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Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good evening. In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa,
Speaker 2: the idyllic calm of nineteen seventy eight was shattered by
Speaker 2: a series of brutal murders. Carol Beavers, of Vivacious High
Speaker 2: School junior and her mother, Clementine became the unsuspecting victims
Speaker 2: of a heinous act of violence that left the community
Speaker 2: reeling For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping
Speaker 2: a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then another shocking
Speaker 2: murder occurred, tying the threads of horror together. A Monster
Speaker 2: in Mount Pleasant delves into the unraveling of this dark chapter.
Speaker 2: Drawing from years of meticulous research, The story reveals not
Speaker 2: just the pursuit of justice, but the profound emotional scars
Speaker 2: left behind, from the shattered dreams of a bright young
Speaker 2: girl to the lifelong grief of families torn apart. This
Speaker 2: book captures the deep humanity behind the headlines. This compelling
Speaker 2: narrative is told through the eyes of a classmate of
Speaker 2: Carol and the murderer, now a federal judge. The author
Speaker 2: unearthed the societal cracks that shape both the victims and
Speaker 2: the perpetrator. It's a haunting journey into a community forever
Speaker 2: changed by tragedy, where resilience and the quest for truth
Speaker 2: stand as testaments that those lost too soon. The book
Speaker 2: they were featuring this evening is A Monster in Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 2: A Story of murders and Justice, with my special guest
Speaker 2: author CJ. Williams. Welcome to the program, and thank you
Speaker 2: very much for this interview. CJ. Williams.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me to do this interview here today.
Speaker 3: I look forward to it.
Speaker 2: And congratulations on this book, A Monster in Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm happy to have finally got it accomplished
Speaker 3: for all these years of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Tell us of your connection to this area, this Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 2: and also to this story. Tell us how you came
Speaker 2: to be and wanted to be the author of this book,
Speaker 2: A Monster in Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to so. I grew up in Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 3: small town eight thousand people southeast Iowa. Pleasant quiet little
Speaker 3: town back in nineteen seventies, and I grew up there,
Speaker 3: and it was a safetown back in those days. The
Speaker 3: last time there had been any murder of Mount Pleasant
Speaker 3: had been back in the nineteen forties. It was policed
Speaker 3: by a small police force, eight manned police force. The
Speaker 3: chief of police was guy in his late twenties who
Speaker 3: had no police training really and didn't really need it
Speaker 3: in a town that size. But in the course of
Speaker 3: about six months, one of my classmates was brutally murdered,
Speaker 3: raped as she was dying on the garage floor of
Speaker 3: her house. Her mother had been shot and killed first
Speaker 3: during the assault. The crime was unsolved for six months
Speaker 3: months the town was in terror. Six months later, a
Speaker 3: waitress at a restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher
Speaker 3: was brutally beaten to death in the early morning hours
Speaker 3: and died a few days later in the hospital. It
Speaker 3: turned out that the perpetrator the murder of all these
Speaker 3: women was a classmate of mine, a year ahead of
Speaker 3: me in high school, who had his own kind of
Speaker 3: sad story. But I lived during that time period. I
Speaker 3: lived during those murders, and it was a shock to
Speaker 3: the community and a shock to my family directly. I
Speaker 3: knew Carol, she was a classmate of mine. I wasn't
Speaker 3: real close with her. My older brother was closer, but
Speaker 3: our families were close to the Beavers family. Carol Beaver's
Speaker 3: her mother, Clementine Max Beavers, her dad ran a small
Speaker 3: grocery store in town where we shopped, and everybody knew
Speaker 3: Max and Clementine. It was a shock in that sense.
Speaker 3: It was a shock that my mother, who was a
Speaker 3: newspaper reporter and edited and photographer at the time, was
Speaker 3: recruited by the Bureau of and Criminal Investigation to come
Speaker 3: and take photographs at the scene. That was common back then.
Speaker 3: Police forces didn't have cell phones back then with their
Speaker 3: own cameras, and taking photographs in the dark and so
Speaker 3: forth was a talent, and so they would call upon
Speaker 3: the local newspaper photographers come out and take photos of
Speaker 3: crime scenes. So my first knowledge of the murders of
Speaker 3: the Beavers was when I woke up at about five
Speaker 3: am and found my mother out in a living room
Speaker 3: with my father and a couple of friends, drinking and
Speaker 3: crying because she just got back from taking photographs at
Speaker 3: the murder scene, and so this at home. And then
Speaker 3: it got even worse when Monte Seeger, the high school
Speaker 3: boy who murdered all these women, was later evidence was
Speaker 3: suppressed and he wasn't prosecuted for many years later. And
Speaker 3: so all this happened at a very formative time in
Speaker 3: my life life when my safe cocoon of a little
Speaker 3: town of Mount Pleasant was shattered. Everybody was in fear,
Speaker 3: the complacency, the security that we used to have was gone.
Speaker 3: And then you had, on top of that the frustration
Speaker 3: that you couldn't do anything about it. And then you
Speaker 3: have the frustration of the legal system seemingly failing to
Speaker 3: hold this man accountable for the murders he committed. Had
Speaker 3: a huge, huge influence on me, a huge influence on
Speaker 3: my twin brother. He later became a police officer. He
Speaker 3: died in line of duty about three years ago. And
Speaker 3: then I think it led me to get into law
Speaker 3: enforcement and ultimately become a prosecutor and now a federal
Speaker 3: judge because it had such an impact on our lives.
Speaker 3: I think my brother and I both felt like we
Speaker 3: had to do something. I think that influenced us in
Speaker 3: our futures.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. Let's get to your description of Clementine, Clementine
Speaker 2: pardon me, and Max and Carol. You say Carol's almost
Speaker 2: like an only child, just because her other siblings have
Speaker 2: already moved on, and she was conceived when she was
Speaker 2: when Clementine or Clementine pardon me, was forty two years old.
Speaker 2: So just tell us a little bit about Max and
Speaker 2: Clementine and Carol, and a little bit about what was
Speaker 2: happening in their lives October twenty eighth, just previous to
Speaker 2: October twenty ninth, nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to so. Max, a World War Two veteran,
Speaker 3: served in the Navy, and it was in the Navy
Speaker 3: where he suffered some hearing loss. He and Clementine, who
Speaker 3: was working in a post office in a small town
Speaker 3: near Mount Pleasant, had met before the war and then
Speaker 3: got married during the war. A good Catholic family. They
Speaker 3: had eight children. Carol, as you mentioned, was the last
Speaker 3: of eight children, and children were spread out over many years,
Speaker 3: so her oldest brother was some twenty years older than Carol.
Speaker 3: But so in nineteen seventy eight, Carol was the only
Speaker 3: child left at home. Most of her siblings were around town.
Speaker 3: A couple out of state, but most of his siblings
Speaker 3: were around town living nearby. Every Sunday morning they went
Speaker 3: to Mass at the church. Max was well known in town.
Speaker 3: He was just assault of the earth kind of guy.
Speaker 3: Back in those days. He would allow people to have
Speaker 3: credit accounts at his grocery store, and so if people
Speaker 3: couldn't pay for their groceries, they could buy groceries on credit.
Speaker 3: He would often write off debts that poor families had
Speaker 3: so they can make sure they could eat. He and
Speaker 3: Carol liked golf, and so they were known to golf
Speaker 3: and father daughter tournaments the local country club. Clementine was
Speaker 3: a stay at home mom for most of the part,
Speaker 3: but she also helped out at the grocery store at
Speaker 3: the time as well. Just a real sweet family. Carol
Speaker 3: was bubbly, energetic. Her locker in the high school was
Speaker 3: in the same hallway as mine, And what I remember
Speaker 3: most is her constant laughing and giggling. She had a
Speaker 3: very unique, infectious laugh, and she was a very bubbly
Speaker 3: person and cheerleaders one might imagine with some kind of
Speaker 3: somebody with that kind of personality and they're just a
Speaker 3: very sweet kind girl. Her aspiration one day was to
Speaker 3: be an architect.
Speaker 2: You write about the home that the Beavers lived in,
Speaker 2: and also the practice at that time in small town
Speaker 2: America that they would leave the doors unlocked, and so
Speaker 2: people were very trusting in those days. Tell us about
Speaker 2: the situation that enabled this person a person to sneak
Speaker 2: into this home.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean it's ironic in a way, because Clementine
Speaker 3: was a little bit different from the typical Mount pleasanter
Speaker 3: back in those days. So I remember, we never locked
Speaker 3: the doors to our house growing up. Nobody did. Really.
Speaker 3: We would leave our cars in the driveway with the
Speaker 3: keys in the ignition because it was just easier that way,
Speaker 3: and if you needed to move cars around, people could
Speaker 3: do that and things went untouched. There just wasn't any burglaries, thefts,
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff really to speak of in Mount
Speaker 3: Pleasant in those days. Clementine was a little bit different.
Speaker 3: And Clementine had a routine. Max always got up five
Speaker 3: am or earlier in order to go into the grocery
Speaker 3: store to start the baking, and so he went to
Speaker 3: bed early every night, usually around eight thirty, and he
Speaker 3: would go up to bed. Clementine liked to watch the
Speaker 3: nightly news, and she would stay down in their basement furnished.
Speaker 3: They had built a little bar down there, and it
Speaker 3: was a kind of a TV room, if you will.
Speaker 3: She would stay downstairs and watch the news. And then
Speaker 3: it was her routine every night when she came up
Speaker 3: after watching the news to go to bed, that she
Speaker 3: would lock the doors to the house, which was very unusual,
Speaker 3: but that was her routine. On this particular night. The
Speaker 3: murders occurred sometime between nine ten o'clock at night. Clementine
Speaker 3: was downstairs. Clementine, I'm sorry. It was downstairs watching TV
Speaker 3: when she was murdered, And so it's interesting, ironic. Had
Speaker 3: she had this taken place an hour later or so,
Speaker 3: Clementine's schedule would have counted for her locking the door,
Speaker 3: and the money secer would not have been able to
Speaker 3: gain entry to the house. Any other house on that
Speaker 3: block you probably could have gotten into, but not the
Speaker 3: Beaver's house. But on this particular night, you struck before Clementine,
Speaker 3: in her normal routine locked up.
Speaker 2: You write about that he likely, this perpetrator likely might
Speaker 2: have seen her Clementine watching TV. He came into the basement.
Speaker 2: You say that he likely heard some noise upstairs, but
Speaker 2: decided to go into the basement. Clementine unaware. He attacked
Speaker 2: her from behind, shot her in the back of the head.
Speaker 2: Tell us what happens, and where is Carol at this time?
Speaker 2: And where is Max at this time? Tell us what
Speaker 2: happens with this perpetrator and after this initial attack of Clementine.
Speaker 3: Sure, and so part of this is based upon the
Speaker 3: forensic evidence, the circumstantial evidence, my years of experience as
Speaker 3: a prosecutor and as a judge kind of piecing things together.
Speaker 3: And part of it's based on what Money Seeger himself
Speaker 3: told me. I interviewed Money Seger three times in the
Speaker 3: prison and Moosa, Iowa, and he, for the first time
Speaker 3: confessed committing the Beaver's murders to me. His version is
Speaker 3: one where he claimed it was kind of a spur
Speaker 3: of the moment, accidental kind of thing, premeditated. I don't
Speaker 3: buy that for a number of reasons. So here's what
Speaker 3: I think happened. Explain why I think it happened that way.
Speaker 3: The basement had small basement windows that you could look through,
Speaker 3: and Clementine and Carol were both downstairs watching TV for
Speaker 3: a while when she goes upstairs. Sometime around nine o'clock,
Speaker 3: she was trying to get a hold of a boyfriend
Speaker 3: that she had been dating and they had split up,
Speaker 3: and so she was trying to make a call to him.
Speaker 3: Clementine stayed downstairs, and so I think that Monty was
Speaker 3: outside casing the place. He was looking through the basement window.
Speaker 3: And it was when Carol separated from Clementine that gave
Speaker 3: him his opportunities strike and the best opportunity to kill
Speaker 3: them separately. Max In the meantime, I had gone to
Speaker 3: bed at about eight o'clock, between eight and eight thirty,
Speaker 3: he had gone to bed and was down the hall
Speaker 3: upstairs across from Carol's room, and Carol was in her
Speaker 3: room listening to the radio and trying to call a
Speaker 3: friend of hers, trying to locate her kind of ex
Speaker 3: boyfriend at the time when Monty entered in through the
Speaker 3: garage unlocked garage door. From there he entered into the
Speaker 3: kitchen from the garage immediately to the left of the
Speaker 3: stairs going down to the basement. He snuck down the stairs,
Speaker 3: came up behind Clementine, put the rifle twenty two collars
Speaker 3: or bold action rifle, put it up against the back
Speaker 3: of her head and pulled the trigger. The way this
Speaker 3: rifle operated was it was a manual feed, meaning he
Speaker 3: had to pull the trigger and then he would have
Speaker 3: to pull the bolt back, which would have ejected the
Speaker 3: showcasing from that first shot. He would have then had
Speaker 3: to have loaded another bullet and then push the bolt
Speaker 3: forward in order to discharge firearm again. No shell casings
Speaker 3: were found anywhere in the house. That tells me that
Speaker 3: he was careful enough to pick up the shell caseinges
Speaker 3: after a shot, which tells me this is somebody who's
Speaker 3: thinking things through. No fingerprints were found anywhere in the house,
Speaker 3: which tells me he was wearing gloves at the time.
Speaker 3: So he kills Clementine goes upstairs. Carol had heard a
Speaker 3: shot and heard something, and she came running down the
Speaker 3: hallway to figure out what the loud noise was. I
Speaker 3: don't know that she knew it was a gunshot, but
Speaker 3: she came running down the hallway as Monty was coming
Speaker 3: up the stairs into the kitchen. They met in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: At that point, Monty raises the barrel of the gun
Speaker 3: and points to that Carol's face. We know this because
Speaker 3: she has a defensive wound. The first shot goes through
Speaker 3: her left arm and acrossed her cheekbone and out the
Speaker 3: side of her head. It didn't actually enter her skull,
Speaker 3: but it was enough to knock her down. According to
Speaker 3: the pathologist, the blow from that shot, Monty would have
Speaker 3: you believe that the gun just accidentally went off. That
Speaker 3: makes no sense. Carol would not have had the defensive
Speaker 3: move of putting her hand in front of her face
Speaker 3: if the gun burl had not been pointed at her,
Speaker 3: and she likely recognized Monty they had a speech class together.
Speaker 3: Once she was down, Monty came up to her and
Speaker 3: then put the gun behind her left ear. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: you're right here, and put another bullet into her head
Speaker 3: at that point. Then he dragged her out to the garage,
Speaker 3: stripped her pants off of her, pulled down, pulled up
Speaker 3: her shirt, pulled down her broad and raped her as
Speaker 3: she was dying in the garage. So he shot her
Speaker 3: twice in the kitchen. As I just related, no shewcases
Speaker 3: were found there, which means he was careful enough to
Speaker 3: pick up the shellcasings from those two bullet discharges as well.
Speaker 3: All this time, maxis asleep down the hallway. I remember
Speaker 3: he had hearing loss from his service in the war,
Speaker 3: and he was asleep and so he didn't hear any
Speaker 3: of this and slept through the entire thing. He wakes
Speaker 3: up a round one thirty in the morning. His Clementine
Speaker 3: is not in bed next to him, which was unusual
Speaker 3: and of course, and so he went out to investigate
Speaker 3: and first found Carol. He saw a trail of blood
Speaker 3: from the kitchen leading out to the garage. His initial
Speaker 3: thought was as somebody cut themselves really badly somehow and
Speaker 3: probably went to the doctor. And he went out to
Speaker 3: the garage to see if the car was gone, and
Speaker 3: that's where he found his daughter. I felt her, she
Speaker 3: was cool. He goes back inside. He calls the police.
Speaker 3: Back in those days, there was no nine one one,
Speaker 3: so he tries to dial the police using the long number.
Speaker 3: He's off by a diday. He gets a stranger in town,
Speaker 3: mumbles out some words. The stranger gets enough to understand
Speaker 3: that the police are needed at the Beavers home and
Speaker 3: tells Max he'll take care of it. And then Max
Speaker 3: goes downstairs to find Clementine and finds her dead downstairs.
Speaker 3: So that's how Max came to discover the murder of
Speaker 3: his wife and his youngest daughter.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is an incredibly vivid scene that you create in
Speaker 2: this book. The idea that a sergeant Duncan arrives immediately
Speaker 2: and doesn't know the particulars yet, and he's in a
Speaker 2: dark garage. He hears a voice. He discovers Carol's body
Speaker 2: and all the blood, and notices that her clothes are
Speaker 2: missing from the waist down. But he when he gets
Speaker 2: his person, he urges this person to come out of
Speaker 2: the garage. This person is disoriented. Max is completely disoriented.
Speaker 2: He has stunned. His arms are flailing away. You say, spastically,
Speaker 2: tell us what happens in this incredible vivid scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean imagine this. So you're you're an officer
Speaker 3: in Mount Pleasant who has never encountered violent crime like
Speaker 3: this ever. You're one of two officers on duty. It's
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. The only other officer is
Speaker 3: a rookie who just joined the police force six months before,
Speaker 3: and you're called to this horrific scene where all you
Speaker 3: know is that somebody's been shot. That's the most that
Speaker 3: Max is able to convey to this other person that
Speaker 3: got conveyed ultimately to the officer. So So shows up
Speaker 3: to the scene. He has a flashlight, he has a
Speaker 3: three point fifty seven magnum revolver, pulls a revolver because
Speaker 3: he sees movement, as you mentioned in the garage, here's
Speaker 3: something in the garage. He can see enough into the
Speaker 3: garage with a flashlight beam to see a body, half naked,
Speaker 3: body on the floor with blood. So he knows things
Speaker 3: are bad and he calls out to whoever's in the
Speaker 3: garage to come out with their hands up pall several times.
Speaker 3: The officer related this to me. He's scared to death
Speaker 3: at this point. He has no idea what he's going
Speaker 3: to encounter, and his finger is on the trigger of
Speaker 3: the revolver of the three point fifty seven magnum. When
Speaker 3: Max finally starts to come out, a Max is worrying.
Speaker 3: He's disheveled, his hairs dishevel He's got a pajama top on.
Speaker 3: He had managed to pull some pants on, but he
Speaker 3: is in shock and he's mumbling incomprehensively. Hands are as
Speaker 3: you said, spastic moving all about. According to the officer
Speaker 3: and it's dark, and so, as the officer described it
Speaker 3: to me, Max wasn't stopping. He ordered Max to stop
Speaker 3: once he came outside, he wasn't stopping. At the last second,
Speaker 3: the officer recognizes Max and recognized him from the store.
Speaker 3: Anybody who knew Max knew he wasn't anybody to be afraid.
Speaker 3: He wasn't violent, and so the officer immediately released the
Speaker 3: tension he had on the trigger. He said he came
Speaker 3: very close to killing Max that night. About that time,
Speaker 3: the rookie shows up. Max's oldest son shows up because
Speaker 3: Max had managed to call his son as well, and
Speaker 3: so the officer puts Max in his son's care, tells
Speaker 3: the rookie to go around back the house, and then
Speaker 3: the officer makes the brave decision to enter the house
Speaker 3: because he's convinced the killer is still inside. Max mumbled
Speaker 3: something about his wife, and so the officer enters the
Speaker 3: house alone in the full belief that the murderer is
Speaker 3: still inside. He goes through the top floor the main
Speaker 3: floor of the house and finds nobody, So now he
Speaker 3: has to go in the basement. There's only one way
Speaker 3: in and one way out of the basement, and so
Speaker 3: as he's going down the basement stairs, he's convinced that
Speaker 3: he's going to encounter the murder down the basement, and
Speaker 3: yet he carries on. He can hear some dripping coming
Speaker 3: from the basement. He doesn't know what the dripping is.
Speaker 3: He discovers the dripping sound as the dripping of blood
Speaker 3: coming from Clementine's head into a puddle beneath her as
Speaker 3: she lay slumped over in the chair. Ultimately, nobody else
Speaker 3: is found in the house. Ambulance spears personnel arrived soon after.
Speaker 2: Now you say that the murders sends shock waves through
Speaker 2: the mount pleasant, Well, that's of course that would happen.
Speaker 2: But also you talk about the autopsy of when it
Speaker 2: reveals and some of the things that like the locket
Speaker 2: that the heart shaped locket that seems to be missing.
Speaker 2: Just tell us what the autopsy reveals about the crimes committed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the autopsy showed Clementine was killed probably fairly instantly.
Speaker 3: She had a single gunshot, one in the back of
Speaker 3: the head. It was a twenty two Cloiber rifle. And
Speaker 3: what many people don't understand is a low velocity twenty
Speaker 3: two caliber seems it's a very small bullet in many ways,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe three times the size of a babe.
Speaker 3: It can be very deadly because it doesn't have enough
Speaker 3: velocity to exit. And so what happens when it goes
Speaker 3: into a cavity like your orso or your head, is
Speaker 3: it will bounce around inside and tear things apart. And
Speaker 3: so that's what happened when it went into Clementine's skull.
Speaker 3: It bounced around inside her skull, scrambling her brain and
Speaker 3: ultimately lodging right in front of her teeth. Harold again,
Speaker 3: I described the wounds on her. She had been raped.
Speaker 3: They did recover some semen. In those days, DNA didn't exist,
Speaker 3: DNA testing didn't exist, and so what they were able
Speaker 3: to tell was blood type and that the person was
Speaker 3: a secret So some of us secrete blood in our saliva,
Speaker 3: in our body of fluids, sweat and so forth, and
Speaker 3: some of us don't. So if you, if you had
Speaker 3: faint amount of blood that comes out in those circumstances,
Speaker 3: you're coldest secretor. And Monte segu was a secreter. He
Speaker 3: had sucked on Peril's nipple and from that saliva they
Speaker 3: had obtained his blood type as well as from the semen,
Speaker 3: but that's all we had back in those days. It
Speaker 3: was just blood type. He had a blood type that
Speaker 3: as a screeter, basically thirty five percent of the population
Speaker 3: could be could be the perpetrator. So it didn't give
Speaker 3: a lot of leads to the police. And so there
Speaker 3: were no fingerprints recovered from the scene. There were some oddities.
Speaker 3: So there was some unknow fingerprints on the hood of
Speaker 3: the car that was right next to Carol where she
Speaker 3: was raped, but that could have been left at any
Speaker 3: time by anybody. Carol gone out to a restaurant earlier
Speaker 3: that night, a fast food restaurant, and some high school kid,
Speaker 3: for all we know, leaned against the car and put
Speaker 3: his hand on it. There was a stray pubic care
Speaker 3: that was found on Carol's clothes. I was later told
Speaker 3: I did a book talking unpleasant about this book back
Speaker 3: in April, and the Beaver's family, who were very supportive
Speaker 3: about this book, came up to talk to me afterwards.
Speaker 3: And one of the people came up there was a cousin,
Speaker 3: female cousin, and she thinks that it was probably hers
Speaker 3: because Carol on her was an older cousin and She
Speaker 3: and Carol used to trade clothes, share clothes, and so
Speaker 3: she hypothesized it was probably her puba care that was found.
Speaker 3: It was not Monty's because it didn't come back to
Speaker 3: match him. So there are some stray things like that,
Speaker 3: but otherwise there was no Despite the closeness of the neighborhood,
Speaker 3: nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything. There were no eyewitnesses,
Speaker 3: there were no forensics found at the scene. For the
Speaker 3: next six months, the police had nothing. They would need
Speaker 3: an offer for a reward for anybody with knowledge. Nobody
Speaker 3: came forward. There was a few perhaps sightings or people
Speaker 3: thought they saw things, but nothing of any value. So
Speaker 3: for six months the community was terrified. They had no
Speaker 3: idea who the murderer was living amongst us. There was
Speaker 3: no motive that anybody could discern for why somebody would
Speaker 3: kill Carol and Clementine. They were well liked family. It
Speaker 3: was a real puzzle and everybody's afraid. Suspicion immediately fell
Speaker 3: on Max. Of course, he was home during this time
Speaker 3: period asleep, but anybody again in New Max quickly ruled
Speaker 3: him out as a suspect.
Speaker 2: What does the autopsy reveal regarding Carol's condition? In terms
Speaker 2: of the sexual assault.
Speaker 3: Well, the autopsy did show that it was a violent,
Speaker 3: violent rape. Her vagina had been torn. I asked Monty
Speaker 3: about the rape when I interviewed him in prison afterwards,
Speaker 3: because when I asked him about the murders, he explained
Speaker 3: shooting Clementine, explained shooting Carol, as I said, you know,
Speaker 3: he claimed that shooting Carol was an accent to the
Speaker 3: first shot was an accent. Then once he saw that
Speaker 3: he had injured so badly, he said he was going
Speaker 3: to put her out of her misery by shooting her
Speaker 3: in the back of the head. I asked him then,
Speaker 3: so why the rape? And his words to me were
Speaker 3: I felt like I was giving something back to her
Speaker 3: she was dying, which is a chilling way of looking
Speaker 3: at it. When he tells me about killing Clementine and Carol,
Speaker 3: he really had no expression in his eyes and his face.
Speaker 3: He told me about it like you'd be describing parking
Speaker 3: the car. It's no emotion, no remorse in his voice.
Speaker 2: All you say this forensic testing, the state of forensic
Speaker 2: testing at that time, doesn't narrow down the search much,
Speaker 2: and so this case goes very very cold. What happens
Speaker 2: in that six month period in terms of the investigation,
Speaker 2: who comes forward in terms of the lead the investigation,
Speaker 2: and then what happens to reveal what what happens in
Speaker 2: the murder of Sue Wheelock.
Speaker 3: So the investigation is taken over by what was then
Speaker 3: called the Bureau of Criminal Investigation now the Division of
Speaker 3: Criminal Investigation, basically the State of Iowa equivalent of the FBI.
Speaker 3: It was a police force that was formed in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties in response to Ryan Waves. Back then profession
Speaker 3: all investigative force at the state level. And so there
Speaker 3: was an agent that was out of Brilington, Iowa that
Speaker 3: came and kind of took up residency working with the
Speaker 3: local law enforcement officers, staying at the Irish Hotel, a
Speaker 3: hotel on the outskirts of town. There was a restaurant
Speaker 3: attached to called the Irish Restaurant. It was the fancy
Speaker 3: place to eat, the Irish Restaurant. If you were going
Speaker 3: to celebrate a wedding or birthday or something, you went
Speaker 3: to the Iris. It was a fancy restaurant. And that's
Speaker 3: where I worked as a dishwasher part time when I
Speaker 3: was in high school. And that's where Monty Seeger the
Speaker 3: murder of Beaver's. It turns out he also worked there
Speaker 3: as a short order cook part time while he was
Speaker 3: in high school, and then Susan Wilock was an assistant
Speaker 3: manager and ran the lounge, the bar that was attached
Speaker 3: to the restaurant as well. It's very likely that the
Speaker 3: officers were served by her, because they would go and
Speaker 3: sit in the lounge after investigating the case at night.
Speaker 3: Very likely that Susan Weilock waited on the officers there.
Speaker 3: It was on a good Friday that night in the
Speaker 3: spring of nineteen seventy nine when Susan Weilock was going
Speaker 3: to close up. The owner of the restaurant, Dave Heaton,
Speaker 3: and the restaurant closed down. They stopped serving at nine o'clock.
Speaker 3: The bar stayed open until about one o'clock and Dave
Speaker 3: eating a big good night to Susan, and she was
Speaker 3: going to close up that night. She was alone closing
Speaker 3: up when she hears a noise in the back kitchen
Speaker 3: area of the restaurant, back where I worked as a dishwasher.
Speaker 3: This is about one o'clock in the morning, and she
Speaker 3: hears a noise and obviously there shouldn't be one, and
Speaker 3: she had been counting the money from the till and
Speaker 3: was going to put it in the safe in the
Speaker 3: ret in a closet at the restaurant. When she went
Speaker 3: down to the kitchen to investigate the noise, that's when
Speaker 3: she is attacked. She was beaten by two weapons glass bottles.
Speaker 3: Back in those days we had glass leader bottles of soda.
Speaker 3: He was encountered somewhere in the back of the restaurant
Speaker 3: and then ran to the front, running from her attacker,
Speaker 3: where she ultimately went down right by where the bottles are.
Speaker 3: She was beaten also with a large wooden paddle that
Speaker 3: was used by Dave to make his famous jam that
Speaker 3: he made in a huge vat. Paddle had been used
Speaker 3: as a weapon against her as well. Dave Eaton shows
Speaker 3: up the next morning on Easter morning to open up
Speaker 3: shop on Saturday morning. I'm sorry to open up the
Speaker 3: restaurant for breakfast. He gets there about six am. He
Speaker 3: comes in and he noticed there are lights left on
Speaker 3: that normally Susan would have turned off off. He noticed
Speaker 3: that Susan's car was stole in the rut in the
Speaker 3: parking lot. He came back to the kitchen area and
Speaker 3: He found her on her face, face down on the
Speaker 3: floor and a pool of blood with broken bottles around her.
Speaker 3: He rushed her aside. He touched her. She moaned, but
Speaker 3: otherwise was unresponsive. Dave immediately calls for the police, rushes outside,
Speaker 3: waves them down as they arrive, and waves them inside,
Speaker 3: and they investigate that murder. They quickly conclude from footprints
Speaker 3: in the blood that match footprints in the mud outside
Speaker 3: the back of the hotel that whoever did this had
Speaker 3: been hiding in a hotel room, had broken into a
Speaker 3: back window of one of the hotel rooms and been
Speaker 3: hiding in there before the attack. From the pattern, it
Speaker 3: was a herringbone pattern from some tennis shoes, and so
Speaker 3: they had that to go on when they started the
Speaker 3: investigation who killed Susan Weelock. Susan was rushed to the
Speaker 3: hospital course and then ultimately life flighted to the University
Speaker 3: of Iowa Hospital, where she died three days later.
Speaker 2: Let's do this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages now in this investigation, how do they get
Speaker 2: to Monty Seegers. There is some past experience that people
Speaker 2: say they'd witnessed in terms of going into this restaurant
Speaker 2: after hours because Monty Seegers also worked at this restaurant.
Speaker 2: So tell us how police proceed after this crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a slow movie investigation in a way.
Speaker 3: The forensics again are limited, so the footprint that was
Speaker 3: left in the blood in the mud is a huge clue,
Speaker 3: and they figured it's an inside job. There was no
Speaker 3: sign of breaking and entering into the restaurant itself, so
Speaker 3: they interviewed all of us employees. They fingerprinted us, and
Speaker 3: they asked us to come wearing what we wore the
Speaker 3: night before, including shoes, and then they took our shoes
Speaker 3: from us so that they could match the pattern. Monty
Speaker 3: was among the people interviewed, and they made several observations
Speaker 3: of Monty. First, he had a herring bone pattern on
Speaker 3: the bottom of his shoes. He also had a brown
Speaker 3: reddish brown stain on his pants. They seized his pants
Speaker 3: from him during the interview. Of course, he denied have
Speaker 3: anything to do with killing her. He did admit that
Speaker 3: he had gone to the restaurant earlier that night to
Speaker 3: borrow some money, and nobody loaned him any money. Dave
Speaker 3: Heaton was interviewed immediately suspected Monty and mentioned that Monty.
Speaker 3: He had found Monty once before in the kitchen area
Speaker 3: late at night when he shouldn't have been there, and
Speaker 3: sent him on his way, And so Monty came under
Speaker 3: immediately immediate suspicion as the murder in this case, based
Speaker 3: on the shoe print and the pants that they later
Speaker 3: discovered or concluded that that brown stain was in fact
Speaker 3: blood that was not matched in Mantes but matched Susan's.
Speaker 3: They got a search one for Montes's house, and they
Speaker 3: searched his house and they found cash that would have
Speaker 3: been consistent cashing coins consistent with the money taken from
Speaker 3: the restaurant. The money that Sue had been collecking was missing,
Speaker 3: and they found other things like iris restaurant match book.
Speaker 3: They also found some other things that were interesting. They
Speaker 3: found a number of photographs of high school girls. Monty
Speaker 3: had a hobby of taking photographs and gave a speech
Speaker 3: on it one time in a class, and among the
Speaker 3: photographs were photographs of Carol. Now there are a lot
Speaker 3: more photographs of other girls, but Carol was among the
Speaker 3: photographs they found there. They also saw standing in the
Speaker 3: corner twenty two caliber rifle. Up to this point all
Speaker 3: the officers had believed that the weapon used in the
Speaker 3: house that killed the beavers was probably a twenty two
Speaker 3: caliber Saturday Night Special. The reason for that is a
Speaker 3: revolver does not expand or shoot out showcasings. The showcasings
Speaker 3: remain in the revolver, and it would make sense you
Speaker 3: would have a small caliber, a small easily handled weapon
Speaker 3: you'd use a house, not a long rifle. And so
Speaker 3: the officer officers had never even thought about the possibility
Speaker 3: that the murderer used a twenty two caliber rifle. Now,
Speaker 3: when the officers went in to search for Susan Weelock's murder,
Speaker 3: they did not have authorization to seize a rifle. No
Speaker 3: weapon was used, no firearm was used in killing Susan WIELOCKX.
Speaker 3: They had no authority to seize that rifle at the time,
Speaker 3: but they did seize other evidence that was consistent with
Speaker 3: Manty having been involved in the Wheelock murder. And so
Speaker 3: he was very quickly after that charge held in Costy
Speaker 3: and taken to a jail first in Henry County in
Speaker 3: Mount Pleasant, and then moved to Burlington, Iowa, because that's
Speaker 3: where his lawyer lived pending trial for the murder of
Speaker 3: Susan Weelock. Now, a few months later, officers would go
Speaker 3: back to a judge to seek a follow up search
Speaker 3: warrant to seize the firearm that they had seen, because
Speaker 3: they now thought Monty was a lead candidate for the
Speaker 3: murder of the beavers and they needed that rifle. When
Speaker 3: the officer Gus Hagers, the chief of police and Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 3: went to the judge to get the warrant for that rifle,
Speaker 3: the judge didn't think there was enough evidence to authorize
Speaker 3: the seizure. You have to have probable cause, which isn't
Speaker 3: a very high standard. But the judge didn't think there
Speaker 3: was enough even for probable cause to seize that rifle,
Speaker 3: and so at first he said no, and then Max,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Then gus Hager's the police chief, said well,
Speaker 3: there's something else. One of the sheriffs. Sheriff had mentioned
Speaker 3: to me when we were in the house searching during
Speaker 3: the Weelock search, he had seen a heart shaped pendant
Speaker 3: that was missing. Carol had been given for her birthday
Speaker 3: right a few months before she was murdered, a heart
Speaker 3: shaped pendant by her mother. She woreked all the time
Speaker 3: everywhere and it was missing, it wasn't on her body,
Speaker 3: it wasn't in the house, and police chief said that
Speaker 3: the sheriff said that he had seen that in Monty's room. Well,
Speaker 3: the judge course says, well, geez, that's huge, write that up,
Speaker 3: And so gus Hand wrote that on the search warrant application.
Speaker 3: The judge granted the search one at that point, and
Speaker 3: they seized the rifle. That rifle would later be suppressed
Speaker 3: as evidence because it turned out the chief of police
Speaker 3: lied according to the sheriff, he made up the whole
Speaker 3: statement of the sheriff had never seen a heart shaped pendant.
Speaker 3: No heart shape pendant was ever found him on his house,
Speaker 3: and so courts later suppressed that othernce.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the eventual conviction for Sue Wheelock's murder.
Speaker 2: How they get to that? What was the again, you
Speaker 2: write about the crucial evidence being the shoeprint, herringbone pattern
Speaker 2: on the shoeprint. But tell us just a little bit
Speaker 2: about this conviction. What is the sentence? And before we
Speaker 2: get back to the police's interest, a new person enters
Speaker 2: the story, interested in reviving the case and seeing what
Speaker 2: they could do to convict him for the Beaver's murders
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Sure, and so money kind of helps out the governmenting
Speaker 3: convicting him. Because when he's in jail down and Brillington escapes,
Speaker 3: did you not his little brother a haxaw blade into
Speaker 3: the jail. He uses the axaw blade to cut through
Speaker 3: the bolt to the door, pulling him in his cell.
Speaker 3: He scales down the outside of the jail and he's
Speaker 3: on the lamb for a month. Lee's steals a car
Speaker 3: amidst a number of burglaries, ultimately caught in a high
Speaker 3: speed chase down in Arizona. Heavily armed. He had stolen
Speaker 3: firearms in the various burglaries he had committed, and that's
Speaker 3: pretty good evidence of guilt. Flight, you know, to avoid
Speaker 3: prosecution's good evidence of guilt. So when he comes back,
Speaker 3: he's ultimately extra nited back to Iowa. The county attorney
Speaker 3: cuts a deal with him and lets him plead to
Speaker 3: second degree murder. It should have been first agree murder.
Speaker 3: Any murder that occurs in the course of committing a
Speaker 3: felony like a burglary, is automatically first degree Down the
Speaker 3: attorney cut him a deal. He plays the second degree murder,
Speaker 3: and he does. He gets a twenty year sentence, so
Speaker 3: Monty's in prison serving twenty years. In the meantime, the
Speaker 3: courts suppressed the evidence of the gun and the case
Speaker 3: goes cold again. In the late nineteen nineties, new DCI
Speaker 3: agent is assigned to the case, and Maure is kind
Speaker 3: of a history of success with cold cases. He jumps
Speaker 3: back into this case and starts developing new evidence, interviewing
Speaker 3: more people. They try DNA that DNA exists by them,
Speaker 3: but it's unsuccessful because there wasn't enough of a sample
Speaker 3: preserved appropriately to allow a DNA testing, But he starts
Speaker 3: launching back into the investigation. The interesting side note, the
Speaker 3: word gets out that the investigations back on. Monty hears
Speaker 3: about it. He has a meeting with his stepmother in prison,
Speaker 3: and he instructs his stepmother to burn a parka that
Speaker 3: she said had a brown stain on it. There was
Speaker 3: some sighting of a man with the park of the
Speaker 3: night of the beavers mur around the neighborhood. She ultimately
Speaker 3: feels bad about that rule and tells the police about
Speaker 3: burning the parka, but it's not recovered. Please also get
Speaker 3: a letter from a guy named Dennis Cornell who is
Speaker 3: doing twenty five years in prison in Illinois for having
Speaker 3: murdered a stockbroker, and that letter says I murdered the Beavers.
Speaker 3: So Maur and other agents go to Illinois and the
Speaker 3: interview this Dennis Cornell. Cornell was kind of a friend
Speaker 3: of Monty's back in the day. They interview with Cornell
Speaker 3: in the prison and Cornell has all the facts wrong.
Speaker 3: At the time of day that they entered the Beaver's
Speaker 3: residence is wrong, where Carol was killed is wrong. He
Speaker 3: didn't have any knowledge of the rape, and the officers
Speaker 3: don't believe him at all. But there is at least
Speaker 3: that attempt by Dennis Cornell to kind of throw off
Speaker 3: the investigation, which turns out interesting. But in the end,
Speaker 3: Mauer keeps going forward the main investigation and persuades the
Speaker 3: state to charge Monty Segur with murders of the Beavers.
Speaker 3: Goes to trial in two thousand. Monty is convicted by
Speaker 3: a jury, but the Ice Spring Court reverses the conviction.
Speaker 3: During the trial, the prosecutor had mentioned that Monty had
Speaker 3: a marijuana grow out behind his house. It comes up
Speaker 3: because Monty explained at one point that the only time
Speaker 3: he left the house that night was to go out
Speaker 3: to water is marijuana plants, and the prosecutor mentioned that
Speaker 3: the I was spring. Court thought that that was too prejudicial,
Speaker 3: and so they threw out the conviction. So Manty is
Speaker 3: retried and reconvicted in two thousand and one of the
Speaker 3: murders of Carol and Clementine Beavers was sentenced into life
Speaker 3: terms of that parle where he is in prison now
Speaker 3: serving those sentences.
Speaker 2: Let's stop for a second to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: you went through this trial fairly quickly. He didn't testify,
Speaker 2: but some things were very important in this trial to
Speaker 2: be able to convict him. Things like his step mother
Speaker 2: came forward and said that she had witnessed something in retrospect.
Speaker 2: Now was quite suspicious with that after the Beaver's murders,
Speaker 2: that he had burns what she thought looked like clothing
Speaker 2: in a burn barrel. So just tell us some of
Speaker 2: the things that really ended up being his downfall in
Speaker 2: terms of convicted for the Beaver's murders before we talk
Speaker 2: about your connection. You're connecting with Monty seekers to get
Speaker 2: some resolution in your mind to what actually happened, because
Speaker 2: throughout this entire process he denied killing the beavers.
Speaker 3: He did. Indeed, in both trials he did not testify,
Speaker 3: never gave an explanation, and denied having murdered them. You know,
Speaker 3: the key evidence in the trials really were a number
Speaker 3: of things. One is his he he had some photographs
Speaker 3: of Carol. One of the photographs he has of Carol
Speaker 3: is of her wearing that necklace. Ironically, the yearbook ultimately
Speaker 3: used that same photo that Monty took unbeknownst to them,
Speaker 3: as a memorial page to Carol in the nineteen eighty yearbook.
Speaker 3: But he had pictures of Carol. He had a firearm
Speaker 3: that could match the shooting. He had checked out a
Speaker 3: book out of the high school library on forensics police forensics,
Speaker 3: including ballistics, and learned that how they matched bullets to firearms,
Speaker 3: and so he had intentionally used a screwdriver to scratch
Speaker 3: the inside of the barrel of the gun so that
Speaker 3: it couldn't be used for matching the bullets recovered from
Speaker 3: Carol and Clementine. It ended up not working because the
Speaker 3: officers recovered other bullets that Monty and his little brother
Speaker 3: had used when they had gone shooting practice, shooting down
Speaker 3: in a park, and they had recovered those bullets and
Speaker 3: then matched those bullets against the bullets from Clementine to
Speaker 3: show that the gun that Monty had practiced with his
Speaker 3: little brother was the same gun that killed Clementine, and
Speaker 3: that was key evidence in the case. And as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: his stepmother came forward and mentioned not only the parka
Speaker 3: that she threw away at his request, but also mentioned
Speaker 3: the day after the Beavers murder, she observed Monty burning
Speaker 3: clothes in a burn barrel. By the time she had
Speaker 3: told the officers that everything had been disintegrated, they did
Speaker 3: find some buttons would have been consistent with some clothes
Speaker 3: being burned in that burn barrel, but nothing otherwise of
Speaker 3: evidentiary value. So those were the kind of the key
Speaker 3: pieces of evidence that ultimately linked Monty to the murders
Speaker 3: and led to his convictions. The defense, of course, focused
Speaker 3: on Max, and they pushed the theory that Max had
Speaker 3: killed had somebody kill Clementine because he wanted clept on
Speaker 3: an insurance policy, and Kerl was somehow simply an accidental victim.
Speaker 2: In all this, you right. What's very dramatic is that
Speaker 2: the idea that he was to be released for and
Speaker 2: had done his time for the sue Weelock murder by
Speaker 2: the time of the Beaver's trial finally getting to judication.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually right between, so he's convicted in the first
Speaker 3: case in two thousand that's overturned, as I mentioned, and
Speaker 3: in between that reversal of his conviction in two thousand
Speaker 3: and his retrial, he had completed serving his sentence on
Speaker 3: Susan Weelock, so he was free at that point. It
Speaker 3: could have been free. The government moved to detain him
Speaker 3: pending trial the retrial, and the judge granted that. But
Speaker 3: that's how close mind he came to getting out is
Speaker 3: he had completed his sentence by the time of the retrial,
Speaker 3: and only coret order holding him pending trial kept him
Speaker 3: from being free.
Speaker 2: With this book, you write, as a federal prosecutor, you
Speaker 2: prosecuted almost one thousand murder cases or involving a thousand
Speaker 2: murder defendants. In your Like many people, you write, you
Speaker 2: were always interested in the motivation for Monte Seegers to
Speaker 2: commit the murders that he did. You decided to contact
Speaker 2: him in writing this book. What was the question that
Speaker 2: was most important to you to ask Monty Seegers the most.
Speaker 3: An important question, of course, is why you know, why
Speaker 3: would you do this? You know, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of speculation at the time, and one of the motives
Speaker 3: for writing this book was to put to rest all
Speaker 3: the speculation or speculation that Carol must have been sleeping
Speaker 3: with Monty and there was some type of romantic thing,
Speaker 3: or he spurned she spurned him, or maybe she was
Speaker 3: a dope user like Monty was. There was speculation that
Speaker 3: Susan Weelock was the same, was sleeping with mont hero
Speaker 3: was a dope user, and I wanted to put the
Speaker 3: rest and protect their reputations by getting to the bottom
Speaker 3: line of why. None of that, of course, is true.
Speaker 3: Monty didn't have a good answer for why. You know,
Speaker 3: Susan Weilock she surprised him. He figured he had to
Speaker 3: kill her, he said, because she was gonna turn him
Speaker 3: in for burglarizing the restaurant. But for Carol and Clementine,
Speaker 3: his explanation was, I was out shooting out street lights.
Speaker 3: I'd like to see him explode. That night, I had
Speaker 3: my twenty two. I was walking home from engaging in
Speaker 3: that criminal mischief. When I was walking by Carol's house,
Speaker 3: that occurred to me that maybe I should just kidnap her,
Speaker 3: and I don't know what i'd do, but I'll go
Speaker 3: in and kidnap her. And then I heard the TV
Speaker 3: on in the basement, and I thought, well, that's going
Speaker 3: to be a problem. So I went down and saw
Speaker 3: Clementine there, and I thought, well, she's just going to
Speaker 3: stand in the way, So I shot her. And then
Speaker 3: I went upstairs and I just kind of ran into
Speaker 3: Carol and accidentally shot her, and then you know, I
Speaker 3: just had to put her out of her misery and
Speaker 3: so forth. So his explanation was unsatisfactory, and as I said,
Speaker 3: it doesn't match the forensics, which tells me, trained to
Speaker 3: investigator and prosecutor, that this was well thought out, well
Speaker 3: plotted out, and premeditated. And so I wanted to get
Speaker 3: at the why. I kept trying to probe that with
Speaker 3: him a little bit. I had, as I mentioned, three
Speaker 3: interviews with him, and as a prosecutor, I used to
Speaker 3: do is I used to when I first sat down
Speaker 3: with criminals and they would talk to me, I'd let
Speaker 3: them tell me their story, whatever it was. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: press them too much, let them give me their BS story,
Speaker 3: and then I'd go back and i'd investigate the case farther,
Speaker 3: figure out the holes in their story, and then come
Speaker 3: back and confront them. And that was my plan with
Speaker 3: Monty tom Is he took me off a visitors list.
Speaker 3: He can't just go talk to somebody in prison. They
Speaker 3: have to agree to it. And he took me off
Speaker 3: a visitor list before I could go back and confront
Speaker 3: him with all the holes in his story. I've concluded
Speaker 3: myself that the motive for killing Carol and Clementine was this.
Speaker 3: Monty was the product of foster homes and group homes.
Speaker 3: His father was blind, his mother basically abandoned him when
Speaker 3: he was seven years old, along with his little brother
Speaker 3: or little sister, and Monty was pissed off at the world.
Speaker 3: He had started engaging in crime as a juvenile. He
Speaker 3: was going to turn eighteen in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight. He had been held back a year in school,
Speaker 3: even though he raided as a genius tested as a
Speaker 3: Genius IQ. He had been held back here because of
Speaker 3: his problems with juvenile authorities. And he was going to
Speaker 3: turn eighteen. And in the first interview I had with him, well,
Speaker 3: we didn't talk about the murders at all. In the
Speaker 3: first interview, but he said something to me that stuck
Speaker 3: with me. He said, because we talked about his past
Speaker 3: mostly that first interview, and he said, I just figured
Speaker 3: when I turned eighteen, I was going to take control
Speaker 3: of my life. And so I think what happened was
Speaker 3: he turned eighteen three days before he killed Carol. Carol
Speaker 3: lived within six blocks of his house. Monty didn't have
Speaker 3: a car. The only car his mother used. His stepmother
Speaker 3: used to go to work that night, so he needed
Speaker 3: to exert at his control. He was now eighteen. He
Speaker 3: was tired of doing what the state told him to do,
Speaker 3: living where the state gold him to live, following orders,
Speaker 3: following instructions, living by the law. He was going to
Speaker 3: do what he wanted to do, and he was going
Speaker 3: to show people how much power he had. He had
Speaker 3: to take power back, and he wanted to do it violently,
Speaker 3: and Carol was a convenient victim. He was more fixated
Speaker 3: on another girl in town. They had a lot of
Speaker 3: photographs of her, but she lived well on the outskirts
Speaker 3: of town. He needed to find somebody he could go
Speaker 3: to rape and kill if necessary, and get back home
Speaker 3: in time for his blind father to claim that he
Speaker 3: was home the whole time, and so it had to
Speaker 3: be quick. He had to be able to do it
Speaker 3: before anybody would discover his absence from the house, and
Speaker 3: so Carol, living six blocks away, became a convenient target
Speaker 3: for him. And I think that's the only reason Carol
Speaker 3: was targeted. She had nothing to do with Monty. They
Speaker 3: had a class together, but she was pleasant to him,
Speaker 3: but barely spoke with him, And so there was no
Speaker 3: other motive for killing Carol other than she was a
Speaker 3: convenient target for him to show that he was going
Speaker 3: to be in charge and nobody was going to tell
Speaker 3: him what to do with his life.
Speaker 2: I thought it was there might have been some sort
Speaker 2: of connection with him briefly not being considered such a
Speaker 2: loner and an antisocial character at high school when he
Speaker 2: developed this hobby, this photography hobby, and had photographed Carol
Speaker 2: and and other girls like you say, and nobody thought
Speaker 2: it was creepy of him. I just thought it was
Speaker 2: interesting that the brief moment that he came out of
Speaker 2: his shell somewhat, that he took photos of Carol, many
Speaker 2: photos of Carol, but there was no interest from Carol
Speaker 2: as a result of what he thought was impressive this hobby,
Speaker 2: this skill of photography.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I talked to him about, you know, whether
Speaker 3: he had a thing for Carol or not, and he
Speaker 3: said no, he didn't. He he did say at one
Speaker 3: point that we exchanged looks to suggest to me that
Speaker 3: he thought that she might be interested in him. But
Speaker 3: there was no indication from any of the classmates. Nobody
Speaker 3: observed him ever asking her out or trying to flirt
Speaker 3: with her. He did come out of his show a
Speaker 3: little bit, according to the teacher, when he got into
Speaker 3: photography and gave a speech about his photography skills. None
Speaker 3: of the classmates, none of her best friends, nobody mentioned
Speaker 3: anything about him ever hitting on her, attempting to ask
Speaker 3: her out. He didn't tell me he did, so. I
Speaker 3: don't think it was a case where he felt spurned
Speaker 3: by her, or that somehow she didn't give him enough
Speaker 3: attention or something like that. I think it was just
Speaker 3: that she lived conveniently close to him and somebody that
Speaker 3: he could rape and kill and get away with it.
Speaker 3: And nearly did.
Speaker 2: You write that this book has been out since February
Speaker 2: and you have I just mentioned that the Beaver's family
Speaker 2: had appreciated what you had written. I'll just tell us
Speaker 2: the response from the book published from people that matter
Speaker 2: to you, what their response has been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was all the family that mattered to me.
Speaker 3: So I really wanted to go into this focused on
Speaker 3: the family. Wanted to write a book that made the
Speaker 3: writer or the reader see who these women really were,
Speaker 3: understand that they were totally innocent, did nothing to cause
Speaker 3: their own demise, and so it was important for me
Speaker 3: to have that tone to the book. And I expressed
Speaker 3: that when I talked to the families about writing the
Speaker 3: book and wanting to focus on the victims and the case,
Speaker 3: not on the murder. I didn't want to focus on
Speaker 3: the graphic details of the murders themselves. I wanted to
Speaker 3: focus on the victims and the family, and I wanted
Speaker 3: the reader to know who these women really were. Family
Speaker 3: appreciated that and spoke with me at length, gave me
Speaker 3: a lot of photographs and shared a lot of stories
Speaker 3: about Clementina, Max and Carol, and we're very supportive about it.
Speaker 3: I also learned after the book came out that Susan
Speaker 3: Weilock had a daughter ends up. When she was in
Speaker 3: high school, she got pregnant. Her own mother was then
Speaker 3: remarried living in a small town near Mount Pleasant, had
Speaker 3: children from that marriage, and her mother was dying of cancer,
Speaker 3: and so she Susan Weilock, decided to give her daughter
Speaker 3: up for adoption and went to Kansas, stayed there, gave birth,
Speaker 3: gave her daughter up for adoption, came back, and then
Speaker 3: cared for her mother, her dying mother, and her mother's
Speaker 3: children through another marriage unbeknownst to me, and I only
Speaker 3: learned about it after the book came out when I
Speaker 3: got a call or email from a woman who said
Speaker 3: that she was friends with Susan's and the daughter would
Speaker 3: like to come visit with me. So she did and
Speaker 3: shared her story with me. She didn't find out about
Speaker 3: her true birth mother until after Susan was dead, but
Speaker 3: she reconnected with Susan's mother's other family and so now
Speaker 3: they've been kind of reunited as a family in that sense,
Speaker 3: and she's been very supportive. Susan's daughter has been very
Speaker 3: supportive of getting the word out and wanting everybody to
Speaker 3: know about Susan.
Speaker 2: Yes, you've definitely achieved your goal, more than achieved your
Speaker 2: goal with this book.
Speaker 3: I believe good Good.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 2: I'm a Monster in Mount Pleasant, A story of murders
Speaker 2: and justice For those people that might want to find
Speaker 2: out more about this story. Do you have a website?
Speaker 2: You do any social media that they couldn't prefer to?
Speaker 3: I'm afraid not, because I am a federal judge. I
Speaker 3: keep I have no social media profile for my own security.
Speaker 3: But A Genius Book is the publisher. They have a
Speaker 3: website you can gain access there. I also am on
Speaker 3: Amazon and so you can pick up the book through
Speaker 3: Amazon as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much. A Monster in Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 2: A Story of Murders Injustice. CJ. Williams, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for this interview.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Dan, you have a great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you too,