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Speaker 3: Lope, You are now listening to true Murder, the most
Speaker 3: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 3: have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history True Murder, with
Speaker 3: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 4: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 4: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 4: history and the authors that have written about them. Jerry
Speaker 4: Mark was a Peace Corps volunteer, lawyer, four h leader,
Speaker 4: vice president of his Cedar Falls High School senior class,
Speaker 4: and certainly a most likely to succeed young man when
Speaker 4: he graduated in nineteen sixty. In nineteen seventy six, he
Speaker 4: was convicted of four execution style murders of his own family.
Speaker 4: How could he have done such a thing and why?
Speaker 4: Author Scott Colwelti knew Jerry Mark from high school and
Speaker 4: went on to interview him in prison, attending the trial
Speaker 4: and discovering a mind consumed with anger, revenge, jealousy, and greed.
Speaker 4: Brother's Blood chronicles the killer's cross country motorcycle ride, the
Speaker 4: landmark investigation and arrest, the circumstantial case at trial, and
Speaker 4: the appeals that continued for thirty years. The book that
Speaker 4: were featuring this evening is Brother's Blood, A Heartland Cain
Speaker 4: and Able with my special guest, Scott Colwelty, Welcome to
Speaker 4: the program, and thank you to agreeing for this interview.
Speaker 4: Scott Cowealthy, thank you now, thank you for have you ma,
Speaker 4: and you're doing a good job with my last name there, oh,
Speaker 4: thank you, thank you, Glad. I asked before the first
Speaker 4: thing I normally ask is that I'm a very curious guy,
Speaker 4: and maybe he can tell us why, given all the circumstances,
Speaker 4: and this case is an older case, why you in
Speaker 4: particular felt it are compelled to write about this case
Speaker 4: and this story.
Speaker 5: Well, he was a high school classmate of mine. I
Speaker 5: knew him in high school and as one of those
Speaker 5: great guys. Everybody liked him. He was friendly, he was polite,
Speaker 5: he was all American boy type, you know, and not
Speaker 5: the No one would ever suspect him of doing anything
Speaker 5: like this. In fact, at the trial, the case was
Speaker 5: made that Jerry could never do anything like this, And
Speaker 5: that's what I thought when I heard that he was accused.
Speaker 5: So immediately I was interested. Terribly shocking crime out here
Speaker 5: in the heartland, you know, and I thought what Jerry
Speaker 5: market can't be And then I began following it and
Speaker 5: then watch trial very closely. And then in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 5: after he was in prison for three years, he threatened
Speaker 5: to kill himself because he was imprisoned illegally. And at
Speaker 5: that point I realized I had to get into this
Speaker 5: because circumstantial evidence they said was absolutely convincing, but to him,
Speaker 5: he was absolutely innocent and had no business in jail,
Speaker 5: and he was going to fast until he died or
Speaker 5: run one for the prison walls and hope they shot him.
Speaker 5: And at that point I realized I needed to talk
Speaker 5: to him, so I wrote him, and he remembered me,
Speaker 5: and I went down to Fort Madison, Iowa, where the
Speaker 5: state penitentiary is, and had an interview, and from then
Speaker 5: on I was hooked. I was just I was compelled
Speaker 5: to continue following the case through four or five appeals
Speaker 5: until two thousand and six, and that's when a judge
Speaker 5: said he should be let go or get a new
Speaker 5: trial because there was exculpatory evidence. And at that point
Speaker 5: I realized I had to write the book, finish the book,
Speaker 5: because I was convinced by now that Jerry did it
Speaker 5: and he was just a very good con man with
Speaker 5: these appeals, and I wrote the book basically so I
Speaker 5: could understand what he did and why he did it,
Speaker 5: and also to tell the world that he really is
Speaker 5: the killer and his appeals are fruitless and useless, and
Speaker 5: people should know what he did and what he what
Speaker 5: he put, what his victims to It was a horrible crime.
Speaker 4: Now, let's go back a little bit in for our audience.
Speaker 4: Tell us what can you describe Cedar Falls, Iowa. Tell
Speaker 4: us what the community is like, maybe a little bit
Speaker 4: of maybe a little bit of the history, what it's
Speaker 4: known for, But tell us, really the.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, Waterloo, Iowa. He is famous
Speaker 5: for having been the home of John Wayne Gay see
Speaker 5: you might know and also Michelle Bocklam who Michelle Backman,
Speaker 5: who made the mistake of thinking John Wayne Gacy was
Speaker 5: John Wayne born in winter said, you know that story.
Speaker 5: We're out here in the We're out here in the prairie.
Speaker 5: Uh Joe. Waterloo, i was known for the John dere
Speaker 5: Waterloo Tractor Works and Theedar Falls. I was known for
Speaker 5: the University of Northern Iowa, which has sports teams and
Speaker 5: also great Music Department and Great A County Department. Is
Speaker 5: known for several major kind of features of the education
Speaker 5: system here in Iowa and the towns. Both towns are
Speaker 5: rather quiet, not very large. I think what it is
Speaker 5: about eighty thousands there falls about thirty five thousand, and
Speaker 5: nothing happens here that you could call a major crime,
Speaker 5: and never has and maybe never will again. And then
Speaker 5: this crime came along in nineteen seventy five. It shook
Speaker 5: the town to the core. We just couldn't believe that
Speaker 5: anything could happen, anything like this could happen here. And
Speaker 5: then when we found out it was one of our own,
Speaker 5: not an outsider like the Clutter family in Kansas, the
Speaker 5: in cold blood pop Us crime, it was actually an
Speaker 5: intra family crime is unbelievable. And then when we find
Speaker 5: out it was Jerry Mark, the lawyer, Peace Carps volunteer,
Speaker 5: was even more incredible. Thing just getting more and more
Speaker 5: surprising and incredible to all of us. And that's why
Speaker 5: I think it garners so much attention. Certainly garners attention
Speaker 5: around here even now, many years now.
Speaker 4: Tell us about Jerry Mark's early childhood, tell us about
Speaker 4: Dorothy and Wayne Mark and the family less and Tom
Speaker 4: and the other brother to become a minister. Tell us
Speaker 4: about the Mark family themselves. What kind of worked were
Speaker 4: they are they known for. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Mark family and a little bit about what
Speaker 4: Jerry's childhood and along with his brothers, what it was
Speaker 4: like growing up in the Mark family.
Speaker 5: He grew up in a fairly large farm outside of town,
Speaker 5: not a little town named near theater falls name Finchford,
Speaker 5: close to Finchford, a large acreage I think twelve eleven
Speaker 5: twelve hundred acres, which is a large farm in those days.
Speaker 5: That's even a large farm now. And the four boys
Speaker 5: farmed it when they grew up. Wayne Mark was the father, patriarch.
Speaker 5: He also ran a real estate business. He bought and
Speaker 5: sold farms. They grew very wealthy off the farmland and
Speaker 5: off the real estate business. When Wayne died in nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy seven, I think it was the family was worth
Speaker 5: well over a million dollars, so there was a lot
Speaker 5: of money here. So Dick Mark was the oldest and
Speaker 5: he grew up with the other boys and then eventually
Speaker 5: left for the minister became a minister up in Canada,
Speaker 5: and as a matter of fact, I think he's in Winnipeg,
Speaker 5: or he was at the time of the murder. And
Speaker 5: then Jerry was the next oldest and then Tom. Tom
Speaker 5: had a problem. He was a schizophrenic and an alcoholic.
Speaker 5: For a while, he wasn't capable of doing much of anything.
Speaker 5: He was sort of a ne'er do well and kind
Speaker 5: of a homeless guy around around Waterloo for a long time.
Speaker 5: And then there was Less, the youngest. Less turned out
Speaker 5: to be the successful one in terms of getting along
Speaker 5: with people, running the farms, running the family operation. And
Speaker 5: Jerry for a while was going to be a lawyer.
Speaker 5: In fact, he passed the bar at Iowa and became
Speaker 5: a lawyer in Des Moines for the Legal Aid Society.
Speaker 5: So Jerry was the one that was you would expect
Speaker 5: to be the success. Turned out he kind of gave
Speaker 5: up on the law and after that he didn't have
Speaker 5: much of anything to do. That is, he really didn't
Speaker 5: end up doing much of anything. He moved to California
Speaker 5: and did odd jobs and lived off the two women
Speaker 5: he was involved with. So Jerry was the kind of
Speaker 5: it turned out to be the nre do well. Tom
Speaker 5: was the incapable one, and Dick was a minister off
Speaker 5: and the successful one was Less. And this bothered Jerry
Speaker 5: because Jerry was the one who really thought he taught
Speaker 5: Less all he knew about farming. When they were growing up,
Speaker 5: they were about four years apart. Dick was the oldest,
Speaker 5: and then there were four years and then there was Jerry,
Speaker 5: and then Tom came about four years later, and then
Speaker 5: Less was the youngest one at twenty five. There were
Speaker 5: approximately eight years between Lest the youngest and Jerry the
Speaker 5: second oldest, so that the family dynamic was set up
Speaker 5: in a way that really pitted the two brothers against
Speaker 5: each other. Jerry and Dorothy became kind of a team,
Speaker 5: and then Less and Wayne became another team, and they
Speaker 5: were always kind of at each other's throats at odds.
Speaker 5: They had pretty terrible family fights. The family dynamic was
Speaker 5: not healthy. There was a lot of dysfunction in the family,
Speaker 5: and Jerry grew up in the kind of rivalry between
Speaker 5: he and his brother and that just ground him down.
Speaker 5: And by the time Less inherited everything in September of
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy five, Jerry realized he was cut out of
Speaker 5: the inheritance. He was not going to end up running
Speaker 5: the family farms and the real estate operation like he planned,
Speaker 5: and the greed there began working its way into his
Speaker 5: heart and head. And that's when he decided I think
Speaker 5: that he had to do something about it.
Speaker 4: Now, there was a family meeting with Less and Jerry
Speaker 4: that members of the family attended, and of course Dorothy
Speaker 4: was there and Wayne. Now maybe he can tell us
Speaker 4: if Wayne was already struck with cancer at that time
Speaker 4: when this conversation had But tell us about that conversation
Speaker 4: or that debate, that argument, tell us what that argument
Speaker 4: contained and what was said at that time.
Speaker 5: Well, I had to do a lot of research for this,
Speaker 5: because of course I wasn't there, and nobody was there
Speaker 5: but the family, and I talked to Dorothy. I actually
Speaker 5: spent a lot of time with Dorothy way back in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty when I began really working on the project,
Speaker 5: and she gave us all this information about that family meeting,
Speaker 5: and I was rather shocked. And then I heard it
Speaker 5: corroborated by George Colthurst, the father of the slain woman.
Speaker 5: Georgine Colthurst was Less's wife, and she was killed along
Speaker 5: with last sent or two small children. And so really
Speaker 5: what happened was that, according to Dorothy and according to George,
Speaker 5: they had a real serious breakdown, a terrible argument basically
Speaker 5: over what they should do with Tom Tom was falling apart,
Speaker 5: wasn't doing well, and Jerry thought they should send him
Speaker 5: to manage clinic for a cure, and Wayne and Left
Speaker 5: thought that there was no cure, they ought to just
Speaker 5: caretake him. And of course the caretaking was less expensive,
Speaker 5: so Jerry was furious at him for being cheap skates
Speaker 5: and not spending more money on Tom. And then many
Speaker 5: other things came up, especially in terms of less Jerry's
Speaker 5: ability to handle the land and actually work the land,
Speaker 5: because he tended not to want to actually farm, and
Speaker 5: so they just started yelling and fighting. And at this
Speaker 5: point Jerry actually said to his father, who was dying
Speaker 5: of cancer, old man, when you die, I'm going to
Speaker 5: come back to Iowa and piss on your grave. And
Speaker 5: that sort of ended his connection with the family. Is
Speaker 5: a terrible thing to say, of course, and shocked everybody
Speaker 5: in the family. And then he left and basically went
Speaker 5: back to California, where he stewed and fumed and eventually
Speaker 5: began planning the murders. That's, of course, part of what's
Speaker 5: going on in the book. You need to read the
Speaker 5: book to get all the details, but there it is, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, was there something about a fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: or inherited. Was there something about Jerry actually running through
Speaker 4: money beforehand so that really he couldn't he really couldn't
Speaker 4: count on receiving anything once Wayne died eventually.
Speaker 5: Right, the real problem for Jerry was he kept going
Speaker 5: through money. He wasn't making much money, and the women
Speaker 5: he was with at various times. His first wife was
Speaker 5: not she didn't have a really well paying job, and
Speaker 5: the second girlfriend, Mimi Marilyn Forrest also did not do
Speaker 5: a lot of work. Us He worked hard, but again
Speaker 5: it was a slow paying, low paying job. So Jerry
Speaker 5: really had no serious source of income other than his family,
Speaker 5: and he kept getting his money from his father, and
Speaker 5: I think Wayne kept saying to him, Okay, you can
Speaker 5: have this now, but remember it comes off your inheritance.
Speaker 5: So Jerry was due to inherit fifty thousand dollars and
Speaker 5: by the time of this terrible breakdown, he had gone
Speaker 5: through pretty much the whole fifty thousand and there wasn't
Speaker 5: any lefts and so he stood to inherit basically nothing,
Speaker 5: even though there was plenty of money. The father said,
Speaker 5: all you guys get is fifty thousand dollars and if
Speaker 5: you want to go through it before I die, all right,
Speaker 5: And that's what happened with Jerry, And so he had
Speaker 5: nothing left. And I think he had nothing to lose
Speaker 5: really by coming back and doing what he did, other than,
Speaker 5: of course, his own sense of being a human being.
Speaker 4: What was the relationship between Jerry and his brother Less,
Speaker 4: as far as Dorothy knew, or as far as witnesses
Speaker 4: stated at that time.
Speaker 5: Well, Dorothy told me that they yelled at each other
Speaker 5: a lot, but in fact they were very good friends.
Speaker 5: Jerry was best man and Less his wedding. Believe it
Speaker 5: or not, Dick married them and Jerry was best man,
Speaker 5: and they seemed to be very close, and right about
Speaker 5: the time of the murders, Jerry wrote Less a letter
Speaker 5: asking him if he would vouch for him so he
Speaker 5: could get the job, and Less agreed to do that,
Speaker 5: and a letter that letter. There are two letters crossed
Speaker 5: in the mail right about the time of the murders,
Speaker 5: and they both seemed friendly. In the letter, they seemed
Speaker 5: to like each other. One of the puzzling aspects of
Speaker 5: this is how in the world could Jerry shoot his
Speaker 5: brother execution style when they had been such good friends
Speaker 5: all their lives. It's really beyond imagining to me, and
Speaker 5: I think it is to everybody who reads the story.
Speaker 4: Now, when you say after this meeting, after the big
Speaker 4: dust up at the home place, as they called it,
Speaker 4: and this is make sure that we understand it, that's
Speaker 4: when we're referring to. That's the homestead, the Jerry and
Speaker 4: Dorothy that's called the home place.
Speaker 5: Now when very large farmhouse. It still exists on Union
Speaker 5: Road outside of Cedar Falls, and it was the basic
Speaker 5: the home had been there almost one hundred years. It
Speaker 5: was built right around the turn of the century and
Speaker 5: gradually added on to various parts of the family, added
Speaker 5: another room or another section here and there, so it
Speaker 5: became a huge old farmhouse. There was the center of
Speaker 5: operations of the entire Mark family real estate and all
Speaker 5: the others those.
Speaker 4: Dealings they have, yes, right now. When he went back
Speaker 4: to California with and living with his girlfriend Marilyn forrest
Speaker 4: Or Mimi, Yeah, she was known as far as Mimi knew.
Speaker 4: What was What did Jerry say to Mimi?
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Speaker 4: Say you've just alluded to that he was began his
Speaker 4: planning of this horrific murder of his own family. But
Speaker 4: as far as Mimi knew, what was what kind of
Speaker 4: conversation did Jerry have with Mimi over this fight with
Speaker 4: his family and concerning these plans that you say that
Speaker 4: he was hatching in his mind to murder his own family,
Speaker 4: As far as Mimi knew what was going on in
Speaker 4: Jerry's mind at that time.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, this is where it gets rather diabolical.
Speaker 5: Because he realized the level of planning that Jerry had
Speaker 5: to undertake. He basically wanted to use Mimi as an alibi.
Speaker 5: He saw that he could use her and in fact,
Speaker 5: she could become his ally at if he ever got
Speaker 5: accused of doing anything. She would say, Oh no, no,
Speaker 5: it couldn't have been Jerry, because he called from various
Speaker 5: parts of a trip. What he told her basically was
Speaker 5: that he wanted to take this motorcycle that he had
Speaker 5: bought with his dad's money, a Honda four point fifty,
Speaker 5: and take a motorcycle ride to find himself because he
Speaker 5: was sort of at odds with what he wanted to do,
Speaker 5: and he no longer was interested in the law. So
Speaker 5: he bought this motorcycle, and he told Mimi he was
Speaker 5: going to ride down into the Mohave Desert around Coalinga
Speaker 5: and sit around, drink a few beers, maybe take a
Speaker 5: little longer ride, and maybe a little further west, a
Speaker 5: little further east rather, and then ride home. This is
Speaker 5: going to happen at the end of the month of October.
Speaker 5: He would start on Wednesday, and he would be back
Speaker 5: by Saturday, he told her, and all would be well.
Speaker 5: He'd feel good about himself again, and they could carry
Speaker 5: on with their lives. And so what he did was
Speaker 5: he called her from various places, but they weren't the
Speaker 5: places he really was. As it came out in the trial,
Speaker 5: he was much closer to Iowa at each time he called,
Speaker 5: and she, as far as she was concerned, when he
Speaker 5: was in Coalinga, he was actually up in Loveland, Utah.
Speaker 5: And then when he was in Provo, supposedly he was
Speaker 5: over in Cheyenne. So he told her, he said, listen
Speaker 5: to me, I'm in Provo, this was Thursday night, and
Speaker 5: I'm having a great time. I'll just ride around a
Speaker 5: little more. But in fact, he was way over in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
Speaker 5: much closer to Iowa. And the phone records they actually
Speaker 5: saved just just in time they rescued, I should say,
Speaker 5: in time to get all the evidence that he was making.
Speaker 5: He was lying about where he was calling from. So
Speaker 5: basically he set up this alibi with Mimi, and she
Speaker 5: would have testified had they not had the phone records
Speaker 5: that Jerry called from Coalinga and Provo and actually nowhere
Speaker 5: near Iowa, and that would have been a really pretty
Speaker 5: airtight alibi. But they found the phone records in that
Speaker 5: wrecked so Mimi didn't know anything. She was being used
Speaker 5: by Jerry the whole time.
Speaker 4: Now let's go back just a little bit, because this
Speaker 4: is I think is important to the story as well,
Speaker 4: is that Mimi's ex husband is involved in this somewhat
Speaker 4: in terms of a camper, in terms of this gun
Speaker 4: that ends up being used. So tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about how they came to have the gun in
Speaker 4: their possession, both of them, and talk about the little
Speaker 4: the ex husband and how this all happened.
Speaker 5: Right. Well, her Mimi's husband's name is Olga Alga, an
Speaker 5: interesting name, and all the and Mimi were not getting along,
Speaker 5: and Olga had had a thirty eight long Colt revolver.
Speaker 5: Actually it was a copy of a Smith and Wesson
Speaker 5: long Colt revolver, a Spanish copy, and had no registration,
Speaker 5: no serial number. It was untraceable, and it was in
Speaker 5: the old camper that Olga kept outside of his trailer
Speaker 5: is his mobile home in Berkeley. And Mimi and Jerry
Speaker 5: decided they're going to have to because they were separating.
Speaker 5: Mimi and Olga were separating. They were going to have
Speaker 5: to get some trading stock in the divorce. So they
Speaker 5: decided to steal this camper truck and that way they
Speaker 5: could get a lot of August stuff and trade off
Speaker 5: the stuff that he was keeping from me. It was
Speaker 5: not a happy divorce. They were mad at each other.
Speaker 5: See the whole thing so they spirited off this camper
Speaker 5: truck and Jerry this is where the story starts for me.
Speaker 5: Jerry was pawing through all this junk in the camper
Speaker 5: and came across this thirty eight long cold pistol. Sorry,
Speaker 5: a revolver is not a pistol. A revolver great big.
Speaker 5: It's a big weapon. They had it in the They
Speaker 5: showed pictures of a weapon like that in the corn
Speaker 5: a very large revolver, and he realized he had an
Speaker 5: untraceable weapon on his hands, and it fired thirty eight
Speaker 5: long cold cartridges. He had no idea what that meant.
Speaker 5: He just thought thirty eight was a thirty eight like
Speaker 5: the rest of us, not familiar with weapons, right. So
Speaker 5: Olga owned that revolver, and Jerry ended up with it,
Speaker 5: and he put it down in his storage cabin a cabinet,
Speaker 5: and left it there outside their apartment until he needed it.
Speaker 5: Then he put it in his motorcycle and it ended
Speaker 5: up being the weapon that killed these people.
Speaker 4: Now we're going to jump ahead just a little bit,
Speaker 4: but in terms of we don't find this out in
Speaker 4: the book till a little bit later. But let's let's
Speaker 4: what does Mimi find out in regards to the gun.
Speaker 4: Shortly after, Jerry gets on his four P fifty Honda
Speaker 4: and start to go find himself. What does she discover
Speaker 4: regarding that gun.
Speaker 5: Well, she went down to the She discovered when she
Speaker 5: came home from work Wednesday night that the little storage
Speaker 5: shed had been broken into, that the lock was the
Speaker 5: little lock, tiny, little crappy little lock was broken off,
Speaker 5: and there was stuff missing. What she discovered was that
Speaker 5: the Iowa license plate that Jerry had on his little
Speaker 5: one hundred cc motorcycle was missing, and that the revolver
Speaker 5: was missing. And she really was worried about that because
Speaker 5: all of a sudden he was gone. The revolver was gone.
Speaker 5: She assumed somebody just stole it out of the storage shed.
Speaker 5: And when she learned of the murders, and by then
Speaker 5: this was Friday night. She had learned of the murders
Speaker 5: on Saturday, and she realized that Jerry had had access
Speaker 5: to that revolver, that really made her nervous. She told
Speaker 5: her father, and her father called the Waterloo Police department
Speaker 5: because that's where the murder was. I mean, it was
Speaker 5: national news and so the Waterloo Police immediately knew that
Speaker 5: Jerry left on Wednesday, that he had access to this revolver,
Speaker 5: and that Mimi was in fact kind of worried about
Speaker 5: what happened to him. Why would he take a revolver,
Speaker 5: why would the rather, why would the revolver disappear at
Speaker 5: the same time Jerry disappeared, and she didn't really know
Speaker 5: where Jerry was. He did not call her from Friday
Speaker 5: till Sunday, so there was no communication between Jerry and Mimia.
Speaker 5: Between Friday and Sunday had plenty of time to kill
Speaker 5: his family and then start on the way back from
Speaker 5: Cedar Falls, So the timing was right, and Mimi knew
Speaker 5: this and she was really upset about it. She did
Speaker 5: not pass the light detector test the following Friday, and
Speaker 5: they actually arrested her and David Dutton, the prosecutor, decided
Speaker 5: to better arrest Mimi because she must have known something
Speaker 5: or she would have passed that light deitector test, and
Speaker 5: that's when they began really looking hard at Jerry because
Speaker 5: they realized something was known by his girlfriend. She wasn't
Speaker 5: able to reveal what it was, but she was very
Speaker 5: nervous about that large revolver missing.
Speaker 4: And the police also asked that they asked for a
Speaker 4: light detector test, uh for for Jerry? And what was
Speaker 4: his response?
Speaker 5: He said no, He said he didn't have to do it.
Speaker 5: They weren't reliable, they had no business asking him, and
Speaker 5: he really didn't think he should. He got very scared
Speaker 5: of that larchitecture test because I think he knew that
Speaker 5: he wouldn't pass it, or if he'd passed it, it meant
Speaker 5: that there was just something else going on that they
Speaker 5: were going to keep looking at him. They were. He
Speaker 5: was nervous that they would even ask him because he
Speaker 5: realized then that he was a suspect, and he never
Speaker 5: even thought it would get to the stage where they
Speaker 5: would suspect him. How could I possibly kill my brother?
Speaker 5: He kept saying, over and over. I couldn't kill anyone,
Speaker 5: much less the brother that I loved and was best
Speaker 5: man at his wedding.
Speaker 4: Now, how did how did the police proceed with this?
Speaker 4: We've kind of jumped ahead a little bit, but they
Speaker 4: wanted to check the phone records. They also wanted to
Speaker 4: place him as close as possible to the home place.
Speaker 4: Rather than his story about being nowhere near that the
Speaker 4: no one nowhere near Iowa whatsoever. So so, how did
Speaker 4: the police proceed with their investigation.
Speaker 5: Well, they were very wise about this, and Tom Rouxslow,
Speaker 5: the head of the BCI investigation, really knew what he
Speaker 5: was doing. He took this case personally because of the
Speaker 5: two small children and also because there was this terrible
Speaker 5: hometown murder. And they found out that all the BCI agents,
Speaker 5: I think they had twenty five different agents, two different
Speaker 5: police departments working on a plus higway patrol. A lot
Speaker 5: of agents were working. And they knew that that Honda
Speaker 5: four fifty had a range of about one hundred and
Speaker 5: forty miles that's about as far as they would go
Speaker 5: on a tank. And so they began looking when they
Speaker 5: took pictures around starting on Interstate eighty and then all
Speaker 5: the ruds anywhere near Cedar Falls all the way out
Speaker 5: to California. And once they found someone that thought they
Speaker 5: could identify Jerry Mark by the picture, they would look
Speaker 5: very hard every one hundred, one hundred and twenty miles
Speaker 5: one hundred and forty miles, and they finally found several
Speaker 5: eye witnesses that said, well, you know, that sure looks
Speaker 5: like the guy that was here. And they were doing
Speaker 5: this the week after the murder, so they very quickly.
Speaker 5: They needed to move fast. They knew. They very quickly
Speaker 5: found people that thought they could identify Jerry Mark. And
Speaker 5: then they got very, very very lucky. As David Dunnan said,
Speaker 5: the hand of the divine was with us. They got lucky.
Speaker 5: When they got to Apostle Roeblaze, California. They walked into
Speaker 5: Ken's Sporting goods store and there was a clerk named
Speaker 5: Jack Makondomski. He was at the trial and testified that
Speaker 5: a young redheaded man had come into his store on
Speaker 5: October twentieth, I think it was thirteen or eleven, days
Speaker 5: before the murders, and bought a box of thirty eight
Speaker 5: long cold cartridges, signed his name and social security number
Speaker 5: for him, so there it was Jerry Mark SOCID security number,
Speaker 5: and he left with these cartridges. They would fit that revolver.
Speaker 5: So immediately they knew they probably had their man, and
Speaker 5: shortly after that they arrested him. They arrested him within
Speaker 5: ten days of the murder. That's another shocking aspect here
Speaker 5: was this very all of a sudden he was under arrest.
Speaker 5: I think it was a shock to him as well
Speaker 5: as everybody else.
Speaker 4: Now what we have avoided here, but I think it
Speaker 4: is important to tell the details of this, What did
Speaker 4: Jerry Mark do at his brother and brother in law's home,
Speaker 4: and so describe the family itself, Less and Georgine and
Speaker 4: the two children, how old these children were, and describe
Speaker 4: for us, because you go into great detail in the
Speaker 4: book what Jerry did and how he did it at
Speaker 4: the murders at the less his home. So tell us
Speaker 4: how he went about doing this and what exactly he did.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I'd like for people to read the chapter.
Speaker 5: It was a very hard chapter to write. It's called
Speaker 5: the Intruder. And by the way, each chapter in the
Speaker 5: story section of the book is matched by a chapter
Speaker 5: in the sources section of the book, so you can
Speaker 5: read where I got the material to use in a story,
Speaker 5: so you can kind of compare. If people think that
Speaker 5: I added a lot too that they can read the
Speaker 5: sources and read it for themselves, or they can just
Speaker 5: read the story and not bother with the sources because
Speaker 5: it's divided into two sections. But anyway, the Intruder chapter
Speaker 5: was the hardest chapter to write because it's so brutal.
Speaker 5: And I looked at the autopsy reports, I listened to
Speaker 5: what Dunton said happened in the home at the trial,
Speaker 5: and his opening gave a long, detailed explanation and then
Speaker 5: basically tried to write it almost from a first person
Speaker 5: point of view, not quite, but I don't identify them.
Speaker 5: I just said there was this intruder and he walks in,
Speaker 5: and it shifts the first it shifts the present tense.
Speaker 5: It happens right in the present. You're right there watching it.
Speaker 5: And it's actually very hard to read. I think too.
Speaker 5: I was looking at a couple days ago and I thought, oh,
Speaker 5: this is not pleasant reading. But anyway, he basically crept
Speaker 5: into the house around two thirty in the morning after
Speaker 5: the lights went off. Less had been out finishing the
Speaker 5: harvest that very night, Halloween night, and he hid down
Speaker 5: the basement. He pulled out that revolver, and he snuck
Speaker 5: upstairs and came into their bedroom and evidently woke them
Speaker 5: up as far as anyone can tell. He flipped on
Speaker 5: the light and they could see who he was, and
Speaker 5: they had they had a bit of a screaming shouting match,
Speaker 5: and then he fired a warning shot down between Less
Speaker 5: and Georgine, and then he made which scared them, and
Speaker 5: then he fired another one just grazed Georgine's side, and
Speaker 5: then he made them kneel on pillows and he executed
Speaker 5: them five shots totally into the less than four shots
Speaker 5: total into Georgine executed them just brutally with this large
Speaker 5: caliber revolver. And then the horrifying, most horrifying aspect of
Speaker 5: the thing that still makes people wonder, how what kind
Speaker 5: of a monster do we have here? He went upstairs
Speaker 5: and shot each of the children Julie was five years
Speaker 5: old and Jeff was a year and a half in
Speaker 5: their beds, one shot in the head and one shot
Speaker 5: in the heart. Execution stopped, and so he basically slaughtered
Speaker 5: the family execution style and came downstairs, tried to make
Speaker 5: it look like a robbery. He bashed out their family
Speaker 5: heirloom grandfather clock, and then pulled out a bunch of
Speaker 5: drawers and ran out the door, basically ran down the
Speaker 5: driveway in his tennis shoes they had they found some
Speaker 5: tennis shoe tracks, climbed on that Honda and took off
Speaker 5: and got out of their as pat as he could.
Speaker 5: The clock stopped at three h three in the morning
Speaker 5: because he pulled the circuits downstairs in the basement, and
Speaker 5: they figured the murders took place sometime dry before that,
Speaker 5: probably just before three in the morning.
Speaker 4: Now, how were the bodies of the victims discovered and
Speaker 4: by who?
Speaker 5: Well, this was another horrifying aspect of the story. Clark
Speaker 5: Runner was a neighbor and a helper, and he came over.
Speaker 5: He planned to come over fairly early in the morning,
Speaker 5: like farmer as well, you know, six thirty or seven,
Speaker 5: just as the sun was breaking, and help with the harvest,
Speaker 5: helped finish the harvest. He was just finishing up and
Speaker 5: he noticed that the electricity was off to the corn dryer,
Speaker 5: and he thought that was odd. And then what was
Speaker 5: especially odd was that nobody was around. The house was
Speaker 5: absolutely dark and silent, which is totally unusual. That family
Speaker 5: would have been up running around, shouting, and there would
Speaker 5: have been a lot of activity. Nothing. And then he
Speaker 5: walked up to the back door and looked out, looked
Speaker 5: through the back door glass in back door and saw
Speaker 5: that the window was smashed and a plant, a potted fern,
Speaker 5: had been thrown through the window. And he got scared nervous.
Speaker 5: He realized there'd been a robbery of some kind, or
Speaker 5: a burglar or somebody had entered the house, certainly in
Speaker 5: an illegal way, and so he did not go in
Speaker 5: the house himself. He thought, this is none of my business.
Speaker 5: I shouldn't be entering a house. I'm not related to
Speaker 5: these people. He got in his truck and drove up
Speaker 5: the road about three miles to Dorothy Mark's house. Dorothy
Speaker 5: and Waynemark by then had moved away from the home place,
Speaker 5: and we're living in a little development on Turkey Fort
Speaker 5: Heights down Union Road. He went and got them. So
Speaker 5: the three of them came back to the Lucky.
Speaker 2: Land casino asking people, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: Lucky? In line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 1: my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 3: Actually do I.
Speaker 1: Have to say?
Speaker 2: Yes? You do?
Speaker 1: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win in tell.
Speaker 2: Well, there you have it. You could get lucky anywhere
Speaker 2: playing at Lucky landsloughts dot com play for free right now?
Speaker 2: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Necessary? My long eighteen plus terms conditions plus fifty years.
Speaker 5: The house Dorothy and Wayne Wayne stayed in the truck.
Speaker 5: Dorothy and Clark went in the house and basically discovered
Speaker 5: the body, to their great horror. I don't think Dorothy
Speaker 5: would ever get over. In fact, neither of them ever
Speaker 5: got over. There was a terrible trauma for Clark. He
Speaker 5: couldn't talk about it very well to anybody. And Dorothy
Speaker 5: talked about it, but it was in the most kind
Speaker 5: of distant terms. She distanced herself from it by absolutely
Speaker 5: insisting it could not have been Jerry to the end
Speaker 5: of her life, and she lived a long life. She
Speaker 5: only died about three years ago. She insisted that Jerry
Speaker 5: didn't do it. So they basically discovered the bodies and
Speaker 5: the bodies of the children and had to call the
Speaker 5: sheriff and began the horrible task of trying to figure
Speaker 5: out what happened, Who did this, who could have done this?
Speaker 5: And Dorothy insisted, like I say, to the end of
Speaker 5: her life, that some intruder, some horrible monster came into
Speaker 5: the house. It could not have been her own son.
Speaker 4: It was interesting in the book too, that you show
Speaker 4: the basically she might have been in shock, but just
Speaker 4: the the strength of Dorothy. Wayne stayed in the truck,
Speaker 4: but Dorothy basically the the helper. Like you say, Clark
Speaker 4: or he was really rattled and shaking and trembling. But
Speaker 4: Dorothy kept it together somehow to be able to do
Speaker 4: what was needed to be done at that time. And
Speaker 4: as anybody that reads the book will realize too, that
Speaker 4: Dorothy stayed almost rock like through this whole thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there were the observations that I heard from several
Speaker 5: different people was that Dorothy seemed too cold to them.
Speaker 5: They couldn't quite believe she was not behaving like a mother.
Speaker 5: She was behaving like an official. You know, this is
Speaker 5: an official thing. This is a serious problem we have
Speaker 5: to get to solve. Her emotions weren't as engaged as
Speaker 5: they thought it could be or should be of a
Speaker 5: mother who had just seen the best part of her
Speaker 5: family destroyed, including her own grandchildren. She acted like she
Speaker 5: just was investigating, and she took over. And of course
Speaker 5: I always took that as a defense mechanism. How else
Speaker 5: could she act and still get anything done. She would
Speaker 5: dissolve in a puddle on the floor. Really, if she lost,
Speaker 5: God lost in the emotions. So she stayed hard and
Speaker 5: cold right through to the end, mostly by insisting that
Speaker 5: there was a terrible injustice done. First terrible injustice was
Speaker 5: the murder of the family, and the second terrible injustice
Speaker 5: was her own son was arrested and imprisoned for a
Speaker 5: crime he did not commit, she insisted, so she sort
Speaker 5: of steeled herself by creating these Uh, well, no, the
Speaker 5: murders weren't created by but creating a story that but
Speaker 5: Jerry off the hook. She was a hard woman when
Speaker 5: I talked to her, she just had her jaws set
Speaker 5: the whole time. But a terrible myths, a terrible misfortune
Speaker 5: had come upon this family, the murder and the accusation
Speaker 5: against Jerry, which led to a conviction longly.
Speaker 4: Now after this, of course police were looking to eliminate
Speaker 4: any of the family members, and they, of course they
Speaker 4: spoke to Dick, and they spoke to Tom, had to
Speaker 4: speak with him to eliminate these people's potential suspects, And
Speaker 4: of course they could not find could not get a
Speaker 4: hold of Jerry right away. And we've already spoken about
Speaker 4: how police initially knew something was amiss or initially and
Speaker 4: decided to pressure Mimi and had the light detector test,
Speaker 4: which indicated that she was being She was not being
Speaker 4: completely truthful, how many days and under what circumstances was
Speaker 4: Jerry Mark finally arrested.
Speaker 5: Well by the time the weekend after the killings came,
Speaker 5: he knew that they were suspecting him. He actually told Mimi.
Speaker 5: He wrote Mimi a note at the end of their
Speaker 5: interviews that Friday, one week after the murders that the
Speaker 5: police suspect me. I did not do it. I love you.
Speaker 5: I actually saw that note. And so Mimi was in
Speaker 5: jail that Friday night, one week after the murders, and
Speaker 5: he was free to go saince he didn't take a
Speaker 5: light detective test, they had no real evidence. He went
Speaker 5: home to his parents' house and he told his parents
Speaker 5: what had happened. They were shocked. There was a terrible
Speaker 5: weekend because they basically had to live with the fact
Speaker 5: that Mimi was in jail and that under suspicion. And
Speaker 5: that's when he revealed to them that he thought he
Speaker 5: might have bought some cartridges and they were They were
Speaker 5: furious at him. And then something happened during the weekend
Speaker 5: and Jerry realized that they must have found evidence, because
Speaker 5: I think word came around that they were they were
Speaker 5: on the verge of going they were going to arrest him.
Speaker 5: The family lawyer had discovered this, I think, and then
Speaker 5: sure enough on Monday, Monday afternoon, the police were there
Speaker 5: and they take He was standing out in the yard
Speaker 5: he didn't want this to happen, in the house, looking
Speaker 5: at the flowhorse, and the family was in, Dorothy and
Speaker 5: Wayne watching. They put him in the car and took
Speaker 5: him over and put him, put him under arrest and
Speaker 5: arraigned him that very day, and within about three days
Speaker 5: he was out on two hundred thousand dollars bail. The
Speaker 5: family was wealthy enough to put that up, so he
Speaker 5: was under suspicion, then arrested within ten days and then
Speaker 5: out on bail. And he stayed on on bail for
Speaker 5: five months and lived in the community of Cedar Falls
Speaker 5: as the accused murder of his own family. Was really
Speaker 5: a bizarre situation.
Speaker 4: Now, getting back to the conversation he had because he
Speaker 4: knew that he had to counter these allegations that were
Speaker 4: involved in him being arrested, but he had to speak
Speaker 4: to his parents and ironically, and even more I guess pathetically,
Speaker 4: these people now have to spring for a really good lawyer.
Speaker 4: And also he's staying with them, and he has to
Speaker 4: explain why he got these cartridges. So tell us a
Speaker 4: little bit more about why he said he was held
Speaker 4: to buy these guns, these keys.
Speaker 5: To his defense was having a story. He had to
Speaker 5: have a story, and Mimi was not going to provide
Speaker 5: it because of the phone records. So I flat out
Speaker 5: ask him in prison in nineteen eighty, I said, Shay,
Speaker 5: what in the world were you doing? What were you
Speaker 5: doing that whole time? Because he insisted, he as he insisted,
Speaker 5: and he still insists of this very day, that he
Speaker 5: did not do it. He could not do it. He
Speaker 5: could not have killed his brother because because and so
Speaker 5: I said, well what were you doing? Then he said, well,
Speaker 5: the truth is I lied to the police. I do
Speaker 5: have to admit that I had a girlfriend. He met
Speaker 5: a girl on the road. I believe her name was Ginger.
Speaker 5: The names changed from the story to story, And because
Speaker 5: she was a pretty hitchhiker, they had a little affair,
Speaker 5: little fling, and he took her further different route than
Speaker 5: he told Mimi was going to take her. And he
Speaker 5: didn't want to tell anybody that because Mimi would have
Speaker 5: realized he was unfaithful to her. Basically, so he was
Speaker 5: covering himself by not telling her the truth about where
Speaker 5: he was, and decided to go on further toward Iowa.
Speaker 5: He was having a good time with his hitchhiker, and
Speaker 5: then he let her go and she took off, and
Speaker 5: he realized he had to lie to Mimi in order
Speaker 5: to cover that story. And then the cartridges. I said, well,
Speaker 5: what about why in the world would you need a
Speaker 5: box of thirty eight long cold or any thirty eight cartridges?
Speaker 5: And he said he lived in the neighborhood in near Berkeley,
Speaker 5: which was dangerous, and there were Simboni's Liberation Army people there,
Speaker 5: and he wanted to write a journalistic article about them,
Speaker 5: and he would get in good with them by giving
Speaker 5: them a box of cartridges. He thought they might be,
Speaker 5: you know, amenable to talking more if he would buy
Speaker 5: something for them they could use, and they could always
Speaker 5: use thirty eight cartridges. I mean, that was basically his story.
Speaker 5: I thought it was amazing. No, I can't believe that
Speaker 5: anybody would believe that. And he made these He made
Speaker 5: these stories up regularly, actually, for various people at various times.
Speaker 5: And that's all he told me. And of course, my
Speaker 5: big question is why didn't you take the stand and
Speaker 5: tell this from a stand. Well that's another story. I'll
Speaker 5: get into that later, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So now so now he's out on bail and
Speaker 4: the trial, the trial is going to start I guess
Speaker 4: fairly soon. I mean, maybe you can tell us how
Speaker 4: long it was before the trial started and what was
Speaker 4: his defense strategy, what was his the strategy of his
Speaker 4: defense team.
Speaker 5: Well, the trial didn't start till May, and it was
Speaker 5: a change of venue. It took place in Sioux City.
Speaker 5: It was a very long time before he was actually
Speaker 5: out in Sioux City in terms of months. He was
Speaker 5: arrested in November, and six months later the trial started,
Speaker 5: So basically for six months he was out, they were
Speaker 5: preparing their defense and they didn't really have much to
Speaker 5: go on. They brought thirteen witnesses and the prosecution brought
Speaker 5: sixty witnesses, so it was pretty quite overwhelming, and the
Speaker 5: only real defense he had was that he was a
Speaker 5: good guy. Everybody he brought character witnesses. Of course, his
Speaker 5: own mother testified, but they were not able to answer
Speaker 5: the phone records. And they got one of the best
Speaker 5: lawyers in Iowa, by the way, it was Lawrence Galise,
Speaker 5: who was Attorney General of Iowa for a year and
Speaker 5: his assistant John Sandra, both highly skilled lawyers, and they
Speaker 5: worked and worked and work to try to find a
Speaker 5: way to convince a jury that this man could not
Speaker 5: have killed those people. But they just didn't have much evidence.
Speaker 5: There were some circumstance, well, it was all circumstantial. I
Speaker 5: after emphasize that there was nothing that placed Jerry on
Speaker 5: the scene. The gun was never found, there were no
Speaker 5: fingerprints of any kind. They placed him by eyewitness very
Speaker 5: near the home place up in Aclee, Iowa, but they
Speaker 5: didn't place him any nearer than that. So the evidence
Speaker 5: was actually kind of sparse in terms of actually putting
Speaker 5: him on the scene. But all the eyewitnesses that did
Speaker 5: see him were sure they saw him. They identified him
Speaker 5: in and I would in a lineup. And then of
Speaker 5: course there were all these problems with the cartridges that
Speaker 5: fit that particular gun, and then the lead lots. They
Speaker 5: tested the lead lots they were shown to be the
Speaker 5: same cartridges that he bought him and it couldn't be
Speaker 5: any more air tight than that. The jury deliberated only
Speaker 5: five hours so and then convicted him of four capital crimes.
Speaker 5: There just wasn't a very strong case. Laurrence Scalise left
Speaker 5: Sioux City the night before the verdicant went back to
Speaker 5: the Moine. I think he must have known that there
Speaker 5: was no way that Jerry was going to get off
Speaker 5: on this one because the evidence was so overwhelming against him.
Speaker 4: What did the defense team ask him to do that? Jerry?
Speaker 4: One of the more amazing parts of the book is
Speaker 4: the conversation they had with him during the trial about
Speaker 4: a strategy that they felt was necessary for them to
Speaker 4: employ at that trial. And then and then you talk
Speaker 4: about in the book about a dream that Jerry had
Speaker 4: and then his reconsideration. So tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Right, I had a lot of help. You can imagine
Speaker 5: how much help I would need with the research for this.
Speaker 5: Had all the trial transcripts, but most importantly, I had
Speaker 5: all of David Dunton, the prosecutor, this special prosecutor from
Speaker 5: Blackhawk County. That and he's still alive, is still working
Speaker 5: and then doing wonderful job at an attorney. Had he
Speaker 5: gave me all of his notes for the trial, and
Speaker 5: he gave me the notes he would have used to
Speaker 5: cross examine Jerry. Had Jerry taken the stand and all
Speaker 5: through the trial, lawn Sculli has kept saying that Jerry,
Speaker 5: you've got to take the stand. You've got to prepare
Speaker 5: yourself to face David Dutton, and you've got to be
Speaker 5: ready to tell your story. And Jerry kept saying all
Speaker 5: the way through the trial, Yes, I'll take a stand.
Speaker 5: I think I can do that. I can handle that.
Speaker 5: And then in the story that I create he plans
Speaker 5: to He tells his mother and he tells police that
Speaker 5: he's going to take the stand the next day, and
Speaker 5: that night he has this terrible dream. It's a nightmare,
Speaker 5: and in that nightmare he understands what Dutton is going
Speaker 5: to say to him. And in that he has a
Speaker 5: dream and it's a nightmare dream. And in that nightmare,
Speaker 5: I actually used to note that David Dutt would have
Speaker 5: used had Jerry taken a stand, and it really is
Speaker 5: a nightmare for Jerry Mark. And then fact, at that
Speaker 5: point he would have been crucified because Dutton had all
Speaker 5: the lies, lie after lie after lie after Why did
Speaker 5: you keep lying? You're a trained attorney, you know about
Speaker 5: the law. Tell us why you lied. And of course
Speaker 5: all he do is answer with these fragmented stories about
Speaker 5: a girlfriend on the road, a need to buy cartridges
Speaker 5: for the simones. These stories would not carry water or
Speaker 5: anybody carry wait with anybody, and the jury would have
Speaker 5: seen through it. And of course at that point he
Speaker 5: would have been convicted by his own words and there
Speaker 5: wouldn't have been anyway his mother would have supported him then,
Speaker 5: I think, and he would have gone to prison as
Speaker 5: a convicted child killer, and that would have been even worse.
Speaker 5: So I think he took the least bad way out.
Speaker 4: And his defense team knew that the case was very
Speaker 4: strong against Jerry. That's why they recommended something which they
Speaker 4: normally don't do, which is to take the stand in
Speaker 4: your own defense.
Speaker 5: They really thought he had to do that and it
Speaker 5: was the only way he was going to be able
Speaker 5: to clear himself, and they said try to. What he
Speaker 5: really wanted to do was introduce some doubt in one
Speaker 5: juror's mind. All he had to do was say, okay,
Speaker 5: here's what probably happened and create a story. And at
Speaker 5: least one juror might have said, you know, I think
Speaker 5: he might have had a point there. Besides, he's such
Speaker 5: a great guy, could he be? How could he have
Speaker 5: done that? And some jur could have been convinced and
Speaker 5: let him off therefore, and you know, because he didn't
Speaker 5: take a stand, I think that sealed his fate for sure.
Speaker 4: Now what Dorothy, his mother was a good witness and
Speaker 4: a strong witness for the defense. What was her testimony
Speaker 4: and what was her demeanor like at trial?
Speaker 5: Well, basically she took Dutton on. She told David Dutton
Speaker 5: that it doesn't bother me that what you're asking me,
Speaker 5: because I want to get at the truth, mister Dutton.
Speaker 5: What bothers me is that Jerry's been wrongly accused and
Speaker 5: you had no business and the police had no business
Speaker 5: even arresting him, much less bringing him to trial. She
Speaker 5: was very strong and very clear that her sons loved
Speaker 5: each other. She loved them, they got along just fine.
Speaker 5: There was no way Jerry could have committed this crime.
Speaker 5: And she kept repeating that, and of course Dunton basically said,
Speaker 5: this is sediment. We know that we have the evidence
Speaker 5: regardless of what the mother thinks. And Dunton basically took
Speaker 5: her a part too, and not in so much in
Speaker 5: cross examination, but in the clo thing said, of course,
Speaker 5: some others are going to testify that their sons. Her
Speaker 5: sons are wonderful people who love each other. There's just
Speaker 5: not the evidence that actually supports that. So you've got
Speaker 5: to go by the evidence, not by by what the
Speaker 5: mother says. So that would turn it out to be
Speaker 5: what they thought was a fairly strong argument for Jerry's innocence,
Speaker 5: turned out to be something that Dunton Riddy could take apart,
Speaker 5: and the jury eventually disregarded it.
Speaker 4: Now, Now, the one of the one of the things
Speaker 4: I found interesting as well is that the scalas and
Speaker 4: Jerry decided that even though he wasn't going to take
Speaker 4: the stand, that maybe he could act as co counsel
Speaker 4: and then in that way he could make a statement
Speaker 4: at the end, just very much like his lawyer could
Speaker 4: address the jury tell us about that. I think what
Speaker 4: was the result of that.
Speaker 5: You know, one aspect of this case which makes it
Speaker 5: very interesting is that lawyers can always find loopholes, and
Speaker 5: I kept looking for loopholes Jerry. In fact, all of
Speaker 5: his appeals were based on minor loopholes in the case.
Speaker 5: All of his appeals just basically said there was this
Speaker 5: little issue, this little issue is and that would introduce
Speaker 5: enough doubt to get him off. They were looking for
Speaker 5: some way to introduce a loophole, and Jerry said, well,
Speaker 5: I just really want to tell my story. There's no
Speaker 5: reason I shouldn't. I'm going to declare myself my own lawyer.
Speaker 5: And when you're free to do that during a trial,
Speaker 5: I'll just say, okay, I'm my own lawyer. I'm going
Speaker 5: to stand up and make my own case as a
Speaker 5: lawyer as part of the closing. He thought he could
Speaker 5: introduce his testimony as part of his own lawyer's closing,
Speaker 5: and the judge was actually shocked. Judge Inglekus said, well,
Speaker 5: I'll have to take that hunder consideration. Nobody's ever asked
Speaker 5: to do that, and Dunton strongly objected. He said, there's
Speaker 5: no way the defendants should take the stand in his
Speaker 5: own defense without being cross examined. If he wasn't willing
Speaker 5: to be cross examined, he has no business acting as
Speaker 5: a co counselor at the end of the trial. And
Speaker 5: at that point and Jerry decided not to and the
Speaker 5: Anglicists didn't have to rule on it. I think he
Speaker 5: would have ruled against it, but he did not have
Speaker 5: to rule on it. That was a good thing.
Speaker 4: Really, Now you say that the jury didn't deliberate for
Speaker 4: very long, and they came back with the convictions for
Speaker 4: four counts of first degree murder. Yes, and off he
Speaker 4: went to prison. And what did his lawyers advise him
Speaker 4: after that, or even even at the sentencing itself, What
Speaker 4: did they advise him to do in light of what
Speaker 4: was in store a little bit later.
Speaker 5: Well, they've they've realized that there are plenty of plenty
Speaker 5: of opportunities during the trial to find loophole. There were
Speaker 5: problems here and there. There were minor issues. There were
Speaker 5: se eyewitnesses that disagreed. There was an issue with what
Speaker 5: date did the one of the witnesses saw him if
Speaker 5: he saw him on Friday or Saturday, leslie one. And
Speaker 5: so they just kept saying, Okay, Jerry, you've lost for now,
Speaker 5: but you're going to win on appeal. We can almost
Speaker 5: guarantee it. And that way, you know, hate to be
Speaker 5: cynical about this, but that way they kept themselves in
Speaker 5: business for a long time. His lawyers, not so much
Speaker 5: lawn Scoolise, but John Sander remained his lawyers through several
Speaker 5: appeals and they basically kept themselves employed with the Mark
Speaker 5: family money keeping appeals going because the mother absolutely thought
Speaker 5: these appeals had to keep going. She knew Jerry was
Speaker 5: going to get off sooner or later. They actually had
Speaker 5: rewards out for the real killer. Their local paper carried
Speaker 5: ads for people that would help find the real killer,
Speaker 5: and their strategy was to continue looking for loopholes, and
Speaker 5: then when DNA evidence came out, they said, Okay, now
Speaker 5: we've got DNA evidence, let's look for that. Gradually, the
Speaker 5: deutron activation analysis was disregarded and that was a strong
Speaker 5: part of the trials showing the leadloss. So as time changed,
Speaker 5: times changed, and notions of DNA evidence came out, they
Speaker 5: thought there was new evidence that could prove he was innocent.
Speaker 5: And they never did find the weapon, you know, that
Speaker 5: kind of thing, So they kept trying and trying and
Speaker 5: trying it until finally in two thousand and six Judge O'Brien,
Speaker 5: Donald O'Brien said, in fact, he should get a new trial,
Speaker 5: that he really didn't get a fair trial, and there
Speaker 5: was an exculpatory evidence that I mentioned at the beginning,
Speaker 5: and that's when I really got shocked and realized that
Speaker 5: they hadn't looked at all the evidence, and then their
Speaker 5: judge O'Brien hadn't looked at all the evidence. There were
Speaker 5: contradictory cases, and there was some issue with the DNA evidence,
Speaker 5: but it wasn't enough to override that major evidence of
Speaker 5: the cartridges and the phone records and then the motorcycle
Speaker 5: license plates, there was enough evidence to convict him that
Speaker 5: didn't contradict anything that putting that actually paid they should
Speaker 5: have paid attention to. And that's when the judge three
Speaker 5: judge panel listened to this appeal said Okay, that's it.
Speaker 5: There's actually no reason to give this man freedom. He
Speaker 5: got a fair trial. He should stay in prison the rest.
Speaker 4: Of his life.
Speaker 5: And that's what happened.
Speaker 4: Now, tell us about you say that three years after
Speaker 4: his conviction, you asked him for an interview and he
Speaker 4: granted you an interview. Tell us about that interview.
Speaker 5: Well, I was with my car at that time. I
Speaker 5: had a co writer, a co worker, Linda Kentner, who
Speaker 5: worked at the Theater Falls Data Record and covered the trial,
Speaker 5: and she and I we interviewed several people. We interviewed
Speaker 5: George and Margaret Colthurst, the parents of the slain woman.
Speaker 5: We interviewed Dorothy, and we interviewed David Dutton and Lawrence Scalise,
Speaker 5: and then we went down to prison together and interviewed Jerry.
Speaker 5: As she knew Jerry fairly well from the trial. They
Speaker 5: had talked some off and on during the trial a little,
Speaker 5: and I had known him from heist, known him from
Speaker 5: high school, and I really wanted to talk to him
Speaker 5: about what had happened. And we met him in that
Speaker 5: prison visitor area, and he was a very muffled up guy.
Speaker 5: It looked like he'd been doing a lot of weightlifting,
Speaker 5: and he was also very tense. And the thing that
Speaker 5: came out of that conversation more than anything, was how
Speaker 5: upset he still was at his who did not let
Speaker 5: certain evidence come out about the Mark real estate business.
Speaker 5: The Marked real estate business was engaged in some shady dealings,
Speaker 5: and in fact, two local lawyers were disbarred because of that.
Speaker 5: And Jerry thought that if had that evidence come out
Speaker 5: during the trial, there would have been a new motive.
Speaker 5: The judge or the jury could have seen that there
Speaker 5: were people really angry at Wayne Mark for these crooked
Speaker 5: land dealings, and that possibly there could have been some
Speaker 5: doubt introduced in some jury's mind. And he actually broke
Speaker 5: down and cried a bit when he talked about upset
Speaker 5: he was that his father wouldn't let this evidence come out.
Speaker 5: His father really protected these lawyers at the time over
Speaker 5: his own son's freedom, and that really bothered him. And
Speaker 5: also he was furious that David Dunton, he was furious
Speaker 5: that the court system had let him down and the
Speaker 5: legal system had let him down, and that he had
Speaker 5: basically been framed. So he was indignant and upset the
Speaker 5: whole way through. And I realized that we had a
Speaker 5: kind of sociopath a lawyer here who had who had
Speaker 5: lied his way through life and was still lying to us.
Speaker 5: I mean, even at the time, I realized that these
Speaker 5: stories just didn't make any sense. It kind of made
Speaker 5: me nervous to be around him as a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: but I realized he wasn't going to do anything to us.
Speaker 5: He was just making his own case, inventing he needed
Speaker 5: to vent on this case because he felt really what
Speaker 5: upsetting most was that he was caught. I don't think
Speaker 5: he was upset that he committed this terrible crime, but
Speaker 5: that he was caught.
Speaker 4: For right now, what did he were? Your motives that
Speaker 4: you wanted to write this book very clear to him
Speaker 4: at that time, and what did he think at the
Speaker 4: time about you writing this book? And do you know
Speaker 4: what he is his thoughts are regarding the end product
Speaker 4: your book, and that's finally released this year.
Speaker 5: I have no idea about that. He's not he's not
Speaker 5: talking to me. I did get a letter from a
Speaker 5: book sell may not a se but a block made
Speaker 5: of his that said he knew Jerry's story and he
Speaker 5: would like to read the book, and I sent a
Speaker 5: copy to him. I'm waiting to hear what he thinks
Speaker 5: about the book. But I went down there with the
Speaker 5: notion that if he has a story to tell, I
Speaker 5: could help tell it. I mean, I was a newspaper writer.
Speaker 5: I'd done a lot of writing. I taught writing. I
Speaker 5: pay attention to language. I thought I could help tell
Speaker 5: his story, and if he really had a point in fact,
Speaker 5: I believe that maybe there's some chance that he got
Speaker 5: a raw deal. I wasn't really sure. Linda was more
Speaker 5: Linda Kettner was more sure than I was. But I thought, well,
Speaker 5: all right, I'd like to listen to him. I was
Speaker 5: really curious, and especially because he had committed he said
Speaker 5: he would kill himself. That sort of got my attention.
Speaker 5: And then I realized the more I listened, and by
Speaker 5: then I'd read the trial transcripts and paid attention to
Speaker 5: the evidence, the more I realized I was dealing with
Speaker 5: a kind of inveteral liar and a killer, and it
Speaker 5: was a kind of nerve wracking. But at the time
Speaker 5: I started talking to him about it, and when I
Speaker 5: was listening to him, I thought, well, you know, he's
Speaker 5: pretty convinced. He certainly convinced Mimi, and he convinced his
Speaker 5: mother that he was innocent because his mother was ready.
Speaker 5: But Mimi. I did talk to Mimi. I was going
Speaker 5: to interview her too, but John Sander wouldn't let me
Speaker 5: because of the ongoing appeals. But she told me over
Speaker 5: the phone from Berkeley that everything I needed to know
Speaker 5: about the Mark murders I could learn from Jerry Mark,
Speaker 5: and that to me told me that she thought he
Speaker 5: was guilty. By then they were divorced by the way,
Speaker 5: she get.
Speaker 4: Married to him, right, and she attended the trial, the
Speaker 4: entire trial.
Speaker 5: You know, I think Mimi and her mother, both Mimi
Speaker 5: and Jerry's mother rather Dorothy, had to be kept away
Speaker 5: because from the actual listening to the trial, because there
Speaker 5: was a chance they could be called those witnesses. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I heard the full, full bore evidence and all the
Speaker 5: rest of us saw on read.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that wasn't the book as well too, because they
Speaker 4: were witnesses. They cannot attend that part of the trial or.
Speaker 5: Ain't their testimony if they sat through the trial? Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, And you say that the community Seater Falls
Speaker 4: still is affected by this murder as well.
Speaker 5: One of the biggest surprises to me. You know, this
Speaker 5: is a very small publishing company, ice Cube Press and
Speaker 5: North Liberty. Ioway, it's not Time Warner, and we have
Speaker 5: very short, very small print runs. We expected maybe a
Speaker 5: couple thousand copies at the most. It's in its fourth printing.
Speaker 5: Now people can't seem to get enough of it. It's
Speaker 5: just it's they kind of fly off the shelves. I
Speaker 5: had no idea. Everywhere I go I signed copies. I've
Speaker 5: got more readings coming up in signings. It's very very
Speaker 5: popular in the sense that people want to know this story.
Speaker 5: They remember hearing about it from their parents, if they
Speaker 5: were small at the time, and if they were alive
Speaker 5: at the time, they remember everything about it. So we
Speaker 5: have long conversations about what they remember and all the
Speaker 5: stuff they've heard, and it sort of sets the record straight,
Speaker 5: and they just keep wanting to know more about it
Speaker 5: because it's just so unusual.
Speaker 4: Now it is the at the time. Did the case
Speaker 4: resonate how far did it resonate, say, nationally or nationally
Speaker 4: in the US?
Speaker 5: Well, horrible crimes happen everywhere. Crimes of fifth caliber from
Speaker 5: a family member who is so well educated and so
Speaker 5: well liked and so popular, so well known in the
Speaker 5: community against his own family are in fact highly unusual.
Speaker 5: So this did have a national audience. There was there
Speaker 5: everybody covered this. I noticed the Chicago Tribune did an
Speaker 5: extensive story on the on the judge o Brand's decision,
Speaker 5: and several reporters from around the country have covered that.
Speaker 5: So you know, it does have some national legs, as
Speaker 5: they say, but so far, I think it's a great
Speaker 5: regional interest because everybody remembers it. I'm going to be
Speaker 5: curious to see if the larger audience is ever interested
Speaker 5: in reading the story, because it certainly has interest to
Speaker 5: people that are acquainted with it at this point.
Speaker 4: Anyway, was there supporters of Jerry Mark based on the
Speaker 4: conviction on circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, two years ago, he had his fiftieth
Speaker 5: reunion and several of his classmates from Cedar Falls I
Speaker 5: went down to Fort Madison and visited him, and they
Speaker 5: came home absolutely convinced a horrible injustice has been done,
Speaker 5: that Jerry's imprisoned wrongly, that somebody should do something about it.
Speaker 5: And they encourage all their classmates to write him and
Speaker 5: actually go down and see him and try to help him,
Speaker 5: because he'd been in prison all these many years, wrong, wrongly,
Speaker 5: and he needs some help. And so people still aren't
Speaker 5: convinced that he didn't do it. They still insisted he
Speaker 5: is such a good guy that there's no way he
Speaker 5: could have done those terrible crimes. That's why I think
Speaker 5: they need to read this book and get the full story.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, What was your What was the effect of
Speaker 4: covering this story from aune need you're very very you
Speaker 4: know very much about and from somebody that you that
Speaker 4: you knew that was accused of this murder. How did
Speaker 4: it affect you?
Speaker 5: I actually I felt like people were pressuring me after
Speaker 5: the two thousand and six appeals. Everybody said, when are
Speaker 5: you going to finish that book? We want to know more?
Speaker 5: And I began writing articles about it in the paper
Speaker 5: and delivering actually shortened versions of it, and huge crowds
Speaker 5: would show up. I remember one at the Cedar Falls Library,
Speaker 5: three hundred people showed up. I had to actually give
Speaker 5: it twice because there's just so much interest. That actually
Speaker 5: encouraged me to continue, because I realized this is not
Speaker 5: something that's going to go away. Everywhere I went, people said,
Speaker 5: all right, I finished that book. We want to read
Speaker 5: that story. So from a curiosity a standpoint, I think
Speaker 5: this finally satisfies their curiosity. This story now is known
Speaker 5: or is going to be known for people to finish
Speaker 5: the book, and from now on I think the facts
Speaker 5: of the case will be known. And it's kind of
Speaker 5: entered into the mythology of you know, the dark mythology
Speaker 5: of Iowa, where this terrible killer who was one of
Speaker 5: the nicest guys anybody who wanted to know did what
Speaker 5: he did and actually there's no doubt about it. I've
Speaker 5: been called a why done it? Rather than who done it?
Speaker 4: I was just going to say that too, that you
Speaker 4: you coined that phrase that if this is not a
Speaker 4: who done it, but a very much why he had
Speaker 4: done it right exactly, and you explore that well, Scott,
Speaker 4: I want to congratulate you on a great book, very
Speaker 4: very compelling read. You're on the edge of his seat
Speaker 4: all the way through, even though it seems like somewhat
Speaker 4: of a slam dunk, but there's so many twists and
Speaker 4: turns in this and you've really captured the essence of
Speaker 4: this this trial and how it affected the Citty. Again,
Speaker 4: I want to congratulate you on a great book, Brothers Blood.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate your interest. I can't I can't thank
Speaker 5: you enough for this in depth interview.
Speaker 4: Thank you well. I want to thank you, and I
Speaker 4: know that the audience is very interested in this. I
Speaker 4: know that I first became aware of this your book
Speaker 4: because of true crime book reviews and Kim Cantrell, and
Speaker 4: she does a great job, doesn't pull any punches, and
Speaker 4: she raved about this book so very rightfully so too,
Speaker 4: so I want to thank her as well. And I'm
Speaker 4: sure we'll be hearing some response from the audience and
Speaker 4: this story would definitely resonate with the audience that listens
Speaker 4: to this program.
Speaker 5: So good well, thank you, Dan, and I appreciate the interview.
Speaker 4: As I say, well, thank you very much, Scott and
Speaker 4: I hope to hear from you again and the best
Speaker 4: of luck with this book. But like you say, this
Speaker 4: story is very interesting to a lot of people and
Speaker 4: I'm sure it will continue. And the best of success
Speaker 4: in the future whatever you do, and another book project
Speaker 4: that you endeavor to do. So thank you very much,
Speaker 4: and you have a great evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you you too, Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Even listening to the program True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors have written
Speaker 4: about them, and the book that we've been featuring this
Speaker 4: evening is Brothers God by Scott Quallette cal Welty. Good Night,