Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the
social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway
Murders Facebook page with my partner in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're.
Speaker 4: Joined today by Francie Haiks, host of Best Case, Worst Case,
and a former state and federal prosecutor. Francie Pink, Thank
you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 4: Can you start by telling us about your personal and
professional background? Please?
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely. I grew up here just outside of Atlanta
in a small bedroom community of Atlanta called Marietta, and
I was fortunate to go to the same school system
my entire life pretty much through first through twelfth grade.
And then I went to the University of Georgia and
I graduated from there with a degree in political science.
And I went on to law school and graduated from
Ohio Northern University Law School and became a prosecutor and
became an assistant District Attorney in nineteen ninety six. And
I worked as an assistant DA for six years and
a couple of three different offices actually here in Georgia.
Mostly I specialized in crimes against children, but I did
a variety of different crime types. And then I got
a job with the United States Attorney's Office in what's
called the Northern District of Georgia also known as Atlanta,
and became a federal prosecutor, which was a huge dream
of mine. I worked on national security and crimes against
children cases. I got to do a couple of what
they call special details to Washington, d C. One where
I worked on FISA warrants, that's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act warrants, doing counter terrorism can counter espionage work with
all the various agencies of the government in front of
the fisaccord at the Department of Justice. Then the second
time I went up to Washington, I was there for
almost three years doing a couple of specialized details that
focused on protecting children from child exploitation, and I got
to do all kinds of it, really exciting, rewarding things.
I got to brief the White House, I got to
testify before Congress, I got to testify before the United
States Sentencing Commission. I traveled all over the world doing
liaison work. I helped write the first National Strategy for
Child Exploitation Prevention Interdiction in the World for the United
States of America, which was published to Congress in twenty ten.
I left the Department of Justice in twenty twelve, and
now I work in Hollywood for a production company. I
still do a little teaching and training. I'm speaking as
a matter of fact, coming up over in the UK
in November, I'll be speaking to a male survivor conference.
So I still do a fair bit of that, But
mostly I work for a production company called XG Productions,
and we produce audio documentaries. We produce television like America's
Most Wanted we produce scripted television and we're working on movies.
So my career has definitely taken a change, for sure.
Speaker 2: In full disclosure, x G Productions co produced these series
on the Colonial Parkway murders, which Oxygen decided to call
the Lover's Lane Murders a couple of years ago with
Jimmy Clementy and many of the people that work on
your team now on the audio and television and film
projects that you're working on.
Speaker 5: I remember that I was at the company then when
that was going on. I wasn't in in particular with
Lover's Lane Murders, which was not the name that we
all wanted, just to be right, that was not our idea.
Speaker 2: We didn't get a vote.
Speaker 5: And that's what I'm finding out that just like government,
nothing you do is really yours. And if once you
sell something to whoever the buyer the network is, they
really decide everything after that and you just have to
go along.
Speaker 2: I found that the folks that write the checks, which
in this example is NBC Universal and they own Oxygen,
they're basically in the driver's seat, and the rest of
us can fight for our perspective and try to make
sure that the points of view that you wanted to
get into the program are there. But at the end
of the day, you're not really in the driver's seat.
Speaker 5: No, definitely not in the driver's seat. I'm not sure
you're even in the car.
Speaker 2: At best. Maybe you're in the back of the bus.
Speaker 5: No. I feel like you're running along behind the car,
flailing your arms around, begging them to stop and listen
to you. But that's just me.
Speaker 2: I had a similar experience. I would say, So, did
you always want to be a prosecutor?
Speaker 5: I did. When I was five years old, my dad
and I used to watch reruns of Perry Mason, and
I always wanted to be Hamilton Burger, who was the
prosecutor on the show, because to me, he was the
exciting character. He was the one trying to put the
bad guys in jail. It was really just his misfortune
that he never ever seemed to have a bad guy
to put in jail. It seemed he always got the
wrong person. But when the right person was found by
Perry Mason, Hamiltonburger always admitted, oh, I guess we got
the wrong guy. Judge arrest that other person. So, for
some reason, at five, it really made an impression on me,
and yeah, I always wanted to be a prosecutor.
Speaker 4: What would you say is like the most fulfilling or
the most rewarding aspect of being a prosecutor, Like, at
the end of the day, what was your I'm going
back tomorrow and doing this again.
Speaker 5: Of course, dealing with victims is a very special and
difficult thing, So I would have to say that dealing
with victims was I'm not sure you can really call
that a favorite thing, because they're victims of crime. We've
been through something terrible, and for some of the victims,
something really horrifying, and so while that's very difficult, it
can be very rewarding. Although there's a tremendous amount of pressure,
at least that's what I put on myself, a tremendous
amount of pressure to try to find a way to
see that the person who'd hurt them was brought to justice.
And just like with Hollywood, it's something that you're not
really in the driver's seat of because you have to
convince a jury occasionally a judge, but most of the time,
you have to convince a jury of something that you
know in your heart happened and is true. You have
to convince them though, using the rules of evidence and
calling witnesses and making arguments. You have to convince twelve people,
all twelve people to agree that this one event happened.
And I think that the courtroom was really my happy place.
That was where I really loved to be. It was
my office, That's where I felt the most at home.
I don't know if you guys have ever seen the
movie it's called from the starring Judd Nelson way back
in the day. I highly recommend it. It's one of
my favorite movies of all time. In that movie, jud Nelson,
he's not a prosecutor, he's a civil attorney, but he
became a lawyer because he wants to go to court
and he's at this big law firm and he's like
a junior associate, and so he never gets in the courtroom.
And he's giving this speech once to his friends about
how he just wants to get in the courtroom. He
wants to pang on the tables, he wants to do
something exciting, he wants to object, and it's all very dramatic,
and then he finally gets a chance to do it.
And that's really for me. Banging on the tables and
throwing things in court. I guess you could say I
channeled my inner drama queen pretty much every time I
ever went into court, and it would be true. But
I think that was the most rewarding thing, was convincing
a jury that the guy in the doc deserved to
go to jail. So that made me happy.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 2: What's the introduction? I know you were a state's attorney
and then a federal attorney. What's the introduction that you
say when you first start? Do you say you represent
the United States of America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so when you stand up in state court here
in Georgia, every state, of course, is different, you have
to tell the court who you are and who you represent.
And I would say Franci Haggs for the state. But
when I got to the Federal Prosecutor's office, I was
thrilled to stand up and say, Franci Haiks for the
United States. I've never I still get chills when I
say it. I miss it. I miss it every day.
I miss being able to say Franci Haggs for the
United States. But it was definitely a thrill and a
real privilege to be able to do it for as
long as I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll second Kristen's Wow, I can't got the hair
in the back of my neck stood up. I mean
that you're representing the country and the people who live here.
Speaker 5: It's a very sobering thing when it happens. It's thrilling,
but also you feel the weight of it because there
is a lot of power. Prosecutors have a lot of power,
and it's a weighty thing that you have to take
really seriously.
Speaker 4: So, Francy, the place where a lot of our listeners
may best know you from is your podcast Best Case
Worst Case with my favorite person, Jim Clemente. I know
sometimes you guys have a little bit of a contention.
Speaker 5: Jim clash a little occasionally.
Speaker 4: I adored Jim probably Jim fangirl. It's probably better that
he doesn't know that much.
Speaker 5: He's going to know it now.
Speaker 2: He's going to know it now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, unless Bill takes it out, which I may ask
him to.
Speaker 2: That's it. It's in Baby Fantastic.
Speaker 4: So talk to us a little bit about how you
formed that partnership with Jim for Best Case, Worst Case.
And you guys have been on the air for is
it what four years now?
Speaker 5: Since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, so longer than that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a long time. So when I left the Department
of Justice, Jim and I had cross paths. We'd been
at training events together. We'd never worked together, but we've
been at training events together. And he left the FBI
and somewhere around I want to say two thousand and
eight or nine, I think that's right. And I left
in twenty twelve and it was probably twenty thirteen or
twenty fourteen when and I reached out to Jim on
LinkedIn and just said, Hey, what are you up to.
Here's what I'm doing. Let's get together sometime, because after
you leave the government, you no longer have all your numbers,
so the way that you connect with people is LinkedIn.
He responded and said, Hey, I'm coming through Atlanta next week.
Let's have dinner. So we did, and he told me
that he had some work he was doing and he
wondered if I could help him, and so I started
reviewing stuff and doing a little bit of expert witness
work with him, and then things at the production company
really started picking up, and he said, I'd really like
you to help me at the production company, but first
I have an idea for a new podcast, and I said,
what's a podcast? Had absolutely no idea at that point.
He had Real Crime Profile. It was already up and
running and had been up for maybe a year, but
I still had no idea what a podcast was. So
he explained to me what a podcast was, and he
said he had an idea for one called Best Case,
Worst Case, and he was looking for a co host.
He thought I'd be perfect. And I was like, you mean,
we're just going to sit and talk and people are
going to listen to it. And he said, yes, that's
exactly what's going to happen kind of sort of, and
I said, no visuals, nothing, just talking. I just really
had a hard time with the whole concept of the podcast.
And so I remember very clearly because it was February
of twenty when was the first crime Con. Actually at
my twenty seventeen I think it was February of twenty
seventeen when Jim said, come out to my house, let's
record the first let's go put in the bank like
eight episodes of Best Case, Worst Case and we'll launch
it at crime Con. And I was going to go
with them to Crime Con. That was that June of
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: So does that so was that the first one in Indianapolis?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I remember seeing you in Nashville. I do
remember that one.
Speaker 5: That was the second crime That was the second one, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I remember talking to Jim about the fact
that you guys were going to the first crime Con,
and of course the question at that time was what's
crime con too?
Speaker 5: Exactly?
Speaker 2: So exactly the podcast and launched at crime Con.
Speaker 5: We did, In fact, we had we launched the first
two episodes on the first day of Crime Con, and
I think it might have been the second day when
we did a live podcast recording and that ended up
we dropped it as even though we'd already recorded eight.
We dropped it as episode three, and it was our
interview with Bobby chacohone, oh wow, that's right, but Bobby
Chicon talking about his experience on nine to eleven. So
our first, our very first episode was one of my
very first cases as a prosecutor, the Watson case in
the DA's office in Columbus, a terrible child abuse case.
Our second podcast was a case of gyms, and then
our third live recorded live at crime Con with live
questions and everything was with Bobby Chaconne talking about nine
to eleven, and we've I think we're over three hundred
and something episodes.
Speaker 2: Now, wow, Now what was the atmosphere like? You were
still moving out your thing, I would imagine with Jim
by that point, and then you decide to go to
a live event and have Bobby Chicone join you. Did
the dynamic feel really different? Was there a live audience?
Speaker 5: There was a live audience. There were probably one hundred
and fifty people in the room.
Speaker 2: I think, wow, what did it feel like doing that
as opposed to going to Jim's house and knocking out age?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a lot different. Listen, I've been speaking
public speaking my whole career, so public speaking doesn't scare me.
That doesn't mean I don't get anxious, but it doesn't
scare me. But it was a weird thing to think
that we're going to sit on a stage at a
table with microphones and interview Bobby in front of people.
And I just could not wrap my mind around why
are people interested in this? I just don't understand. It
just seemed really weird. But that first episode of Best Case,
Worst Case right now has something like one hundred and
eighty thousand downloads. Wow, we're well over fourteen million total downloads.
Speaker 2: Now and crazy.
Speaker 5: Still to this day, I have to admit, it's still
super bizarre to me that people want to listen to
anything that I say weird times to Yeah, it seems weird,
it does. It seems it does seem super weird to me.
It's I'm humbled by it. I'm excited about it. I
love talking. First, I'm a Southern woman, so of course
I like talking. But secondly, I'm a born prosecutor, so
I love talking, and mostly I love talking about crime.
I love the podcast because I like interviewing people about
their cases. I think it's interesting. I find crime. Of course,
it was my whole career and still is to this day.
So crime to me is fascinating. And humanizing the people
behind some of these incredible cases was Jim's original goal
and then of course mine when I joined on, to
humanize the work of law enforcement who are doing really incredible, difficult,
terrible things. I tell people, I used to think that
the hardest thing I would ever have to do would
be to sit in my office and listen to a
child tell me about the sex abuse that they had suffered,
and that was horrible. That was a horrible thing to
go through time and time again. But it was worse.
It was far worse when I had to look at
child pornography as a federal prosecutor, because you're not listening
to a child tell you what happened, You're watching it happen,
and it's horrendous and it's just in your head. And
these images are just horrifying. You see just the things
that people will do to little children. Just you can't, like,
you just can't understand it. You can almost understand why
a drug dealer would shoot another drug dealer over like territory,
if that makes sense. It's wrong. Clearly, it's evil. I
don't mean it's not, but it's understandable at least. But
you look at child sexual abuse and you just think
to yourself, how is this? How does anyone do this?
How is this happening? And so that's definitely the hardest
thing I ever had to do. And I think that
for me, best case, worst case is a way, and
every time I speak to people is a way to
remind the citizens that there are people who are sitting
behind a desk right now. For every hour, every minute
of every day doing that work, suffering that secondary trauma
because they want to put the bad guys in jail.
Right now, it's not very fashionable to talk about putting
the bad guys in jail, because it's much more fashionable
to talk about letting the bad guys out of jail.
I'm against it. I am just against it. I don't
think that makes me very politically correct right now, but
I will always be for the victims and always be
against the bad guys. And I'm someone who thinks that
child sex offenders should never get out of jail. There
is not enough time that you can spend in jail.
I don't care what happens to you in there, as
far as oh, you're redeemed, fine, redeem yourself and sit
in prison. To me, that's just what I believe. But
so that's an important message that I try to convey.
Speaker 2: I think are there places in the trajectory of best
case worst case that are still difficult. In other words,
I was thinking about even the example you brought up
a moment ago, Francy. It's you and Jim and Bobby
Shacone talking about Bobby's experiences on nine to eleven, and
we interviewed Bobby about nine to eleven, and as a
former New Yorker who was living in New York on
nine to eleven, he was such a great storyteller. But
I found myself drawn into and going through some of
the same emotion we all felt that day. So the
topics are very serious. Is it sometimes a struggle to
talk about these things with people that they lived them,
they investigated, they prosecuted, they did something. It's very difficult work.
Is it hard for you and them to revisit?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sometimes I think it is. Although I think one
of the things I learned from some of the people
who do counseling for first responders is that sharing the
trauma lessons it sharing it makes it just a tiny
bit better. And I think that's what a lot of
people find when they come in and talk about their cases.
So I've talked about some of my cases. General interview
me about some of my cases occasionally, and you do
find that you feel emotional when it's appropriate to feel
emotional because you don't have I think for me, I
don't really quite have that barrier I used to like
when I look back and think about what I used
to do for a living, and how difficult it was
to look at child pornography and to prosecute these cases
and have to deal with that kind of just the
vile dregs of humanity. It's like I feel like it
steals a little piece of your soul, or maybe I
feel like it blackens a little piece of your soul
where you just can't really get that off. It's like
smut that you can't get rid of because it just
stains you. It stains you, and I think you have
a bit of a shield when you're doing the work,
or you couldn't do the work. And I don't have
a shield anymore. Sometimes talking to people about it or
even revisiting my own cases in my own mind are
much more difficult and much more raw now than they
were then. So yeah, sometimes Bill, I think they do
waken that difficult to deal with kind of emotion.
Speaker 4: You guys have done some amazing work over the last
couple of years with audible presentations at x G. Everything
that you guys have done I've listened to multiple times
and I have.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you so much, that's so nice for
you to say.
Speaker 4: And I finished listening to Midwest Monster the other day,
which is your newest That was difficult to listen to,
but boy, it is worthwhile to listen to. So for
anybody who may not be familiar with the Kansas College rapist,
which is the case which is the basis for Midwest Monster,
can you just give us a quick thumbnail sketch of
the Kansas College rapist.
Speaker 5: Of course, I certainly would encourage anyone who wants to
know more about this case to go to audible dot
com and look up Midwest Monster and listen for yourself.
It's about two and a half three hours. It's an
incredible case that started a couple of decades ago when
a young woman on a college campus there in Kansas.
There was Kansas State and University of Kansas, and a
young woman on one of the campuses had her apartment invaded.
She lived just off campus, and she had her apartment
invaded and she was raped. And it was a brutal
attack by a man wearing a mask and gloves and
who had shaved all his body hair. He had a
gun and he set up a video camera. And after
these this rape, he made her go to the bathroom
and brush her teeth and then flush her toothbrush and
then take a shower, and he watched her in the
shower so that she to make sure she had cleaned
all of herself off of any obviously he was. These
were forensic countermeasures before he left. And this serial rapist
continued this pattern for years, and the last known attack
was in twenty fifteen there in Kansas, and there are
a total of fourteen fourteen or fifteen victims, and it's
just a horrendous series. But we have two of the survivors.
I'll call them Abby and Beth because those are the
names that we used and the project. Those are not
their real names. There are so incredibly brave. I'm still
in touch with them today. We text, and they were
so brave to come forward and tell their stories in
detail what happened to them. They have not just survived,
but thrived in the two decades really since then. They
are incredible young women, Abby and Beth, and I admire
them tremendously. And the reason that they agreed to sit
in and be interviewed for Midwest Monster was in the
hopes that what something they say, something any of the
other people that we interview say might trigger a memory
or flag something for someone into recognizing who this offender
is because he is still uncaught. He's not just uncaught,
he's unidentified Kristin, and that, to me was the biggest
reason we wanted to bring this forward. And we had
to do some I had to do, in particular, some
really fancy dancing to the police departments there to get
them to talk to us, because it's an unsold case
for twenty years, and they feel responsible for that. They
feel horrible that it hasn't been solved yet, and I
think they were afraid that we were going to be
pointing fingers at them and passing a bad judgment. But
it's just a fact that this guy was very forensically sophisticated,
and they have done just yeoman's work in trying to
figure out who this person is. They've done thousands of interviews,
they've developed literally over a thousand different suspects, and it's
just not happened yet. They've just not been able to
solve the case. And so our hope is that the
more people that listen to Midwest Monster, the more people
will hear profiler doctor Mike Burham, the survivors themselves, and
the other police officers talking about this offender, who he is,
who he likely is in his life, what he was
doing at these various times that might trigger partner, a wife, child,
and aunt a parent to remember something unusual about this offender.
So I hope that this project can help identify the
Midwest Monster.
Speaker 2: The law enforcement people are usually incredibly reluctant to get
into any kind of lengthy discussion about an unsolved case.
How did you really? I know you said you did
some fancy dancing, but usually the answer to questions like that,
will you do an interview with us is just a
flat out no. It's an open case. What do you
think was different about it? Was it the team or
your approach that allowed them to open up more?
Speaker 5: I think, Bill, you're asking me to give away my secrets?
Speaker 2: Oh, the trade secrets.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 5: I think that's a great question. Did they did tell me? No?
I figured, I just I don't take no. That's not
really just ask my dad or my husband. It's not
really a word I liked here, and so I I
just didn't let it stop me, and I kept asking them.
I think the truth of the matter is that I
tried very hard my entire career to be a good prosecutor.
And I think I like to think anyways sort of
self congratulatory, but I like to think that I built
a very solid reputation as a pro law enforcement prosecutor,
and I'm still a very pro law enforcement and I
always will be a person. That doesn't mean I won't
call out bad conduct, because I do, but I'm very
pro law enforcement as a person, and I think that reputation.
I have to say the US Marshals were tremendously helpful.
Doctor Mike Berg is a personal friend of mine and
he worked on the case, and so he was able
to vouch for me with them and make sure that
the police understood that our perspective was not anti cop,
that we weren't there to point fingers, that we honestly
and truly wanted to present something to the public that
might help solve the case. And ultimately it's not about me.
It's to their credit because they really want to solve
the case. They've tried everything, canines, every scientific test you
can think of, profiling multiple times of course, a million
man hours of interviews, impounding the pavement, and I think
they just in the end decided that getting a lot
more people to listen to the case might help them
find a clue that can eventually solve it. They just
really want to solve the case.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind Over Murder. We'll be right back
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mindover Murder.
Speaker 4: So you assigned on Paget Brewster, who most people will
know is from Criminal Minds. She's my favorite character.
Speaker 5: She plays Emily Prentiss.
Speaker 4: Love her to death. Why was it important to you
that she be the storyteller for this piece?
Speaker 5: I love her. I think that Paget is a one First,
she's a great actress, of course, but most importantly, she
is a lovely human being. And it was a real
thrill to me. I got to meet her when Jim
and I we had her on Best Case, Worst Case.
We interviewed her on one of our episodes of Best Case,
Worst Case, and we went to our house to do it,
and so I actually got to meet her in person.
I've got a photograph with her. And by the way,
nobody wants to take a picture next to a Hollywood actress.
It's not good. Talk about humbling. No matter how good
you think you look, you're standing next to an actress
and you look crappy. That's a judging moment for me.
But anyway, she's was just lovely and friendly and you know,
thank me for my service for goodness sakes. And so
when the time came to figure out who we wanted
to narrate on my list was one person and it
was Paget. And of course she and Jim are longtime friends.
And Jim told her about the project and said that
I was executive producing and writing it and would she
consider And she didn't even think twice about it. Wow,
she said absolutely yes. Cool And so she was just
the sweetest thing. And I got to direct her to
do the narration and it was a love experience. She
is so professional and so good at what she does,
not to mention, just has a great voice. And I
was thrilled that she agreed to do it.
Speaker 2: Did you find yourself saying I'm sorry, Paget, that just
wasn't good enough? Could you go? Could you take that
one more time?
Speaker 5: Even though I'm a bit of a bull in a
china shop, Bill, I do have a bit of a
filter as well when necessary. No, you never tell them
you don't like it. All you say is could you
do that one more time? And this time, let's try
with the emphasis on the end.
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 5: That's how you do it.
Speaker 2: Duly noted, Hey, she rarely.
Speaker 5: I'd admit, she doesn't really need very much direction. She
does a ton, She's won awards, she does a ton
of voiceover work already, So she was telling me what
the best thing was.
Speaker 2: On a more serious note, one of the things I
think is most chilling about the Kansas College rapist case
are the forensic countermeasures. And you use that expression, which
always just chills my bones. What did you make of
that when you were looking through the details of the case.
How is this rapist understanding all of the steps that
he might need to take to try to minimize his exposure.
From a scientific person, that's.
Speaker 5: A really interesting question, Bill. I have to go back
to as a prosecutor away back in the day when
the television show CSI first came out, Remember was set
in Vegas, the first crime show that really went in
depth into the world of the crime scene technicians crime
scene investigators as they called it. There was nothing about
that show that it was realistic. It was entertaining, but
it was complete fiction, just utter bunk. And as a prosecutor,
I literally hated it because they would say things on
the show like I can always find DNA, and I'm
thinking to myself, I can't. We can't really why in
Georgia we can't always find DNA and what we do
we can't test at all, So stop say things like
that to be or there's always a fingerprint, No there's not. No,
there's not always a fingerprint. So those kind of generalizations
made the consumer who sits on juries simply absurdly demanding
because they wanted things that did not exist. But the
other thing that those shows did, I think is teach
They taught offenders how to evade, because they made them
see realistically or unrealistically, what forensics really was and what
it was capable of. And now listen, they rarely had
anything on there that was completely out of the realm
of anything you know that is high tech currently available.
But those things I remember one time, this was a
long time ago, I remember seeing a scene where they
tented it separate that super glue stuff. Nobody had that
that was in like one lab in the country, and
it cost an outrageous amount of money and unless you
have the multiple murders, you couldn't do it. Because they
were so in demand. You couldn't get it, your crime
lab couldn't afford it. He just was ridiculous. But they
were constantly doing that, and so that glue tent and
everything made I think offenders think that the forensics was
going to get them, and so I think people like
this Kansas college rapist understands that forensics would be his downfall,
and so he was taking these terribly sophisticated steps to
make sure that he left no forensics behind. And that's
just a shock, I think, to people to think that
a violent rapist could leave no forensic evidence behind, no DNA,
no trace, no prints. But that seems to be the case.
Speaker 4: One of the things that Midwest Monster got into, actually
the two major problems that they got into, is the
discussion of reporting rape and then prosecuting rape in America.
One of the things that I took away from it
is the fact that it is the most massively underreported
is crime. I knew it, but I hated hearing it again.
And you spend a lot of time talking about the
major problem prosecuting it can be due to this concept
called statute of limitations that maybe not everybody is familiar
with so can you give a brief rindown of what
statutes of limitation are and that what does that mean
for people who want to hold rapeist accountable for their crimes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, rape and child sexual abuse are the most underreported
crimes in the country, and the estimates of underreporting for
rape are around as much as fifty percent, So that
means we're only getting about fifty percent of reports of
women who are being raped. Men and women, but mostly
women who are being raped. Unfortunately, unlike murder, rape was
a crime for a long time that had what's called
a statuteal limitation. Most cases have what's called a statutal limitation,
and that means there is a limit on the time
in which a prosecutor is allowed to bring a case.
So if in the year two thousand a crime is committed,
say it's a bank robbery, a crime is committed and
nobody finds the offender, they don't solve the case for
twenty years. In the state of Georgia, that's just too late.
You needed to solve the crime earlier, and there's a
reason for that. It's not a random thing. The reason
is because if you hauled the defendant into court right now,
today in twenty twenty two for a bank robbery that
you allege he committed in the year two thousand. What
is his defense if it's say, oh, I was out
of town that day. I couldn't have robbed this bank
in downtown Atlanta. I was in Florida on business. It's
twenty two years ago. Who has records still and he
prove it? Does anyone even remember? Does he even remember
where he was twenty two years ago on a specific night.
And so the idea of the statute of limitations is
really all about fundamental fairness, because our system is designed
to be fair to the accused, because the government has
a lot of power, and so the accused needs to
be given sir rights so that he can fight the
charges meaningfully. And that includes a time limit because witnesses die,
paper gets lost, evidence is too old, witnesses memories are
no longer good. And so for all those reasons, we
have statutes of limitations for most crimes. It's not we
don't have it for murder in any state. And slowly
the states are starting to understand that sexual crimes like
rape and child abuse should be in that category. One
of the things we found out on Midwest Monster. In
the state of Kansas, for example, was that for many
years until very recently, their statute of limitations for rape
was five years. So an offender had to be identified
and brought into court within five years of the offense.
So it's not within five years of you discovering some
new technology or new evidence. No, No, within five years
of the crime, and so that caused all sorts of problems.
Now they've ex end of their statute of limitations now
in Kansas, but many other states. I think Hawaii was
an example that I looked up when we were getting
this whole Midwest Monster into production. Hawaii had a five
or seven year statute of limitations, and so there are
still states in this country with relatively short statutes of
limitations for raven I just think it's terrible because if
the offender is like like this one in Midwest Monster,
if he can stay away long enough, if he can
avoid capture long enough, he'll never be held accountable for
what he did. And I think that's horrifying.
Speaker 2: It seems to take the air out of the excitement
that many of us feel. We're seeing forensic genetic genealogy
being used to solve so many serious sexual assaults, murders
and so on. But if the statute of limitations has expired,
then we're out of luck. And now obviously for a
murder case, as you said, it doesn't apply. But it's
so disheartening to find out that we've finally identified a perpetrator,
an offender in a terrible series of sexual assaults in
this example. It's so heartbreaking to find out that some
states haven't found a way to create a longer appropriate.
Speaker 5: Period of It's so difficult, Bill, because you've got this
balance right. There has to be balanced in the system.
You've got to be fair to offenders or too accused anyway.
I guess they're not an offender, so they're convicted, but
we have to be fair to the accused. It's why
we It's one of the reasons we left King George
and England way back in the day, because trials were
not fair. People were being thrown in prison without knowing
the evidence against them or hearing witnesses. They didn't have
any right to attorneys and all that stuff. You also
have to be fair to victims, but there's no question
that in this sort of triad, if you will, the
triad between the government, the accused, and the victim. The
victim just gets completely disregarded in almost every way. Look
at the Jeffrey Epstein case for example, the federal government,
my own brethren, in the US Attorney's office down in
South Florida, they had the case and they made a
deal with Epstein. They signed a non prosecution agreement without
ever telling the victims. Now, that was completely and one
hundred percent in violation of the Crime Victim's Rights Act,
which gives them the right to meaningful consultation with the prosecutor,
to notice of anything that's going to dismiss the charges
or result of a plea or a trial. But they
were completely disregarded. And what is the remedy right? So
they have these rights, but the rights don't have any teeth,
because without teeth, prosecutors, to my shame, can just disregard them.
And so victims can be given very short trift in
our system because it's not victims whose freedom is going
to be taken away, it's the accused. And so they
have to have rights to fight. They have rights to
an attorney and rights all the evidence, and you can't
do trial by ambush. But what about the victim. What
right does the victim have? They have rights listed in statute.
I'm working on something right now out of California. And
there was a serious case of child abuse that went
on at a daycare center and the offender gets arrested
and the child's parents, a child was only four years old,
and the child's parents were never even contacted and told
that the offender is getting out of jail, that he
was only held for a couple of days, and then
gets out and there they see him, he's wandering around
in the community.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: And in California, they have a right to know, they
have a right to meaningful consultation, they have a right
to know specifically that someone is going to make a
bond or someone is going to be released from jail.
And they just didn't get any notification. Nobody cared why,
because there's no teeth in these provisions. There's no remedy
when they're violated. Nobody pays a price. Nobody. There's not
a fine, there's not a suspension, there's nothing for violating
victims' rights. We have to do a much better job
in this country than we're doing right now.
Speaker 4: I'd say the strongest component of Midwest Monster for me
as a listener is the fact that you have showcased
women and you referred to them earlier as Abby and Beth,
who are refusing to let being rape victims ruin their lives.
They're discussing how to heal, how to move forward from trauma.
What is the message that you want women who have
been victims of rape and sexual assault to know about
healing from trauma.
Speaker 5: That's a great question, Chris, and I think that for me,
the most important thing to remember is that you're alive.
That's the most important thing. You have survived. You've already survived.
To me, what Abby and Bess said is so important.
To live your best life. That is the best revenge.
You do not want to spend your life thinking about
what happened to you, ruminating on it, marinating in it,
because who wins.
Speaker 1: He does.
Speaker 5: He wins if that's your attitude going forward, And that
was not their attitude. They went back to school, They
went right back to the same place in spite of
what happened to them there, because they were determined that
he not win. And I think that's the best message
to survivors is don't let him win. By a focusing
on it the rest of your life. Because you have survived,
you can succeed in whatever you want to do because
you've survived that. And I think too, I want women
to think very long and hard about reporting these sexual assaults.
I know what I'm asking. I've had rape cases, lots
of rape cases, and they're very difficult cases to prosecute,
and you get dragged through the mud. We see it
all the time all over the news. Whenever there's an allegation,
especially against a famous person. What's the What's the first
thing they do is they absolutely start throwing darts at
the victim. She's a slut, she wanted it, it was consent,
she likes rough sex, all these different defenses. So yes,
it is not going to be an easy time. But
I've had children that I've put on the witness stand
before that. When they testified and pointed out the offender
in front of the jury and left the courtroom, and
I talked to them later. They looked me in the
eye and they said I saw him, and I pointed
at him. I did good, didn't I? And they took
that little bit of power right back. And I think
that holding that guy to account, and frankly this going
to sound terribly self defeating, but even if he doesn't
get convicted, you have put him through it to have
let him know that you are not going to be quiet,
that he did not win, that he did not silence you,
and you're going to look him in the eye. By God,
whatever those twelve people do, you can't control, but you
can control how you react to it, and you can
control that you can face him in the courtroom and
make bye damn sure that jury's going to know your
story and not his.
Speaker 2: Did you ever talk about the possibility that this offender
in the Midwest Monster series might actually end up listening
to the show. The show's incredibly popular, it's on Audible,
many of your other shows have done incredibly well. He
could be one of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people
listening to the show. Did you ever think to yourself,
he might actually hear this.
Speaker 5: We did. We talked about it, and I talked about
that specifically with Mike Burke and with Abby and Beth,
because of course that's one of the things they were
very concerned about. It's why we used a pseudonym. Those
aren't their real names, because we want to make sure
that they're protected. But Mike Burke thought that there was
a real possibility that the offender would hear, and he
hopes that listening and hearing Abby and Beth and knowing
how much time has passed might inspire this guy to
turn himself in. Mike Burke is a great, great psychologist,
and I just think he's a bit of an optimist.
I don't feel that optimistic about it. I think this
guy is a violent predator and don't I can't see
him ever admitting his guilt, pleading guilty, or turning himself in.
It just doesn't seem that fits to me, with the
kind of person that he obviously is, the kind of
complete and utter scum that he obviously is, So I
can't see that happening, but I certainly wish it would.
I hope, so. I hope he listens and by God
turns himself in. But I think it's much more likely
that someone who knows him will hear that behavior and
what went on in that time frame and in those
time periods, and that where he must have been in
order to have access to these young women at these
two college campuses in Kansas, and will call the police.
And what I think is really likely is that this
guy has some kind of a partner, possibly a mother,
someone that he lives with, and he's got a storage
facility or a locked closet or a drawer that is
full of these videos of these horrific rates.
Speaker 2: Oh I forgot.
Speaker 5: Someone has got to know that. Yeah, someone has got
to know it. Either they've seen it, they've seen him
watching it, or it's there living with someone who has
a hidden room. I had a case once with an
offender who was offending against his or from the time
she was five at the time she was nine, and
he had a locked room that his wife wasn't allowed
to go in, And I thought to myself, what the
hell are you thinking? Why do you think that's okay?
Why aren't you weirded out by the fact that your
spouse has a locked room you're not allowed to go in.
It's not like he's a diamond merchant and you're not
allowed to go to where the diamonds are stored. It's crazy.
So I think this guy probably has that same kind
of thing, and someone who listens to Midwest Monster might think,
Oh my god, I wonder if that's what he has
in that locked room or that locked row, that storage facility.
I'm not allowed to go to fancy.
Speaker 4: This has been an amazing series that you guys have
put together for Audible, but I know it's not the
only thing you're working on. Can you talk about what's
next for you in best case, worst case and anything
else you're doing with x G.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's a big ass Chris. I really appreciate you
guys asking me to come on, and I really appreciate
you highlighting mid Wes Monster. It's such a passion project
for me. It's so important for me. It's almost like
I'm still a prosecutor a little bit. I can still
feel like I'm seeking justice, and that is what we
really do it x SHE in a lot of ways
is we highlight these kind of projects and we're seeking justice.
Some of my favorite projects that we've done that are still,
of course available on Audible are Call Me God about
the DC Sniper Case. That's just an incredible end depth
perspective from all the people who work that case that
you've never heard of before. Shoot Out the Battle for
North Hollywood, Now that's an amazing project. We got some
incredible interviews of people like the dentists who save the
life of the young rookie police officer who's still a
sergeant today at LAPD. That's an amazing project and we
have a lot coming out that I think people will
be interested. Go to exgproduction dot com and see. So
that's exciting. Of course we're going to continue best case,
worst case. Jim and I have really focused the last
couple of weeks on the Eliza Fletcher kidnapping and murder,
which is just horrifying, just a terrible case. And Christen,
you mentioned earlier about rape being underreported, something that I
would really like to highlight, and we've actually tried to
get a variety of different outlets to let us do
a show or project about and everyone always says no
about the rape kit backlog. It's just shocking to me
that Eliza Fletcher didn't have to die. That offender should
have been behind bars because the woman was raped before
Eliza Fletcher was kidnapped, was raped an entire year before that,
and it took them almost a year to process that
rape kit and to get a result that came in
a couple of days after Eliza was dead. And it's
how many women have to die? Why do we devalue
this so much it makes me just It infuriates me
that we do this and continue to do it, and
have plenty of money in this country to fix the spot.
We're too busy wasting it on stupid stuff. I would
cuss here, but I don't know if you're allowed to
cuss in this podcast, so I'm not going to shut
And so that I think is something that we all
as podcasters can consistently highlight by covering cases like Eliza
Fletcher and talking about rape kit backlog, how inexcusable it is,
and how we all should demand to be fixed. We
are the taxpayers, where are the citizens, we're providing the money,
Where is it going? We need to demand that our
politicians prioritize rape kits and DNA like that from every crime,
because there's no excuse for it. There's no excuse for
waiting year to process it, because you are sitting there saying,
here's you're saying to the woman who gets raped in
twenty twenty one, you don't matter exactly. We don't care
if fact guys running around raping other women, which means
women don't matter. It drives me absolutely up the wall.
And so I think as podcasters we can all agree
that those sort of issues are why we do what
we do and why it's important to continue to do
what we do and hopefully draw the attention of legislators
and lawmakers and fix this damn problem. Wonderful, Oh I
did cuss.
Speaker 4: Sorry, You're fine.
Speaker 2: Phenomenal discussion for then, next time we have you on
mind over anytime.
Speaker 4: Yes, Fantsy, thank you so much for joining us. It's
been a pleasure and we do hope you'll join us
for another episode of mind Over Murder.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of
mind Over Murder. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space.
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Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mind Over Murder