She
Speaker 7: came home. She was home like a quarter or twelve.
Speaker 7: And it'll start to echo.
Speaker 1: Is that okay?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 7: Can you hear me echoing?
Speaker 6: I just heard a little breakup there in the last sentence,
Speaker 6: So if you could repeat what you just said there,
Speaker 6: can you hear me? Yes?
Speaker 7: Okay, So sorry, I'll sudden it's echoing on my line.
Speaker 6: Okay, sounding fine on this.
Speaker 7: End, It is okay. So anyway, Shay came home and
Speaker 7: I neglected to tell her that Ryan was spending the
Speaker 7: night at his best friend's house. So she thought, I'll
Speaker 7: leave the back door unlocked for Ryan, because he's who
Speaker 7: knows if he has his key, And so she left
Speaker 7: the back door unlocked. She curled up on the sectional,
Speaker 7: which is right by our back door, and fell asleep
Speaker 7: there until about two o'clock in the morning, and then
Speaker 7: she got up and went into the spare bedroom, which
Speaker 7: was right next to our bedroom. It's like kitty corner
Speaker 7: to our bedroom. And because we had the air conditioning
Speaker 7: on in that room. We live in a small cape
Speaker 7: and it was extremely hot that July. It was ninety
Speaker 7: five ninety seven degrees and the kid's bedrooms upstairs arepressive.
Speaker 7: You can't sleep up there, so typically they will sleep
Speaker 7: on the sectional by the back door. A lot of
Speaker 7: times they'll just crash on that sectional because there's windows
Speaker 7: all around the perimeter of the room. There's ten windows,
Speaker 7: so we have them all open, and then there's a
Speaker 7: ceiling fan, so the breeze is beautiful. But even I
Speaker 7: mean this particular night, it was like ninety seven degrees.
Speaker 7: It was terrible. So we left the AC unit on
Speaker 7: in the spare bedroom ready for her to sleep in there.
Speaker 7: She woke up about two o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 7: went into the spare bedroom and curled up to go
Speaker 7: to sleep. And at three, I'm going to say three
Speaker 7: thirty three fifteen, I woke up. I wasn't sleeping very
Speaker 7: well because it was really hot that night. Our air
Speaker 7: conditioning unit was not working, okay, which was a blessing
Speaker 7: because if our air conditioning unit was working, our door
Speaker 7: would have been closed all the way never would have
Speaker 7: heard anything. So our door was open three quarters of
Speaker 7: the way and we had the ceiling fan going, and
Speaker 7: I wasn't sleeping well, so I got up to use
Speaker 7: the bathroom get a drink of water, went back to bed,
Speaker 7: got into bed. I wasn't fully asleep, and I heard
Speaker 7: this weird little whimper come from the bedroom next to
Speaker 7: us where shee was sleeping nice and I must have,
Speaker 7: you know, disrupted Kevin when I got up because he
Speaker 7: wasn't asleep either, and I said, I'll go check on Shay.
Speaker 7: We said no, no, I'll go. I said, no, Hi,
Speaker 7: I'll go. He said no, I'll go, and and we
Speaker 7: looked at each other. We started laughing. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 7: you know she's fifteen, she's in the room next door. Okay,
Speaker 7: well we'll both go.
Speaker 6: What do you think? What do you think was happening?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: Did you do normally? Was it typically for you to go?
Speaker 6: I know that both that you're saying, both of you
Speaker 6: wouldn't have gone, But no, what was it that you
Speaker 6: thought you heard whimpering?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: Was she a person that was prone to nightmares?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 7: No, I just I just no. I thought she's just
Speaker 7: having a bad dream. I'll just check on her because
Speaker 7: I don't I it's divine intervention. I believe me. I
Speaker 7: believe it's divine intervention. So thankfully Kevin went before me,
Speaker 7: because if I had gone first, things would have turned
Speaker 7: out completely differently. There's just no way it would have
Speaker 7: entered the way it did. So Kevin went first, opened
Speaker 7: the bedroom door because the bedroom door was closed. Now,
Speaker 7: as we were getting up, he doesn't recall hearing this,
Speaker 7: but I recall hearing this. As we were getting up
Speaker 7: to go check on Shay, I heard like a bump
Speaker 7: against the wall. And what it was was Shae was
Speaker 7: kicking her legs out and her head hit the headboard,
Speaker 7: which in turn hit the wall in between our bedrooms. Okay,
Speaker 7: And so Kevin opened the bedroom door and saw this
Speaker 7: hulking figure stanning over our daughter. Was the light on
Speaker 7: light pitch black, pitch black, but the light from the
Speaker 7: hallway was shining in pitch black. And this hulking figure
Speaker 7: standing over our daughter, all dressed in black with a
Speaker 7: black mask on.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 7: And Kevin said who are you? And he didn't say anything.
Speaker 7: And as Kevin said that, he had been leaning over
Speaker 7: our daughter. He had his left hand on our daughter's
Speaker 7: mouth and nose and was pressing her face into the pillow,
Speaker 7: and his right hand he had a hunting knife to
Speaker 7: her throat. And when Kevin said who are you? He
Speaker 7: stood up and erected himself, and we saw the knife
Speaker 7: in his hand, and Kevin said, knife grabbed the intruder
Speaker 7: by his wrists and yanked him off our daughter towards Kevin,
Speaker 7: and then spun him and threw him on the adjacent bed.
Speaker 7: It's an extremely small room. There were two beds and
Speaker 7: they were across from each other, and so Kevin had
Speaker 7: the strength to pull this guy off of Shae and
Speaker 7: spun him around and threw him on the other bed
Speaker 7: and was on his back.
Speaker 6: How big is this guy? For those for the audience,
Speaker 6: how big is he comparison to your husband's five nine
Speaker 6: and one hundred and sixty How big is this guy?
Speaker 7: Probably six feet and two thirty two forty Okay, yeah,
Speaker 7: uh So he's on his back holding him, and he said,
Speaker 7: Genie grabbed the knife. So I went to grab the
Speaker 7: handle of the knife, but then it was it was
Speaker 7: a hunting knife, and the blade was fifteen inches long.
Speaker 7: It was a story blade. It was it was long.
Speaker 7: So I'm trying to grab, you know, the grip of
Speaker 7: the knife, but the guy's hand was huge and it
Speaker 7: wasn't doing anything. So I just said, all right, and
Speaker 7: I just grabbed the blade of the knife, and I
Speaker 7: held on to it because I was afraid that it
Speaker 7: was going to come around and get Kevin or hurt someone,
Speaker 7: so I just held onto it. So Kevin had him
Speaker 7: on the bed for probably about thirty seconds or so.
Speaker 7: We had him there, and then the intruder got a
Speaker 7: burst of adrenaline and stood up. My husband's on his back.
Speaker 7: At that moment, I just it was. It was dark
Speaker 7: in the room, there wasn't much light, and I probably
Speaker 7: know I think I might have closed my eyes and
Speaker 7: just went, oh, that's it, We're all screwed. But Kevin
Speaker 7: was able to throw his weight back. He threw his
Speaker 7: arm around the intruder's throat and put him in a
Speaker 7: chokehold and threw all his weight backwards, and they landed
Speaker 7: on the floor in between the bed and the closet.
Speaker 7: It was probably a two and a half foot space. Now,
Speaker 7: how there was a air at the air conditioning unit
Speaker 7: was in the window right behind him. How Kevin didn't
Speaker 7: hit his head on the air conditioning unit when they
Speaker 7: went backwards, I don't know, because if he did again,
Speaker 7: it would have been a whole different scenario.
Speaker 6: But sorry, sorry, So what were you doing that you
Speaker 6: had you had grabbed a knife, and what was she
Speaker 6: doing at this time?
Speaker 7: At this time, Shaye was calling nine one one. She
Speaker 7: had called nine one one. She was watching this whole
Speaker 7: thing unfold and called nine one one on her cell phone.
Speaker 7: And when you call on your cell phone, which we
Speaker 7: didn't know, it automatically goes to the State Police, and
Speaker 7: so she was connected with the State Police. The state Police.
Speaker 7: She told them what was happening. The State Police said
Speaker 7: hold on because they were going to transfer her to
Speaker 7: the Chelmsford dispatch. But she thought they were like putting
Speaker 7: her on hold, and not like transferring her, but putting
Speaker 7: her on hold. So she hung up and then thankfully
Speaker 7: a few minutes later they called back. But Kevin in
Speaker 7: the meantime had the intriguder on the floor and he
Speaker 7: had him in a choke hold. I came over after
Speaker 7: they landed on the floor, and I was like, oh
Speaker 7: my god, all right, we're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 7: I think I grabbed the knife again because it was
Speaker 7: out in front of them, so I grabbed and I
Speaker 7: held on to the knife, and Kevin said to Shay,
Speaker 7: not knowing that she'd already called nine one one, he
Speaker 7: said Shay, call nine one one and get my gun.
Speaker 7: And Shaye didn't say oh, She didn't say, Dad, what gun?
Speaker 7: Because we don't have a gun. She didn't say, you know, thankfully,
Speaker 7: she said okay, dad, And I'm not really in that tone.
Speaker 7: She said okay, and let.
Speaker 6: Why why did he Why did Kevin say that?
Speaker 7: Just great thought process going on there, because this guy
Speaker 7: here doesn't know that we don't have a gun. For all,
Speaker 7: he knows we do have a gun. So, I mean,
Speaker 7: I think it was just a defense tactic and it
Speaker 7: was really smart because Shaye didn't say anything. She just
Speaker 7: left the room. So this guy has no idea that
Speaker 7: we don't have a gun. For all, he knows she's going.
Speaker 6: To get that gun, and he's hoping that maybe he
Speaker 6: just runs off because he doesn't know what the police
Speaker 6: are going to get.
Speaker 7: There is no he wasn't. No, he wasn't. He wasn't
Speaker 7: going to let this guy go. There's no way he's
Speaker 7: going to let.
Speaker 6: This guy go.
Speaker 7: He had him. The guy was on top of Kevin's lap.
Speaker 7: They were on the floor. Kevin was on the floor,
Speaker 7: he was on his lap. Kevin had him in a
Speaker 7: choke hold, was holding the hand that had the knife,
Speaker 7: and then I came over and I grabbed the knife,
Speaker 7: and then I started screaming all kinds of questions at
Speaker 7: him because I was pissed off, and I also wanted
Speaker 7: to distract him because I had no idea what he
Speaker 7: was capable of at that point. You know, I didn't
Speaker 7: know how firmly Kevin had him. I you know, I
Speaker 7: just and I was beside myself. So I started screaming
Speaker 7: all kinds of questions at him, like who are you?
Speaker 7: And he said, I'm nobody, Just let me go. And
Speaker 7: Kevin and I just looked at each other like yeah, right,
Speaker 7: and I said, what were you thinking? Because our initial thought,
Speaker 7: or at least my initial thought, was that he was
Speaker 7: a high school kid that had was obsessed with our
Speaker 7: daughter for whatever reason and had just taken it one
Speaker 7: step too far and was, you know, essentially playing a prank.
Speaker 7: But you know, let let me see if I can
Speaker 7: terrorize this girl. That was That was the only logical
Speaker 7: explanation I could come up with in my mind, was
Speaker 7: that it was some kid that was just you know,
Speaker 7: pulling a prank. And so when I said to him,
Speaker 7: what were you thinking? I was seriously thinking that he
Speaker 7: was a high school kid and he just ruined his
Speaker 7: life and he said nothing, I just wanted money. And
Speaker 7: that's when my husband said, well you should have come
Speaker 7: seen me. You fat?
Speaker 6: Yeah I laughed at that. That's crazy. Yeah, well I
Speaker 6: guess it's because it makes no It makes no sense,
Speaker 6: so you're you're just grasping for some kind of logic.
Speaker 6: And it must have been even more horrifying when you
Speaker 6: realized who he was a few days or a few
Speaker 6: weeks later. Yeah, was there something too that that your
Speaker 6: your husband You put in a book too, that despite
Speaker 6: your husband being in shape, he you both were, or
Speaker 6: at least he was kind of surprised that he could
Speaker 6: subdue this guy, or at least he was at least
Speaker 6: relieved that he could subdue this guy because the guy
Speaker 6: was a big fat guy, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah he was, but he wasn't you know. He
Speaker 7: was a big fat guy, big big fat, out of
Speaker 7: shape guy who'd been walking around all night long, like
Speaker 7: he had covered a lot of miles the night that
Speaker 7: he was out, and he'd just come on. I mean,
Speaker 7: I know, as adrenaline was high after just coming off
Speaker 7: killing Monica Massaro twenty two hours before, but still he'd
Speaker 7: been out and it was ninety seven degrees. He's in
Speaker 7: long pants, long shirt, and he's extremely overweight and not
Speaker 7: in good shape. So he'd been out for a while.
Speaker 7: And you know, Kev's in great shape. He's got his
Speaker 7: adrenaline going, and he just the strength he had. He said,
Speaker 7: for sure, I could have choked this guy and killed
Speaker 7: him in the room. But again, he wasn't going to
Speaker 7: traumatize our daughter, he said, there, you know, and if
Speaker 7: he had, then would we have every even found out
Speaker 7: about everything that he had done previously?
Speaker 6: Right now, the thing is, I you talk about it earlier,
Speaker 6: and you really don't answer it through the whole book,
Speaker 6: but you do talk and we'll just briefly touch on this,
Speaker 6: but you do talk about this incredible order from this
Speaker 6: person that's not just it's just not body order. It's
Speaker 6: not just ninety seven degrees. There's just some kind of
Speaker 6: foul order from this this almost human being here. But
Speaker 6: what I wanted to say, I'll ask you too, is
Speaker 6: because it's a short period of time, how many minutes,
Speaker 6: even though it seems like a lifetime or a very
Speaker 6: very long time, how many minutes does it take for
Speaker 6: the police to get to your home.
Speaker 7: Oh, it was four minutes. It was four minutes because
Speaker 7: they were out in They were canvassing the area because
Speaker 7: he had been spotted at other residences in our area,
Speaker 7: and the police have been called twice that night about him,
Speaker 7: about an intruder, about a peeping tom, or someone trying
Speaker 7: to get into someone's residence, so they were on high alert.
Speaker 7: They knew he was in the area, so the cruiser
Speaker 7: was relatively nearby, so it only took them four minutes
Speaker 7: to get here when they got the call.
Speaker 6: Right now, you don't What I thought was interesting is
Speaker 6: that I think his mask does come off, but neither
Speaker 6: you or your husband, Kevin really get to see what
Speaker 6: he looks like. What happens after this? Tell us about
Speaker 6: the arrest. Tell us about the arrest of Adam Lee
Speaker 6: roy Lane and the unmasking of Adam Lee roy Lane.
Speaker 7: Well, the police got here and the first responding officer
Speaker 7: was Officer Murphy, and he came into the room and said,
Speaker 7: if you move, I'll blow your head off, which was
Speaker 7: like really a great thing to hear because I was like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, I can't even believe this. And then
Speaker 7: the next responding officer was Officer for good, and they
Speaker 7: both they had, you know, the calls had been coming
Speaker 7: in that night about this guy, so it didn't take
Speaker 7: long for them to realize that this was the guy
Speaker 7: that they were looking for. Sure, they didn't take the
Speaker 7: mask off of him until I believe, you know, because
Speaker 7: I wasn't in the room at the time. I don't
Speaker 7: think they took his mask off inside the house. I
Speaker 7: think they took it off outside. But I never saw it,
Speaker 7: and Kevin never saw it, never saw his face. My
Speaker 7: hands were cut pretty badly, and so I needed to
Speaker 7: leave the room, and also I was in underwear and
Speaker 7: a T shirt, so I needed to get dressed, and
Speaker 7: I needed Shay to come in and help me get
Speaker 7: some clothes on so that I could be around all
Speaker 7: these police officers and everyone. Sure, so we never saw
Speaker 7: his face at that that night, and Kevin I believe,
Speaker 7: never saw it either. We didn't see his face until
Speaker 7: we got into court.
Speaker 6: Right now, we'll go just back just a little bit,
Speaker 6: because we talked about Patricia Books Brooks her being attacked,
Speaker 6: We talked about Darlene E. Walt, of course her being murdered.
Speaker 6: While we'll be on the telephone, and then Monica Masero
Speaker 6: being attacked in her home because of even though it's
Speaker 6: close proximity. And this is what part of the story
Speaker 6: is too, that this guy's a trucker and it's I
Speaker 6: won't give it away, but we'll talk about that near
Speaker 6: the end of the interview about how you know the
Speaker 6: one good part of this story is, or one of
Speaker 6: the better parts of the story is that people were
Speaker 6: looking at how much some of these people could travel
Speaker 6: and then connecting the dots now in terms of these
Speaker 6: other victims, despite being in close proximity it will say,
Speaker 6: or in the general area, even though it's in other states,
Speaker 6: none of these murders were connected at all till a
Speaker 6: prosecutor named j. Patrick Barnes looked at these So I'm
Speaker 6: getting ahead of a little bit. But when he was
Speaker 6: initially charged with this home invasion and the attempted murder,
Speaker 6: how long does it take and who are the people
Speaker 6: responsible for putting all the clues together and making the
Speaker 6: connection between these other murders and Adam Leroy Lane.
Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't until three and a half weeks after
Speaker 7: our home invasion that we were called down to the
Speaker 7: Chelmser Police station by the Chelmsford Police Chief James Murphy,
Speaker 7: who actually happened to be a good friend of ours.
Speaker 7: He called me on my cell phone that day and said, Genie,
Speaker 7: when you have a minute, if you and Kevin could
Speaker 7: come down to the police station, we need to talk
Speaker 7: to you. And I thought, okay, this is odd. He's
Speaker 7: calling me on my cell phone, but I said, okay, Jim,
Speaker 7: we'll be down there as quickly as we can. We
Speaker 7: came down there and he came into the room, and
Speaker 7: then the the DA and the assistant DA came into
Speaker 7: the room. The chief, the deputy chief was there, and
Speaker 7: then George Tyros, the detective. Everyone came in and we thought,
Speaker 7: all right, what's going on here? And that's when they
Speaker 7: told us, well, we have some news. We have some
Speaker 7: bad news to give you. You know, Adam Leroy Lane
Speaker 7: killed a woman the night before he came to your house.
Speaker 7: And we just looked at each other and thought, okay,
Speaker 7: all right. So this whole time we were wondering what
Speaker 7: Lane's intent was. Was he going to take our daughter
Speaker 7: out of our house? Was he going to you know,
Speaker 7: what was his intent? Was he going to rape her?
Speaker 7: Was he going to take her?
Speaker 1: What was this?
Speaker 7: We and then that moment we realized, Okay, he was
Speaker 7: going to actually kill our daughter right in our house, yes,
Speaker 7: which was horrible, and we and then we also realized, okay,
Speaker 7: now this guy he's never I mean, he's never going
Speaker 7: to go anywhere. Now, this is it. He's going to
Speaker 7: be in prison. We're not going to have to worry
Speaker 7: about him. But it also comes at the expense of
Speaker 7: someone else. And it was just a really horrible moment. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 7: that that that that day was a real tough one,
Speaker 7: And that was the day that I that night actually
Speaker 7: that I started writing. And then it wasn't until a
Speaker 7: few weeks later that we learned about actually, I think
Speaker 7: it was probably two weeks later that we learned about
Speaker 7: Darlene Ewald, and then we started learning all these other
Speaker 7: pieces of information about him.
Speaker 6: And Patricia Brooks, as you had mentioned before, the would
Speaker 6: be victim was able to identify a little bit later
Speaker 6: on any what was positive identification of Adam Lee roy
Speaker 6: Lane as her attacker as well. So you inadvertently uncover
Speaker 6: a serial killer, and now you're inextricably involved with this
Speaker 6: case forever. As we can see from this book and
Speaker 6: from the entire ordeal that it's created for your family. Now,
Speaker 6: we can't go into the whole book, and I don't
Speaker 6: want to give away a lot of this book, but
Speaker 6: what I wanted to talk about too is that at
Speaker 6: least touch on it. It was very interesting the relationship
Speaker 6: that you had with the police. They were very, very
Speaker 6: congratulatory towards your family. You later were honored by articles
Speaker 6: in People magazine and dateline interviews. So that is just
Speaker 6: a gem for people to be able to read how
Speaker 6: both sides of the coin, the trauma that you endured,
Speaker 6: the survival guilt that you had for the other families,
Speaker 6: and then your relationship that you wanted and felt necessary
Speaker 6: with those victims families. But I found it interesting that
Speaker 6: you had this much recognition and you had this many
Speaker 6: opportunities for the media to do reasonable articles and stories
Speaker 6: about what your family injured, you and your family injured.
Speaker 6: So I found that quite interesting and unusual for what
Speaker 6: usually happens. You know, usually it's just not good, it's
Speaker 6: not good experiences with the media, let's put it that way.
Speaker 6: And usually the police are not congratulating anybody because it's
Speaker 6: just there's nothing much to congratulate usually, So right, right, Well,
Speaker 6: it was.
Speaker 7: A good story for us, because you're right, Dan, it doesn't.
Speaker 7: It doesn't usually turn out this way. It really doesn't.
Speaker 7: The fact that we survived and that we were able
Speaker 7: to hold this guy because a lot of times I
Speaker 7: think about it. I mean, it's hard for me not
Speaker 7: to think about every night I go to sleep, because
Speaker 7: it happened in the room right next to where I sleep. Yes,
Speaker 7: I do say my prayers every night because I do
Speaker 7: think if we had hesitated just one second, everything would
Speaker 7: have been different.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Now, what we normally do is talk about the
Speaker 6: killer a little bit, and I know that you did
Speaker 6: go into his life as much as you possibly could.
Speaker 6: And just for people that always want to have a
Speaker 6: correlation between some horrendous upbringing and what happens later, just
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit briefly about Adam Leroy Lane.
Speaker 6: As far as what you wrote about is that he
Speaker 6: didn't have any real connection with the police. But tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about Adam Leroy Lane, what people
Speaker 6: who were close to him plot of him, and what
Speaker 6: basically what was his character like before this reign of
Speaker 6: horror that he.
Speaker 7: You know, he wasn't He was definitely not a likable guy.
Speaker 7: He was difficult to work with. He did not like women.
Speaker 7: He was very degrading to women from the you know,
Speaker 7: from what I read in the newspaper accounts of people
Speaker 7: that knew him. I wish I knew more about him.
Speaker 7: I had read out to his ex wife, and I
Speaker 7: reached out to his wife and his mother to see
Speaker 7: if they would maybe respond to me, because I felt
Speaker 7: like there's always another side to everything. Sure, and you know,
Speaker 7: I tried to give them that opportunity. They weren't interested.
Speaker 7: I you know, he wasn't. He just he wasn't a
Speaker 7: likable guy. And you know, I know that his ex
Speaker 7: wife had said that he was abusive to her, and
Speaker 7: she had stated that he was abusive to his mother.
Speaker 7: Now you know, whether he was or he wasn't, this
Speaker 7: is what she had said. Honestly. I mean, I can't
Speaker 7: see that someone that goes out murdering innocent women in
Speaker 7: the middle of the night and slicing their throats is
Speaker 7: anything but has a horrible character. I don't know what
Speaker 7: happened to him growing up. I suspect that there was
Speaker 7: there's a lot more to him. I can't imagine that
Speaker 7: he had a good upbringing for him to all of
Speaker 7: a sudden turn into this statistic killer.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, what I wanted to point
Speaker 6: out was that very much like a lot of these killers,
Speaker 6: and I mean, just the last bunch of stories that
Speaker 6: I've done, it seems that these these very heinous or
Speaker 6: you know, monstrous killers at the same time have a
Speaker 6: wife and a few kids, a couple of kids. So
Speaker 6: that's what Adam Leroy Laney had. He had, he had
Speaker 6: a child from a previous or she had two children
Speaker 6: from a previous relationship, and then he had a daughter.
Speaker 6: So for all intentsive purposes, he was living the lie
Speaker 6: because he was living a seemingly normal life, I mean,
Speaker 6: even if it was a bit odd, had children and
Speaker 6: part of and you know, and and the thing is
Speaker 6: that was interesting, and we'll tell the audience about the
Speaker 6: trials that one of the things that he was most
Speaker 6: not one to be associated with for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 6: was he did not what he had no problem being
Speaker 6: known as a killer, but he just didn't want to
Speaker 6: be known as a child rapist, right that's for his
Speaker 6: own safety, but also something to do with his wife
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 7: So yeah, yeah, I don't know. And honestly, to this day,
Speaker 7: I can't help but think about his wife and his daughters,
Speaker 7: and you know, he's destroyed so many lives, not just
Speaker 7: the victims, but his family. They're victims now too.
Speaker 6: And tell us about the story of Nicole and the
Speaker 6: contact you had, because that's an interesting story of someone
Speaker 6: carrying on in light of this tragic event. So tell
Speaker 6: us about Nicole and who she was related to, and
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about her story and your
Speaker 6: contact with her.
Speaker 7: Right, Nicole is Darlene Ewald's daughter, and Nicole was nineteen
Speaker 7: at the time that her mother was murdered and not
Speaker 7: living at home, and it was just it was I
Speaker 7: can't even imagine getting that phone call and being told
Speaker 7: that your mother's been murdered. And then the media, I
Speaker 7: mean the media, law enforcement, everybody's looking at her father
Speaker 7: or possibly her brother as potential killers. And she just
Speaker 7: a really sweet girl, really sweet girl who didn't deserve
Speaker 7: to go through what she did. And I just had
Speaker 7: this strong connection to her and felt like I needed
Speaker 7: to connect with her. And thankfully Todd had agreed to
Speaker 7: do the dateline piece, and in agreeing to do the
Speaker 7: dateline piece, Nicole and I had an opportunity to talk
Speaker 7: and we spoke once, and then we continued to connect
Speaker 7: and we kept calling each other, and she, ironically, her
Speaker 7: job at the time was working as a truck driver.
Speaker 7: She was delivering medical supplies to area clinics and hospitals
Speaker 7: and doctors' offices along the Eastern Seaboard, and she was
Speaker 7: doing this with her her fiance who's now her husband.
Speaker 7: And she called me one day and said, Genie, I'm
Speaker 7: actually in Nashaua, and I'd really like to stop by
Speaker 7: and meet you in person. And I was thrilled, and
Speaker 7: she came by and it was it was a really
Speaker 7: heart wrenching meeting meeting her, and we spoke at length.
Speaker 7: We went to dinner and with her fiance, my husband
Speaker 7: and I and Nicole had dinner, and then they ended
Speaker 7: up spending the night here and ended up going back
Speaker 7: down to Rhode Island where their next doc was. But
Speaker 7: it was it was a really it was a wonderful
Speaker 7: experience for all of us.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 7: It was really heart wrenching though. Sure, but ever since
Speaker 7: we've been very close, you know, we call each other
Speaker 7: all the time, and it's just it's been quite a connection.
Speaker 7: I truly feel like her her mother is guiding me
Speaker 7: to be there for her daughter.
Speaker 6: And you also had a good relationship and you talk
Speaker 6: about in the book about with the Masero family as well. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and that was you know, you you used the strength
Speaker 6: of both of yourself and the other couple as well
Speaker 6: to help each other through the truck itself. Which it's
Speaker 6: because I won't get we won't go into the trial
Speaker 6: so much. But again, and when people think if this
Speaker 6: is just a slam dunk, well, it's not so much
Speaker 6: a slam dunk. When when a family like yourself doesn't
Speaker 6: quite understand the procedure, and when a delay of six
Speaker 6: months seems not that out of the ordinary for the judiciary,
Speaker 6: and it seems like a real long time for people
Speaker 6: when they're looking somehow forward to the to the sort
Speaker 6: of it's not really closure but to the court case
Speaker 6: itself and whatever can result as in the conclusion of that,
Speaker 6: and then it's delayed and delayed and more delays. And
Speaker 6: that I mentioned delay.
Speaker 7: You know, So our our case went through the court
Speaker 7: system very quickly. I was very surprised because I didn't
Speaker 7: realize how quickly our case went through, right, because it
Speaker 7: took two years for Monica's case to go through, and
Speaker 7: then it took three years for Darlene's case to come
Speaker 7: to a fruition. So you know, I was we were
Speaker 7: I'm thankful that ours was so quickly resolved, but at
Speaker 7: the same time, I felt like, because he was here
Speaker 7: in Massachusetts, that it was holding up, you know, the
Speaker 7: charges and eventual sentence in the other states, and so
Speaker 7: I felt extremely guilty about.
Speaker 6: That, right I See. The thing is is that obviously
Speaker 6: there's a he gets his jump Leroy Lane, so we
Speaker 6: can just tell people that so that much. But what
Speaker 6: I found quite interesting too is that there is a
Speaker 6: little twist to believe for a moment that maybe Adam
Speaker 6: Leroy Lane has escaped his fate, where someone reports to
Speaker 6: you or through or through the friend. I think it's
Speaker 6: through Patricia Brooks actually, or through Nicole, I'm not sure,
Speaker 6: but anyway, in the book they talk about how for
Speaker 6: a second everyone believes, or for a short period of
Speaker 6: time they believe that maybe Adam Leroy Lane is now
Speaker 6: brain dead side and then we find out no, no,
Speaker 6: that's not the case, and it was someone else exactly.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Nicole called me distraught. She had learned through a
Speaker 7: family acquaintance that she thought what was Adam Lee Rolaine
Speaker 7: had come into the hospital nearby and was in a
Speaker 7: medically induced coma because he had tried to hang himself.
Speaker 7: But it was actually another inmate. So I made a
Speaker 7: lot of phone calls that night to see if I
Speaker 7: could get to the bottom of it, and found out
Speaker 7: that it actually wasn't wasn't true, and it wasn't him,
Speaker 7: because I, you know, for her, she felt cheated that Okay,
Speaker 7: this fob took his own life and we didn't get
Speaker 7: the opportunity to see him stand trial for the murder
Speaker 7: of our mother, you know.
Speaker 6: Yes, So in the end, everyone did get their day
Speaker 6: in court, and a Leroy Lane did get his and
Speaker 6: obviously he has been recognized as a serial killer and
Speaker 6: your family, like I say, what, people will buy the
Speaker 6: book and read the book. They will hear about the
Speaker 6: touching moments where the police reached out to your family,
Speaker 6: congratulated for you, and then all the ensuing not so
Speaker 6: much publicity, but recognition for what your family actually did
Speaker 6: again instinctively, intuitively and like you say, from the intervention
Speaker 6: from the guy in the sky there, that's by the
Speaker 6: grace of God himself that your family's here to tell
Speaker 6: this story and help these other people, and you felt
Speaker 6: it was your responsibility. And I know it's an amazing
Speaker 6: story where you do unite with the victims and it
Speaker 6: would be victims and successful trial. And there really is
Speaker 6: no happy endings in these stories, but if there ever
Speaker 6: is one, this is about as close to that happy
Speaker 6: ending as you can get.
Speaker 7: Oh Dan, Definitely, for us, it's a really you know
Speaker 7: this guy And I was just responding to someone that
Speaker 7: had sent me a message on Facebook the other night.
Speaker 7: I said, this, this guy came into our house to
Speaker 7: terrorize us, and really what he ended up doing was
Speaker 7: making us stronger, and we're closer as a family and
Speaker 7: who you know, he certainly wouldn't have expected that, We
Speaker 7: wouldn't have expected that, but but it happened. You know,
Speaker 7: we believe me. My whole perspective towards life is completely different.
Speaker 7: And you know, yes, very naive not to lock your doors.
Speaker 7: And if I could say anything to anyone is make
Speaker 7: sure you lock your doors at night because strangers come
Speaker 7: in off the street. Don't think that they're out there,
Speaker 7: but they are, and they do come in off the street.
Speaker 7: So lock your doors, double lock your doors, check and
Speaker 7: be vigilant, you know, in protecting yourself. You know, that's
Speaker 7: the security system. If you can get motion detector lights,
Speaker 7: you know, just protect yourself. Because everyone thinks that their
Speaker 7: community is safe and that nobody would ever do this. Well,
Speaker 7: there are people that come into the community from outside
Speaker 7: and they will wreak havoc. And yes, we were very naive,
Speaker 7: but we are so much stronger today because of this guy.
Speaker 7: I mean, no one would want to go through what
Speaker 7: we went through, obviously, but you know, we survived. It's
Speaker 7: a good story for us, it's not a good story
Speaker 7: for the other people, for the other victims.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting that all this had to happen to
Speaker 6: just capture the person. So it's like, it's interesting where
Speaker 6: you have a victim's family is congratulating you. It is
Speaker 6: such an unusual situation to be find your family in.
Speaker 6: And like you say, his reign of destruction ended that
Speaker 6: night because your family, despite being traumatized, it wasn't that
Speaker 6: easy for your family to recover from this because it's
Speaker 6: so unusual. That's still your family is stronger, closer, and
Speaker 6: you've gone through this period and successfully put this guy
Speaker 6: away and also didn't destroy your family in the process,
Speaker 6: so quite an interesting thing. But I want to thank
Speaker 6: you very much, Genie for a fantastic read, a fantastic interview.
Speaker 6: And I also wanted to thank Paul Leonardo as well
Speaker 6: for his contribution with this book as well. He's a
Speaker 6: veteran true crime co writer and he's the guy that
Speaker 6: helped you write this book, and he is great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: And I thank him for connecting with connecting us for
Speaker 6: this interview as well, because he was instrumental in doing
Speaker 6: that as well. So I want people to know they've
Speaker 6: been listening to Genie McDonough, author of Caught in the Act,
Speaker 6: a courageous family's fight to save their daughter from a
Speaker 6: serial killer, and that's Caught in the Act. And thank
Speaker 6: you very much, Geenie for a great interview.
Speaker 7: Thanks. I'm glad it worked out tonight.
Speaker 6: Yeah. We got past the technical errors and gave the
Speaker 6: audience what they were looking for. So thank you very much,
Speaker 6: and you have a very good evening, Jeannie.
Speaker 7: Thank you you too, Dean. I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Take care. We'll talk soon, okay, I hope, So bye bye,
Speaker 6: thank you, bye bye. You've been listening to the to
Speaker 6: the program True Murder the most shocking killers in true
Speaker 6: crime history, and the authors that have written about them,
Speaker 6: With your host Dan Zupanski, join me next time. Good Night,