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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about him Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening, November two, nineteen forty five, On her way
Speaker 5: to a high school football game with friends, a fourteen
Speaker 5: year old girl vanishes after driving away with a man
Speaker 5: who says he needs a babysitter. The FBI unleash It's
Speaker 5: Ungleish is its top kidnapping expert, an agent who helped
Speaker 5: bring John Dillinger down. Will that be enough to find
Speaker 5: the girl and her abductor? Agents chase the suspected kidnapper
Speaker 5: from California to Illinois and back again. Arrested in Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: he admits abducting the child. He also tells the FBI
Speaker 5: he killed the girl and threw her body into the
Speaker 5: Pacific Ocean. A search for her corpse proves fruitless. Then,
Speaker 5: when all hope is lost, authorities discover the skeleton of
Speaker 5: another young woman who's fallen victim to this madman. The
Speaker 5: wife of the man who made that discovery is found
Speaker 5: dead at the bottom of the cliff. During the accused
Speaker 5: killer's trial, women around the country fall in love with
Speaker 5: the handsome monster and literally break down the doors of
Speaker 5: a courthouse to get close to him. After the child's
Speaker 5: killer is convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber, a
Speaker 5: scientist shows up and says he can bring the murderer
Speaker 5: back from the dead. The book featuring this evening is
Speaker 5: The Murder of Thora Chamberlain, a shocking true crime story
Speaker 5: with my special guest, journalist and author Rod Cackley. Welcome
Speaker 5: back to the program and thank you very much for
Speaker 5: this interview Rod Cackley, and.
Speaker 4: Thank you Dan for having me again. This is always
Speaker 4: a joy.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you so much. Congratulations on this book,
Speaker 5: The Murder of Thor Chamberlain.
Speaker 4: Thanks. Yeah, you know, this story is probably the most
Speaker 4: fascinating story I've written over the past five years or so.
Speaker 4: It really is an incredible story.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, you take us to September twenty Firth first,
Speaker 5: nineteen forty five, and you set the stage where you
Speaker 5: talk about the World War Two just being over and
Speaker 5: all kinds of servicemen returning to America, but also returning
Speaker 5: through California. So tell us what happens November two, nineteen
Speaker 5: forty five and September nineteen forty five. Tell us about
Speaker 5: the foot locker theft.
Speaker 4: Now, this is what's important to realize many how many
Speaker 4: servicemen and women came into California as part of what
Speaker 4: they called Operation Magic Carpet, the post World War II
Speaker 4: operation to bring US military personnel home. Millions of servicemen
Speaker 4: from the Pacific Theater are streaming back home this day
Speaker 4: through California. So military uniforms, including those of the Navy,
Speaker 4: are hardly unfamiliar, and that's an important part to the story.
Speaker 4: Right now, the small town of Campbell, California, has exploded
Speaker 4: with this new population. It's relatively close to the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 4: only five miles from San Jose and forty two miles
Speaker 4: from San Francisco. One of those returning through California is
Speaker 4: a petty officer. After being stationed in London and Ireland,
Speaker 4: is a Chief Commissary Stewart in the US Naval Reserve.
Speaker 4: He's back on American soil and someone has nicked his
Speaker 4: foot locker. He's gotten into the British way of speaking
Speaker 4: being overseas as long as he was. They've stolen his
Speaker 4: foot locker, and what's inside his foot locker is very important.
Speaker 4: It will become important later in the story. There was
Speaker 4: no money in it, so he didn't lose any money,
Speaker 4: but he lost his white London Dairy Ireland Navy T shirt.
Speaker 4: His Navy medals were pinned on that, so he lost
Speaker 4: his medals as well. And then he lost a pair
Speaker 4: of navy slate gray trousers. That's all missing, and that
Speaker 4: will come into our story later on.
Speaker 5: You talk about a waitress, and of course this will
Speaker 5: factory in later. But a waitress sees him on November two, Yeah, November.
Speaker 5: What's he wearing? What's this man wearing in this restaurant
Speaker 5: that she works at?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, this is in November, so it was a
Speaker 4: couple of months later, and Sally has drawn a little
Speaker 4: weary of watching a guy wearing guess what, a white
Speaker 4: T shirt with blue insignia bearing the words London Dairy Ireland.
Speaker 4: He's playing a pinball game called the big broadcast game,
Speaker 4: simple game to play. But you know he could just
Speaker 4: drop Nickels in and they're not kicking him out. What
Speaker 4: strange about him. Sally's a very attractive waitress and she's
Speaker 4: coming on to him as much as the waitress might
Speaker 4: to get an extra tip. Back in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 4: I mean, we have to remember this is forty five,
Speaker 4: so this is you know, life in forty five was
Speaker 4: not what we see life as in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: So she is trying to get a little more tip
Speaker 4: out of him, trying to figure out why he's not
Speaker 4: eating her. Boss Lewis would just as soon this guy
Speaker 4: get out, But he's just hanging out in this restaurant,
Speaker 4: this little cafe. And you know, Sally had a husband
Speaker 4: who was lost overseas, and so this is the whole
Speaker 4: post war thing is going on in this restaurant, and
Speaker 4: she's wondering why this guy is not ordering anything to eat.
Speaker 4: He's just hanging out playing this big broadcast pinball game.
Speaker 4: Now it's just after two o'clock. Now high school kids
Speaker 4: are starting to stream in coming into the restaurant, so
Speaker 4: she doesn't have any time to worry about this guy
Speaker 4: sitting at the counter anymore, wearing the white Londonderry Ireland
Speaker 4: team shirt. Suddenly she looks up and he's gone. This
Speaker 4: navy veteran with the white T shirt has gone on
Speaker 4: on the bigger and better things.
Speaker 5: She figures, Yeah, you talk about the She notes that
Speaker 5: he was driving a blue Sedan. And so then you
Speaker 5: take us to Carol Anne and Yvonne Rapp. And this
Speaker 5: is Caroline's seven and her sister is eight years old,
Speaker 5: and they're walking home from school.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, I'm glad you mentioned that blue Plymouth because
Speaker 4: that's essential to the story as well. It's two thirty
Speaker 4: five in the afternoon now, November two, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 4: and like every school day, these two sisters, Caroline and Yvonne,
Speaker 4: are walking home. They're seven and eight years old. They're
Speaker 4: walking home together from Campbell Grammar School, which is across
Speaker 4: the street from Campbell Union High School. The war is over,
Speaker 4: you know, they're walking home together. This, again, is nineteen
Speaker 4: forty five, not unusual to see kids walking alone on
Speaker 4: the way home from school. This isn't twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: when parents have to feel like they have to come
Speaker 4: and protect their children all the way home from school.
Speaker 4: To their home. Right well, as Yvonne and Carol Anne
Speaker 4: are walking home, a blue sidan pulls up alongside them.
Speaker 4: A man inside wearing a white Londonderry Ireland T shirt
Speaker 4: notices that or asks the girl rather, how are you doing?
Speaker 4: And the girls giggle and ask how can we can
Speaker 4: you help me? He says. What he says is that
Speaker 4: he and his sister need a babysitter for the afternoon. Oh,
Speaker 4: you know these kids is in nineteen twenty five. Again,
Speaker 4: kids are trained, they're raised to help grownups and to
Speaker 4: respect grown ups. Sure, but still Carol Anne, even though
Speaker 4: she's the younger of the pair, she knows something's wrong.
Speaker 4: There's something just creeping her out about this guy in
Speaker 4: the blue sidan, and she grabs her sister and they run.
Speaker 4: Yvonne does look back and wave goodbye, and she sees
Speaker 4: the man in the blu Sidan doing a U turn
Speaker 4: in the street and he's driving back toward the school
Speaker 4: where she thinks the big kids go, Campbell Union High School.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about Thora Chamberlain and her friends. They're
Speaker 5: walking to a football game, and so tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about who Thora Chamberlain is and what happens
Speaker 5: on the way to the game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, twenty five minutes later, Thora and her friends are
Speaker 4: walking out of Campbell Union High School. They're walking to
Speaker 4: a football game that'll be Campbell Union against Washington High
Speaker 4: School of Centerville. Tora is only twenty days short of
Speaker 4: her fifteenth birthday. She has brown, curly hair, blue eyes,
Speaker 4: five foot two and weighs one hundred and twenty pounds
Speaker 4: now this day, she's wearing a gabardine coat, a blue sweater,
Speaker 4: a white blouse, a red skirt, and just like her friends,
Speaker 4: she has two pairs of overlapping bobby socks on one
Speaker 4: red and the other color blue on each foot, and
Speaker 4: tan loafers. The socks they're red and the blue. This
Speaker 4: is what they do on game day. They wear two
Speaker 4: pairs of socks instead of just a pair of socks,
Speaker 4: and red and blue those are the school colors. Right now.
Speaker 4: Like the other girls, Thora's carrying textbooks, her books from school.
Speaker 4: She has a zipper binder and a cow bell that
Speaker 4: she'll ring in support of the Campbell Union team. She
Speaker 4: fits right in with your friends, but she's kind of
Speaker 4: the leader of the packs here, okay. She is the
Speaker 4: one that always takes the lead. Two of her friends,
Speaker 4: Elaine and Catherine Band. Elaine Seeneca and Catherine Band. They're
Speaker 4: fifteen years old, a little bit older than thora. Both
Speaker 4: have blonde hair and green eyes. And they see a
Speaker 4: blue sedan, a blue Plymouth, slowly coming up alongside the
Speaker 4: girls on Winchester Boulevard. Look, it looks to Eileen and
Speaker 4: Arlaine brother Elaine and Catherine, it looks like one of
Speaker 4: those cars that gangsters drive in the old nineteen forties
Speaker 4: movies that they would watch. I mean what they weren't
Speaker 4: old movies to these kids, but the movies that they
Speaker 4: go to see in the theater. It looks just like
Speaker 4: a gangster car. They're thinking, actually, it's a thirty two car,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty two, because you know, back in this day,
Speaker 4: you know, they shut down all the car manufacturing plants
Speaker 4: during the war, so nobody was driving a new car
Speaker 4: from the forties. Everybody was driving cars from the Well.
Speaker 4: The blue car pulls up alongside the girls and they
Speaker 4: look inside and there's a guy inside who's he's got thick,
Speaker 4: curly black hair, he's got a jaunty smile. He's a
Speaker 4: good looking guy. Okay, the girls don't know what to
Speaker 4: do next. They look to Thora to take the lead,
Speaker 4: and even Rita Byerley, who's seventeen years old, the oldest
Speaker 4: in the crowd. She doesn't know what to do, but
Speaker 4: Thora giggles, shrugs her shoulders, and moves up to the car.
Speaker 4: The guy in the car again, he's a good looking guy.
Speaker 4: It kind of a quick, easy goofy smile, is how
Speaker 4: the girls would later describe it. It's wearing a garrison
Speaker 4: hat with a water repellent cover, the US Navy style
Speaker 4: white tearshirt with a purple heart and a blue insignia
Speaker 4: bearing the words London Dairy, Ireland and pinned down the
Speaker 4: shirt are several service medals. Remember what was in that
Speaker 4: foot locker that was stolen back in October, Well, this
Speaker 4: is what we're looking at now. Okay, now, it's hardly
Speaker 4: unusual to see military veterans on the streets in Campbell.
Speaker 4: Like we Saidlliams of them were working their way through
Speaker 4: Campbell into California and then into the United States. The
Speaker 4: man in the car, green eyes a good looking guy again.
Speaker 4: He smiles. He smiles at Thra He says, Hey, I
Speaker 4: need some help. My sister needs a babysitter. Could you
Speaker 4: just do this for a couple of hours, It won't
Speaker 4: take long, and I'm ready to pay you. He pulls
Speaker 4: a five dollar bill out of his shirt, out of
Speaker 4: his pocket. He says, I'm ready to pay you now.
Speaker 4: Five bucks goes a long way with a teenager in
Speaker 4: nineteen forty five. That can buy a lot of fun
Speaker 4: in Campbell and she's going to the football game. He says,
Speaker 4: I only need you for thirty minutes. My sister and
Speaker 4: I just need to run a couple of errands, no
Speaker 4: more than half an hour, and then I'll drive you
Speaker 4: to the football game. You'll be there by halftime. He
Speaker 4: makes that promise. Thora looks back at her friends, takes
Speaker 4: a deep breath, looks back at the roll down window
Speaker 4: in the car and the five dollar bill in this
Speaker 4: guy's hand, and she gets into the car. She looks
Speaker 4: out the window of her friends and says, don't forget
Speaker 4: to save me a seat. I'll see you soon, and
Speaker 4: they drive away.
Speaker 5: You write about a woman in Saratoga, which is about
Speaker 5: six miles away from Campbell. What does she witness a
Speaker 5: man in a blue plymouth doing? What does she see?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is where the story really gets scary. Three
Speaker 4: point thirty in the afternoon. Now Ella Ribble of Badel,
Speaker 4: the wife of the San Jose physician, an I specialist,
Speaker 4: does luckily have it, goes out to get her mail
Speaker 4: from a roadside mailbox outside her home, as he said
Speaker 4: in Sarahtoga, about six miles southwest of Campbell. Now she's
Speaker 4: out looking at all. Of a sudden, a blues to
Speaker 4: dan comes speeding by, ripping by fast, and she looks.
Speaker 4: She steps off the lawn. She steps, she's gonna go
Speaker 4: to the Mailbox's car comes by and nearly knocks her down.
Speaker 4: She catches herself on the way down and looks into
Speaker 4: the car through the passenger side window. Ella sees something
Speaker 4: she'll never forget. She sees a teenage girl, young, with
Speaker 4: bouncy curls in her brown hair, wearing a red skirt
Speaker 4: and a blue sweater. The child's face is pressed against
Speaker 4: the car's window as the girl claws furiously at the glass,
Speaker 4: trying desperately to get out. Beyond the girl, Ellisi is
Speaker 4: a man, hatless with bushy hair, driving with both hands
Speaker 4: on the steering wheel. Ella let's go with the mailbox
Speaker 4: handle and sits down on the lawn. Her head falls
Speaker 4: forward as she tries to catch her breath. Then she
Speaker 4: looks up, realizing she'll never forget that girl's face because
Speaker 4: Ella has never seen such fear.
Speaker 5: You talk about. Frank and Lois Chamberlain. Now they know
Speaker 5: she's going to the football game. They keep her supper warm,
Speaker 5: but it's seven point thirty. So Mom calls around, calls
Speaker 5: her friends to see what's happened.
Speaker 4: If it seens Thorra, yeah, Now this is a typical
Speaker 4: nineteen forties era, late forties, early fifties couple, Frank and Lois.
Speaker 4: Lois is a stay at home mom. They had two
Speaker 4: other sisters or two other girls along with Thorra. Frank
Speaker 4: is a real estate developer and quite successful in Campbell. Now,
Speaker 4: Frank and Lois, they weren't expecting to her to be
Speaker 4: home for the usual five thirty pm dinner. But now,
Speaker 4: as he said Dan, it's seven thirty and they're starting
Speaker 4: to get worried. So Lois picks up the phone and
Speaker 4: starts calling Thora's friends. One friend after another says, you know,
Speaker 4: they hate to say that Thora did anything wrong. They
Speaker 4: don't want to squeal on Thora, so to speak, but
Speaker 4: they do say that we were all on the way
Speaker 4: to the football game. Thora did get into a car
Speaker 4: with another man with a man, and they drove off
Speaker 4: and promised to be back at halftime. Now Lois is
Speaker 4: very scared, and she continues calling Thora's friends. Half an
Speaker 4: hour into this, Frank, who was too old to serve
Speaker 4: in the war, but he still sees himself as a
Speaker 4: man of action, well respected in Campbell, he calls the police,
Speaker 4: the sheriff's deputies rather, and they start calling neighbors, and
Speaker 4: less than half an hour after they realize Sora is missing. Frank,
Speaker 4: Lois and as many neighbors as they can round up
Speaker 4: all start walking through the neighborhood in Campbell, calling out
Speaker 4: in vain Dora's name.
Speaker 5: Nineteen forty five. You take us to a construction site
Speaker 5: called Blair's Construction Yard in Burlingame, which is about thirty
Speaker 5: five miles north of Campbell. Tell us about what the
Speaker 5: boss believes about his employee, Thomas Henry mcmonocle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Thomas Henry mcmonagall. This is where we meet this guy.
Speaker 4: He's a laborer at Blair's construction yard. I mean he's
Speaker 4: just like a classic ne'er do well, as they would
Speaker 4: say back in the forties, I think. I mean, his
Speaker 4: buddies are glad to see him. He's always good for
Speaker 4: a joke, a laugh, a slap on the back of
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. But he's not a hard worker.
Speaker 4: I mean, he ducks out early as often as he can.
Speaker 4: He takes as many cigarette breaks as he can. He's
Speaker 4: not he doesn't have what we would call in this
Speaker 4: day a great work ethic. Okay, but now he's a
Speaker 4: good worker when he puts his mind to it. And
Speaker 4: he's a strong guy. He was a boxer as a
Speaker 4: teenager and did pretty well. He did some professional boxing,
Speaker 4: so he's got muscle, he's got coordination. And this day
Speaker 4: he swaggers up to the time clock at seven fifty
Speaker 4: five am, a full five minutes early, to begin to shift.
Speaker 4: This is not like mister mcmonagall at all. This is
Speaker 4: a totally different Thomas. He listens to the clock clunking along,
Speaker 4: you know those old time clocks they would have, as
Speaker 4: his buddies put their cards in. He takes his turn
Speaker 4: and guess what his card is missing. His boss pulled
Speaker 4: the card, so he has to go to his boss
Speaker 4: ask for his card back, in effect, and ask for
Speaker 4: his job back. The boss is upset because he, you know,
Speaker 4: mcmonagall took a powder on him, so to speak, and
Speaker 4: he's been gone for a week. He hasn't been seen
Speaker 4: for a week. They go back and forth and finally
Speaker 4: gets his Thomas gets his card back and he punches
Speaker 4: in and he goes back to work, talks to his
Speaker 4: friends and they're saying, hey, where have you been for
Speaker 4: the past week? What have you been doing? And Thomas
Speaker 4: leans on his shovel, tips his hat back with his
Speaker 4: left thumb, looks at them, smiles and says, out with
Speaker 4: a fifteen year old girl, that's where and oh yeah,
Speaker 4: a real cookie she was. You take us.
Speaker 5: In November six and this non ambitious or unambitious person
Speaker 5: worker asked his boss to do a special job. What
Speaker 5: is this special job? Entail?
Speaker 4: He wants to build a ramp or a causeway over
Speaker 4: a ditch. Thomas. This is his second day back from
Speaker 4: his on paid five day vacation and Thomas wants to
Speaker 4: do this. He's actually asking for extra work, which raises
Speaker 4: red flags all over the construction yard. He explains boss,
Speaker 4: if we can walk over the ditch instead of around it,
Speaker 4: we'll save all kinds of time and effort, which was
Speaker 4: true enough. The foreman had to admit that was really
Speaker 4: a pretty good idea. But he says, if you do
Speaker 4: your usual half job and decide to take a powder
Speaker 4: two hours into this, what am I left with? Thomas
Speaker 4: promises that he'll get it done. He's going to fill
Speaker 4: the dish in with dirt and concrete blocks and another
Speaker 4: half hour repleting, whining and promises. The boss gives in.
Speaker 4: He grants Thomas permission to leave the crew for a
Speaker 4: day to start and finish the project. Eight hours. He's
Speaker 4: giving him to do this project, to fill in this
Speaker 4: ditch so that they can walk over it instead of
Speaker 4: around it.
Speaker 5: He shares a home in San Matteo, Matteo and he
Speaker 5: his wife's name Enna. They have this blue plymouth. When
Speaker 5: he comes home from this job, the special assignment that
Speaker 5: he asks his boss to do, what does he do
Speaker 5: and what does he tell Enna he's going to do?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So he comes home after that day, He's filled
Speaker 4: in the ditch. He's done everything that you know he
Speaker 4: promised to do. He's worn out. He goes into the
Speaker 4: house and Enna is waiting for him. As you said,
Speaker 4: she's had a rough day too. She works at Woolworth's
Speaker 4: and you know, on her feet all day long. They
Speaker 4: have a dinner of hamburgers and French fries and he
Speaker 4: gets up. Now they just had a baby too. It's
Speaker 4: important to say that a baby in the house, okay.
Speaker 4: But he stands up after dinner, says he's got to go.
Speaker 4: Where are you going? And it says la. He responds,
Speaker 4: as in Los Angeles. He says, it's like you're reading
Speaker 4: the map in my head. So anyway, he tosses the
Speaker 4: car key of that blue Plymouth to Enna and just
Speaker 4: goes out the door. While Enna's tapping another cigarette to
Speaker 4: get the tobacco packed down nicely, Thomas is outside. He's
Speaker 4: nearly running down the street. He sees he's running toward
Speaker 4: a bus stop and he sees a bus to Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: He sprints and he gets on that bus and he
Speaker 4: takes off on that bus. I'm not sure where he's
Speaker 4: going to end up, but he's thinking in the back
Speaker 4: of his mind, maybe I'll wind up in East Alton, Illinois,
Speaker 4: drop in on his family. That's where his family lives,
Speaker 4: and that's where he's from. East Alton, Illinois. So he
Speaker 4: leaves Enna at home, with the baby and the plymouth.
Speaker 5: You take us in November eighth, and this is six
Speaker 5: days in Authora Chamberlain's is missing. On the FBI get involved,
Speaker 5: tell us about this involvement, and also tell us about
Speaker 5: the San Jose Evening News and a telegram to the family.
Speaker 4: It's six days long, long days and nights for Frank
Speaker 4: and Lewis Chamberlain and their two other daughters. The FBI
Speaker 4: is on the case now, but guess what, maybe the
Speaker 4: FEDS will be able to stay home. Speculation grows today
Speaker 4: that Thorra is doing okay, or at the very least,
Speaker 4: will be found near Long Beach. The San Jose A
Speaker 4: Evening News the editors they're looking at a telegram they received,
Speaker 4: and the telegram says Tha Chamberlain, daughter of the San
Speaker 4: Jose contractor, was last seen in Long Beach about ten am.
Speaker 4: And the telegram has signed a friend at Campbell High
Speaker 4: School class of nineteen forty four. So now they think
Speaker 4: they've got a lead.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Coincidentally, Thora is not the only child listed. It's missing
Speaker 4: in today in California, also at the top above the
Speaker 4: fold in the newspapers. As they've said back in those days,
Speaker 4: a kid by the name of Dickey Tom Sudden went
Speaker 4: missing six days ago. The timeline is there, right? Is
Speaker 4: there a connection between the two? Probably not, but hundreds
Speaker 4: of soldiers and civilians who have been searching for Dickie
Speaker 4: near Downeville say they've all been abandoned, hope. So you've
Speaker 4: got a search for two children going on at the
Speaker 4: same time. FBI agents around that case as well, while
Speaker 4: Frank and Lois are sitting at home in Campbell waiting
Speaker 4: for news. Now, going back to this telegram, we've got
Speaker 4: Sheriff William Emmig coming into the case. Now. They're looking
Speaker 4: hard at Long Beach because of that telegram. There's additional
Speaker 4: evidence she's alive and well, this is a break in
Speaker 4: the case. They're thinking not a Kazakh cosmic seismic opening,
Speaker 4: but it's good news and it gives the sheriff's team
Speaker 4: a more substantial lead than they've had to date. Along
Speaker 4: with the telegram, Emigs says, a call to the Chamberlain
Speaker 4: family was placed from Long Beach Tuesday night to sixth
Speaker 4: around ten pm, and then another call from Long Beach
Speaker 4: rang the Chamberlain's home at nine in the morning yesterday.
Speaker 4: One of EMI's deputies asks who is calling Emmig responds
Speaker 4: with a shrug. We don't know whoever was calling before
Speaker 4: the calls hung up, before the calls were completed. Now
Speaker 4: they've also discovered a guy who gets that. His name
Speaker 4: is George O'Neill. Phoned that telegram to Western Union Tuesday,
Speaker 4: claiming the Chamberlain girl was in Long Beach and he
Speaker 4: gave his address as the local YMCA. Unfortunately, nobody by
Speaker 4: that name is stated the y recently, so they're back
Speaker 4: to ground zero, back to where they started. But Emma
Speaker 4: assures his men that now they have hope, and the
Speaker 4: Chamberlain family should have hope as well well. Frank and
Speaker 4: Lowers are not feeling as good about this as the
Speaker 4: shriff his. They hand deliver a statement to all the
Speaker 4: local newspapers that is, as they put it, an earnest
Speaker 4: appeal to the person responsible for Thora's disappearance to advise
Speaker 4: us by letter or telephone that she's unharmed. And the
Speaker 4: parents also ask all other people who have are persons
Speaker 4: who have any information of any character as to the
Speaker 4: whereabouts of our daughter to communicate with us, and they
Speaker 4: list their phone number and their home address something that
Speaker 4: nobody would do in this day and age. Now, in conclusion,
Speaker 4: Frank and Lowis write, no one can appreciate the grief
Speaker 4: and anxiety they have been ours for the past few days.
Speaker 4: For ours and the sake of all mothers and fathers,
Speaker 4: please try to help us an hour of need. And
Speaker 4: again they too, Frank and Laws are reading the story
Speaker 4: of Dickie Tom Sutton's family and their woes on page
Speaker 4: three of today as San Francisco Examiner, and they're thinking,
Speaker 4: you know, what could this be? What happens to us?
Speaker 4: Were they given up on Dickie? Will anyone will they
Speaker 4: give up on thra And once you know, remember they
Speaker 4: gave their phone number out, their phone number and their
Speaker 4: address out, something we would never do in this day,
Speaker 4: I said parenthetically. Well, once word gets out that the
Speaker 4: search for the toddler Dickie has been called off, the
Speaker 4: Chamberlain family get so many crank phone calls they have
Speaker 4: to move out of their house to what's described as
Speaker 4: an undisclosed location. And so now not only do they
Speaker 4: have a child missing, they have to move to a
Speaker 4: new home. They have to run escape their house and
Speaker 4: go to a new home and wait and pray that
Speaker 4: their daughter will be found alive.
Speaker 5: And well, we talked about the FBI in the introduction.
Speaker 5: We talked about somebody that was involved in bringing on
Speaker 5: Dillinger and Ma and Fred Barker to Justice EJ. Connolly,
Speaker 5: and this is you talk about a dramatic meeting of
Speaker 5: the FBI in San Jose, California. Tell us about that meeting,
Speaker 5: but also about the law that in response to Charles
Speaker 5: Lindsberg's son being kidnapped.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Lindberg baby law. This is really what brings
Speaker 4: the FBI into this. Otherwise they it would be a
Speaker 4: local case, a local jurisdiction, and the FBI wouldn't get
Speaker 4: involved in this because they have no they have no
Speaker 4: evidence that thora's kidnapper has taken her and cross state lines.
Speaker 4: So they're into this because of this, the Lindbergh baby case,
Speaker 4: and they have a meeting now. EJ is a very
Speaker 4: interesting guy, one of the top FBI agents. He is
Speaker 4: such a top FBI agent that, despite Jander Hoover's mandate
Speaker 4: that all FBI agents be clean shaven, EJ has a
Speaker 4: thin pencil mustache that he refuses to shave off. And
Speaker 4: he's so good at what he does Hoover does not
Speaker 4: force him to shave it off. That's the kind of
Speaker 4: guy that EJ tinally is. Okay, And now so they
Speaker 4: the FBI is coming into this case, and he meets
Speaker 4: with the top cop in San Mateo, California, Robert em
Speaker 4: and O'Brien. He became the city's second police chief two
Speaker 4: years ago. And O'Brien is everything that EJ is not. Okay.
Speaker 4: EJ is a former military man. He's like lean and strong,
Speaker 4: razor sharp, every hair in place on the top of
Speaker 4: his head, while O'Brien's muscular body is hidden by pounds
Speaker 4: of fat, his hair is wavy black. It never seems
Speaker 4: to want to stay still. He's a big guy. I
Speaker 4: mean you know that. You know, if a fight broke
Speaker 4: out in a bar, you would want him on your side. Okay,
Speaker 4: but he still is everything that EJ is not. So
Speaker 4: neither of them feel like they're looking into a mirror
Speaker 4: as they're sitting across the table from each other, and
Speaker 4: they each have their own jurisdiction to worry about. You know,
Speaker 4: these guys are both alpha males. I guess there's a
Speaker 4: way to put it. They're not about to let down
Speaker 4: at all, but chief O'Brien knows that the primary motivation
Speaker 4: here is to find thora Chamberlain, so he is willing
Speaker 4: to let his guard down and starts giving EJ information.
Speaker 4: He thinks there's a man that they should be looking at.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have any evidence, but a lot of circumstantial
Speaker 4: evidence is coming up that points him in this direction.
Speaker 4: He pushes an eight x twelve black and white photos
Speaker 4: toward EJ. He says, this is a fellow worth looking at,
Speaker 4: I think, and it is a picture of Thomas Henry mcmonagall.
Speaker 4: And this is where we start finding mcmonagall's problem the past.
Speaker 4: And there are a lot of signs, you know, that
Speaker 4: would lead you to think that Thomas Henry mcmonagall, an
Speaker 4: ex con from Illinois by the way, living with his
Speaker 4: wife and San Matteo, is a guy you have to
Speaker 4: look at mcmonagall. I love this guy, but you know
Speaker 4: who mcmonical loves teenage girls. He's been after teenage girls.
Speaker 4: It's been a real problem in San Matteo. He's got
Speaker 4: a job as a bus driver and one of his
Speaker 4: route goes along a high school or near a high
Speaker 4: school where high school girls are getting on all the time.
Speaker 4: He's constantly putting the moves on these high school girls.
Speaker 4: It gets so bad that they form the Thomas mcmonagall
Speaker 4: fan Club. The girls new and they think it's hilarious,
Speaker 4: but they don't want anything to do with this guy. Now.
Speaker 4: What they do occasionally is they'll set up dates with
Speaker 4: him and have him like you'll meet at this corner
Speaker 4: and we'll meet you there. Well, of course they stand
Speaker 4: him up, but they are the bushes laughing at him. Right, Okay,
Speaker 4: So mcmonagal's got some real problems here when it comes
Speaker 4: to women. He's an ex town from Illinois. He's also
Speaker 4: got a real anger management problem. He gets into an
Speaker 4: argument with his boss and beats his boss up. He
Speaker 4: also is charged with attempted rape, and the attempted rape
Speaker 4: involved guess what a fourteen year old girl they did.
Speaker 4: The family did not press charges. But with all of
Speaker 4: this information, EJ. Connolly figures this has got to be
Speaker 4: his suspect number one. This is the guy that he
Speaker 4: wants to find, Thomas Henry mcmonagall.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about that. He has this photo of
Speaker 5: mcmonacle and so he takes it to the people that
Speaker 5: have said that they had seen this person like Rita
Speaker 5: and her friends that were with Thorra, and also the
Speaker 5: woman that said she saw a man in the vehicle
Speaker 5: with the girl in the back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And they also go to that fourteen year old
Speaker 4: girl in San Bruno that had accused him of rape
Speaker 4: but then backed off and didn't press charges. They showed
Speaker 4: the picture to all of them and they all say,
Speaker 4: this is the man. They all give a positive ID
Speaker 4: to that photo.
Speaker 5: Now, the FBI has decided to follow this person to
Speaker 5: this team has its assignment. So what are some of
Speaker 5: the things that they are assigned to do to be
Speaker 5: able to capture this person? Tell us what some of
Speaker 5: those assignments were.
Speaker 4: Remember we have to remember here that as far as
Speaker 4: we know, if Thora is still alive, right, okay, And
Speaker 4: what they're hoping is that Thomas Henry mcmonagall, if he
Speaker 4: is their man, will lead them to Thorra and they
Speaker 4: will able to bring her home alive and well, so
Speaker 4: they don't want to pick him up, they don't want
Speaker 4: to scare them, they don't want to arrest him, but
Speaker 4: they are following him, and they follow him all the
Speaker 4: way from Los Angeles to Eastdalton, Illinois, and they're following him.
Speaker 4: You know different teams of agents as they come into
Speaker 4: different territories, different FBI agents offices will open up and
Speaker 4: they all work together. They'll work with local police, and
Speaker 4: they're following this guy, staying as close to him as possible.
Speaker 4: When Thomas starts hitch hiking, when he gets off the
Speaker 4: bus and starts hitch hiking, a couple of the FBI
Speaker 4: agents in a car actually pick him up and take
Speaker 4: him to where he wants to go. So that's how
Speaker 4: close they were to this guy. They really kept in minded,
Speaker 4: really a strict surveillance the whole way.
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Speaker 5: ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire Now, Rod, we were
Speaker 5: talking about the chase was on, the surveillance was on,
Speaker 5: and they have their suspect. They have acknowledgments from witnesses
Speaker 5: to say that this is the man they do a
Speaker 5: photo lineup, they do a actual lineup. Pardon me, I'm
Speaker 5: getting ahead of myself a little bit. Tell us about
Speaker 5: the effort from the team to close around and capture
Speaker 5: Thomas mcmonical.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's in a bus now, and a bus on
Speaker 4: the way back to LA They did you know? He
Speaker 4: went to Eastalton, Illinois and stayed with family and his sister.
Speaker 4: By the way, as soon as he walked into the house,
Speaker 4: his sister told a friend, something is wrong here. He
Speaker 4: never comes to see us. Something is wrong. Now they're
Speaker 4: closing in on him. He takes a bus back to
Speaker 4: Los Angeles, or at least in that direction. They're closing
Speaker 4: in on him. A couple of agents are in the
Speaker 4: bus with this guy. A couple more agents are in
Speaker 4: a car behind them, so they're like right on this
Speaker 4: guy and Thomas Henry mcmonag they're not about to let
Speaker 4: him loose, and they pull into the bus stop. This
Speaker 4: is a day. But you know, one of the things
Speaker 4: I tried to do in this story was to put
Speaker 4: it all in context. Now, this is the day, A
Speaker 4: couple of days until Thanksgiving November twentieth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 4: and Thomas is on this bus and they're headed back
Speaker 4: to Los Angeles. He gets off the bus, or everybody
Speaker 4: gets off the bus except the bus driver, and Thomas
Speaker 4: is gone. How could this mean? How could he have vanished? Well,
Speaker 4: actually he fell asleep on the bus and they have
Speaker 4: to lead They pull him up and actually walk him
Speaker 4: off the bus. He's got a medical problem in that
Speaker 4: he tried to overdose. He took sedatives and tried to overdose.
Speaker 4: He tried to kill himself. So now they've got their
Speaker 4: prime suspect. They've got him, but he is totally incoherent
Speaker 4: and they're afraid that he might die. So they've got
Speaker 4: to rush him to a hospital. What happens there in
Speaker 4: the hospital, he's treated and he comes back to life.
Speaker 4: He gets over it. The doctors, whose name is doctor
Speaker 4: Edmund D. Butler, examines Thomas when the FBI brings him
Speaker 4: in from the bus stop and says Thomas was suffering
Speaker 4: from sedative toxicity. In other words, he tried to overdose.
Speaker 4: They leaved him in the bus. In the hospital, they
Speaker 4: never leave him alone. Of course, there's an agent in
Speaker 4: the hallway and EJ is pretty much setting up a
Speaker 4: residence in the hospital. Is December eighth, now nineteen forty five,
Speaker 4: ej is pacing up and down the hallway. Finally a
Speaker 4: nurse comes down to get him, and she tells him
Speaker 4: that the mcmonagall did take sleeping pills and overdose. It
Speaker 4: was close to his suicide. He almost died when they
Speaker 4: pumped his stomach. If they hadn't rushed him there, if
Speaker 4: the bus had been delayed just a little bit, he
Speaker 4: would have died, or at least, at the very least,
Speaker 4: he would have suffered severe internal damage. But now his
Speaker 4: physical findings are good. On December eighth, his neurological findings
Speaker 4: are almost normal, and he is good to go, so
Speaker 4: to speak. And the doctor says, in a word, he's yours.
Speaker 4: And so now the agents have him. Okay, they have him.
Speaker 4: And this is where now it's time for a lineup.
Speaker 4: They bring men about the same height, five foot nine
Speaker 4: to five foot eleven inches tall, half a dozen men
Speaker 4: in the early thirties. They all had bushy to curly
Speaker 4: black hair atop their heads. So and this is where
Speaker 4: they'll bring the girls in. These five girls, I mean
Speaker 4: teenage girls are suddenly if to them it's like they're
Speaker 4: in a Humphrey Bogart movie or a Spencer Tracy movie.
Speaker 4: You know, they're in a lineup, looking at a lineup
Speaker 4: of people of men who may have taken their best friend,
Speaker 4: and each girl identified one after another, each girl identifies
Speaker 4: Thomas Henry mcmonagal as the guy who was in that
Speaker 4: blue sedan the Plymouth that drove away with thora on
Speaker 4: that day in November.
Speaker 5: Now you have mcmonaca now with the FBI, EJ. Connolly,
Speaker 5: and with the sheriff as well. What how does the
Speaker 5: interrogation go?
Speaker 4: Three long days of interrogation. It's December twelfth, nineteen forty
Speaker 4: five now, and EJ is forced to tell Jay Edgar
Speaker 4: Hoover in Washington that he has not been able to
Speaker 4: crack mcmonagal, and he doesn't think he's going to be
Speaker 4: able to get him to crack. They are going to
Speaker 4: they are not going to get a confession from mcmonagall.
Speaker 4: But suddenly mcmonagall says, you know, it's a simple question,
Speaker 4: Dolora Chamberlain, where is she? EJ is like the suspect. Finally,
Speaker 4: and mcmonagall is grinning this day. He is actually grinning,
Speaker 4: even though he does not think. EJ doesn't think he'll
Speaker 4: get a confession out of him. All of a sudden,
Speaker 4: mcmonagall cracks and he says, EJ thinks the guy has
Speaker 4: the look of the devil in his eyes. And Thomas
Speaker 4: looks up at the agents who are interrogating him and says,
Speaker 4: she's dead. These are the words they didn't want to hear.
Speaker 4: But he confesses that she is dead. Now this begun.
Speaker 4: This is where he gets into the first of many
Speaker 4: stories about how he says Dora Chamberlain died. Now in
Speaker 4: this story he said that he admits that the girl
Speaker 4: was in his car. Says he took her to Santa
Speaker 4: Cruz on Highway seventeen and got off on Highway one
Speaker 4: close to the San Mateo County line. Why because the
Speaker 4: girl was not cooperating. I didn't have to go this way,
Speaker 4: he says. But she just wouldn't shut up. So what
Speaker 4: did Thomas do? He says, I just wanted to scare
Speaker 4: her to get her to shut up, So I reached
Speaker 4: into my guloup box and got my gun, a Colt
Speaker 4: thirty two. And this is, by the way, a Colt
Speaker 4: thirty two. They found a Colt thirty two in that
Speaker 4: YMCA and Quincy, Illinois is part of there. So he says,
Speaker 4: I got the gun out, and then he says he's
Speaker 4: not a groggy again like he did when he got
Speaker 4: off the bus. Then he looks at EJ and says,
Speaker 4: if I shot her, that's where it took place. Hardly
Speaker 4: a confession, but it's close, okay, right, And again it
Speaker 4: looks like he's going to pass out while he's talking
Speaker 4: to her. Then Thomas says, I didn't want to shoot her.
Speaker 4: That was never what I wanted to do. I kept
Speaker 4: driving with her in the car I drove, but he
Speaker 4: did shoot her. You know, he never says that he
Speaker 4: shot her. This is where it gets confusing with Thomas
Speaker 4: has all these stories. I kept driving with her in
Speaker 4: the car. I drove north on Highway One to Devil's Slide.
Speaker 4: That's where I pulled over. I got her body out
Speaker 4: of the car and rolled it off the cliff into
Speaker 4: the water. And the Devil's Slide is about five hundred
Speaker 4: feet high, and they call it Devil's Slide because of
Speaker 4: all the landslides that come off that cliff into the
Speaker 4: Pacific Ocean. The water down there is swirling so hard
Speaker 4: that they figure that thora's body if it was thrown
Speaker 4: into the water. There it was ripped to pieces only
Speaker 4: a few days after she was murdered, maybe even a
Speaker 4: few hours, but still this is the best evidence they
Speaker 4: have that Thorra is dead. Oh, by the way, Thomas
Speaker 4: also tells them what he did with the gun that
Speaker 4: he buried the slug from that one shot that he
Speaker 4: got out of his car. He dug it out of
Speaker 4: the wood post in his car, buried on under a tree.
Speaker 4: So he's telling him he's telling them where the evidence is.
Speaker 4: So he sent EJ sends one team out to the
Speaker 4: hot to where he says he hid the evidence. Another
Speaker 4: team goes out to Devil's Slide and EJ goes with them.
Speaker 4: They've also called the navy. The Navy has sent a
Speaker 4: cracked team of divers just back from World War Two.
Speaker 4: They put that team into the water under Devil's Slide
Speaker 4: looking for Thora's body as they're going. As eg and
Speaker 4: his team are going down the cliff, they find a
Speaker 4: pair of socks, red sox a blue sock. So you
Speaker 4: know what we're talking about here. Thora's body probably was
Speaker 4: dragging down that cliff. Was it found in the water. No,
Speaker 4: the water was swirling so hard. These experienced navy divers
Speaker 4: with World War Two experience. They were thrown around in
Speaker 4: the water. One guy was knocked unconscious twice by his
Speaker 4: head just slamming against the rocks. So they finally have
Speaker 4: to give up hope that they're going to find your
Speaker 4: body there. Meanwhile, you've got another team in the backyard
Speaker 4: of the mcmonoco home in San Matteo and they're using
Speaker 4: a shovel and a spade to dig up earth around
Speaker 4: a tree looking for a thirty two caliber slug. So
Speaker 4: you've got this investigation really hitting high gear. Then one
Speaker 4: of the agents digs his hands into the earth and
Speaker 4: finds that slug. He's got the slug that Thomas said
Speaker 4: he buried there. So you've got some evidence. You still
Speaker 4: don't have a body, and through this whole story is
Speaker 4: going to be what complicates this investigation and the trial
Speaker 4: is they do not have a body. And this is
Speaker 4: before you had DNA evidence of any kind, and you
Speaker 4: really didn't have the kind of fingerprint technology that we
Speaker 4: have today.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, the parents have to be told about thora's what
Speaker 5: has happened and what they can conclude from this. You
Speaker 5: said that she would have been torn to bits in
Speaker 5: a short order as a result of being thrown off
Speaker 5: there into that water. So who goes and has the
Speaker 5: unfortunate task of telling the parents about this development.
Speaker 4: EJ. You know there's no EJ is the leader in this,
Speaker 4: through this whole thing. You'll find that he never never
Speaker 4: backs off and lets another do what he can do.
Speaker 4: EJ knocks on the door. Frank answers. Lois leads them
Speaker 4: into the They go into their house. You know, the
Speaker 4: investigation is still underway. He would like to believe that
Speaker 4: Thra is still alive. He'd like to be able to
Speaker 4: tell the parents that, but he just can't. Now. Those
Speaker 4: socks that they found on Devil's slide, EJ has them.
Speaker 4: He pulls them out of his pocket. Lois. The mother
Speaker 4: gasps and walks from the living room to a hallway.
Speaker 4: She stops and looks back over her shoulder at EJ.
Speaker 4: He follows. Lois leads him to a bedroom. Thora's bedroom
Speaker 4: where she had slept every night for the past fourteen
Speaker 4: nearly fifteen years. Lois opens a dresser drawer. It's filled
Speaker 4: with socks, red and blue socks, just like the socks
Speaker 4: in EJ's hand. Right now, the Bobby socks that looks
Speaker 4: just like the socks he's been carrying in his pocket
Speaker 4: ever since Devil Slide. So now you've got to figure
Speaker 4: these socks are Thora's socks.
Speaker 5: So what happens as a result, How does that help
Speaker 5: them in this investigation? And how do they proceed?
Speaker 4: Well, they go to the construction yard next. Now they
Speaker 4: know that they've got a pretty good idea that Thora's
Speaker 4: body was probably tossed off Devil's Slide into the Pacific
Speaker 4: Ocean or thrown from there. Now they go to the
Speaker 4: construction yard. And remember mcmonagall offered to fill in that
Speaker 4: ditch the last day he worked at the construction yard
Speaker 4: in Berlin game. Well, yeah, now they go to talk
Speaker 4: to his buddies. Yeah, and they decide it's time to
Speaker 4: dig it all up. They dig up that ditch and
Speaker 4: they find more evidence. In that ditch. They find a
Speaker 4: pair of slate gray trousers that was in that foot locker.
Speaker 4: They see Thora's brown shoes, her school books, a zipperbinder,
Speaker 4: and even the cow bell that she was going to
Speaker 4: ring in celebration at the November two football game. So
Speaker 4: now they've got just a ton of evidence. Oh and
Speaker 4: one more thing. They also dig up a thirty two
Speaker 4: caliber gun. Wow, and pieces of bloody upholstery from it
Speaker 4: would turn out from a car from a Plymouth.
Speaker 5: So with the new information, do they confront mcmonocle and how.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they do confront mcmonagall and he is You know,
Speaker 4: there's one thing about mcmonagall. He loves being the center
Speaker 4: of attention. So even in this situation, he is in heaven.
Speaker 4: He loves doing this. He is not like this crestfallen
Speaker 4: killer that you might imagine. He is a killer who
Speaker 4: loves being the center of attention. And so they show
Speaker 4: him all the evidence and he admits it. He'said, like
Speaker 4: the trousers, for instance, So how did the trousers get buried?
Speaker 4: Had to bury them? Thomas says, too much blood. I
Speaker 4: tried to wash it out. I've got most of it,
Speaker 4: but I was afraid there was still some blood in
Speaker 4: the seams of the pants or maybe the pockets. So well,
Speaker 4: he admits I buried the trousers with the rest the
Speaker 4: bloody upholstery. He admits that he came out of the car.
Speaker 4: He has no problem confessing now because again it's moving
Speaker 4: him into center stage, keeping him in the spotlight.
Speaker 5: Even talk about a polstery that was buried with his
Speaker 5: other evidence as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the upholstery from the Plymouth. Remember he says
Speaker 4: he shot her, you know, he inferred, you know, that
Speaker 4: he shot her in the Plymouth. And that is and
Speaker 4: he it says, you know, the Plymouth is all of those,
Speaker 4: all the cars with wood they had wooden posts in them.
Speaker 4: He dug the bullet out of the wooden post, the
Speaker 4: slug and that's where the thirty two slug came from.
Speaker 4: The upholstery that is stayed with Thor's blood. He admits
Speaker 4: that all that he had to pull it out and
Speaker 4: bury it because you know, he knew that they would
Speaker 4: get back to the car eventually.
Speaker 5: In terms of admissions, despite all this overwhelming evidence, does
Speaker 5: he admit or or how does he admit?
Speaker 4: Not really, you know, he never really admits that he
Speaker 4: killed her, or if he did, he says, I didn't
Speaker 4: mean to kill her. I didn't want it to work
Speaker 4: out that way. He is, you know, willing to admit
Speaker 4: that he killed her kind of, but he never actually
Speaker 4: says I did it. He just says, yeah, there was
Speaker 4: too much blood, there was too much blood here. But
Speaker 4: he never actually says that he did it.
Speaker 5: Now, you talked about not having a body in terms
Speaker 5: of a prosecution. What about the search for her body?
Speaker 5: He has said that he would lead authorities to her body.
Speaker 5: What about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he does say. Then he goes and says that, yeah,
Speaker 4: I did kill her, and I'll lead you to the body.
Speaker 4: So this gives. Now we need to say too that
Speaker 4: he's in San Quentin Now. They took him out of
Speaker 4: the local county county jail and put him in San
Speaker 4: Quentin's because they had some serious concerns for his safety.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a national story. People are just
Speaker 4: screaming with outrage. Women may fall in love with this guy,
Speaker 4: but there are plenty of people who want to string
Speaker 4: him up. And people have been strung up before recently
Speaker 4: in San Mateo as Actually, there was a radio station
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles back in the nineteen thirties organized a
Speaker 4: lynching party and lynched and led people and then broadcast
Speaker 4: the lynching live. This is the kind of atmosphere that
Speaker 4: we have going on here. Okay, now Thomas. Now Thomas
Speaker 4: is saying that I fell asleep and it was awakened
Speaker 4: by a gunshot, and that's when I discovered the girl
Speaker 4: was gone. But then he says he can lead them
Speaker 4: to the body, and they organize this massive thing, all
Speaker 4: kinds of security so nobody, you know, so a sniper
Speaker 4: can't get him or anything. And he decided, he says
Speaker 4: he'll lead them to the body. A jury is about
Speaker 4: to be seated. But then he says he can't go.
Speaker 4: He decides that he can't go and do this. So
Speaker 4: it's always this on again, off again with Thomas, with
Speaker 4: multiple confessions. And he explains he actually by this time
Speaker 4: he has confessed four times, and this day he says
Speaker 4: that on February first, nineteen forty six, he says that
Speaker 4: three of those four confessions were false.
Speaker 5: And does he elaborate, No.
Speaker 4: He does not elaborate, but he does say that he
Speaker 4: will not go on this search. He calls off the search,
Speaker 4: and he will now go on the search anymore because
Speaker 4: he fears for his own safety.
Speaker 5: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
Speaker 1: Wait, lucky land slots. You can get lucky just about anywhere.
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Speaker 5: Now he talks, He cites his own safety, but of
Speaker 5: course no one believes this pathological liar for even a second.
Speaker 5: Tell us what happens with a person named Hogmier, a
Speaker 5: junk dealer?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Franklin Hogminer is of the most interesting guys around.
Speaker 4: He's a junk dealer, as he said, a junk collector
Speaker 4: and a dealer. Now he's down looking for junk below
Speaker 4: the cliffs of Devil's Slide and discovers the skeleton of
Speaker 4: a woman's body. Now you know, this is when the
Speaker 4: all of the coastline of California was looking for Thora
Speaker 4: Chamberlain's body. The body still hasn't been found yet, Okay,
Speaker 4: so he scrambles back up. Now, coincidentally, his wife is
Speaker 4: with him during this time. She's up in the car,
Speaker 4: and so he scrambles back up to the car. He's
Speaker 4: going to find the police and get the police out
Speaker 4: here to go to this to find this skeleton. Gets
Speaker 4: up to the car, his wife is gone, no sign
Speaker 4: of his wife. Well, now this gets into a whole
Speaker 4: thing with did Franklin Now Franklin, he doesn't he go
Speaker 4: right to the police. No, he actually sits down and
Speaker 4: takes a nap in the car. Then he gets up
Speaker 4: and finds the police. He figures his wife just wandered off.
Speaker 4: They get the police, They come back that you know,
Speaker 4: this is where the FBI gets back into the case.
Speaker 4: And they go to this body, the skeleton with Thomas,
Speaker 4: and they say Thomas, is this Thorra Chamberlain. He says, no,
Speaker 4: this is somebody else that I killed. Actually, but this
Speaker 4: is somebody else, and yes, I did kill her. This
Speaker 4: is Dorothy Ross Jones, a twenty three year old woman
Speaker 4: who Thomas confessed to killing. Her body was discovered on
Speaker 4: a county beach near the cliff where Thomas had he'd
Speaker 4: thrown Thora's body into the ocean. He confessed to killing Jones.
Speaker 4: He said they had met in San Francisco and soon
Speaker 4: began arguing. He killed her in the heat of the
Speaker 4: moment and Jones. Badly decomposed body was discovered during the
Speaker 4: search for Thora's body in April nineteenth, nineteen forty six.
Speaker 4: So now we have the body of Dorothy Ross Jones.
Speaker 4: But guess what we're missing. We're missing Franklin's wife. Where
Speaker 4: could she be. Well, now the police are thinking they
Speaker 4: could have another murder on their hands. They're searching for
Speaker 4: his wife. They do find her body at the bottom
Speaker 4: of the cliff. So what the heck is going on here? Oh?
Speaker 4: Franklin immediately says I want to be taken in jail.
Speaker 4: He wants to be in jail for his own protection.
Speaker 4: He does not want to be out loose. He says,
Speaker 4: I'll take a lie detector test. He says, I did
Speaker 4: not kill her, but I need to go into jail
Speaker 4: for protection. Finally, they investigate this and decide that he
Speaker 4: did not kill her. Actually, she'd been drinking. They had
Speaker 4: a bottle of whiskey up there in the car, and
Speaker 4: she just got drunk and fell off the cliff.
Speaker 5: Now back to the trial. Yeah, first, nineteen forty six,
Speaker 5: it begins. Tell us what happens at this trial.
Speaker 4: Well, the trial is, you know, they bring all the
Speaker 4: girls up who saw him lead. They present the case
Speaker 4: and Thomas though he's a little bit different than he's been.
Speaker 4: He's not as jaunty and flippant as he used to be.
Speaker 4: He needs a haircut, he's losing weight. Life in San
Speaker 4: Quentin on death row, which is where they put him,
Speaker 4: is really getting to him. It's a very emotional trial.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 4: Frank and Lois both take the stand the parents of Thora.
Speaker 4: They describe her as a quiet, home loving child. I
Speaker 4: talk about her at Sunday School church Christian Endeavor, which
Speaker 4: are summer religious conferences at not Hermann. She was a
Speaker 4: regular at all of that. Lois breaks down and cries
Speaker 4: on the witness stand as she looks at a picture
Speaker 4: of Thora taken a few weeks before the girl vanished.
Speaker 4: Frank can barely keep it together, but he's a strong type,
Speaker 4: so he doesn't cry. What he does say that just
Speaker 4: tears the jury up. He says, I remember I kissed
Speaker 4: Dora goodbye at the door that morning, the day she disappeared,
Speaker 4: and that was the last time I ever saw my
Speaker 4: little girl. Now, at the same time this is going on,
Speaker 4: you've got women who I think are old enough to
Speaker 4: know better, and girls who maybe don't have the history
Speaker 4: or maturity to make a rational judgment. They fall in
Speaker 4: love with Thomas Henry McMonigal. I mean, this is the
Speaker 4: kind of thing you might expect in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: This happened in nineteen forty six, Frints, and I mean
Speaker 4: they literally the women rushing into the courthouse made literally
Speaker 4: broke down the doors of the courthouse fighting for seats
Speaker 4: to watch this trial and get as close to Thomas
Speaker 4: Henry mcmonagall as they possibly could. So this is just
Speaker 4: a wild scene. One of the reporters wrote, you'd think
Speaker 4: there was a sale on nylons going on. It was
Speaker 4: so crazy. And he wasn't really being i mean, knocking
Speaker 4: women any more than you might in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 4: But they actually did have riots these days over women
Speaker 4: trying to get nylon stockings. But yeah, it was just
Speaker 4: like just an incredible scene there, big celebrity, you know,
Speaker 4: papa what we call paparazzi now everywhere. It was just
Speaker 4: an incredible scene of this trial.
Speaker 5: Did he take the stand in his own defense?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he did take the stand in his own defense,
Speaker 4: which is something that you know, you might now want
Speaker 4: somebody like Thomas to do. But he but he says
Speaker 4: on the witness stand, he says to the EJ, he
Speaker 4: says offered him a deal. Thomas says he only confessed
Speaker 4: because EJ said that he tried to get for his
Speaker 4: parents to agree to a lesser charge than murder in
Speaker 4: return for his cooperation. He also testifies that EJ told
Speaker 4: him that people of Santa Clara are going to arect
Speaker 4: a memorial for Thora Chamberlain and promises, though, if you'll
Speaker 4: come clean and confess, I'll try to get the trial
Speaker 4: change to another county. So he just made this all up.
Speaker 4: There's not a bit of truth in any of it.
Speaker 4: But he did make it up. I mean he did
Speaker 4: testify to that. Now, as luck would have it. At
Speaker 4: this point, a member of the jury, Mabel Waters, collapses
Speaker 4: in court. She just passes out and collapses, so they
Speaker 4: have to take a break. They break for lunch, and
Speaker 4: now Thomas comes back and he tells it. While they're
Speaker 4: outside waiting to go back into court, Thomas tells one
Speaker 4: of his San Quentin guards that he wants to confess.
Speaker 4: Thomas says, now that he did murder Thora, but he
Speaker 4: did not toss her body off the three hundred foot
Speaker 4: high Cliffs of Devil's Spider in the Pacific. He says
Speaker 4: he wrapped Thora's body in a blanket, tied it up
Speaker 4: with rope, and then threw Thora into the water held
Speaker 4: back by the Crystal Springs dam at Dune's Beach. This
Speaker 4: is confession number five. They go out to the water,
Speaker 4: even though they don't put much stock in it. No,
Speaker 4: they never do find Thora's body.
Speaker 5: This is a death penalty case. We didn't mention. So
Speaker 5: what happens further in this Yeah, we need to.
Speaker 4: Jump ahead, I'm sure because we're running out of This
Speaker 4: is just such a wild story here. So he's convicted,
Speaker 4: he gets the death penalty, and then we've got a
Speaker 4: scientists pop up who says, you know what, I can
Speaker 4: bring Thomas back from the dead. I've done it with
Speaker 4: cats and dogs. I have this special concoction, this formula
Speaker 4: that I'll inject it into his dead body, and then
Speaker 4: I put him on a teeter totter to rocket back
Speaker 4: and forth to make sure this concoction goes through his
Speaker 4: body and he'll come back to life. Well, this is
Speaker 4: a real problem. Now what he's been sentenced to death.
Speaker 4: Now what happens if you bring him back to life.
Speaker 4: He's already served his penalty of death. So now if
Speaker 4: you bring him back to life, is it go free
Speaker 4: or do you have to kill him again. California state
Speaker 4: officials have no idea what's going on here, but the
Speaker 4: warden of San Quentin settles it. He says, there's no
Speaker 4: way I want a mad science setting up a laboratory
Speaker 4: in my prison. So but still the doctor says, I.
Speaker 2: Can do it.
Speaker 4: Problem was, you see, they would kill them with cinid
Speaker 4: gas back in these days the execution, he could not
Speaker 4: get into the Sinaide chamber, and there was a time
Speaker 4: limit on how long Thomas could lay dead before he
Speaker 4: could be brought back to life, and the scientists could
Speaker 4: not get back into the chamber in time. They have
Speaker 4: to clean out the sinid gas. They couldn't clean that
Speaker 4: chamber in time to get him in in time to
Speaker 4: rescue Thomas and bring him back to life.
Speaker 5: It's interesting you talk about in the trial during his
Speaker 5: testimony and this new fifth version of what happened. But
Speaker 5: of course in this fifth versions there's all kinds of
Speaker 5: talk of accidental shooting and he didn't mean to so
Speaker 5: there's a lot of this, and also basically and then
Speaker 5: we see this with other killers like this. They're always persecuted.
Speaker 5: It's always somebody persecuting them, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. And you know what, Thomas has a
Speaker 4: history of this. So one of his former employers come,
Speaker 4: you know, Thomas tried for who was a bus driver
Speaker 4: in Samonteo, tried for a management position. They turned him
Speaker 4: down because of his criminal history, and he saw his persecution.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he had a real history of that in
Speaker 4: his life of every time he got turned down for
Speaker 4: something or rejected, he viewed it as persecution.
Speaker 5: And what he did do too, is that he tried
Speaker 5: to offer that he would lead the authorities to the
Speaker 5: body of a shallow grave he had built a crate.
Speaker 2: What of that?
Speaker 4: Then again, this turned out to be nothing. You know,
Speaker 4: he could not find the body. They couldn't find the body.
Speaker 4: There was nothing to it. And eventually, you know, when
Speaker 4: he made that last confession, they had it all typed
Speaker 4: out and ready for him, he refused to sign it.
Speaker 5: What happens with the sentencing? What is his sentence? What happens?
Speaker 4: He was sentenced to death, and he was sentenced to death,
Speaker 4: and then you know, then I think he saw the
Speaker 4: real Thomas Henry mcmonagall. When they were leading him from
Speaker 4: his cell on death row to the execution chamber, you
Speaker 4: saw a total different You saw a guy who knew
Speaker 4: he was about to die. They had to hold him
Speaker 4: up to keep him walking. And it really is an
Speaker 4: emotional scene. I mean, you know, he's a killer. You
Speaker 4: can't feel sorry for the guy, but it's a very
Speaker 4: emotional scene as they're leading him to the chamber, to
Speaker 4: the death chamber.
Speaker 5: What happens as a result, you talk about just the end?
Speaker 4: Tell us, yeah, the end. You know, they never found
Speaker 4: the body, remember, okay, it's it's a very gast is
Speaker 4: not an easy way to die, okay, And we write
Speaker 4: about that or I write about that, and I mean
Speaker 4: I think it really you know, going to some detail
Speaker 4: on that of how he died. At the end, there
Speaker 4: was nobody for him. There was no one to pick
Speaker 4: up the body. So finally a priest who the priest
Speaker 4: who walked him down from the death chamber, Father McAllister
Speaker 4: is his name. He They find a note that was
Speaker 4: passed Warden Duffy opened and that was passed to him
Speaker 4: by Thomas, and Thomas wrote, I Thomas Henry mcmonagall, in
Speaker 4: this last testimony to the people, declare that I did
Speaker 4: not shoot Thorra Chamberlain, and I did not throw her
Speaker 4: body over a cliff. I never made any confession that
Speaker 4: I shot Thora Chamberlain. In Santa Cruz County Warden Duffy
Speaker 4: refolded the paper and wonders, did we convict the wrong man.
Speaker 4: He also wonders if he should just throw the note
Speaker 4: away or release it to the newspapers. He makes up
Speaker 4: his mind tosses a note away. Duffy tells his aid,
Speaker 4: we got the right man. Mcmonagall might say he didn't
Speaker 4: shoot Thora and toss her body off a cliff, but
Speaker 4: he never says he did not kill the girl. After
Speaker 4: all the stories mcmonagall crafted, how are we going to
Speaker 4: believe this one, Duffy says. So he crumples the note
Speaker 4: and tosses it to his aid for disposal. The paper
Speaker 4: that held Thomas Henry mcmonagall's last words would soon be ashes.
Speaker 4: The aid would burn them, but he would remember the story.
Speaker 4: Father McAllister takes Thomas's corpse and goes next to a
Speaker 4: cemetery near San raph yell sad lonely journey he performs
Speaker 4: at service walks away, Priest of the Bible. Grave diggers
Speaker 4: tap down the earth over Thomas's chief Wooden't casket and
Speaker 4: that's the end. If Thomas, Henry mcmonagall, Frank and Lois Chamberlain,
Speaker 4: they simply say no comment when they're contacted by reporters.
Speaker 4: They don't want to talk about this. They want this
Speaker 4: just to go away, if you will Enna. One of
Speaker 4: the journalists asks Enna if she believes her ex husband
Speaker 4: murdered Thra. Anna size and says to the reporter, what's
Speaker 4: the point. He confessed and there's nothing else to be done.
Speaker 4: She's holding the hand of their little girl, her and
Speaker 4: Thomas's daughter, born just a few days before Thorra disappeared.
Speaker 4: Anna looks over her shoulder at the reporter and says,
Speaker 4: perhaps it will all be for the best.
Speaker 5: Yes, I want to thank you very much Rod Cackley
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about your latest The Murder
Speaker 5: of Thora Chamberlain, a shocking true crime story for those
Speaker 5: that might want to take a look at other work.
Speaker 5: Do you have a website or Facebook page for this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Rodcackley dot com is the best place to go.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much much, Rod. It's been a pleasure,
Speaker 5: Rod Cackli The Murder of Thora Chamberlain a shocking true
Speaker 5: crime story. Thank you very much, you have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Good night, Thanks Sam. To you, Dan