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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening. It was an unbelievable crime, hideous, unexpected, baffling,
Speaker 4: a crime destined to become the most notorious and obsessive
Speaker 4: cold case in Cincinnati history. On that long ago day
Speaker 4: in September, on the cusp of autumn, we were horrified
Speaker 4: by the blaring brick A Murder headlines. Jerry's pretty wife
Speaker 4: Linda and their young daughter, Debbie were found stabbed to
Speaker 4: death in their home in the city's Bridgetown neighborhood. Striking
Speaker 4: between the fourth and fifth slayings of the Cincinnati Strangler
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty six, the brick A Killer plunged the city,
Speaker 4: already on edge, into an abyss. A half century later,
Speaker 4: the brick of mystery lingers in cobwebs and survives on
Speaker 4: whispers enter Cincinnati crime writer J. T. Townshend, author of
Speaker 4: local bestseller Queen City Gothic. JT. Was given unprecedented access
Speaker 4: to the case file, laden with information that never saw
Speaker 4: the light of print before, evidence that might illuminate the
Speaker 4: relentless rumors that police screwed up the crime scene or
Speaker 4: covered up for the suspect. Fifty years later, true crime
Speaker 4: detective JT. Townshend answers who done it and renders a
Speaker 4: final verdict. As an armchair detect of stalking a mystery killer,
Speaker 4: townshen is not shackled by presumption of innocence or reasonable doubt.
Speaker 4: All evidence is amissible. In this gripping excavation, Townshend jettison's
Speaker 4: the implausible until we arrive at the probable truth. Townshend
Speaker 4: finally addresses the question who killed the Brick of Family
Speaker 4: book we're featuring this evening in Summer's Almost Gone, The
Speaker 4: Brick of Family Murders, the most notorious cold case in
Speaker 4: Cincinnati history, with my special guest, journalist and author JT. Townshend.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 4: for agreeing to this interview JT. Townshend, Dan, it's good
Speaker 4: to be back with you. Thank you. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 4: Let's get to right. As you write in the book
Speaker 4: your personal connection to this, you say you were, if
Speaker 4: I'm not correct, thirteen in September sixty six, and a
Speaker 4: serial killer was on the loose. Tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about what that meant you and your memory of that.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit, as you write in a book,
Speaker 4: about what you were doing when you were thirteen and
Speaker 4: this happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually I was twelve years about nine months I
Speaker 3: was going into seventh grade, and obviously, Dan the fears
Speaker 3: of junior high, you know, being in with all these
Speaker 3: older kids, and I've gotten taller over the summer. Girls
Speaker 3: were kind of looking interesting. And we had a serial
Speaker 3: killer on the loose. He'd killed four victims, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't in school more than a couple of weeks. And
Speaker 3: then this beautiful family, the Bricas, are murdered in their
Speaker 3: home and obviously not by the Cincinnati strangler. So we
Speaker 3: have a completely separate crime. And I think if you
Speaker 3: read my introduction, I had a horrific nightmare about this crime.
Speaker 3: A couple of nights after it happened that the Bricket
Speaker 3: Killer had got in our house and was killing my family,
Speaker 3: and it was just extremely memorable, and I said it
Speaker 3: in the book. I was almost thirteen, Dan and I
Speaker 3: teed the bed. This nightmare was so horrific, and thus
Speaker 3: began a fifty two year obsession of mine to solve
Speaker 3: this case.
Speaker 4: You talk about November twenty fourteen being a very significant date.
Speaker 4: Tell us what happened in November twenty fourteen that changed
Speaker 4: your situation regarding this case.
Speaker 3: Well, the book, the book Summer's Almost Gone does not
Speaker 3: exist without my access to that case file. And that
Speaker 3: was the day I sat down with Hamilton County Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 3: two cold case officers and myself and Dan. There was
Speaker 3: the file crime scene photos, mork photos, interviews, evidence, all
Speaker 3: sitting there and I've been waiting, oh, I guess what
Speaker 3: forty eight years at that point to see this information,
Speaker 3: and suddenly there it is, and it was astounding. I
Speaker 3: looked at the crime scene photos. I had envisioned this
Speaker 3: crime in my mind. It was nothing like I thought
Speaker 3: it was. And it basically changed my theory of the
Speaker 3: crime and pretty much spawned this book.
Speaker 4: You talk about the crime itself September twenty seventh, nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty six, when the bodies were discovered, but you talk
Speaker 4: about the family itself, Jerry, Linda, and young child Debbie.
Speaker 4: So tell us a little bit about Jerry and Linda
Speaker 4: and their life the Brica family life. Tell us a
Speaker 4: little bit about their background and their life together.
Speaker 3: Well, they were both Jerry was raised in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: lynd in Chicago, both upper middle class families. They met
Speaker 3: while she was an airline stewardess for American Airlines out
Speaker 3: of Seattle, and they started dating, and Linda got pregnant
Speaker 3: almost immediately, and they had a rather hurried marriage in
Speaker 3: November of nineteen sixty one. They'd only known each other
Speaker 3: six months, so Linda was only eighteen at the time.
Speaker 3: Jerry was twenty three, so rough start for a young couple.
Speaker 3: Debbie was born beautiful child. Jerry, I think has been
Speaker 3: described as kind of a workaholic. He was very career oriented,
Speaker 3: job oriented, focused on work. Linda was stunningly beautiful, and
Speaker 3: I got family photos from the family of her in
Speaker 3: the book that were never published. One of the problems
Speaker 3: with the book originally, well, I didn't have any good
Speaker 3: photos of her, just newspaper photos, and suddenly I had
Speaker 3: photos that showed just how stunningly attractive she was. And
Speaker 3: the fact that she was an ex airline Steward is
Speaker 3: very beautiful with a workaholic husband kind of started the
Speaker 3: rumors about this case. But just a typical kind of
Speaker 3: middle class family in Cincinnati, living in a nice neighborhood,
Speaker 3: and suddenly all three of them are murdered. Why That's
Speaker 3: the question everybody in Cincinnati and the West Side has
Speaker 3: been asking for fifty two years. You know, why have
Speaker 3: all those neatly.
Speaker 4: Hello? JT. Yes off. Yeah, we were cut off. So
Speaker 4: let's go back and let's talk about about Jerry and
Speaker 4: Linda and Debbie a little bit about their background.
Speaker 3: Okay, we didn't we didn't get any of that before.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: We got just an introduction to them, just a little
Speaker 4: bit about just about their living arrangement, and then you
Speaker 4: said they wound up passed away. What I was going
Speaker 4: to ask you as well about the brick of family
Speaker 4: you write in this book at the same time about
Speaker 4: the Cincinnati Strangler. Yes, why is this important to include
Speaker 4: the Cincinnati strangler at the same time that you have
Speaker 4: this parallel investigation into the brick and murder mystery.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it. Obviously the Cincinnati Strangler and the
Speaker 3: brick and murders were concurrent. They happened obviously both during
Speaker 3: nine in sixty six. The city was already on edge
Speaker 3: from four women being killed by the strangler when the
Speaker 3: Bricks were killed. And if the brickas are the most
Speaker 3: notorious cold case in Cincinnati history, then the fifth Cincinnati
Speaker 3: Strangler victim, Alice Hawkausler, who was murdered two weeks after
Speaker 3: the brick is that's the second most notorious cold case
Speaker 3: in Cincinnati history. She was a very prominent victim, wife
Speaker 3: of a chief of surgery at a major hospital, mother
Speaker 3: of nine. So we had this beautiful family murdered in
Speaker 3: late September sixty six, and two weeks later, this society
Speaker 3: matron fifty one years old is struck down on her
Speaker 3: own driveway at midnight by the Cincinnati Strangler. So it's
Speaker 3: difficult to separate the Strangler and the brick A murders.
Speaker 3: The combination of the brick Is being killed and Alice
Speaker 3: Hawkhausler really launched the largest law enforcement mobilzation in city history.
Speaker 3: That time.
Speaker 4: You talk about the misconception two of the profile that
Speaker 4: all serial killers are white. In this case, here we
Speaker 4: see so many reports of attacks by black males. Tell
Speaker 4: us why this is important in this story.
Speaker 3: Well, again, I think there is a misconception two of them,
Speaker 3: actually that serial killers are invariably white males and that
Speaker 3: they never stop killing, and both those assumptions are false.
Speaker 3: Black serial killers occur roughly, it's the same percentage of
Speaker 3: black people in the population, about twelve to thirteen percent
Speaker 3: of serial killers are black rather than Wayne Williams, the
Speaker 3: Atlanta child killer. Allegedly, there's not a lot of publicity
Speaker 3: about them. But you know, Cincinnati, it's the sixties. Cincinnati
Speaker 3: is extremely conservative, Dan still is, and we've got the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War going on, their race riots. The backdrop of
Speaker 3: the sixties has got Cincinnati kind of befuddled. You know, hippies,
Speaker 3: you know, radical free love movements, things like that. And
Speaker 3: suddenly we have an allegedly black serial killer killing elderly
Speaker 3: white mothers. And really the fertilizer just hit the fan
Speaker 3: with this, and it exacerbated racial tension extensively in Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: Black men were rounded up and pulled into lineups without
Speaker 3: any due process. Civil rights groups assailed this, but the
Speaker 3: fear was so palpable that in the end, no one
Speaker 3: really cared that anyone's rights were being violated. So the
Speaker 3: racial tension in Cincinnati during the reign of the Strangler
Speaker 3: was certainly a big part of the story. A mysterious
Speaker 3: black man killing elderly white women, and then the brick
Speaker 3: acase lands right on top of this, a beautiful suburban
Speaker 3: family stabbed to death in their own home. I'm really
Speaker 3: a little stunned Dan that a national crime show has
Speaker 3: yet to do a story on this, and my age
Speaker 3: and I are working on just that. I think what
Speaker 3: Cincinnati went through in nineteen sixty six on a true
Speaker 3: crime level was profound, and it would be certainly not
Speaker 3: a stretch to say that Cincinnati lost its innocence in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty six. What did Mark Twain say, the world
Speaker 3: were coming to an end. I'd moved to Cincinnati and
Speaker 3: have ten more years to live because nothing it takes
Speaker 3: so long for things to get to Cincinnati. But you know,
Speaker 3: this was something These crimes were like something that would
Speaker 3: have happened in New York or Chicago or LA but
Speaker 3: it was Cincinnati. You know, how could that happen here?
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the crime itself, what police find once
Speaker 4: they are alerted to this, and how police are alerted
Speaker 4: to the brick, a family and something amiss. You talk
Speaker 4: about the neighbors and their reaction and their response. Tell
Speaker 4: us about that and how they find out. But then again,
Speaker 4: what are the characteristics about the murder that seemed to
Speaker 4: baffle police from the onset?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were Sunday night, September twenty fifth, the rainy
Speaker 3: Sunday night. Not a lot of people are out. It's
Speaker 3: the world television premiere of Bridge on the River Quai.
Speaker 3: At the time, sixty million people tuned in, the largest
Speaker 3: to ever watch a movie on TV at the time.
Speaker 3: Jerry Brook is seen taking out his garbage cans at
Speaker 3: nine by a neighbor. That's the last time anyone saw
Speaker 3: any of the family. Jerry didn't make a flight the
Speaker 3: next morning for his business trip. All day Monday, newspapers
Speaker 3: sat out, garbage cans sat out. Neighbors kind of wondered,
Speaker 3: but they assumed the family might be out of town.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until Tuesday night, the twenty seventh that some
Speaker 3: alarmed neighbors did investigate again. The garbage cans are still out,
Speaker 3: there's three newspapers on the sidewalk in front of the house.
Speaker 3: They can hear the family's dogs barking inside, and two
Speaker 3: neighbors lean in the front door, which is unlocked and
Speaker 3: are assaulted by the unmistakable stench of dead bodies in
Speaker 3: the brick a house. And that's about ten forty five
Speaker 3: on that Tuesday night, And that's when the call went
Speaker 3: out and you you had mentioned what were the circumstances
Speaker 3: of this crime that baffled investigating officers. Obviously there were
Speaker 3: hamstrung immediately from the get go. The first forty eight
Speaker 3: it's gone. You know, nobody is aware from Sunday night
Speaker 3: to Tuesday night that these people have been murdered. You know,
Speaker 3: witness memories start to recede into the rearview mirror after
Speaker 3: forty eight hours. I mean, how many can you remember
Speaker 3: what you had for dinner three nights ago, Dan, or
Speaker 3: who you saw near your house. It's totally hamstrung the investigation.
Speaker 3: If the bodies had been discovered the night of the
Speaker 3: murder murders, we've probably got a different situation. So they
Speaker 3: got a really late start there, was conflicting jurisdictions. There
Speaker 3: was four different police jurisdictions at this crime scene, and
Speaker 3: the crime scene was unsecured for the first two hours,
Speaker 3: which is not that unusual for a nineteen sixty six
Speaker 3: crime scene. You know, there's no sign in log there's
Speaker 3: no hazmat suits of glove, there's no detectives trained in
Speaker 3: evidence collection. These detectives have to do everything themselves, and
Speaker 3: the crime scene was unsecured, and the rumors immediately started
Speaker 3: that this was a screw up, But I don't think
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 4: I can expand talking about yes, well, there's also some
Speaker 4: features of the I talked about the characteristics that they
Speaker 4: found no struggle from the victims, and also no forced
Speaker 4: entry that they could see. What are a couple of
Speaker 4: the other circumstances that seemed again odd or they noted,
Speaker 4: And then you can again again we talk about what's
Speaker 4: interesting as well, is that no struggle but Jerry, if
Speaker 4: you could describe Jerry more unusual that he would not
Speaker 4: have fought well.
Speaker 3: I think even with the forty eight hour delay of
Speaker 3: discovery Dan, I think the lead investigator her Vogel, once
Speaker 3: he arrived and shut down the crime scene, he made
Speaker 3: a couple of very correct assumptions, I think, almost immediately,
Speaker 3: one being that the brick is knew the killer or killers,
Speaker 3: and we see a lot of signs there of the
Speaker 3: family being lulled into a sense of security. There is
Speaker 3: no forced entry, there is no sign of a struggle,
Speaker 3: there are no defensive stab wounds. The two dogs known
Speaker 3: to be aggressive barkers, especially around strange men, strangely quiet,
Speaker 3: not only the night of the murders, but for days afterwards.
Speaker 3: No neighbors hear anything. And the houses on either side
Speaker 3: Dan are very close, very close, twenty feet maybe you know,
Speaker 3: no sign of a struggle. And I think the police,
Speaker 3: in a modern profiling sense, they dermined this was a
Speaker 3: personal cause homicide, that the killers knew the victims, that
Speaker 3: one killer or both were emotionally entangled with one of
Speaker 3: the victims. And the immediate speculation was that Lindabrica was
Speaker 3: the target. And there was an immediate controversy at the
Speaker 3: crime scene had she been raped, and the coroner and
Speaker 3: the lead investigator went back and forth on this. Now
Speaker 3: I've seen the crime scene photos. Her breasts were exposed
Speaker 3: and she was wearing a skimpy negliget, but it appeared
Speaker 3: to be because she had been thrown off the bed
Speaker 3: after being stabbed, and her body was thrown on top
Speaker 3: of Jerry's her panties were in place. Eventually, the police
Speaker 3: determined she had not been raped, but that she had
Speaker 3: had recent intercourse, possibly the day before her murder. But
Speaker 3: I think the police were correct. This was not a
Speaker 3: burger had gone wrong. This was not a roving serial
Speaker 3: killer or maniac. This was not a professional hit, This
Speaker 3: was not a cult. This was someone emotionally involved with
Speaker 3: the victims. So in that aspect, I think they pushed
Speaker 3: off in the right direction with their investigation.
Speaker 4: You talk about they oh, you're right about that. They'd
Speaker 4: speak to a neighbor and at who ends up being
Speaker 4: a babysitter for Linda, and from that they get a
Speaker 4: lot about the situation between Jerry and Linda, possibly at
Speaker 4: least from that event. Tell us about that event and
Speaker 4: what it tells police and indicates the police.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure they didn't call it victimology then in
Speaker 3: sixty six, but they were trying to get to know
Speaker 3: this family better than the family knew that. They got
Speaker 3: a lot of information from Linda. Zeph the primary babysitter
Speaker 3: who probably knew the family better than any non relative,
Speaker 3: having spent so much time babysitting there. It would be
Speaker 3: it would be incorrect to suggest this couple had a
Speaker 3: happy marriage. They'd had a trial separation in March of
Speaker 3: that year. There was disputes about Linda not wanting to
Speaker 3: have another child. She was certainly an animal lover and
Speaker 3: was interested in acquiring more pets, but not more children.
Speaker 3: This was at odds of what Jerry wanted. This was
Speaker 3: a troubled marriage. They only knew each other five months
Speaker 3: before they were married, and she was pregnant for a
Speaker 3: couple of those, so kind of a rocky start. And
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want to blame any victims, but
Speaker 3: I found it interesting. I interviewed three men who were
Speaker 3: inside the crime scene after the discovery, and the speculation
Speaker 3: about Linda Brica having an affair started as they were
Speaker 3: looking at the dead bodies almost immediately, actually immediately. Speculation
Speaker 3: was that the motive for this murder was an adulterous
Speaker 3: affair that took a wrong turn into rage.
Speaker 4: We talked about that neighbor and that neighbor that was babysitting.
Speaker 4: She mentioned that there was a confrontation where Linda was
Speaker 4: supposed to be back from work and she was working
Speaker 4: as only one day at this veterinarian's clinic, and she
Speaker 4: was supposed to be home around nine. Jerry went to
Speaker 4: some event and came home late himself and still found
Speaker 4: that his wife hadn't returned home take care of their child.
Speaker 4: You mentioned that this affair was a rumor. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about the subject of that rumor, Doctor Fred Leininger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me. Let me get put a little basis
Speaker 3: to that. Chapters four and five of my book. I
Speaker 3: set up a timeline in chapter four of the week
Speaker 3: leading up to the murders. Chapter five is the murder day,
Speaker 3: and this is piecing together into narrative form all the
Speaker 3: interviews and information, all the witness statements. Linda worked. She
Speaker 3: went to work at the Glenway Animal Hospital on Monday,
Speaker 3: September nineteenth. She'd been bugging the head vet there about
Speaker 3: a job. She ended up working only three days that week, Monday, Tuesday,
Speaker 3: and Wednesday, and the family was murdered that Sunday. And
Speaker 3: the obvious first question for me is, if Linda Bricka
Speaker 3: does not go to work at that clinic, is the
Speaker 3: family in fact murdered. The only break from her routine
Speaker 3: was taking that job at that clinic. So the Wednesday
Speaker 3: night I thought was a pivotal night. Jerry's at a
Speaker 3: bachelor party indicates he needs to go home. He needs
Speaker 3: to be home when his wife gets home from work.
Speaker 3: He gets home at nine o'clock, she doesn't. He waits,
Speaker 3: He goes next door. His daughter is asleep, being babysat
Speaker 3: by a neighbor. He seems upset. He's wondering where Linda is. Suddenly,
Speaker 3: at ten thirty, an hour and a half late, she
Speaker 3: shows up with whiskey on her breath, indicated she had
Speaker 3: a drink with doctor Fred Lininger, her boss at the clinic.
Speaker 3: Jerry became somewhat enraged, made a threat. I must say, Dan,
Speaker 3: it's only hearsay that he made that threat, because I
Speaker 3: don't I'm not actually in the case file. But I've
Speaker 3: got pretty good witness corroboration. But he didn't make the
Speaker 3: threat directly, and eventually he took his wife and child home.
Speaker 3: What's interesting, on Thursday morning, the normally reserved Jerry, who
Speaker 3: never talked about his family life, unloaded to his boss
Speaker 3: about how upset he was about what was going on
Speaker 3: with Linda, her being drunk, being late, and her association
Speaker 3: with this veterinarian. This is Thursday morning, and this guy's
Speaker 3: stepping totally out of character, venting to his boss about
Speaker 3: what happened the night before. And as I say in
Speaker 3: the book, that Wednesday night, the seeds of murder are sown.
Speaker 3: I don't know what went on between Linda and doctor
Speaker 3: fred Leininger that night, but I can say this if
Speaker 3: you look at any murder victim dan and today we
Speaker 3: look at who called him on the cell phone? You
Speaker 3: who are they on social media with? But back then
Speaker 3: it was basically about were they in each other's company?
Speaker 3: And Linda worked for Fred Lininger Monday through Wednesday. She
Speaker 3: tried to get in touch with him Thursday by leaving
Speaker 3: an emergency call at his answering service. She was seen
Speaker 3: with him Friday and Saturday in some out of the
Speaker 3: way places, and she's murdered on Sunday. So with all
Speaker 3: the suspects in the file, she seemed to have most
Speaker 3: interaction with doctor Fred Lininger, a married VET with five
Speaker 3: children under the age of ten, and they're seen together
Speaker 3: in some out of the way places and apparently the
Speaker 3: rumors had been going on about them for some time.
Speaker 3: And I can tell you this about the west side
Speaker 3: of Cincinnati, Dan, my very first chapter in Summer's Almost Gone,
Speaker 3: the chapter title is small town city, small town, big ears,
Speaker 3: wagging tongues. Very conservative over there. I would say, just
Speaker 3: generally speaking, any affair that's exposed on the West Side
Speaker 3: that involves a prominent businessman like Fredlininger, that's going to
Speaker 3: be a problem. That's not the kind of thing anyone
Speaker 3: would want to come to light.
Speaker 4: Let's go backwards in this when the family is found
Speaker 4: murdered in midst of Cincinnati with a serial killer loose,
Speaker 4: a strangler, the Cincinnati strangler, and various reports you say,
Speaker 4: in this investigation comes up. There's numerous obscene phone calls
Speaker 4: keep coming up in the reports, and we have other attacks.
Speaker 4: So there's all kinds of eyewitness reports. And when the
Speaker 4: police go to investigate this, they have to look at
Speaker 4: everyone and eliminate everybody before they can proceed. So they aren't.
Speaker 4: We can't let the audience think that the police are
Speaker 4: focused initially or entirely on Fred Leininger at all. In fact,
Speaker 4: they had to go look at where Jerry worked and
Speaker 4: look at relationships that he had, and look very hard
Speaker 4: at his temperament to see if there was some involvement.
Speaker 4: So tell us how police investigate this initially, and where
Speaker 4: are some of the sort of tangents and in terms
Speaker 4: of suspects that the police go towards.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean, Dan, this is the kind of case
Speaker 3: that a detective might catch once in a lifetime, and
Speaker 3: that's that kind of case. I found it interesting that
Speaker 3: Cincinnati police tried to get jurisdiction on this, but the
Speaker 3: Bricker case was two blocks outside the city limits, so
Speaker 3: County took it on. The Cincinnati police had way more resources,
Speaker 3: but I noticed County went out of their way almost
Speaker 3: immediately to say that the killer of the Brickas was
Speaker 3: a white man, And I think they were trying to
Speaker 3: head off possible vigilanti action. The strangler has been identified
Speaker 3: as a black man. The immediate assumption when the Brickas
Speaker 3: are killed is the strangler has moved out to the
Speaker 3: suburbs and changed his mo And the county made it
Speaker 3: very clear from the get go brick a killer is
Speaker 3: a white man. And I think the tension was so
Speaker 3: racial tension was so great that they had to get
Speaker 3: that out there immediately, I think something was maybe going
Speaker 3: to boil over. But so now you got this case,
Speaker 3: and sure the rumors about lining are started immediately, but
Speaker 3: you don't want to get involved in a confirmation bias
Speaker 3: and try to tailor your case that way. They did
Speaker 3: over four hundred interviews. Everyone who had any contact with
Speaker 3: this family was was looked at. And it really comes
Speaker 3: down to if you think about think about the lack
Speaker 3: of computers than DAN. You have to work on elimination.
Speaker 3: You have to look at everybody that knew this family
Speaker 3: and eliminate them. You know, you've got the inner circle neighbors, friends, relatives,
Speaker 3: co workers, babysitters, visitors. Then you've got regular delivery people,
Speaker 3: mail men, paper boys, meter readers, milkmen, bread trucks. Then
Speaker 3: you've got periodic on site workers you know, tree tremors,
Speaker 3: landscapers or cleaning services. All these people have to be checked.
Speaker 3: You know, something could have spawned this murder that happened
Speaker 3: years ago, you know, some random link. So in the
Speaker 3: pre computer age, they're only chance to get a handhold
Speaker 3: on this case. With this mass of information coming in
Speaker 3: Dan and seriously inundated with tips, absolutely and the only
Speaker 3: thing they can really do is work on elimination. Who
Speaker 3: can we eliminate? Can we eliminate this tip, can we
Speaker 3: eliminate this suspect? And hopefully you come down to the
Speaker 3: end and you've got somebody. But you know, they had
Speaker 3: to look at everything, rumors, gossip, undertones, hearsay, tangents. You know,
Speaker 3: I like to say, objectivity never solved the murder case.
Speaker 3: You have to get subjective, you have to get down
Speaker 3: in the gutter. What were the secrets going on that
Speaker 3: spawned this triple homicide? So based on what I just
Speaker 3: said and based on the amount of elimination, they did
Speaker 3: a pretty good job. When at the end they had
Speaker 3: one guy still standing there dan that they couldn't eliminate,
Speaker 3: and that was doctor Fred Lininger.
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Speaker 4: That's Zla z zo La z o la dot com
Speaker 4: slash true murder. We last spoke of the investigation that
Speaker 4: goes pointing in different directions. Hello, we last spoke about
Speaker 4: We last I spoke about the investigation turning to other suspects,
Speaker 4: and one of those suspects was somebody that worked with
Speaker 4: Jerry at Monsanto. Tell us why he was a suspect
Speaker 4: for a time in this Rica murder case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they interviewed them, over twenty people at Monsanto. Dan
Speaker 3: And by the way, I've been inundated with rumors that
Speaker 3: Monsano knocked Jerry off because he was a whistleblower about
Speaker 3: Agent Orange. Not true, but anyway, he worked at a
Speaker 3: plastics plan in Cincinnati and Monsanto they had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with Agent Orange. But that just shows you the
Speaker 3: wild rumors that surround this case. Jim Cannon was one
Speaker 3: of twenty people twenty to twenty five interviewed at Monsanto.
Speaker 3: A very frosty relationship with Jerry Brica almost came to
Speaker 3: blow at a company cookout. Cannon was the opposite of
Speaker 3: Jerry Brica, both in work temperament and personal temperament. Thought
Speaker 3: he was God's gift of women and apparently paid a
Speaker 3: lot of attention to Linda Brica whenever he was around her.
Speaker 3: And you know, Jerry was pretty much a straight shooter.
Speaker 3: He was ivy league. Jim Cannon was a community college
Speaker 3: and the night the bodies were discovered. On the twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: some Monsanto people were standing outside in the gathering group.
Speaker 3: There was fifty to sixty people outside this house watching
Speaker 3: the activity, and Jim Cannon walks up and surprised these people.
Speaker 3: He tried to he suggested that he didn't know that
Speaker 3: was Jerry Bricker's house, even though they had carpooled, and
Speaker 3: he seemed to well the people he was talking to.
Speaker 3: He seemed to be oozing an alibi already, and when
Speaker 3: they did it interview him, he had an exceptionally detailed alibi,
Speaker 3: mostly backed up by family members. So they took a
Speaker 3: good hard look at Jim Cannon, unable to shake the alibi.
Speaker 3: I still wonder about him because of his behavior after
Speaker 3: the crime. You know, people can lie, but behavior never lies.
Speaker 3: He acted like a guilty man. Maybe it's just because
Speaker 3: he figured they would suspect him, but he was certainly
Speaker 3: a good suspect. And Dan, as you know, we had
Speaker 3: a local TV celebrity that.
Speaker 4: Was interviewed, right tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well, that one's some people didn't care that I put
Speaker 3: this in the book. A local kiddie show host called
Speaker 3: Skipper Ryle. His name was Glenn Ryle. He was a
Speaker 3: local newscaster who ran a very successful children's show. I
Speaker 3: was actually on it. He was interviewed because of his
Speaker 3: very close association with doctor Fred Lininger, the prime suspect.
Speaker 3: He and Glenn Ryle were exceptionally close and remained that
Speaker 3: way until Ryle's death in the early nineties. According to
Speaker 3: what witnesses said, Ryle drove a very recognizable motorcycle on
Speaker 3: the West Side and it was often seen parked outside
Speaker 3: the Glenway Animal Hospital. It was seen parked there the
Speaker 3: day's Linda Bricker worked there. It's very possible he knew Lindabrica.
Speaker 3: He was kind of a bigger than life character, former
Speaker 3: Special Forces trained to kill a large man, a bow
Speaker 3: hunter like Fred Lininger was. And I found it interesting
Speaker 3: that of the four hundred or so interviews, sixteen of
Speaker 3: them were flagged as suspicious or containing a key witness statement,
Speaker 3: and Ryle's interview was flagged said something to effective he's
Speaker 3: obviously a close friend of Lininger and we should not
Speaker 3: expect any help from him. So, if you're looking at
Speaker 3: multiple killers here, which is something I've gone back and
Speaker 3: forth on, you've got a minor local celebrity who is
Speaker 3: certainly a candidate for the partner. If Lininger is looking
Speaker 3: for somebody to back him up, you know, if he's
Speaker 3: having a problem with Jerry Bricka, Glenn Ryles on a
Speaker 3: list of possible people he would turn to. I'm assuming
Speaker 3: when you're going to murder people and you need help,
Speaker 3: you go to the people you're closest to. So I'm
Speaker 3: not saying he's involved. It's just seemed the police at
Speaker 3: the time were suspicious of him, and I can say
Speaker 3: honestly the cold case detectives that are working the case
Speaker 3: today are also still suspicious of him.
Speaker 4: Talk about the event with Robert Gerton at this archery
Speaker 4: range and also what that tells police in terms of
Speaker 4: Fred and his basically their interest in him as a suspect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a that's a weird one.
Speaker 1: Dan.
Speaker 3: Thursday night before the murders, Linda Bricca had made some
Speaker 3: strange comments to her babysitter and tried to get her
Speaker 3: babysitter again for Thursday night but couldn't. Linda places a
Speaker 3: call to Fred Lininger's answering service and it's coded as
Speaker 3: an urgent call, so she's trying to get ahold of
Speaker 3: doctor Fred lining her Thursday night urgently. Don't know if
Speaker 3: they ever connect that night or not, but on Friday morning,
Speaker 3: Linda calls the clinic and says her daughter Debbie left
Speaker 3: a book and Fred Lininger's right there when the call
Speaker 3: comes through with the book and he says he'll drop
Speaker 3: it off, and apparently he does and hands it to
Speaker 3: Debbie Brica playing in her front yard. He then goes
Speaker 3: to shoot archery with some of his friends at a
Speaker 3: secluded range out there, and Linda Bricka shows up, and
Speaker 3: according to the witness there, Lininger's friend that he became
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable with her there and the friend finally left.
Speaker 3: He said he felt kind of like a third wheel.
Speaker 3: And when he left there on Friday afternoon, around one o'clock,
Speaker 3: Fred Lininger and Linda Bricker are alone in a secluded
Speaker 3: area of the West Side at an archery range way
Speaker 3: out on Muddy Creek Road, I think it was, and
Speaker 3: they're alone there, and she's murdered two days later with
Speaker 3: her family, so seems very odd. She eventually lied to
Speaker 3: a neighbor about where she was because she had a
Speaker 3: neighbor watching Debbie during this period, said she was getting
Speaker 3: her car worked on. Well, she did get her car
Speaker 3: worked on that morning, but not that afternoon. But the
Speaker 3: trick is not to lie more than you have to.
Speaker 3: So something was going on Friday afternoon. I think Linda's
Speaker 3: call about the book to the clinic is a coded
Speaker 3: message for her in lining her to meet. Everybody's got
Speaker 3: to remember this is nineteen sixty six. She can't text
Speaker 3: someone or call her cell phone or message him, snapchat them.
Speaker 3: You know, there's just landlines. There's not even any answering machines.
Speaker 3: So very odd that she would call to get this
Speaker 3: book returned on this Friday morning at Children's Book and
Speaker 3: that Fred Lininger immediately jumped up and said, I'll take
Speaker 3: it over there seems like a coded message to meet.
Speaker 3: And what went on between them when they were by
Speaker 3: themselves that secluded location on Friday open to speculation. Linda
Speaker 3: had told several people while at the wedding of Jerry's
Speaker 3: sister in San Francisco three weeks before that her period
Speaker 3: was late and she might be pregnant. I interests me
Speaker 3: because I honestly don't think that she and Jerry were
Speaker 3: having sexual relations that summer and fall. I think Jerry
Speaker 3: was spending a lot of time on the couch. Was
Speaker 3: she pregnant? Who by? You know, if Lininger is the killer,
Speaker 3: you know what corner did she push him into to
Speaker 3: make him do this? You know, what was the secret
Speaker 3: of their relationship? What was the nature of their relationship?
Speaker 3: And at some point Dan, we need to talk about
Speaker 3: that interview on October eighth.
Speaker 4: You talk about danview October eighth. Yeah, what is his
Speaker 4: alibi and how do police check that alibi? And what
Speaker 4: do they come up with?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they found an interesting Dan that they did
Speaker 3: eight interviews on Wednesday, September twenty eighth. Now, they found
Speaker 3: the bodies the previous night, So who did they interview first?
Speaker 3: And they went right to Monsano first, but they also
Speaker 3: interviewed Linda Bricka's employer that week. So they interviewed Fred
Speaker 3: Weininger on that day after the bodies were found. And
Speaker 3: it was kind of a perfunctory interview, but I could
Speaker 3: see already that they were looking at this guy a
Speaker 3: bit askance. Even a short ten minute interview apparently raised
Speaker 3: some questions. Some things he volunteered without them asking, like
Speaker 3: he was trying out a story. And then the rumors
Speaker 3: about him and Linda Bricker increased, you know, as the
Speaker 3: investigation went on. So they finally sat down with Fred
Speaker 3: Liner on October eighth, nineteen sixty six, at his place
Speaker 3: of business, and this is the interview that kind of
Speaker 3: turned the case. It's what detectives like to call the
Speaker 3: moment Dan. You know, you're interrogating a guy and he
Speaker 3: starts tripping over his own tongue. And these interrogators were good,
Speaker 3: I mean, a good interrogator asked short questions that demand
Speaker 3: long answers, and then they asked those same questions in
Speaker 3: a different way. You know, they're just trying to get contradictions.
Speaker 3: And apparently Fred Lininger during this interview became so flustered
Speaker 3: and so befuddled and started leaking consciousness of guilt. And
Speaker 3: when he was asked about his alibi for the night
Speaker 3: in question, you'd have thought he'd have been more prepared,
Speaker 3: because he came up with two things and the police
Speaker 3: knew both of them were untrue, and it's basically like
Speaker 3: they caught him in a lie twice. And he also
Speaker 3: lied about when he last saw Lindabrica. He said it
Speaker 3: was Wednesday night at work, which was the last night
Speaker 3: she worked there. And yet Lininger's own friend places him
Speaker 3: with her on Friday, and people in the neighborhood placed
Speaker 3: Linda with lining her on Saturday before the murders. So
Speaker 3: he's lied about when he last saw her. He lied
Speaker 3: about his alibi twice, and he apparently became quite confused
Speaker 3: when asked about her urgent message to him on Thursday night,
Speaker 3: he claimed he never got it. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: heard the tape of the interview and I can hear
Speaker 3: his voice getting chalky, you know, a little quavery. But
Speaker 3: I'm trying to imagine the visual cues that the two
Speaker 3: investigators must have seen, as you know, as they saw
Speaker 3: him literally probably starting to sweat. And when they asked
Speaker 3: him the nature of your relationship with Lindabrica, he terminated
Speaker 3: the interview. And he'd been telling them all through the
Speaker 3: interview that he was pressed for time, and with that question,
Speaker 3: he terminated the interview and he went home and immediately
Speaker 3: lawyered up. This was on a Saturday, when they tried
Speaker 3: to interview both him and his wife on Monday. We
Speaker 3: have nothing to say. Here's our lawyer's card. So the
Speaker 3: prime suspect has retained a lawyer, which he certainly has
Speaker 3: the right to do. And the police Hamilton County Sheriff's
Speaker 3: Department never again sat down with Fred Lininger. That October
Speaker 3: eighth interview. The second interview of Lininger was the last
Speaker 3: time they ever spoke to him officially.
Speaker 4: You talk about see attorney go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I suspect. As I mentioned in the book, they
Speaker 3: certainly spoke to him in ways afterwards. They maintained surveillance
Speaker 3: on this man for at least three years, and there
Speaker 3: were some incidents where Hamlin County Sheriff's deputies might have
Speaker 3: cost him coming out of a restaurant and say things like, wow,
Speaker 3: how could somebody do what they did to that little
Speaker 3: brick or girl? You know, how could they live with themselves?
Speaker 3: And you know he's got to just take it. You know,
Speaker 3: he could be with his family either. So they stayed
Speaker 3: on top of this guy for years later. But I
Speaker 3: think in the end the prosecuting attorney felt they didn't
Speaker 3: have enough to go to a grand jury, and you know,
Speaker 3: they really didn't other than his demeanor and his connection
Speaker 3: to the victim. Unfortunately, we had a real lack of
Speaker 3: physical evidence, but we do have a DNA profile.
Speaker 4: Now you talk about the attorney that he obtained, and
Speaker 4: you talked that he was a former state representative, and
Speaker 4: he was an auditor, he.
Speaker 3: Was a son, he was the son of a former
Speaker 3: state representative. He was a member of a prominent West
Speaker 3: Side family. Lininger didn't just get any lawyer. He really
Speaker 3: went up the food chain. He got a guy with
Speaker 3: tons of West Side political connections. And I think the
Speaker 3: Hamilton County investigators were just a little bit intimidated by
Speaker 3: this guy. And then we have the Miranda ruling just
Speaker 3: passed that July. You know, you have the right to
Speaker 3: remain silent, you have the right to an attorney. There
Speaker 3: was some question about how to interpret this when interrogating Lininger,
Speaker 3: and in the end, I think the combination of the
Speaker 3: stance of the lawyer, a tremendously protective stance, and the
Speaker 3: uncertainty over the Miranda ruling and how to interpret it,
Speaker 3: the thing just stalemated. It just literally came to an impasse.
Speaker 3: And I've seen other cases where this happened. People ask me,
Speaker 3: why didn't they go to trial, Why didn't they charge him,
Speaker 3: Why didn't they get a conviction? You know, the best
Speaker 3: thing they could have done Dan was subpoena him to
Speaker 3: a grand jury. He would have had to shown up
Speaker 3: without his attorney, but his attorney would have told him
Speaker 3: to take the fifth on anything he was uncomfortable answering.
Speaker 3: And then he walks out of there a freeman. So
Speaker 3: that's really what it came down to why they couldn't
Speaker 3: close it.
Speaker 4: You talk about him being the likely suspect, and then
Speaker 4: a surveillance and then new advances in DNA technology. You
Speaker 4: talk about them never finding the murder, but there was
Speaker 4: some DNA. It's some samples, and they were tell us
Speaker 4: about the DNA.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about the physical evidence here, and I'll include
Speaker 3: that there was a carving knife missing from the brick
Speaker 3: a house and the sheath for the knife. It definitely
Speaker 3: would have fit the wounds. There was some question whether
Speaker 3: it was kept away in a drawer or out on
Speaker 3: the bureau. If it was kept in a drawer, obviously
Speaker 3: somebody that knew the family would know it's there. But
Speaker 3: the knife was missing. Was it the murder weapon? I
Speaker 3: don't know. Would have been a red hearing. I didn't
Speaker 3: get a much chance to talk about Jerry Bricker's physique
Speaker 3: DAN when I saw these crime scene photos This guy
Speaker 3: was about five nine, one hundred and ninety pounds. He
Speaker 3: looked like a college wrestler. He looked like a bantam weightlifter,
Speaker 3: not a tall man, extremely muscular build. And I saw
Speaker 3: Morg photos taken the next day. I saw him naked
Speaker 3: on a Morg slab. He's been dead three days and
Speaker 3: he still looked very physically imposing. I almost immediately when
Speaker 3: I saw this. I remember I looked up at the
Speaker 3: cold case detective across from me, and I said, two killers.
Speaker 3: I don't believe one guy with a carving knife could
Speaker 3: have handled him. This is a man who would have
Speaker 3: fought like a tiger to save his wife, his daughter,
Speaker 3: and he was slaughtered basically like a lamb to slaughter,
Speaker 3: totally unaware of the danger. I suspect, and to me,
Speaker 3: that tells me there's a second man with a gun.
Speaker 3: There appeared to be some ligatures possibly used on the
Speaker 3: two adult victims that were removed. Jerry was stabbed mostly
Speaker 3: from the back, Linda from the front. And you know
Speaker 3: you've got a rage killing in that bedroom, perhaps controlled rage.
Speaker 3: And then the murder of the child is nothing more
Speaker 3: than the elimination of a witness. Debbie was four and
Speaker 3: talked like she was ten. She could recognize people, speak
Speaker 3: in complete paragraphs. She was killed because she knew that
Speaker 3: at least one of the killers, but not a lot
Speaker 3: of physical evidence at all, no good fingerprints, and back
Speaker 3: then DAN fingerprints were DNA basically, but they didn't compromise
Speaker 3: the crime scene enough in the two murder rooms that
Speaker 3: they actually came up with a DNA profile of the killer.
Speaker 3: And this was based on Marlborough cigarette butts smoked in
Speaker 3: the murder bedroom and neither of the two adult victims smoked.
Speaker 3: Some hair found in Linda Bricker's hand, clapped in her hand,
Speaker 3: and the seminal fluid taken from her from either the
Speaker 3: rape or the recent intercourse, depending on which theory you
Speaker 3: would ascribe to. And I can say this with certainty
Speaker 3: based on blood type on that semen the man she had,
Speaker 3: the man she had recent intercourse with, had a different
Speaker 3: blood type than Jerry. So we know that. So we've
Speaker 3: got this DNA profile. Now they've sent it through Cotis.
Speaker 3: You know, known felons, no hits predictably obviously I could
Speaker 3: have told him that. But here's the thing, and you
Speaker 3: know everybody now is so DNA oriented you know, what
Speaker 3: do they call it the CSI of America. This is
Speaker 3: not a very clean DNA profile the way it was
Speaker 3: described to me, we wouldn't get an O. J. Simpson
Speaker 3: type number here. You know, one in seven teen million
Speaker 3: people fit this profile, and mister Simpson is one of them.
Speaker 3: Be nothing like that. Possibly could get a one in
Speaker 3: twenty five. One in thirty men fit this profile. That
Speaker 3: is not that's short odds, but it's long odds in
Speaker 3: the DNA game. And again, I suppose a guy could say, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I smoked some cigarettes over there and I had intercourse
Speaker 3: with her. I didn't kill her. So I don't think
Speaker 3: the DNA is going to yield a resolution to this case. Obviously,
Speaker 3: if things have been preserved better in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: maybe it's a different story. But you know, who knew
Speaker 3: anything about DNA in nineteen sixty six. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: a vagrant fantasy. So that's kind of where we sit.
Speaker 3: I don't think that profile is going to going to
Speaker 3: move this case forward. And I don't think we'll see
Speaker 3: any cooperation for familial familial DNA from Liner's family, And
Speaker 3: it's tough to get a prime suspect zoomed. It's not
Speaker 3: easy to do, and you know, there's basically a bias
Speaker 3: against exhuming people that have been obviously consecrated and buried.
Speaker 3: So I don't think we're going to get anything from
Speaker 3: the lining Er family either. So the only thing that
Speaker 3: profile has done is eliminate non felons.
Speaker 4: You talk about lining your being dead, tell us about
Speaker 4: that and about his wife.
Speaker 3: Wasn't that funny?
Speaker 4: Dan?
Speaker 3: You know, I hear rumors about this case all the time,
Speaker 3: and some of them sound ridiculous to me. Like when
Speaker 3: somebody first told me Skip or Ryle was a suspect,
Speaker 3: I said, the kiddie show host, you're kidding me. Well,
Speaker 3: he's interviewed and it's flagged. But with Lininger, the rumor
Speaker 3: I heard was he and his wife killed themselves. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, sure, and my god, it was true.
Speaker 3: Fred Liner and his wife were living in Sarasota, Florida.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Dan, this isn't in the book,
Speaker 3: but Chief investigator Herb Vogel ran into Fred Liner and
Speaker 3: his wife in Sarasota at a University of Cincinnati alumni
Speaker 3: dinner and phyllis Phyllis. Vogel told me they she and
Speaker 3: herb walked in and ran right into Fred and Lynn Lininger,
Speaker 3: like literally in front of them, And Fred and Lynn
Speaker 3: Lener immediately did in an about face, moved to the
Speaker 3: other side of the room and never came near them
Speaker 3: the rest of the night. But the rumor was that
Speaker 3: they had killed themselves in a hotel in Cincinnati and
Speaker 3: a suicide pack. And it's absolutely true. They drove up
Speaker 3: from Sarasota, checked into a hotel. They had instructions for
Speaker 3: their children, they had cash gifts for grandchildren for birthdays.
Speaker 3: Fred put a suit in the closet with a note
Speaker 3: said bury me in this, and they took over doses
Speaker 3: of morphine. He died. She lapsed into a coma and
Speaker 3: died nine months later. So interesting to think, Dan, what
Speaker 3: kind of conversation did they have right at the end there.
Speaker 3: Lynn Lininger has been married to him for fifty two years.
Speaker 3: For thirty seven of those years, her husband's been the
Speaker 3: prime suspect in a Grizzly triple homicide. I mean, she
Speaker 3: has to think him innocent, or I assume she'd go insane.
Speaker 3: But don't you have to wonder, you know, did she
Speaker 3: ask him right before they took their own lives. Did
Speaker 3: she ask him to come clean? Did he You know,
Speaker 3: those are the kind of things we can only speculate on.
Speaker 3: He left a suicide note, there was no mention of
Speaker 3: the rumors that had dogged him in terms of being
Speaker 3: a suspect. So yes, our prime suspect ended his own life.
Speaker 3: And I pointed out other circumstantial evidence against him in
Speaker 3: the book. He was seen near the crime scene in
Speaker 3: a convenience store at the time of the crime, trying
Speaker 3: to use a payphone, and he appeared to be very
Speaker 3: distraught and confused. And this puts him a half a
Speaker 3: mile from our murder scene at the time of the murders.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to him.
Speaker 3: In the corner of the armchair, Detective Dan Boy, he's
Speaker 3: my number one with a bullet. I mean, he's all
Speaker 3: alone in a court of law. It's not even an indictment.
Speaker 4: Yeah. What was one of the more horrified bullying facts
Speaker 4: about this is that it looked like to investigators that
Speaker 4: tell us about what investigators discovered, what at least was
Speaker 4: indicated about the fate of about the fate of Debbie Brica, Well,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: She was killed. Last, she was dragged from underneath the bed,
Speaker 3: and it appeared Jerry had been putting her to bed
Speaker 3: when the killers arrived. He always took off her knee socks.
Speaker 3: One was off laying on the bed, and one was
Speaker 3: on her leg, so he appeared to have been interrupted
Speaker 3: while putting her to bed. At some point, Debbie crawls
Speaker 3: under the bed as the violence in the net in
Speaker 3: the next door bedroom is going down against her parents,
Speaker 3: and she is dragged out and very methodically, I would say,
Speaker 3: based on the wounds I saw stabbed four times in
Speaker 3: the back and the blade went all the way through
Speaker 3: her body. On no rage, there no anger, This was fear.
Speaker 3: The only thing they felt toward Debbie was fear of
Speaker 3: being identified. They had nothing against her. But people asked
Speaker 3: why did they kill the child? It's pretty simple, she
Speaker 3: knew the killers. So, you know, I looked at the
Speaker 3: crime scene photos of the adults quite a bit because
Speaker 3: I'm trying to learn from them. It was hard to
Speaker 3: look at the pictures of Debbie. You know, I can
Speaker 3: remember my daughter, my granddaughter at that age. Just really
Speaker 3: hard to look at that, you know, I just kind
Speaker 3: of passed over it real quick. They were afraid of her,
Speaker 3: they killed her.
Speaker 4: What would the Some of the witnesses said that she
Speaker 4: referred to doctor Lininger as what uncle Fred.
Speaker 3: Three witnesses close to the family, Debbie referred to Fred
Speaker 3: Lining as uncle Fred. Linda, with her love for animals,
Speaker 3: almost a pathological obsession with animals, was constantly over that clinic,
Speaker 3: conferring with Lining or with Debbie, and apparently she'd been
Speaker 3: pestering him about a job for months and again, Dan,
Speaker 3: I'll say it again. She goes to work there for
Speaker 3: the first time on Monday before the murders, works three
Speaker 3: days and is murdered four days later with her family.
Speaker 3: If she doesn't go to work at that clinic, does
Speaker 3: this even happen? Did she learn something at this clinic
Speaker 3: about something Lininger was doing? Because Dan, as you know
Speaker 3: reading the book, there were a number of suspicious veterinarians
Speaker 3: on that side of town, Strange veterinary practices going on,
Speaker 3: a theft of animal tranquilizers from clinics, making healthy pets
Speaker 3: in and having been called the next day and saying
Speaker 3: they died and we've cremated the body. Strange things going on.
Speaker 3: If Linda Bricca worked at that clinic, and found out
Speaker 3: that some harm was coming to animals somehow, either by
Speaker 3: lining her or one of his veterinary friends. She's not
Speaker 3: going to let that go, right, So did she learn something?
Speaker 3: And she's physically involved with him and feels betrayed by
Speaker 3: what he's doing and threatens to blow the whistle. Liner's
Speaker 3: comfortable little life will implode, his great business, his marriage,
Speaker 3: his five kids, his reputation. And this guy was very
Speaker 3: status conscious. Everybody I interviewed that knew him, very concerned
Speaker 3: about his image and his standing in the community. So
Speaker 3: we're looking for motives for murder. They're all there. Personal
Speaker 3: cause homicide. He is involved with the female victim, the
Speaker 3: affair takes a wrong turn into rage and or fear,
Speaker 3: and that to me is the bricker case.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you include in this book some incredible photos, including
Speaker 4: crime scene photos. Kudos to you for the inclusion of
Speaker 4: all of these incredible photos of the homes and locations
Speaker 4: a map.
Speaker 3: I've got one hundred and sixty five images in there. Dan,
Speaker 3: And if you've read my books, I don't put twenty
Speaker 3: pictures in the middle of a book. I give you
Speaker 3: tons of images placed in the chapters where you need them.
Speaker 3: That's what true crime people want to see. And I
Speaker 3: also put a lot of section breaks in so the
Speaker 3: reader can rest and kind of gather all they learned.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a very complex case. I had
Speaker 3: to put a massive amount of file information and try
Speaker 3: to make it into an interesting narrative. Dan. It was
Speaker 3: originally five hundred and ninety pages. I got it down
Speaker 3: to five twenty. That includes the appendix too, So yeah,
Speaker 3: I went after a lot of images. There's there's pictures
Speaker 3: of the family that have never been published, crime scene
Speaker 3: photos of the strangler victims in there. And look at
Speaker 3: the cameo appearances in this narrative. Dan Richard Speck killed
Speaker 3: the eight nurses in Chicago in nineteen sixty six, Charles Whitman,
Speaker 3: the very first tower sniper. Valerie Percy, the daughter of
Speaker 3: senatorial candidate Charles Percy, is murdered a week before the brick.
Speaker 3: Is just an unusual year for true crime in the nation,
Speaker 3: and I think some of those crimes kind of dwarf
Speaker 3: what was going on in Cincinnati. But I tell you
Speaker 3: got you got a conservative Midwestern city confronting a mysterious
Speaker 3: serial killer while reeling from the slaughter of a beautiful
Speaker 3: suburban family in nineteen sixty six. It's quite a crime
Speaker 3: story in its own right, and you know that's why
Speaker 3: this book had to get out there.
Speaker 4: Absolutely yes, it's an incredible time and an incredible response
Speaker 4: by media and the public, the fear and the investigation
Speaker 4: that did not lead to a conviction. I want to
Speaker 4: thank you very much JT for coming on and talking
Speaker 4: about Summer's almost gone. The Rica Family murders, the most
Speaker 4: notorious cold case in Cincinnati history. Thank you very much. JT. Townsend.
Speaker 3: Hey Dan, do I have a quick second here? Absolutely,
Speaker 3: book is exclusively available at my website. My agent would
Speaker 3: wanting to say this www dot JT. Townsend dot com
Speaker 3: running a little special today with a coupon code. But
Speaker 3: again that's Jttownsend dot com hardcover softcover looking for the
Speaker 3: ebook in January. There's my plug.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. I was going to ask you
Speaker 4: for that and how people might be able to get
Speaker 4: a copy and see your other work Queen City Gothic
Speaker 4: and Queen City Notorious as well.
Speaker 3: That's links to buy those are on the website. You know,
Speaker 3: I like to I really write books with a true
Speaker 3: crime fan in mind. Lots of photos lots of pages,
Speaker 3: lots of space breaks, short paragraphs. You know, I like
Speaker 3: I write the books the way I would want to
Speaker 3: read them, you know, the way I want a true
Speaker 3: crime book to be. So I hope people buy it
Speaker 3: and enjoy it. It's a really incredible part of Cincinnati's history,
Speaker 3: you know, the underside of it. And I can honestly
Speaker 3: say Cincinnati lost its citizens in nineteen sixty six because
Speaker 3: of these events. So I appreciate you having me on, Dan.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. It was certainly a crime that
Speaker 4: changed Cincinnati forever. Thank you very much for talking about
Speaker 4: Summer's almost gone. JT. Townsend, you have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Good night you too, Thanks Dan, Thank you,