Speaker 1: And welcome to Cindy Stampo tough his nails on WBZ
Speaker 1: and I'm in studio tonight with Jesse Foster.
Speaker 2: Nice to have you again.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Jesse's learning the ropes because Sammy's got a life besides
Speaker 1: just giving up every Saturday night to be on radio.
Speaker 2: And who's in the studio and you are?
Speaker 4: I'm maryon Ryan. The privilege of being the district Attorney
Speaker 4: in Middlesex County.
Speaker 2: What does that mean and how long you've been there?
Speaker 4: I have been the district attorney for twelve years, and
Speaker 4: it means that my primary mission is the protection of
Speaker 4: the public safety in Middlesex County and that comes primarily
Speaker 4: through the investigation and prosecution of cases.
Speaker 1: Has that been a hard job when you're from the
Speaker 1: best in the world, the best job in the world.
Speaker 1: I'll say the same thing about my job, but I
Speaker 1: will tell you I think it was hard for me
Speaker 1: at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Was it hard for you at the beginning?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yes, The learning curve is steep, and when I started
Speaker 4: doing this work, it was a very different world, I
Speaker 4: think for women.
Speaker 1: So you're saying here that when you first started it
Speaker 1: was tougher obviously, was it that you're a woman or
Speaker 1: you were just had to learn a lot more.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to learn, and there were many fewer
Speaker 4: women doing this work.
Speaker 2: So you come in, were you respected or you had
Speaker 2: to earn that?
Speaker 5: You had to earn that.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, anybody who's a trial lawyer has
Speaker 4: to earn that respect. And you've got to understand the
Speaker 4: seriousness of what you're doing. You know, the prosecutions we
Speaker 4: do can cause people to learn, lose their liberty, and
Speaker 4: be incarcerated. So you've got to be thinking all the
Speaker 4: time about the seriousness of that.
Speaker 1: Have you ever looked back in your career and said,
Speaker 1: or any deeds anybody that has stood in your position
Speaker 1: said maybe that person shouldn't have went to jail, or
Speaker 1: maybe that person should have went to jail, both vice
Speaker 1: versa or no.
Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, we obviously subscribe to that
Speaker 4: view in this country that it is better that somebody
Speaker 4: who is guilty be found not guilty than that we
Speaker 4: get the wrong person and put them in jail. But
Speaker 4: I think one of the pieces to me is that
Speaker 4: we really understand that, like any other profession, we're fallible,
Speaker 4: and that's why the first thing that I did when
Speaker 4: I became DA was to create a conviction integrity unit
Speaker 4: so that if someone were saying I shouldn't be here,
Speaker 4: this is wrong, You've got it wrong, we had a
Speaker 4: way to be looking at that.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh that's a tough job. I like my job,
Speaker 1: and in your job, there's too much more stress in
Speaker 1: your job.
Speaker 3: Hey, we're all. All of us are good at different things.
Speaker 2: See my promise.
Speaker 1: I have too much empathy, Like I would feel bad
Speaker 1: for the person that killed the person, and I feel
Speaker 1: bad for the person that got killed, And why is
Speaker 1: that person so sick that they kill the person?
Speaker 4: All those people I know, these guides, and that's a
Speaker 4: balance we are always working on.
Speaker 6: We're eating kit Catcher, crime Junkies and all those crime
Speaker 6: shows like that is my number one favorite thing to watch.
Speaker 1: And then that's the other thing is mental illness out there,
Speaker 1: which is a lot right now, right.
Speaker 4: So mental illness and substance abuse are probably present in
Speaker 4: some combination in all cases eighty percent of the people that.
Speaker 3: Wow, that doesn't surprise me though.
Speaker 2: And what comes first?
Speaker 1: I always say that mental illness comes first and the
Speaker 1: addiction comes afterwards. That's my personal my personal beliefs being
Speaker 1: in construction for as long as I have and watching
Speaker 1: the epidemic of it in my.
Speaker 2: Business union non union.
Speaker 1: There's always an underlining problem before I see the guy
Speaker 1: move over to the painkillers and then to the opio,
Speaker 1: you know, to the and there was either he was shy,
Speaker 1: or he was not popular, or there's always a different story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sexual molestation came out later on life, right. I seem
Speaker 1: to be like the mother to all the guys. They
Speaker 1: come tell me their stories, but not they're wise. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you need to tell you wife this. No, I can't
Speaker 1: tell my wife this.
Speaker 3: But because you're one of the guys, you know, they trust.
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I just I believe that eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the things bad people do is because they're
Speaker 1: under and then there's just a twenty percent.
Speaker 2: Then there's just bad people.
Speaker 1: They just do bad things because it's just Google crazy, right.
Speaker 1: I don't like Google crazy people. Those people just whatever.
Speaker 1: Some days, I'm okay. Jesse is in training on co hosting.
Speaker 6: I ask, I mean, I got the question. First of all,
Speaker 6: I have so many questions. I think your your job
Speaker 6: is so important and so interesting. What are the biggest
Speaker 6: challenges that you have that you face on daily or
Speaker 6: weekly basis.
Speaker 4: I'd say one of the biggest challenges right now is
Speaker 4: the lack of really effective available.
Speaker 5: Mental health treatment.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, so even for people who have insurance, their
Speaker 4: ability to find a treatment that's going to be effective,
Speaker 4: be able to get into that treatment program when they
Speaker 4: need to go, right, you know, because when people see
Speaker 4: a moment when they're willing to do treatment.
Speaker 5: You've got to strike.
Speaker 4: And also because leaving people out of treatment can often
Speaker 4: put them in danger, put other people other nature.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, we don't have enough people to run
Speaker 1: these treatment centers. How do we don't have enough psychiatrists?
Speaker 1: We don't have enough psychologists, and psychiatrists aren't getting into
Speaker 1: this field.
Speaker 2: They're not coming out of medical school.
Speaker 1: Do the statistics on how many people are becoming a
Speaker 1: psychiatrists think about that job.
Speaker 2: You're listening to.
Speaker 6: Other jobs that aren't like you know, you don't necessarily
Speaker 6: have to be like a psychiatrist.
Speaker 4: Or I think we have to think more in reimagining
Speaker 4: how that works. Because you know, even if we took
Speaker 4: people today and decided, Okay, these hundred people are willing
Speaker 4: to be psychiatrists, you're looking at you know, probably a
Speaker 4: seven eight year window right before they're ready.
Speaker 2: To do training.
Speaker 6: And it's anything in life though, any job, any career,
Speaker 6: you got to work towards it. But how do you
Speaker 6: get to that level being able to truly help these people.
Speaker 4: Through these Well in the meantime, you've got people right
Speaker 4: now who need help. Right we also have to be
Speaker 4: thoughtful enough about it. You don't want somebody who isn't
Speaker 4: really qualified in a spot because getting bad treatment is
Speaker 4: even worse.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to sit here and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk to you as a psychiatrist, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay you four dollars an hour whatever you're going rate is,
Speaker 1: and you want to see me on zoom, I have
Speaker 1: a problem with that. I have a problem with that.
Speaker 1: You need to watch my mannerisms. You need to see
Speaker 1: if my leg is shaking? Am I doing this? Am
Speaker 1: I what am I doing?
Speaker 2: Like? You need to feel me. You gotta that.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how you can help people on zoom
Speaker 1: now once you know your patient, right, fine.
Speaker 5: I mean they're off that way.
Speaker 4: There is a balance because one of the things that
Speaker 4: we did see through COVID is I represent Middlesex which
Speaker 4: is large.
Speaker 5: There are parts of our.
Speaker 4: County that are incredibly rural where public transportation is not
Speaker 4: an option. And the other piece that we forget about
Speaker 4: is even when you have public transportation, it's expensive, especially
Speaker 4: sometimes if you've got to take a couple of kids
Speaker 4: with you, or you got to do some you know.
Speaker 4: So I had many people who were able to get
Speaker 4: treatment during COVID who weren't able to get to treatment before,
Speaker 4: and that became an honest I can't.
Speaker 1: Believe this has become part of your job. This has
Speaker 1: changed drastically when I look at this. You guys are
Speaker 1: taking and recovery. You're teaching kids how to go into trades,
Speaker 1: the building trades of New England. What's that all about?
Speaker 1: What are you doing what I've been doing the last
Speaker 1: fourteen years, trying to get kids into the trades, teaching
Speaker 1: that plumbers, electricians and HVAC guys make more money than
Speaker 1: the average doctor, average lawyer, average accountant.
Speaker 5: You know. The trades are fourteen They're an interesting.
Speaker 4: Peace because they are very forgiving for somebody who's had
Speaker 4: some difficulties, maybe has some a prior record.
Speaker 5: The trades are one place that's.
Speaker 4: Very forgiving, for sure, correct to give them a job
Speaker 4: where they can make good money, they can get benefits.
Speaker 4: If they need treatment, they can be doing that. It
Speaker 4: is also a place where we have seen the number
Speaker 4: of people who suffer from opioid misuse or an overdose
Speaker 4: is very high.
Speaker 5: Of the people.
Speaker 4: Between the ages of sixteen and sixty five who suffer
Speaker 4: a fatal overdose, one sixth of them have been in
Speaker 4: the trades, you know, for lots of reasons.
Speaker 2: Pay that thought for me was going to break. I'm
Speaker 2: Cindy Snowpoint.
Speaker 1: You listen to tapes Nails on WBZ, would be right
Speaker 1: back and welcome back to tapest Nails on WBZ, and
Speaker 1: I'm here with Jesse Foster.
Speaker 4: And Marion Ryan. That is the what the Middlesex district attorney.
Speaker 1: You think people dislike people that are district attorneys when
Speaker 1: they hear that. That's when I asked you, I'm going
Speaker 1: off by ninety five for a second here, I think like.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, she's just a whole journey. Yikes.
Speaker 5: Really meets us in a happy moment.
Speaker 4: Either something bad has happened to them, something bad has
Speaker 4: happened to somebody in their family. They've witnessed something and
Speaker 4: now we're trying to get them to be willing to
Speaker 4: cooperate with us, or somebody they love is accused of
Speaker 4: a crime, and I think.
Speaker 2: That, I'm so happy I've got to meet you in
Speaker 2: all good terms.
Speaker 5: That piece doesn't even know it's coming down the road.
Speaker 5: But right now, all the other things we do.
Speaker 2: Okay, so get it.
Speaker 1: You're saying one six of the people in my business
Speaker 1: are in drugs, opioids, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Alcohol.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 1: If you could wave a magic one, no more alcohol,
Speaker 1: no more drugs, would you do that?
Speaker 4: I think there's you know, everybody, no, look at drugs, right.
Speaker 4: The same drugs that people use, these opioids, for instance,
Speaker 4: also do amazing things for people when they use properly,
Speaker 4: like what you know they use for the treatment of
Speaker 4: chronic pain, for instance.
Speaker 5: Sometimes they make life bearable for people.
Speaker 1: How long as you think you could take those before
Speaker 1: you are now stuck on them.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think it depends on the person, the dosage, the problem,
Speaker 4: how well you monitor.
Speaker 1: They say two weeks you can become addicted to any pain.
Speaker 4: Oh, you can certainly become addicted, And it depends, but
Speaker 4: that assumes a success.
Speaker 1: I get pain in my seat. I could take a
Speaker 1: pain call. I'm gonna take three, and I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: three advalle. I'm gonna keep taking three advil blow my stomach.
Speaker 1: But I've never had a drink in my life.
Speaker 6: You've never You don't have an addictive personality like for me,
Speaker 6: for instance, I fell and hit my back like we
Speaker 6: do have in my family, like slight addictive personalities like
Speaker 6: I probably wouldn't even take that medication in fear of
Speaker 6: like I might like depend on this, I might say.
Speaker 1: I always said to my kids, if you never try it,
Speaker 1: you'll never know if you like it. If you try
Speaker 1: it one day, it's fun time, prior time, and then
Speaker 1: it's it owns you. Yeah, so if you never try it.
Speaker 1: So I never drank. I never had to drink marian
Speaker 1: because I was afraid. I worked in my father's nightclub.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh boy, these girls are making fools
Speaker 1: of themselves. I don't want to coming up to the bar.
Speaker 1: I'm seventeen. We could serve of liqu back that at
Speaker 1: sixty and a half, go home with that guy lesson
Speaker 1: you don't remember, like, Okay, this is something I don't
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 2: That was my choice right. It made an impact on me.
Speaker 1: But to see that you guys are doing so much
Speaker 1: to help the community, it's wonderful, Well you have to
Speaker 1: do this is just mind blowing to me. I never
Speaker 1: realized that you guys are doing all of this work.
Speaker 4: It's really my hope that we take terrible things and
Speaker 4: learn from them and then put those lessons to work
Speaker 4: to help people.
Speaker 2: But Maria does a leopard change his spots, you.
Speaker 5: Know, recovery.
Speaker 4: We see people who I've We've seen people that I
Speaker 4: have seen at their lowest points, and I have seen them.
Speaker 5: Get to successful recovery.
Speaker 4: I think right now of somebody that we prosecuted many
Speaker 4: many times, who hit as far down as you could go,
Speaker 4: and there were lots of offers of treatment, lots of
Speaker 4: taking of treatment, treatment that wasn't successful, and then they
Speaker 4: found the right treatment program. That person has now been
Speaker 4: sober for years and is involved in a program of
Speaker 4: helping people themselves now running treatment programs.
Speaker 3: Wow, unbelievable.
Speaker 6: So when you, I mean, what do you think would
Speaker 6: keep someone in a program or how can we get
Speaker 6: someone to say they finished the program, they leave not
Speaker 6: come back into that program.
Speaker 4: I think you have to be realistic about the fact
Speaker 4: that recovery includes some slips and bed missteps. And I
Speaker 4: think it's taken people a long time to realize that.
Speaker 4: You know, for instance, in drug court, you know, when
Speaker 4: somebody is in the program and they have a misstep,
Speaker 4: yes there are consequences, but we don't kick them out
Speaker 4: of the program. Good you know, because every when you
Speaker 4: become educated about recovery, you know there were going to
Speaker 4: be some returning to bay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right right, Wow, It's it's wild.
Speaker 6: Do you think that COVID had an impact on these
Speaker 6: like the rate at which people like whether it be
Speaker 6: mental illness skyrocketed or using drugs or just whether it
Speaker 6: be recreational or what have you like, did that increase
Speaker 6: in your experience or in your opinion?
Speaker 4: I think it did in that people were isolated for
Speaker 4: a long time. I think we know from many people
Speaker 4: that suffer from, you know, some form of some different
Speaker 4: forms of mental illness. Isolation is not a good thing.
Speaker 4: I think we all kind of lost the ability to
Speaker 4: socialize and connect, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think for.
Speaker 4: Everybody, people are still they they operate socially a little
Speaker 4: bit differently.
Speaker 2: I do. I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 2: be crowds.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: If I'm a crowd, I want to be outside. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be inside going to any event inside.
Speaker 1: I don't be around all the I'm not a germophobic,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to be around all these German people. Right,
Speaker 1: And I see a baby with running nose and get
Speaker 1: the baby?
Speaker 2: Wait from me?
Speaker 1: Like who I also said about babies like that because
Speaker 1: they're a little German sponges.
Speaker 5: But no, people, people change?
Speaker 3: It did change, Yeah, I do.
Speaker 6: It ruined like that social aspect for me a little
Speaker 6: like and like I'm less willing to go out and
Speaker 6: hang out with people now because I'm like, man, I
Speaker 6: could just stay home and watch Netflix, like I don't
Speaker 6: need to go out and.
Speaker 1: Right, or you can get on I sit on on
Speaker 1: an app called Chatter, right, and I sit on the
Speaker 1: board and I run rooms and I love it because
Speaker 1: we'll have rooms on It doesn't matter. It could be mindset,
Speaker 1: Like there's words I don't use that this generations all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: What's the other word? What's my other word?
Speaker 3: Manifest?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm going to manifest on a twenty five
Speaker 1: right now. And I'm a supermodel and I'm going to
Speaker 1: be six y three. Oh hold on, I just opened
Speaker 1: my eyes. Oh I'm still looking the way I look.
Speaker 3: I can see myself, so you look stunning.
Speaker 2: I just think that.
Speaker 1: We get on these apps and they're great because this one,
Speaker 1: this chatter one, you go right on camera. You can
Speaker 1: have twenty people on camera and we're all debating each
Speaker 1: other on certain things, right, and it's fun.
Speaker 2: I actually, but you have to have the person.
Speaker 1: I want to do that too, right, So I'll run
Speaker 1: a five o'clock business room during the week almost every
Speaker 1: you know, every night at five o'clock, and then just
Speaker 1: keeps building and building and building. And I'm just realizing
Speaker 1: through social audio, not social like Instagram, Facebook, social audio,
Speaker 1: there's so many lonely people out there. They come home
Speaker 1: to an empty house, they don't have anybody. And I
Speaker 1: know now the drinkers, you know what I mean. I've get
Speaker 1: to know the people on there, and I'll be like, Okay, Shelley,
Speaker 1: I see you've had your third drink. Cut the drink
Speaker 1: out right because you can see they're getting you know, animated.
Speaker 2: Okay, how much? And Billy, how much part of you
Speaker 2: smoke tonight?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Like as the night goes because the mom can run.
Speaker 1: Sometimes from five o'clock I'll step out some it will
Speaker 1: take over for me.
Speaker 2: I'll come back at eight, nine o'clock or stay right
Speaker 2: through it.
Speaker 1: You can see and I'll say, okay, yeah, I'll say, guys,
Speaker 1: get you, I'm shutting down the room.
Speaker 2: I'm tied.
Speaker 1: No, don't shut down the room. And then like on
Speaker 1: a Friday night, it's like, okay, everybody just released. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of lonely people up and they depend
Speaker 1: on those those people that they can look up to. Right,
Speaker 1: And I'll say, guys, look, I keep it real, like
Speaker 1: I'm not perfect. I'm out here making the same mistakes. Mistakes,
Speaker 1: don't you can't look at my life now, thirty seven
Speaker 1: years later. I've got battle scars that are bigger than
Speaker 1: most people in this room.
Speaker 2: Okay, So like.
Speaker 1: They want to see you today, they don't want to
Speaker 1: see the pain that you've put into your career and
Speaker 1: the guilt as a mom and the things that you've
Speaker 1: missed being a mom. Right, everybody just thinks it's easy
Speaker 1: you just get there. You don't just get there. It's
Speaker 1: hard work. It's tenacity, it's pushing that rock up that mountain.
Speaker 1: Every day. And if you happen to be oppressed with empathy,
Speaker 1: it's hard to do your job. It's even hard to
Speaker 1: do my job because you want to just keep forgiving
Speaker 1: and forgiving and forgiving, but you can't. And you're a
Speaker 1: line of work because somebody's gonna get hurt. But I
Speaker 1: do not believe that we just put people in jail.
Speaker 1: That's not the answer either. If they have an alcohol problem,
Speaker 1: if they have a mental problem, let's not just stick
Speaker 1: them in jail. But we're gonna put in a hospital.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have insurance, self played at McLean's
Speaker 1: is crazy money, right, So wh is the answer? What
Speaker 1: is the answer? We closed down all the state hospitals
Speaker 1: and what year do you remember, like some of the nineties.
Speaker 5: Yeah, before that, really they started.
Speaker 2: Do you know why they closed down these hospitals? Can remember?
Speaker 4: I don't think there was and this was appropriate in
Speaker 4: many respects.
Speaker 5: There was.
Speaker 4: There were many people who suffer from a mental illness,
Speaker 4: for instance, who still have civil rights, and they should be.
Speaker 4: They were able to make some decisions for themselves, some
Speaker 4: ability to have some ability to how they want to
Speaker 4: live their life. You know, we had some places where
Speaker 4: the conditions were wonderful, and the problem is we've had
Speaker 4: a hard time trying to strike a balance from all
Speaker 4: of that.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that thought.
Speaker 1: This is Cindy Stumbley listened Toughest Nails in WBZ and
Speaker 1: welcome back to Toughest Nails on WBZ.
Speaker 2: And I'm here with welcome.
Speaker 4: Welcome Jesse Foster and Marion Ryan, the district attorney in
Speaker 4: Middlesex County.
Speaker 2: I love the way you say that. You say that
Speaker 2: with authority.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm City Stumpy from Sea Stumple Development and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna break your face.
Speaker 3: No, there you go.
Speaker 2: Guys, can you please come to work? Do I have
Speaker 2: to keep chasing you? Right? You're talking about Jesse. You
Speaker 2: had a question?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do so. As we all know, summer's coming.
Speaker 6: There are I see here that you have some new
Speaker 6: adaptive swim programs for kids with special needs.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 5: Sure? You know.
Speaker 4: One of the saddest things that we do is troopers
Speaker 4: in our office, which respond anytime we have someone who
Speaker 4: suffers a death by drowning always sad, just incredibly sad
Speaker 4: when it's a child. And we have worked very hard
Speaker 4: over the last decade to really reduce those numbers, because
Speaker 4: for kids, it really.
Speaker 5: Comes in three forms.
Speaker 4: Usually one is what we all think about, the toddler
Speaker 4: who's kind of left unattended or gets away from somebody,
Speaker 4: something terrible happens. The second is kids in what we
Speaker 4: have in some parts of our county kind of ornamental water,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a koi pond, there's those big fountains,
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 5: The other is older.
Speaker 4: Kids, usually boys, often an inner city kid who's never
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to swim. They're with a bunch of
Speaker 4: their friends, it's ninety five degrees. Nobody wants to say
Speaker 4: I can't swim, and in they go. It doesn't look
Speaker 4: all that hard, and then their friends don't realize that
Speaker 4: they can't swim. There's some kind of distress going on,
Speaker 4: and then their friend doesn't come up, and those you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things we looked at a lot is
Speaker 4: obviously it destroys our family, but neighborhoods, communities, those are
Speaker 4: the kinds of things that people never forget. And so
Speaker 4: we've done a lot of work, a lot of partnerships
Speaker 4: with private pool companies, education in the community. But what
Speaker 4: we also started to see was a number of those
Speaker 4: children were children who were neuro divergent, and when we
Speaker 4: did research into that, we learned that kids who are
Speaker 4: neurodivergent are one hundred and sixty times more likely wow
Speaker 4: to die by downing. It's enormous and there's a couple
Speaker 4: of reasons for that. One is because they really are
Speaker 4: attracted to the calm of the water, the security, the
Speaker 4: embrace of the water, particularly if they're lost or frightened.
Speaker 4: They all seek some comfort from the water. The other
Speaker 4: is that many of the programs to teach kids to swim,
Speaker 4: you know, the Why or the Boys and Girls Club,
Speaker 4: all of those kind of programs, the typical program is
Speaker 4: not going to be effective for those kids. They really
Speaker 4: need to have changes in the program that is teaching them.
Speaker 4: So we have partnered with a company where we've been
Speaker 4: going around any place we can get a pool for
Speaker 4: four hours, we are offering the program for free for
Speaker 4: neurodiversent kids and their parents or guidians to come.
Speaker 5: It is it is some of the they are some
Speaker 5: of the best days we have.
Speaker 3: Where is this is it like?
Speaker 5: We've been doing them.
Speaker 4: In different places. We just did one of the throw
Speaker 4: club in conquered. We've used the State Police dive team pool.
Speaker 4: The State Police dive team comes out with us and
Speaker 4: is in the water to make the kids safe. It
Speaker 4: is unbelievable to see kids come who are very apprehensive
Speaker 4: about getting near the water and then see them three
Speaker 4: hours later when they're splashing around the pool and having
Speaker 4: a great time. And a lot of it is about
Speaker 4: really teaching in a different way and also helping families
Speaker 4: to learn some rituals. One of the things that kids
Speaker 4: learn is you know, often kids are lost or they're
Speaker 4: frightened and they run into the water and.
Speaker 5: Bad things happen quickly.
Speaker 4: This ritual thing really slows the kids down because they learn,
Speaker 4: for instance, before you ever go in the water, the bathtub,
Speaker 4: a pool, whatever, you do this ten or fifteen minutes
Speaker 4: of getting yourself ready. I'm going to touch my head,
Speaker 4: I'll touch my shoulders. That time can be what saves
Speaker 4: the kids, like because somebody catches up to them and
Speaker 4: they're able to rescue them if they're not.
Speaker 2: Stuff here. Your deprotlement is doing a lot here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we do an amazing amount off And now.
Speaker 1: You're also working to connect kids exposed to opioid related
Speaker 1: trauma with services.
Speaker 2: How does that program work?
Speaker 1: So we have and by the way, you watching every eleven,
Speaker 1: you're following that every eleven minutes, some kid dies between
Speaker 1: the ages of I think eleven to I think they
Speaker 1: moved into twenty one. Every eleven minutes something this country
Speaker 1: is dying from one kid that could take a percoset
Speaker 1: and it's just full of fatanol. And we're not talking
Speaker 1: about drug users. We're talking about kids.
Speaker 3: That literally over the counter drugs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a pill off, another kid off in school. Okay,
Speaker 1: these are kids that I haven't entered into the real
Speaker 1: drug world. They taken HDD whatever, what's those maybe some
Speaker 1: boom percept booms, you know, And every eleven minutes, you've
Speaker 1: following that every Yeah, I have all of my Instagram.
Speaker 2: I want to cry every time I watch it. But
Speaker 2: tell me what this is really about.
Speaker 4: We unfortunately, have seen lots of situations where kids are
Speaker 4: the ones who find a parent or guardian who's suffered
Speaker 4: an overdose. They go to school and they come home
Speaker 4: and something has happened. And you know, we had one
Speaker 4: of the real sort of triggers for this was we
Speaker 4: had a case where a little girl had come home
Speaker 4: had found her mother passed away, then went off to school,
Speaker 4: was sent off to school the next day. The school
Speaker 4: had no idea what had happened, all right, And you
Speaker 4: know what, it comes from a good place. It's kind
Speaker 4: of the you know, to keep the routine, and we
Speaker 4: don't want them around while we do all of this.
Speaker 4: But think about being the child who's kind of been
Speaker 4: up all night. The police have been at your house.
Speaker 4: Mom's gone. You're terrified, and then you're expected to sit
Speaker 4: at your desk. Yeah, and and for lots of families,
Speaker 4: you know, sudden death is terrible. Trying to deal with
Speaker 4: the medical Examiner's office, dealing with the police, they're not
Speaker 4: going to have top of mind. Gee, I need to
Speaker 4: get some services for this child, even if they're thinking
Speaker 4: about that that's down the road someplace. So what we've
Speaker 4: done in partnership is to have clinicians available so that
Speaker 4: our police when they go there, they see there's a
Speaker 4: child there, or there's.
Speaker 5: A child about to come home.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a serial bowl on the table, there's
Speaker 4: a kid coming home. At some point they make the
Speaker 4: referral to the Department of Children and Families that they're
Speaker 4: required to do, and they also make a reach out
Speaker 4: to these providers that have partnered with us to set
Speaker 4: up a program, so that then when we talk to
Speaker 4: you know, assume the grandmother's coming to take that child.
Speaker 4: We aren't just saying, gee, you should get your granddaughter
Speaker 4: some help. We're saying, call this number and Cindy will
Speaker 4: see her tomorrow. So it's a much more practical kind
Speaker 4: of things.
Speaker 2: Come see them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you do. They're like age.
Speaker 2: Kids have lost their parents in the last two years.
Speaker 4: Well about one third of the kids who are in
Speaker 4: foster care right now in Massachusetts, many of whom are
Speaker 4: being raised by their grandparents, are there because of opioids,
Speaker 4: either because a parent can't parent because.
Speaker 2: Of that, or their grandparents are raising.
Speaker 5: Enormous number of people. We do a training program.
Speaker 1: Might I have had one friend that their grandparents raised
Speaker 1: them between living on the North Shore, so I was
Speaker 1: thirteen and kept all those friends. Yeah, all my friends
Speaker 1: are revere being at my grandparents and all my kids
Speaker 1: my friends and I never saw any grandparents have to
Speaker 1: raise their.
Speaker 4: The number is enormous right now. I do a lot
Speaker 4: of training for grandparents because if you think about being
Speaker 4: a parent right now, just a regular parent and trying
Speaker 4: to keep up with the electronics.
Speaker 5: Keep enough. Just well, if you're eighty, that's a whole
Speaker 5: different world.
Speaker 4: So we do a lot of training with grandparents about
Speaker 4: this is what this means. You know, they don't know.
Speaker 6: What I decay, civity, you're all these other weird words.
Speaker 4: So there's an enormous number of grandparents who step up
Speaker 4: who it changes their life. I mean obviously some often
Speaker 4: they're living someplace where they can't have kids, so now
Speaker 4: they've got to figure out where to go.
Speaker 5: You know, costing Raising kids costs a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I haven't had any yet, but yeah someday.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a lot of that kids overrated. Okay,
Speaker 1: cyber education campaign that your office is launching with a
Speaker 1: focus on is this word right?
Speaker 2: Sex? Thing?
Speaker 5: Sex?
Speaker 2: What's sexting mean? Oh?
Speaker 3: Come on, you know what's sexting?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: What's sexting is sharing sexually inappropriate photos, videos, that kind.
Speaker 3: Of sending nudes, flirting like.
Speaker 2: Oh they're doing yeah, yeah, what's that all about? That
Speaker 2: needs to stop?
Speaker 4: So you know it's getting But what people forget is
Speaker 4: actually doing that in Massachusetts is a felony. We're not
Speaker 4: looking to be punishing little kids, you know, because we're
Speaker 4: seeing kids.
Speaker 1: And so fifteen year old girl wants to send that's
Speaker 1: what you call it, and I have a word for it,
Speaker 1: sextinging their boyfriend sexting, sex text should be sex texting
Speaker 1: or whatever. Sexting, it's sexting with their boyfriend, and then
Speaker 1: their boyfriend splats it all over school.
Speaker 5: They're both guilty.
Speaker 4: She sent she's guilty for sending the pictures. He is
Speaker 4: obviously guilty for sharing those pictures.
Speaker 2: What happens those kids?
Speaker 4: So what we do is when that's what's been that's
Speaker 4: all that's been happening. We're not talking about somebody who's
Speaker 4: a repeat defender or somebody who's threatening people with them
Speaker 4: or blackmailing them.
Speaker 5: They We require that they.
Speaker 4: Come in and they do an education program. They and
Speaker 4: their parents, they come in for a day. They come
Speaker 4: in and do that. The hope is that they now
Speaker 4: realize what that means.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, thought we got to gloat to break. I'm
Speaker 2: Sidney Stumbling.
Speaker 1: Let's send Toughest Nails in WBZ, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: Toughest Nails on WBZ.
Speaker 2: And I'm Cindy Stumpo and I'm here with.
Speaker 4: Jesse Foster and Aaron Ryan, the District Attorney Middlesex County.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk about cold cases. I love that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been excited about this topic.
Speaker 4: We've done an amazing amount of work in this area.
Speaker 4: We created a cold case unit in twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 4: just this year so far we've been able to bring
Speaker 4: four cases to some resolution.
Speaker 2: What I like.
Speaker 4: So I'll give you an example. We just arranged somebody yesterday.
Speaker 4: In a case that happened in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: twenty three year old woman lived with her family, had
Speaker 4: a good job, kind of everything literally everything in front
Speaker 4: of her. To get to her job, she needed a car.
Speaker 4: She'd been using her dad's car. She was going to
Speaker 4: buy a car. She had a guy who was a friend,
Speaker 4: had been a friend since childhood.
Speaker 5: He said he could get.
Speaker 4: Hook her up with somebody he knew who worked at
Speaker 4: a car dealership get her a good deal on the
Speaker 4: Cardiff car she wanted. He told her the only hitch
Speaker 4: was she had to pay cap. She wanted to get
Speaker 4: the good price, she had to pay cash. She went
Speaker 4: to the bank in April of two thousand and nine
Speaker 4: and twenty three, took out the money, very excited, you know,
Speaker 4: got the money, got to get the car, had a
Speaker 4: picture of the car. Everything was great. And in fact,
Speaker 4: her friend and a friend of his who actually did
Speaker 4: work at a car dealership, who had produced a car
Speaker 4: that was the kind of car she wanted. You get
Speaker 4: a picture of the car. She thought that's what she
Speaker 4: was getting. They set her up, robbed her, and shot her.
Speaker 4: That's the allegation. She was found she was missing for
Speaker 4: a week and ultimately found dead in her father's car.
Speaker 5: So the allegation.
Speaker 1: All these years later, how they put the puzzle together.
Speaker 4: Really, our cold case unit did some amazing work, just
Speaker 4: really going through evidence, looking at things, putting things together,
Speaker 4: re examining some of the evidence. With better technology to
Speaker 4: put that together, we were able to make an arrest.
Speaker 4: We brought him in yesterday to start that process. He's
Speaker 4: been indicted.
Speaker 2: He was guilty yesterday.
Speaker 5: No, No, we got to does he say not guilty?
Speaker 5: He yes.
Speaker 4: I mean everybody is presumed to be innocent until they're
Speaker 4: proven guilty.
Speaker 2: If I have a come and say I did it,
Speaker 2: it's just give me the give me the time.
Speaker 4: There are certainly some people along the way who make
Speaker 4: statements sometimes and plead guilty.
Speaker 3: Yes, Is that for like a lesser?
Speaker 5: No? No, not always.
Speaker 3: Serve not always.
Speaker 1: So that's one cold case. Yep, what's the best cold
Speaker 1: case that you've ever seen? Because I've watched these on
Speaker 1: TV all the time.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 4: I prosecuted a case myself that I responded to when
Speaker 4: it happened. It took us twenty years to make the arrest,
Speaker 4: and many of the programs I have are born out
Speaker 4: of that because in that case, the victim was a
Speaker 4: single mother. She had three kids, seven, four, and eleven.
Speaker 4: They came home from school and found her and didn't
Speaker 4: have the benefit of a lot of immediate treatment. She
Speaker 4: ultimately re arrested and convicted a person who was a coworker.
Speaker 4: She was somebody who went to work for a family
Speaker 4: owned company. She was so grateful for that job because
Speaker 4: it allowed she was making decent money, it allowed the hours,
Speaker 4: allowed her.
Speaker 5: To be with her kids.
Speaker 4: The suspect in that case was somebody who was much
Speaker 4: higher up in the company than she was. You know,
Speaker 4: she really was. I think probably thought she could handle it.
Speaker 4: She wasn't going to rock the boat. People knew that
Speaker 4: there was some things that went on, and one of
Speaker 4: the things we really discovered, and you all know this
Speaker 4: from working is lots of times in places, you know
Speaker 4: a little bit about something that happened. You know a
Speaker 4: little bit about something that happened, somebody else knows, but
Speaker 4: no one knows the whole picture. And she wasn't really complaining,
Speaker 4: you know, she didn't go to the bus and say
Speaker 4: I want him taken away, or I don't want him
Speaker 4: coming to where my sight is that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: She was just trying to keep everything together. And I'll
Speaker 4: you know, it took us twenty years, and that for
Speaker 4: me was a situation where I saw those kids grow up.
Speaker 4: I saw how different there life.
Speaker 2: Blamed anybody right away.
Speaker 4: No, we had suspicions, but we didn't have enough evidence
Speaker 4: to charge.
Speaker 6: Your suspicions always on that individual, Yeah wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean not.
Speaker 4: We had ruled out other people. You know, she'd been
Speaker 4: in she had an ex husband. We had ruled him out.
Speaker 4: There were some other people who floated up. We kind
Speaker 4: of you know, ruled people out. He was a person
Speaker 4: who continued to kind of come up.
Speaker 5: Well, we didn't. We just didn't have enough evidence to
Speaker 5: charge him.
Speaker 1: The one that gets charged was the one that you thought. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: teen years later, twenty years later, years the well side.
Speaker 1: The guy with the pizza, the guy that we're did it,
Speaker 1: raped all those girls in New York. They got him
Speaker 1: a many years later and took the pizza out of the
Speaker 1: dumpster after he threw to the dumpster.
Speaker 5: Oh for the DNA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, come on, that guy was what a
Speaker 1: layable one time?
Speaker 5: Yeah it's a very low yeah, yeah something New York.
Speaker 4: YEAHZ know the I forget what they call that guy.
Speaker 2: Killed how many girls and buried them all in the
Speaker 2: same area.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh my god, I can't believe New York.
Speaker 2: But he was caught twenty.
Speaker 4: Well, they got they got pizza out of the dumpster,
Speaker 4: and that's how they got the d.
Speaker 1: They watched him eat the pizza and they must have
Speaker 1: threw the crust in the dumpster.
Speaker 3: I can't remember the Long Island.
Speaker 6: How cell phones and a pizza box led to a
Speaker 6: suspect in three pieces.
Speaker 4: I mean, forensic genealogy has changed that. You know, we
Speaker 4: are the only DA's office that has a forensic genealogist
Speaker 4: as a consultant that gives you a whole nother because
Speaker 4: one of the things that happens is if you get DNA,
Speaker 4: so you're the killer, you leave some DNA on this table,
Speaker 4: I get it. Well, if you've never been arrested and
Speaker 4: you've never given up your DNA.
Speaker 3: It's not really helpful to me.
Speaker 1: That's not true, because if the daughter or granddaughter has
Speaker 1: right or a sibling right, they can tie.
Speaker 4: A forensic genealogist can build out that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's why that ancestry things like dangerous, right or helpful.
Speaker 1: I guess for people that are like us, if don't
Speaker 1: do any wrong that some of our family members have
Speaker 1: in the past, it could hurt them.
Speaker 2: That's the truth, right.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: And and that's not magic, but it's a it's another
Speaker 4: tool because if we can find out, okay, whoever this
Speaker 4: killer is is the maternal relative of yours, Well, you
Speaker 4: probably have a whole bunch of maternal relatives. True, So
Speaker 4: now we have to take that whole family tree. Some
Speaker 4: of them will be the wrong sex, some of them
Speaker 4: will be too old or too young, some of them
Speaker 4: have never lived anywhere near where we are. So you eliminate, well,
Speaker 4: then you narrowed on and then you have to go
Speaker 4: back and get a DNA sample from that target.
Speaker 5: And that if you're right, that should match me.
Speaker 1: So not only all this, you're also doing young woman
Speaker 1: leadership and the future.
Speaker 2: Mate, will you get all this time? Why wait?
Speaker 1: Hold on, this one's up my alley. How come I'm
Speaker 1: not getting a call to help you on this one?
Speaker 5: I know we'll call you for next year.
Speaker 3: We did it?
Speaker 4: Is that is my favorite day of the year. We
Speaker 4: just did it. We had six hundred.
Speaker 5: Girls my games. Yeah, I do, I know. I know.
Speaker 1: Hey, take that stage like this with these girls. They're
Speaker 1: like this, she says, what I want to do that?
Speaker 1: So you recently held a car fence for five hundred
Speaker 1: young women. What made you want to put that together?
Speaker 4: You know, I think I'm the only woman who's serving
Speaker 4: as a DA in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good for you.
Speaker 4: So, and I think you know, we put so much
Speaker 4: on kids now. One of the things that's is to
Speaker 4: see the girls come and we start out by just
Speaker 4: saying to them, you don't have to worry about anything today.
Speaker 4: You don't have to think about school, you don't have
Speaker 4: to be thinking about your mcast, you're not going to plays. Say,
Speaker 4: we just want you to sit and listen and think
Speaker 4: about who you could become. And then they watch people
Speaker 4: all day. They do things like this one we just had.
Speaker 4: They had a great moment. One of their speakers said
Speaker 4: every person should kind of have an elevator pitch about themselves.
Speaker 4: So she talked about what you want to say, what
Speaker 4: you do, and then just out of the audience, we had.
Speaker 5: Kids just lining up. These kids were like some of
Speaker 5: them were the eighth grade jumping up.
Speaker 4: They were so good at it. That's the kind of
Speaker 4: thing they don't ever do anywhere. You know, there's so
Speaker 4: much pressure on kids. How do I look? How am
Speaker 4: I doing in school? And I got to get to college?
Speaker 4: Am I playing sports? Am I doing this? They forget
Speaker 4: who they are and how valuable they are.
Speaker 1: We grew up in a generation that we came home
Speaker 1: from school, we put our play clothes on, we play,
Speaker 1: and when the lights came home, we knew to come home.
Speaker 3: I was okay, I was there. I was outside. My
Speaker 3: mom had a cow bell, the dinner bell. We'd be outside.
Speaker 1: Can we just think kids back to nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: and thwell them in the streets for like forty dollars
Speaker 1: to see along they were?
Speaker 3: Do you think it would help? I think technology really is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a blessing and.
Speaker 6: A curse because it, like I think, solve cold cases,
Speaker 6: yet it takes away the attention span of children.
Speaker 2: I think it's like.
Speaker 5: Anything, you should do it in moderation.
Speaker 4: Kids don't need to sit in the backseat with other
Speaker 4: kids texting to each other.
Speaker 3: Oh, when they're sitting right next to you.
Speaker 2: Got this, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Send them off to the army for one year when
Speaker 1: they get out of college.
Speaker 3: The army doesn't work for everyone.
Speaker 1: I don't care gives you discipline. It does, but gives
Speaker 1: your discipline. I love discipline.
Speaker 3: I do wish I was in the army at some
Speaker 3: because most.
Speaker 1: People will not hold themselves accountable and they blame mummy
Speaker 1: and daddy for all their issues. Time to stop blaming
Speaker 1: mummy and daddy. This is Cindy stumbling and listen Toughest
Speaker 1: Nails on WBZ. We'll be right back and welcome back
Speaker 1: to Toughest Nails on WBZ. And I've been here with
Speaker 1: Jesse Foster, and I've been here with the most amazing
Speaker 1: district Attorney Marion Ryan that we love very much that
Speaker 1: comes on the show.
Speaker 2: Miriam. Tell people how they can reach and help you
Speaker 2: or your causes. Please sure.
Speaker 4: Please go to our website Middlesex da dot com. You
Speaker 4: can see more information about our programs. You can find
Speaker 4: out about job opportunities in our office and one of
Speaker 4: the best things we do is our internship program. So
Speaker 4: you can just tabs for all of that.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Do you have to give yourself like just a pat
Speaker 1: on the back, Like everything you've done for this community incredible.
Speaker 2: You're just not a DA. This is not DA's work.
Speaker 1: DA's work is to prosecute, not to give back to
Speaker 1: the communities. The way you're doing this is what you
Speaker 1: love best.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, folks, have a great, safe weekend. This is Cindy Snumble.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next weekend. Make it a safe one.