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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. In nineteen seventy seven, four teenagers were kidnapped
Speaker 5: and attacked near and on Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Only
Speaker 5: one survived. This book is written by the first responder
Speaker 5: to the call, Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper JB. King.
Speaker 5: He goes back in time to tell how it was
Speaker 5: from the moment of the crime until the conviction of
Speaker 5: Military Police game Warden Johnny Lee Thornton. His purpose is
Speaker 5: to tell the story of Pulaski County, Missouri's crime of
Speaker 5: the century, in detail and with clarity, from the first
Speaker 5: minutes after this attack was reported. The United States Army,
Speaker 5: the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command,
Speaker 5: CID and the United States Attorney's Office work together to
Speaker 5: bring the killer to justice. This book is a first hand,
Speaker 5: comprehensive look into the investigation and the shocking story. The
Speaker 5: book they were featuring this evening is Frozen Tears the
Speaker 5: Fort leonard Wood MP Murders with my special guests, retired
Speaker 5: law enforcement professional and author JB. King. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you very much for greeing this interview. JB.
Speaker 6: King shape the opportunity to talk to your audience today.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It's a remarkable book and an
Speaker 5: equally remarkable case. Now you open this in January thirteenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy seven. Tell us what your role was, what
Speaker 5: we were doing professionally in law enforcement and with who?
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about this, also this Fort
Speaker 5: leonard Wood Reservation military base. Tell us about this where
Speaker 5: it is. Tell us a little bit about this and
Speaker 5: what you were doing in your official role at that time.
Speaker 6: Well, Dan, that's a pretty broad question. Fort leonard Wood
Speaker 6: was established in nineteen thirty nine, when World War Two
Speaker 6: was looming on the horizon and the United States government
Speaker 6: appropriated roughly seventy five thousand acres of land in the
Speaker 6: Central Ozarks Island just off of Route sixty six at
Speaker 6: that time and established the military base of Fort leonard Wood.
Speaker 6: It was used for training combat troops going overseas and
Speaker 6: has basically been used for the same purpose ever since. Now.
Speaker 6: At the time this particular case came up, I was
Speaker 6: a trooper with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The Patrol
Speaker 6: did assignments by counties, and my assignment was Pulaski County, Missouri,
Speaker 6: which includes the Fort leonard Wood Federal Reservation. The fact
Speaker 6: that it's the federal reservation leads to some special legal
Speaker 6: circumstances because on the federal land, all criminal activity is
Speaker 6: the strict purview of the United States government. So in
Speaker 6: this particular case, the actual crimes were committed on Fort
Speaker 6: d Wood, where I had no jurisdiction, but the surviving
Speaker 6: victim walked off base into my territory, so to speak,
Speaker 6: and as a result, I got a chance to interview
Speaker 6: her and start this case. Rolling forward.
Speaker 5: Now, you write that the call came in at one
Speaker 5: eighteen pm, and this was mister Needham. Tell us what
Speaker 5: he says to you and what you discover about his
Speaker 5: daughter and this entire case. What do you find out
Speaker 5: at that time was he.
Speaker 6: Saying, Well, he called in to Troop I headquarters at Rolla,
Speaker 6: Missouri and basically told the dispatchers there that he was
Speaker 6: the father of a runaway girl aged sixteen, and that
Speaker 6: he knew where she was and where the other kids were.
Speaker 6: But then he added the fact that one of them
Speaker 6: had been shot, which at the time did not make
Speaker 6: sense on the initials scenario. So my role was as
Speaker 6: a trooper patrolling Pulaski County on that particular day shift,
Speaker 6: I was sent south on Missouri seventeen to contact mister
Speaker 6: Needham and find out exactly what was going on.
Speaker 5: You also found out around about this time that there
Speaker 5: had been four teens reported missing Wednesday night. Tell us
Speaker 5: about that, and tell us some weather conditions that night
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 6: Okay, we had a miscommunication or not enough information was given.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure at this late date which way it went,
Speaker 6: but we had no knowledge of any missing kids. While
Speaker 6: I was driving to the scene, the Troopy dispatchers contacted
Speaker 6: the Fort Leonard Wood Military Police and learned that the
Speaker 6: four kids had been reported missing the night before. Now,
Speaker 6: it took me quite a while to get down to
Speaker 6: the scene because unfortunately, I was driving a rear wheel
Speaker 6: drive vehicle and we had eight inches of snow and
Speaker 6: ice on the road, so speed was not exactly a
Speaker 6: factor in this response.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, when you came up to mister Needham, you describe
Speaker 5: him as being hysterical, and he had a woman in
Speaker 5: the vehicle, So tell us what he says in what
Speaker 5: you observe.
Speaker 6: Well, the first thirty seconds to a minute, I don't
Speaker 6: know what he said. I couldn't make out what he said,
Speaker 6: and he, I think, got frustrated with me because he
Speaker 6: finally paused for a minute, took a deep breath, and
Speaker 6: then he pointed toward his vehicle and said, we'll do something.
Speaker 6: She's been shot in the chest. So I walked up
Speaker 6: to the vehicle and there was a slender, young lady
Speaker 6: sitting there quietly crying, very well dressed, very clean, no
Speaker 6: blood in sight, no dirt. Definitely did not look like
Speaker 6: a gunshot victim. And I believe I said to her
Speaker 6: that he said you were shot. She lifted up her
Speaker 6: left arm and showed me what appeared to be a
Speaker 6: bullet crease across the arm. It could have been made
Speaker 6: by some other mechanism of injury, but it did appear
Speaker 6: to be a bullet crease. And then I said, well,
Speaker 6: he said, you were shot in the chest. And at
Speaker 6: that point she lowered her blouse and she had a
Speaker 6: major caliber entry hole right near the top of her breast.
Speaker 6: And the wound was obviously many hours old. It was glazed,
Speaker 6: crusted over, and it clearly was not a serious wound,
Speaker 6: despite the fact that it was obviously a major caliber wound.
Speaker 6: I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's the
Speaker 6: way it was. She was exhibiting no signs of physical
Speaker 6: distress from the gunshot wound, but she was obviously and
Speaker 6: I hate to use the word, a catatonic state, but
Speaker 6: she was close to it. She was frightened out of
Speaker 6: her mind and like I said, crying. So very unusual
Speaker 6: site to look at this young lady.
Speaker 5: Now, what's the tale that she tells you that she
Speaker 5: imparts to you.
Speaker 6: Well, according to her, her three friends and herself had
Speaker 6: been spending a quiet evening together playing cards and having fun,
Speaker 6: and the gentleman who owned the vehicle, Tony Bates, decided
Speaker 6: that he needed some gasoline, and so they all piled
Speaker 6: into the vehicle and went to the gas station in
Speaker 6: their small town locally, which was closed, and at that
Speaker 6: time there was not a whole lot of commercial estate
Speaker 6: publishment south of Fort Leonard Woods, so that meant they
Speaker 6: had to drive across the base to the wayins Old
Speaker 6: Saint Robert area on the north side of Fort Wood
Speaker 6: and obtain their gas there. School had been canceled throughout
Speaker 6: the area because of the snow, so they weren't worried
Speaker 6: about getting back late or anything along those lines. So
Speaker 6: they set out driving across post.
Speaker 5: Now who do they encounter and what does this person
Speaker 5: say to them? What does he do?
Speaker 6: They encountered a military police officer in a marked vehicle
Speaker 6: who stopped him and began questioning them, asking for identification.
Speaker 6: After a moment or two, he told the kids that
Speaker 6: their vehicle was a match for a vehicle that had
Speaker 6: been used in an armed robbery of the Southgate, Texas
Speaker 6: which is on the south side of Fort Leonard Wood,
Speaker 6: and that he was going to have to take them
Speaker 6: in for questioning. Now, the two boys did not I
Speaker 6: would imagine they were not too alarmed at this point
Speaker 6: because one of the boys, Wesley Hawkins, his older brother,
Speaker 6: worked at the gas station, so I don't believe they
Speaker 6: had any fear of, you know, charges being filed or
Speaker 6: anything like that, so they very quietly allowed the officer
Speaker 6: to handcuff him. He put them into the back seat
Speaker 6: of his patrol vehicle, had the youngest girl sit between
Speaker 6: them in the back seat, which was a bench type seat,
Speaker 6: and he had the other girl sit up front. He
Speaker 6: then went around and started to get into the vehicle,
Speaker 6: and then at that point he stopped. He drew out
Speaker 6: his forty five caliber semi automatic pistol and fired three shots.
Speaker 6: He shot each boy one time and had one complete miss.
Speaker 5: Now, the reaction from these women are one of the
Speaker 5: girls asks why did you do that? Why did you
Speaker 5: why did you shoot these words?
Speaker 6: And his answer was basically, so they wouldn't get rowdy.
Speaker 6: A number of reasons why you would have done it
Speaker 6: that way, But the sheer shock of the moment has
Speaker 6: got to be an extremely emotional impact on both of
Speaker 6: the young ladies. Obviously, the two boys, each of whom
Speaker 6: has been hit by a forty five caliber slug, is
Speaker 6: completely different. So basically he obtained control of the situation
Speaker 6: totally at that point.
Speaker 5: You're right that one of the boys is unconscious. It
Speaker 5: looks like or not making any noise, and one is groaning.
Speaker 5: So you have that situation. Now, what is this person
Speaker 5: in this MP's vehicle saying that he's got these people
Speaker 5: suspects in armed robbery. I don't know if anybody can believe,
Speaker 5: you know, especially the girls can believe this at this point.
Speaker 5: But what does this person do and where does he
Speaker 5: take them and what does he say?
Speaker 6: Well, he started to leave the scene of the abduction.
Speaker 6: Then he stopped and drove back a number of yards
Speaker 6: back to the car that these kids had been in.
Speaker 6: He got out of the vehicle and took a knife
Speaker 6: and punctured a front tire so that the vehicle would
Speaker 6: display a flat tire. While he was doing that, he
Speaker 6: left the International Scout running. But it was a stick
Speaker 6: shift vehicle and neither one of the girls knew how
Speaker 6: to drive it, and so they lost the golden opportunity
Speaker 6: to escape from him right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One of the things that we didn't touch on,
Speaker 5: and I think this is important, it will be important later,
Speaker 5: I think, is that he asks if any of these
Speaker 5: people he looks at their identification, but he asked if
Speaker 5: any of these kids are military dependents.
Speaker 6: That's correct, he was screaming very carefully.
Speaker 5: Now where do they go? Where does he go with
Speaker 5: these women? And what does he have them do?
Speaker 6: The four hundred Wood Reservation, as I said earlier, is
Speaker 6: about seventy five thousand acres at that time. It's now
Speaker 6: down to about seventy two thousand, but it has thousands
Speaker 6: of acres of land that I think the average person
Speaker 6: would say it out in the middle of nowhere, out
Speaker 6: in the boondocks. And he took these four kids down
Speaker 6: to a what you would call it, I guess the
Speaker 6: shack on the river. Now, at the time, the Rubydoo
Speaker 6: River was frozen over, and this shack is cold, there's
Speaker 6: no electricity, but there is a pot bellied stove in
Speaker 6: it that you can put wood in and crank it
Speaker 6: up and actually get the place somewhat warm. And that's
Speaker 6: what he did. He left the boys in the scalped
Speaker 6: vehicle out back, took the two girls inside, started a
Speaker 6: fire in the stove, and got the place reasonably warm.
Speaker 5: You talk about, not to get into the details, but
Speaker 5: what does he have these women doing? What does he
Speaker 5: oddly and strangely say to them.
Speaker 6: Well, he made a number of statements. He made one
Speaker 6: statement that he was in an MP. He made another
Speaker 6: statement that he was deserting the next day, but his
Speaker 6: actions were much more serious. He kept the forty five
Speaker 6: in his hand at all times. He forced the two
Speaker 6: young ladies to strip everything but their socks, and he
Speaker 6: then forced them to commit a series of sexual acts
Speaker 6: upon each other, and then later after he had taken
Speaker 6: off his clothing, to perform sexual acts on him, and
Speaker 6: then he raped both of them. This entire scenario took
Speaker 6: about three and a half hours. As near as we
Speaker 6: can calculated.
Speaker 5: They were under the impression, these girls because he had
Speaker 5: said things to them like that if they complied, so
Speaker 5: there was not they did comply because there was this
Speaker 5: insinuation that if you cooperated, if they complied, that they
Speaker 5: would be okay and he wouldn't hurt them.
Speaker 6: Correct, And it probably got a little more excuse me
Speaker 6: complex than that, because several times during the course of
Speaker 6: this three and a half hours he had to leave
Speaker 6: the shack and go outside and get more wood, and
Speaker 6: every time he did that, they heard him talking to
Speaker 6: the boys in the scout, and so the surviving girl
Speaker 6: got the idea somehow that he had sedated the boys,
Speaker 6: which she didn't quite understand what was going on, but yes,
Speaker 6: they retained an element of hope that if they cooperated,
Speaker 6: then they would come out of this nightmare, you know,
Speaker 6: alive and well.
Speaker 5: Soon. Though they hear gunshots, don't they We only have
Speaker 5: one witness, but they both hear the same thing. What
Speaker 5: do they hear? What do they what does he do? Well?
Speaker 6: At the end of the three and a half hour period,
Speaker 6: when he was done, he made the statement that it's
Speaker 6: four twenty am and I'm behind schedule. So we had
Speaker 6: the girls get dressed again, put them back in the vehicle,
Speaker 6: and drove about another mile and a half from the shack,
Speaker 6: and then drove just a little waist down a dirt path,
Speaker 6: I guess you would call it. When he stopped, he
Speaker 6: had the girls get down and start walking down the path,
Speaker 6: and they got about twenty yards or so from the
Speaker 6: scout vehicle, and he told him to stop and turn around,
Speaker 6: and when they turned around, he fired shots at him.
Speaker 6: The surviving girl was hit and fell to the ground.
Speaker 6: The other young lady was not hit, but she fell
Speaker 6: to the ground, and she then drug her into the woods,
Speaker 6: deeper into the woods, and evidently discovered that she was
Speaker 6: faking and stood directly over and fired one shot straight
Speaker 6: down into her chest. He came back and picked up
Speaker 6: the surviving girl, drug her into the woods, kicked her
Speaker 6: a couple of times to make sure she was dead,
Speaker 6: buried her in a snowbank, just as he had done
Speaker 6: the other young lady. And then he went back to
Speaker 6: the vehicle took out the one young man that was
Speaker 6: in the vehicle who had taken a bullet right through
Speaker 6: the heart and had died almost instantly. He drug him
Speaker 6: off into the woods, buried him in the snow bank,
Speaker 6: and then he took the fourth young man off that
Speaker 6: he had shot and wounded earlier, and was leading him
Speaker 6: off into the woods when that young man, whose name
Speaker 6: was Toby Bates. By that time, I had to know
Speaker 6: what was going to happen next, so he broke free
Speaker 6: from him and took off running, But he only made
Speaker 6: it about seventy or so feet before he tripped over
Speaker 6: a log that was hidden in the snow, and before
Speaker 6: he could get up, Tarton came up behind him and
Speaker 6: shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Speaker 5: Now you say one, Nita didn't lose consciousness again like
Speaker 5: the other girl, but more successfully. She has made him
Speaker 5: believe that she's dead, doesn't she.
Speaker 6: Yes, her presence of mind, her desire to live, her fortitude,
Speaker 6: any way you want to put it. She was absolutely yeah.
Speaker 6: I'm almost at a loss for words here her actions
Speaker 6: that they were tremendous, not only for herself but probably
Speaker 6: in preventing other victims from coming up in the future.
Speaker 5: Sure, certainly, certainly now you say too that. Then I
Speaker 5: asked her just before this to clarify, because you conclude
Speaker 5: in the book a headline from a newspaper that says
Speaker 5: she ran twelve hours to a woman's trailer in this
Speaker 5: eight inches of snow and cold, after witnessing what she witnessed.
Speaker 5: But you say it was six hours. We'll say six hours.
Speaker 5: And so tell us about this encounter with this woman,
Speaker 5: what happens and who does she call?
Speaker 6: And Okay, we don't know what time the shooting actually occurred.
Speaker 6: Thornton had made the statement to the girls at it
Speaker 6: was four twenty am and he was behind schedule, but
Speaker 6: they had no way of verifying the time. He then
Speaker 6: took him off to the other section of woods where
Speaker 6: he shot him, and then after he shot him, he
Speaker 6: hung around for about another thirty minutes before he finally left,
Speaker 6: and the surviving young lady did not get up out
Speaker 6: of the snowbank until she knew that his vehicle was gone.
Speaker 6: So probably we're talking somewhere around five thirty am is
Speaker 6: going to be when she started walking for help, and
Speaker 6: at precisely twelve thirty she knocked on the door of
Speaker 6: a trailer alongside Highway seventeen. Now we know it was
Speaker 6: precisely twelve thirty because the lady that lived there had
Speaker 6: managed to get her car stuck in her front yard
Speaker 6: that day in the snow and could not go to work,
Speaker 6: so she was determined to watch her favorite soap opera,
Speaker 6: which was As the World Turns. And if you're familiar
Speaker 6: with that show, you know that the opening credit shows
Speaker 6: a big round globe and it starts spinning, and it's
Speaker 6: exactly twelve thirty, and that's when the knock on her
Speaker 6: door came.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Her name is Janis Eckleberry. Janie opened the front door
Speaker 6: and found what she thought was a fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 6: year old girl standing there. Throws him half to death
Speaker 6: and almost incoherent in her talk in speech, so she
Speaker 6: got her into the trailer put her in front of
Speaker 6: the woodstove began warming her up, and for the next
Speaker 6: couple of minutes it was kind of spooky because the
Speaker 6: girl was talking about murders and rapes and Janis was
Speaker 6: home alone with her two small children and had no
Speaker 6: idea what was going on. As the young lady became
Speaker 6: more coherent as she started warming up, her story made
Speaker 6: a little more sense. She was talking about being stopped
Speaker 6: by the MP and him shooting them and being raped.
Speaker 6: And as this went on but feather Janie realized she
Speaker 6: needed to help her, so she brought some dry clothing
Speaker 6: into the room and helped the surviving girl changed clothes. Well.
Speaker 6: When she did that, at one point, when they took
Speaker 6: off Juanita's sock, a men's ring fell out of the
Speaker 6: sock and rolled across the floor, and Juanita made the
Speaker 6: statement that that's my boyfriend's ring. He's dead in the woods.
Speaker 6: When Thornton had had them strip in the cabin, she
Speaker 6: had taken that ring off and slipped it into her
Speaker 6: sock because she was determined to hang on to it,
Speaker 6: and now it's rolling across the floor, And that was
Speaker 6: probably the first real sentence that she said to Janice.
Speaker 6: The other words that she uttered were sort of fragments
Speaker 6: of sentences, didn't make much sense. And then, of course,
Speaker 6: while they were changing her clothes, Jane saw the two
Speaker 6: gunshot wounds, and by giving her the fresh clothing, she
Speaker 6: presented once she met me a little while later, the
Speaker 6: image of a person that you know, spick and span,
Speaker 6: no injury here. After she got the clothing changed and
Speaker 6: she became a little more, a little more coherent, she
Speaker 6: asked to call a friend, and Janie layer call. She
Speaker 6: called the brother of the older brother of the young
Speaker 6: man that was down in the woods with her, and
Speaker 6: that gentleman picked up mister Needham, whose daughter was in
Speaker 6: the woods, and they came up to get her. Well,
Speaker 6: when they showed up at the trailer, well, Anita took
Speaker 6: one look at him and said, don't let him in,
Speaker 6: and she kind of ran to the other side of
Speaker 6: the trailer. And Janis asked her who these men were,
Speaker 6: and she said, well, one is the brother of my
Speaker 6: boyfriend and the other is the father of my friend
Speaker 6: in the woods. And so Janis opened the door and
Speaker 6: called them back. And while the three of them were talking,
Speaker 6: and Janie went to the backside of the trailer to
Speaker 6: check on her two children. She had a seven year
Speaker 6: old and a four year old a trailer at the time,
Speaker 6: and she hadn't looked in on him for quite some
Speaker 6: time because of the wounded girl in the living room.
Speaker 6: And once she finally came back up front, the older
Speaker 6: gentleman asked if he could call the highway patrol and
Speaker 6: she said yeah. So that's when the call came in
Speaker 6: the troopy from mister Needham. And then a few minutes later,
Speaker 6: excuse me, all three of them left went south on
Speaker 6: Highway seventeen to sit roadside at the point where her
Speaker 6: tracks came out of the woods and the snow.
Speaker 5: Yes, so now you are inextricably involved here what she
Speaker 5: had also said to you in this again not in
Speaker 5: maybe an initial interview, but you soon got the information
Speaker 5: out of her describing the person that was driving this vehicle,
Speaker 5: but a very eerie thing that she noticed the number
Speaker 5: and she said, X are two thirty seven. Now, right
Speaker 5: at that point you made a realization that this was
Speaker 5: an MP vehicle. But you had also called for backup
Speaker 5: from these MPs. Tell us about this this horror. You
Speaker 5: say you were dumbstruck, You were with your realization and
Speaker 5: can tell us what happened that you were horrified basically
Speaker 5: at the prospect that you had learned.
Speaker 6: Well, that answer is a little bit longer because when
Speaker 6: I first started talking to her, it didn't make a
Speaker 6: lot of sense. And as time went on and she
Speaker 6: kept giving me more details, including the description, a very
Speaker 6: detailed description of an International scout vehicle which the MP's
Speaker 6: on Fort Wood had. At the time, my first thought was, well,
Speaker 6: that does sound like an MP vehicle, But we had
Speaker 6: had this previous impersonation about a year prior where a
Speaker 6: guy flew in from Fort Bragg to Fort Leonard Wood
Speaker 6: overpowered an MP, took all of his equipment, picked up
Speaker 6: a payroll officer, and took him out to a deserted range,
Speaker 6: locked him in the trunk of the stolen patrol car,
Speaker 6: and basically flew back to Fort Bragg with about fifty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars in cash. Will. The FBI and c IDEA
Speaker 6: had broken that case and I had heard some details
Speaker 6: about it, So my first thought is, Okay, we've got
Speaker 6: another fake MP running around. But then as time went
Speaker 6: on and kept answering my questions, she gave me answer.
Speaker 6: She told me some of the radio traffic she was
Speaker 6: hearing over the radio, and the Military police at that
Speaker 6: time had a very I hate to use the word stylized,
Speaker 6: but that's probably the best word, A very precise and
Speaker 6: stylized way that they've communicated over the radio, and if
Speaker 6: you listen to them any at all, you could recognize
Speaker 6: their traffic and a heartbeat. And she gave me details
Speaker 6: of that traffic. She described the vehicle to a t,
Speaker 6: including the number on the fender. Well, and the more
Speaker 6: she talked, it finally got to the point where I
Speaker 6: realized this was not a fake MP. This was a real,
Speaker 6: live MP officer in a Mark Patrol vehicle. And as
Speaker 6: you said, I had just called for MP backup because
Speaker 6: this crime is on Fort Leonard Wood, I don't have
Speaker 6: any jurisdiction to investigate it.
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Speaker 5: notice right away when the scout comes as Jensen and
Speaker 5: another story back.
Speaker 6: So when they arrived on the scene, Captain beck I
Speaker 6: had asked for MP backup, including the highest ranking officer
Speaker 6: they could find and four wheel drive vehicles and they
Speaker 6: sent Captain Raymond Beck of the two o eighth Military
Speaker 6: Police Company and several other people, and then as time
Speaker 6: went on, additional units began arriving on the scene. I
Speaker 6: had basically given Beck a briefing on what the situation was,
Speaker 6: and then he stopped me and said, I want Sergeant
Speaker 6: Jensen here to hear this story because he's going to
Speaker 6: take the CID team down.
Speaker 4: To the scene.
Speaker 6: And while I'm talking to Jensen giving him the story again,
Speaker 6: I realized that he's leaning up against an international scout
Speaker 6: and the number on the side of it is thirty seven. Well,
Speaker 6: that's so close to three two seven that I instinctively
Speaker 6: knew this is going to be the suspect vehicle. And
Speaker 6: it was kind of a well, you said, dumbstruck, and
Speaker 6: I won't argue with that. I totally shut down. I
Speaker 6: froze in place, didn't know what to do.
Speaker 5: Now you find out immediately that I believe Jensen says
Speaker 5: right away that because he's involved with Thornton. He says,
Speaker 5: Thornton reported shooting some dogs the night before. Why is
Speaker 5: that correct? Tell us why that would be significant in
Speaker 5: alarming say the leave, Well.
Speaker 6: The surviving girl had described the MP vehicle to a
Speaker 6: T and she gave us the number off the side.
Speaker 6: And this number here was so close to the number
Speaker 6: that she had given that it was almost improbable that
Speaker 6: it could not be the correct vehicle. And so Jensen
Speaker 6: has just driven up in the suspect vehicle. And when
Speaker 6: Beck and I both realized that, and we both had
Speaker 6: two seconds to think, Beck turned to Jensen and said,
Speaker 6: who drove this vehicle last? And Sergeant Jensen was the
Speaker 6: head of the Fort Leonard with game warden detail at
Speaker 6: that time, the noncommissioned officer in charge, and he, you know,
Speaker 6: pumped out two names, one of which was Thornton. And
Speaker 6: then the realization of what we were saying struck him
Speaker 6: and his mouth dropped open and he said, oh my god,
Speaker 6: Tharnton said he shot some dogs last night. And so
Speaker 6: just that quick, we've got shots fired. We know it's
Speaker 6: almost got to be the same vehicle, and just we
Speaker 6: go from what do we have to read out suspect
Speaker 6: in about three seconds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now Captain Beck knows again you talk about this
Speaker 5: that the line has to be secure. You don't want
Speaker 5: to alert all kinds of media or anyone civilians or anybody.
Speaker 5: So you take him to a house, to a friend's house.
Speaker 5: He makes the call right away. What does he call
Speaker 5: for in terms of arrest or at least containment of Thornton?
Speaker 5: What does he suggest to do? And then what does it?
Speaker 5: Almost immediately did they hear from Johnny Lee Thornton.
Speaker 6: Well, the communications on this particular date was critical, but
Speaker 6: they were also compromised. When I was talking to Troop
Speaker 6: Ayle on the radio at that time, the patrol's frequency
Speaker 6: was wide open. There were thousands of people in and
Speaker 6: around Pulaska County with the police scanner, they could hear
Speaker 6: every word I said, So we had to be very
Speaker 6: guarded with what we said on the radio. And for
Speaker 6: that meant the same thing applied to the MP frequency,
Speaker 6: anybody could with a scanner could hear it. So Beck
Speaker 6: instinctively knew he had to get to a phone, and
Speaker 6: he basically said, I need a phone. And at that
Speaker 6: point I came out of my trance and I had
Speaker 6: a friend that lived a couple of miles up the road.
Speaker 6: So I took him to my friend's house and we
Speaker 6: basically barged in, grabbed the phone back, called the MP
Speaker 6: command on fort Wood told him to grab Thornton and
Speaker 6: the other MP that Jensen had named put him in
Speaker 6: a room under guard, read them their rights and to
Speaker 6: ask them no questions. Well, just a minute or two
Speaker 6: later he was told that Thorarnton had been in the
Speaker 6: building and had heard the news of a survivor, and
Speaker 6: that he had already checked out a forty five caliber
Speaker 6: pistol and a couple of magazines of ammunition so we
Speaker 6: could go to work early that day, and had left
Speaker 6: the building.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 6: Basically fifty eight minutes after I started my interview with
Speaker 6: Juanita deck Or roadside, the man hunt for Thornton started.
Speaker 5: You say too that they immediately secured some exits and
Speaker 5: some entrances, and you were assigned to the south exit
Speaker 5: or back of fort Wood. Correct, while you're there, you
Speaker 5: stop somebody and you talk to them, tell us about
Speaker 5: this conversation and with who.
Speaker 6: Well, the back gate of fort Wood is a little
Speaker 6: bit hard to get to, and when this came up,
Speaker 6: they immediately wanted joint checkpoints at all four of the
Speaker 6: gates leaving fort Wood, and I was the closest guy
Speaker 6: to the back gate, so they sent me to the
Speaker 6: back gate. They sent officers from Troop g which is
Speaker 6: adjoining highway patrol group up to back me up, and
Speaker 6: we were stopping everybody coming off base looking for a
Speaker 6: white male five to nine, one hundred and sixty pounds
Speaker 6: you know, probably weren't fatigues. Well, there are about two
Speaker 6: many of those guys that fit that description on fort
Speaker 6: hundred Wood. So it was kind of a tense and
Speaker 6: edgy time. And we'd been at it for I don't
Speaker 6: know an hour or so probably when I stopped the
Speaker 6: vehicle and the driver was an older white male, and
Speaker 6: after looking in the vehicle and you know he's by himself,
Speaker 6: I told him to go ahead, and instead of leaving,
Speaker 6: he kind of leaned closer to me and asked me
Speaker 6: if this roadblock had anything to do with the missing kids.
Speaker 6: And that question kind of, I guess set me on
Speaker 6: edge and be the way to put it. So I
Speaker 6: asked him why he was asking that question. He said, well,
Speaker 6: one of the kids is my son, So that put
Speaker 6: me between a rock and a hard place. The humane
Speaker 6: thing to do under those circumstances was to talk to him,
Speaker 6: so I asked him to pull over, and Michaelemma was
Speaker 6: at the time I did not know for sure his
Speaker 6: son was dead in the woods based on all the
Speaker 6: information I had available and everything the young lady had
Speaker 6: told me, and our weather conditions, which like I said
Speaker 6: at the time, were eight inches of snow. The temperature
Speaker 6: overnight was in the high teams. During the day it
Speaker 6: was in the low twenties. We had a ten to
Speaker 6: fifteen mile an hour north wind blowing. And if the
Speaker 6: young man could not have gotten up out of that
Speaker 6: snow bank because of his wounds, then he was going
Speaker 6: to be deceased. But that wasn't confirmed. So that decision
Speaker 6: bothered me for years because basically, I told the man,
Speaker 6: your son is dead, and I did not know that
Speaker 6: for sure, but based on everything I had available to
Speaker 6: me for information, the young man had to be dead, and.
Speaker 5: He was appreciative of that information. Will say that so
Speaker 5: that you don't have to think about that.
Speaker 6: When when I was doing the research for the book,
Speaker 6: mister Bates said, Jones' name was Leroy Bates. He had
Speaker 6: moved to the state of Alabama since this happened. He
Speaker 6: came back up here to visit a daughter, and I
Speaker 6: was able to sit down with him face to face
Speaker 6: for about an hour and a half and we had
Speaker 6: a good cry together. And yes, he thanked me for
Speaker 6: telling him that, because he really wanted to know what
Speaker 6: was going on. And for me, it was I don't
Speaker 6: even know how to express this to you. They really
Speaker 6: bothered me that I told him his son was dead,
Speaker 6: but yet I didn't know that for sure. You know
Speaker 6: what if somehow the inland had made a miraculous survival
Speaker 6: and I tell the father that he's dead, then he
Speaker 6: turns out he's alive, you know it Just you don't
Speaker 6: want to tell people that they've lost the love, not
Speaker 6: unless you know it's true. But in that particular case,
Speaker 6: there couldn't have been any other answer, And so I
Speaker 6: told him. That really bothered me for a long long
Speaker 6: time until I talked to him during the research phase
Speaker 6: of the book, and he was very appreciative of my
Speaker 6: effort that day. So I'm feeling a lot better over
Speaker 6: that decision.
Speaker 5: Right now. Right away, you write about the CID agents
Speaker 5: and the FBI working together. They work together in teams
Speaker 5: CID agent and also FBI agent Bird agents Matthews and
Speaker 5: roy E Black and Thomas Byrd and Robert oyster O
Speaker 5: roster pardon me, so they pretty well have this sewn
Speaker 5: up it looks like. But obviously you never know what
Speaker 5: can happen with when lawyers get involved. But they have
Speaker 5: a part of their investigation is try to find bullets
Speaker 5: who you write about. Right away, they get into the
Speaker 5: vehicle in question, this three two seven MP vehicle, and
Speaker 5: they noticed the bullet wound of not wound, pardon me,
Speaker 5: bullets in the vehicle itself, and obviously some evidence in
Speaker 5: that vehicle as well. How does this investigation proceed? Tell
Speaker 5: us about that?
Speaker 6: Well, that gets very complex. In nineteen seventy seven, we
Speaker 6: had a two man FBI resident office on Fort Leonard Wood.
Speaker 6: We were probably the only military base in the country
Speaker 6: that had an FBI office on it. They were here
Speaker 6: for another purpose. But contrary to what TV and books
Speaker 6: will tell you, FBI agents generally do not work homicides.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 6: The only time they're going to get into a homicide
Speaker 6: situation is like what we have in this particular case,
Speaker 6: a killing that occurs on a military our federal reservation.
Speaker 6: And so at that time, the FBI really wasn't training
Speaker 6: the FBI agents how to do this, and so they
Speaker 6: walked into a homicide investigation that the decision had already
Speaker 6: been made for them to take over. Now, let me
Speaker 6: back up here a second. When you have a crime
Speaker 6: committed on a military base, normally it's investigated by the
Speaker 6: Criminal Investigation Command of the United States Army, basically the
Speaker 6: Army's Detective Division. However, in this particular case, the kids
Speaker 6: who were killed were not military or military dependents. They
Speaker 6: were civilians, and so that almost automatically made it a
Speaker 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation case. And so the FBI and
Speaker 6: CID worked together in an absolutely tremendous fashion. The two
Speaker 6: agents that were here on base at the time were
Speaker 6: joined overnight by thirteen more agents sent in, and the
Speaker 6: next morning when we had our big briefing, we had
Speaker 6: fifteen FBI agents and fourteen CID agents available. And so
Speaker 6: one of the smartest moves in this whole investigation, the
Speaker 6: command team paired up one FBI agent and one CID
Speaker 6: agent together as a team. And that was done for
Speaker 6: a number of reasons. First, it's an FBI case, but
Speaker 6: you're operating on a military base that the CID agents
Speaker 6: are familiar with and dealing with military customs, people, chain
Speaker 6: of commands and things of that. So putting the two
Speaker 6: together was a good idea IDA. A secondary reason was
Speaker 6: that the command staff running this case knew immediately that
Speaker 6: the CID agents had better training in homicide investigation than
Speaker 6: evidence securing techniques than the FBI agents did. So that
Speaker 6: meant that not only were the agents at the same
Speaker 6: crime scene together or interviewing the same witness together, so
Speaker 6: that their reports would be very very similar, but also
Speaker 6: that any evidence picked up by a CID agent would
Speaker 6: be immediately turned over to his partner standing next to him,
Speaker 6: and thus getting the proper chain of evidence going for
Speaker 6: later court purposes. So putting the two different agents together
Speaker 6: in one team was an absolute genius move because in
Speaker 6: that first three or four days after this started, the
Speaker 6: agents there were fourteen teams of agents and they had
Speaker 6: seven crime scenes to cover in about twenty some odd
Speaker 6: people they wanted to interview immediately because those people either
Speaker 6: worked with Thornton or new Thornton, or were the people
Speaker 6: that checked out the weapon to Thornton. So that first
Speaker 6: three or four days the investigation was absolute frantic chaos.
Speaker 5: Let's go back, because we forgot a very very moviesque
Speaker 5: and vivid scene in this in that he isn't arrested
Speaker 5: under normal conditions whatsoever. And in fact, it's a very
Speaker 5: tense situation for the reader, especially not knowing what's the
Speaker 5: outcome of what happens with this when they try to
Speaker 5: get this arrest. Tell us about this and then his conditions.
Speaker 6: Well, and once again the complex. Starting at about three
Speaker 6: thirteen pm that afternoon, they were looking for him. Manhunt
Speaker 6: was underway. At roughly six thirty pm, Johnny Thornton called
Speaker 6: the mp command building and asked to speak to Sergeant Jensen,
Speaker 6: and he ended up in a three way conversation. Thornton,
Speaker 6: Sergeant Jensen, his immediate superior, who was also a close
Speaker 6: personal friend of his, and the Provost Marshal of Fort
Speaker 6: Wood or the Chief of Police of Fort leonard Wood,
Speaker 6: Colonel Perry Elder, And the upshot of the phone call
Speaker 6: was that Thornton told him, I know you're looking for me,
Speaker 6: and I know you want to talk to me, and
Speaker 6: I'll meet you out here in this spot basically out
Speaker 6: in the middle of nowhere on Fort leonard Wood, but
Speaker 6: I'll only talk to YouTube Colonel Elder and Sergeant Jensen,
Speaker 6: and you have to come unarmed. Well, they kind of
Speaker 6: cheated on that one. Jensen and Elder both hid stuff
Speaker 6: in those thirty eighths in their coat pockets, and the
Speaker 6: FBI agent, who was the resident agent charge of the
Speaker 6: Fort Leonard Wood office, was hiding in the back seat
Speaker 6: of the vehicle with a twelve gage shotgun. They went
Speaker 6: to the appointed spot where he said he would be,
Speaker 6: and the agreement was that when they reached that spot
Speaker 6: and they shined their headlights on the woods, he would
Speaker 6: come out of the woods and face them and they
Speaker 6: would talk. Didn't quite work out that way. They're looking
Speaker 6: at the woods and the headlights and nothing's happening, and
Speaker 6: all of a sudden he says, I'm here, but he's
Speaker 6: standing behind them, and so at that point the tactical
Speaker 6: situation has gone totally down the tubes. He is not
Speaker 6: illuminated by the hell lights. They, however, are silhouetted by
Speaker 6: the headlights, and even worse, the agent who's supposed to
Speaker 6: save them, Agent Castlebury, is in the back seat of
Speaker 6: the vehicle between Thornton and the other two officers, so
Speaker 6: he's kind of trapped and pinned in, and that leads
Speaker 6: to about a thirty to thirty five minute negotiation as
Speaker 6: they stand there in the snow Thornton's holding the forty
Speaker 6: five that they complainly see. And during this timeframe he
Speaker 6: makes numerous statements he doesn't know what happened, he don't
Speaker 6: know what he did, he has a headache, bright lights, bot,
Speaker 6: I mean, all kinds of dibbers. And they finally convince
Speaker 6: him to lay his weapon down and they are able
Speaker 6: to take him into custody.
Speaker 5: You talk about the self incriminating statements, but they're not
Speaker 5: just they're very important because they're made while he's not
Speaker 5: in police custody. So these are golden. These are you know,
Speaker 5: these statements don't require him around a warning like you say,
Speaker 5: to be admissible. And he says a lot of things
Speaker 5: like you say about the headache, almost sounding like he's
Speaker 5: prepared for this by saying, well, I get headaches. And
Speaker 5: he talked about the trauma of being away from his wife,
Speaker 5: but they were getting back together. But it was fortuitous
Speaker 5: that he made those kinds of self incriminating statements that
Speaker 5: really couldn't hurt the case whatsoever, but.
Speaker 6: Only oh no, they were tremendous at trial. He the
Speaker 6: agents who were working the case from the very first
Speaker 6: moments that they made contact with him, their gut instinct
Speaker 6: was that he was shooting for an insanity defense. He
Speaker 6: was laying the ground working, and all of these notes
Speaker 6: and all of these statements. Elem me back up. I
Speaker 6: said all of these notes, and I haven't mentioned the
Speaker 6: fact that his shirt pocket was full of notes that
Speaker 6: he had written. Between the time he knew the manhunt
Speaker 6: has started and he confront of these officers, he had
Speaker 6: written all kinds of notes, and when they took them
Speaker 6: out of his pocket, it's the same thing. You know,
Speaker 6: I know something happened. I don't know what it was.
Speaker 6: What did I do? I have a headache, I felt
Speaker 6: bad for months, just all kinds of things like that.
Speaker 6: And so the agents were convinced that he was going
Speaker 6: to do an insanity defense almost from the very beginning. Now,
Speaker 6: within three days, they had secured enough evidence that they
Speaker 6: knew they were going to convict him. The only question
Speaker 6: was would he be able to get off on an
Speaker 6: insanity plea? And that leads into a bread large bag
Speaker 6: of worms.
Speaker 5: You say that. What the prosecutor prosecution did right away though,
Speaker 5: was to make sure that he was They got a
Speaker 5: doctor for a medical examination, so to make sure he
Speaker 5: was fit for questioning. So this is an important step
Speaker 5: that they knew they had to do, and they did
Speaker 5: it right.
Speaker 6: The FBI agent, the resident agent on Fort Leonard Wood,
Speaker 6: William Castleberry, did an absolutely outstanding job on this case.
Speaker 6: He recognized almost immediately that knowing what they had, what
Speaker 6: the circumstances, what the outcome probable situation was going to be,
Speaker 6: he recognized almost immediately this is going to be an
Speaker 6: insanity defense. And so while they're transporting Thornton back to
Speaker 6: the propos Marshal's office on Fort Wood to do the
Speaker 6: formal questioning, he asked the propos marshals to come up
Speaker 6: with a military doctor to examine Thornton and thus have
Speaker 6: his medical condition on record. And they actually called in
Speaker 6: the commander of the Fort Wood Hospital, another colonel, to
Speaker 6: do the examination, and he cleared him. He said, there's
Speaker 6: nothing medically wrong with this man. So when it came
Speaker 6: time for trial, his defense attorneys tried to insinuate that
Speaker 6: he was extremely fatigued, didn't know what he was saying,
Speaker 6: and had no sleep, and the information or the examination
Speaker 6: by the doctor was quite critical at that point.
Speaker 5: It's interesting too for the FBI interview, he has a
Speaker 5: condition that he wants his friend, Sergeant Jensen to be
Speaker 5: in the room also, so care very interesting too. Now
Speaker 5: in that interview again he continues and says, look at
Speaker 5: I remember stopping the car, but I don't remember doing anything.
Speaker 5: I got a headache. But he said some important things,
Speaker 5: like about his mother, I love her and I hate her.
Speaker 5: So he did a lot of talking, did a lot
Speaker 5: of self incriminating statements. But again, like you say, it
Speaker 5: seems like an exercise in trying to set up an
Speaker 5: insanity defense by saying I know I did something, but
Speaker 5: I don't know what I did and I can't remember.
Speaker 5: So it's a poor, you know, poor opportunity, but a
Speaker 5: poor example of how you might try to do that.
Speaker 5: But he's doing it well. The ogs are recruiting it.
Speaker 6: But it also sets the groundwork for later on for
Speaker 6: his defense team to say, Okay, yes, our client is disturbed,
Speaker 6: he's confused, he's mentally deficient, he's insane, he has a
Speaker 6: They finally settled on the term he has a split personality,
Speaker 6: and that bad Johnny made good Johnny kill. And this
Speaker 6: occurred at a time frame in our country when you
Speaker 6: had I think two different books going about the three
Speaker 6: faces of Eve and Sybil, and both of them dealt
Speaker 6: with cases were people under hypnosis and regressed back to
Speaker 6: previous lives that they had lived, and that in recounting
Speaker 6: the details, they would say, follow a certain certain road
Speaker 6: to the end of it, and you will find a
Speaker 6: blue house and to the right there will be a
Speaker 6: small concrete shed, things like that, and when the people
Speaker 6: followed up, they would find those particular landmarks where they said.
Speaker 6: And so at the time it was point the phenomenon.
Speaker 6: And so by him, you know, doing the split personality.
Speaker 6: You know, my other personality made me do it. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm not responsible here.
Speaker 5: You described this again, it's so eerie knowing that less
Speaker 5: than fifty years ago this was accepted in the psychiatric circles, incredibly,
Speaker 5: that multiple personalities could be accepted. Now in this they
Speaker 5: have a doctor Claren and it's fascinating you including the
Speaker 5: book about how he does this through hypnosis and at
Speaker 5: that time a drug that they considered a truth serum.
Speaker 5: So he administered the truth serum, administered the also another
Speaker 5: drug as well, which is very interesting at trial when
Speaker 5: of course the prosecution has their own psychiatric expert. And
Speaker 5: also what's even more interesting, a hypnosis expert, one of
Speaker 5: the leading hypnosis experts in the country. So tell us
Speaker 5: first about this doctor clara and his examination and the
Speaker 5: performance basically of Johnny lease Orton.
Speaker 6: But doctor Clary, I've examined him repeatedly and talked to
Speaker 6: him and then put him under hypnosis and regressed him
Speaker 6: back to the date of the crime, trying to figure out,
Speaker 6: you know, what he did and didn't do. And Thornton
Speaker 6: made a number of statements under this hypnosis that we're
Speaker 6: incriminating as can be, but they were the actions of
Speaker 6: bad John good Johnny, and Clay finally presented the jury
Speaker 6: that this man has a dual personality. He can't control
Speaker 6: what he did. One of Thornton's defense attorneys, i think
Speaker 6: used the phrase that this is as crippling as any
Speaker 6: other disease out there, and he's incapable of, you know,
Speaker 6: withstanding the thoughts of the other personality, to kill these kids.
Speaker 6: It gets kind of complex, and just talking about it's
Speaker 6: a little bit hard. You almost have to read the
Speaker 6: book to get the entire flavor of what doctor Clarey
Speaker 6: is doing. But he makes a number of critical things occur.
Speaker 6: He administers drugs to put Thornton under and that became
Speaker 6: a major bone of contention later on when the when
Speaker 6: the prosecution expert came in, because he basically said, the
Speaker 6: use of any kind of drug is going to finish
Speaker 6: the ability of the subject to be hypnotized, and that
Speaker 6: really got complicated again.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because it's so dramatic in visually for me
Speaker 5: because and the reader, because there's a videotape that he
Speaker 5: makes and that's presented at the trial. So these are
Speaker 5: the hypnosis sessions. He administers dexidron sodium amathol, which is
Speaker 5: the truth serum, but then he puts one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty five milligrams of ephidrine, which later with the prosecution
Speaker 5: psychiatrist he says this would render him drowsy and groggy, again,
Speaker 5: like you've mentioned, basically negating the or reducing the ability
Speaker 5: of putting that person in a sufficient hypnotic state, which
Speaker 5: is what that correct other psychiatrist testifies to. But during
Speaker 5: this again, when people are looking at this video and
Speaker 5: the doctor Spiegel for the prosecution is asked to look
Speaker 5: and said, did you review this videotape of this supposed hypnosis.
Speaker 5: There are things that he does in that hypnotic state
Speaker 5: that doctor Spiegel disagree with in terms of procedure as well,
Speaker 5: What does he say about the entire thing and what
Speaker 5: is the performance that we see on that videotape. What
Speaker 5: is Johnny Lee Thornton saying and doing in that hypnotic stage.
Speaker 6: Okay, another complex question. So I'm going to back up
Speaker 6: to the fact that the defense made these hypnotic recordings
Speaker 6: without the prosecution's knowledge. They were not required to reveal
Speaker 6: this to the prosecution until just a couple of days
Speaker 6: before the actual trial started, So that led to a
Speaker 6: certain amount on a panic in the prosecution side of
Speaker 6: the fence. But the second agent FBI agent who was
Speaker 6: stationed on Fort Lennard Wood at the time was Thomas Dauden,
Speaker 6: and Tom had recently been to an in service training
Speaker 6: where a similar hypnotic state had occurred in another alleged
Speaker 6: murder case had occurred in a VA hospital that the
Speaker 6: FBI had investigated, and doctor Spiegel, the prosecution's defense with
Speaker 6: her prosecution's rebuttal witness in the end, had been part
Speaker 6: of that case, and Agent Donawden had attended this seminar
Speaker 6: that had gone through some of this and when Agent
Speaker 6: Donawden watched these tapes of Forton, he immediately detected one
Speaker 6: of the key points of this whole case. He immediately
Speaker 6: detected that this was PUREBS because the first thing that
Speaker 6: tripped him was Thornton is rambling on about this and
Speaker 6: this and this, and somebody walked into the room and
Speaker 6: shut the door, which you know, it should have been
Speaker 6: a private and it should not have happened. But when
Speaker 6: that happened, Tharnton quit talking until that person was seated,
Speaker 6: and then he started talking again. A little bit later,
Speaker 6: a similar situation occurred when the telephone rang and doctor
Speaker 6: Clay answered the telephone and Thornton stopped talking agents and
Speaker 6: now realized instantly that he was not under a full
Speaker 6: hypnotic state. And so when doctor Spiegel came in, he
Speaker 6: was extremely critical of the defense's presentation of those because
Speaker 6: he said that if a person was in a true
Speaker 6: hypnotic state recalling an event, they would be totally oblivious
Speaker 6: to the fact that somebody walked into the room or
Speaker 6: the telephone rang, And you know, this is pure BS.
Speaker 6: Thornton is reacting to the clues given to him by
Speaker 6: doctor Clarey, and the questioning and responding in kind because
Speaker 6: he's developed the idea in his head that if doctor
Speaker 6: Claire says, okay, now, bad Johnny made you do this, right, well, okay,
Speaker 6: if doctor Claire says bad Johnny made you do this,
Speaker 6: and I agree with that, then it's bad Johnny doing
Speaker 6: the killing and me good Johnny over here. I'm just
Speaker 6: fine and hopefully I can get off. So basically, Spiegel,
Speaker 6: Doctor Spiegel said that Barton was play acting going along
Speaker 6: with the suggestive comments made by the defense psychiatrists.
Speaker 5: It's very odd and unreal almost how the psychiatrist is
Speaker 5: talking with Clary. Doctor Clay is talking to him, and
Speaker 5: of course he's well, you know, Spiegel calls it coaching,
Speaker 5: and that's exactly what it is. But it's also very
Speaker 5: bizarre some of the things he says about the two personalities,
Speaker 5: believing wholeheartedly in Thornton's explanation of these two personalities, and
Speaker 5: then in saying some bizarre things to urge him on
Speaker 5: in terms of in that hypnotic state to induce to
Speaker 5: get John versus Johnny, or Johnny bad Johnny, pardon me,
Speaker 5: bad Johnny versus good john So it's very odd exchange,
Speaker 5: to say the least.
Speaker 6: It gets complex, and basically you have to follow that
Speaker 6: chapter very closely. Now, during the actual trial, the defense
Speaker 6: put doctor Clary on and when he finished his testimony,
Speaker 6: they put a couple of other people on behind him,
Speaker 6: which was kind of confusing because then at a later date,
Speaker 6: doctor Spiegel comes out for the prosecution. So I did
Speaker 6: a I guess you'd call it an editorial something or another.
Speaker 6: I put the two dueling psychiatrists together in the same
Speaker 6: chapter so they would make better sense. You get the
Speaker 6: defensive side of the good Johnny Matt Johnny routine, and
Speaker 6: then the prosecution comes in right behind him and disputes
Speaker 6: everything that the defense has put out about this. So
Speaker 6: it makes it a lot easier for the reader to follow.
Speaker 5: I think you talk about a pretty short deliberation after
Speaker 5: the closing arguments, because it's pretty well not much after
Speaker 5: these two dueling psychiatrists go at it in court. Tell
Speaker 5: us how fast they come back and what's the decision,
Speaker 5: what's the outcome?
Speaker 6: I was just under four hours. You caught me on
Speaker 6: that when I can't remember the exact time right now,
Speaker 6: like four hours and twelve minutes or two hours and
Speaker 6: twelve minutes. Very quick, pretty short, Yeah, but the final
Speaker 6: outcome is he was found guilty on all charges. Now,
Speaker 6: the charge themselves are kind of unique because a jurisdictional
Speaker 6: issue arose on Fort Leonard Wood. When Fort Wood was
Speaker 6: first set up in nineteen thirty nine, it was smaller
Speaker 6: than it is now. Later on, the United States Force
Speaker 6: Service in the state of Missouri both transferred parcels of
Speaker 6: land over to Fort Leonard Wood to help drow the base,
Speaker 6: so to speak. But those parcels of land, several of them,
Speaker 6: were never properly deeded over, and at the time this
Speaker 6: case surfaced, it didn't take the lawyers long to figure
Speaker 6: out that the United States Federal Court might not have
Speaker 6: jurisdiction over a couple of spots where Fornton did some
Speaker 6: of his worst crimes, and so, as a result, in
Speaker 6: the early stages of this case, the United States Attorney's
Speaker 6: Office in Kansas City, Missouri, presented a federal grand jury
Speaker 6: with four very carefully selected charges, and those charges were
Speaker 6: The first was the assault of Tony Bates for shooting
Speaker 6: and wounding him but not killing him, which was committed
Speaker 6: on land that the federal court had jurisdiction on. There
Speaker 6: was a capital case filed for the murder of Wesley Hawkins,
Speaker 6: which occurred at a spot where the federal court had jurisdiction.
Speaker 6: There was a federal capital case again for the rape
Speaker 6: of Linda Needham, which occurred at a spot where the
Speaker 6: federal court had jurisdiction. And then all four of the
Speaker 6: kids were kidnapped for the purpose of rape, which is
Speaker 6: a totally different charge. It's also a capital charge, and
Speaker 6: it also occurred on a parcel of land where the
Speaker 6: federal court could prove they had jurisdiction. Later on, the
Speaker 6: actual murder of Tony Bates and the actual murder of
Speaker 6: Linda Needum occurred on these disputes lands, and as a result,
Speaker 6: no charges were ever filed over their deaths. Now, when
Speaker 6: the trial concluded, Thornton was found guilty on all four charges.
Speaker 6: He received life in prison on the three capital charges
Speaker 6: and got twenty years extra for the assault on Tony
Speaker 6: Bates by shooting and wounding him, but the federal judge
Speaker 6: ordered that the sentences be served consecutively and not concurrently,
Speaker 6: so he basically has to serve the first life sentence
Speaker 6: before he could serve the second one before he could
Speaker 6: serve the third one, which in essence means he's not
Speaker 6: coming out right.
Speaker 5: Actually, what we didn't talk about and which is super
Speaker 5: fascinating as well, is October ninth or tenth, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 5: two girls disappear in the same area. The car is
Speaker 5: found abandoned and Johnny Lee Thorton was the first to
Speaker 5: advise radio dispatcher about the car, tell us about the
Speaker 5: shooting dog report, and Albert Hoffmann and Teresa Gossage eighteen
Speaker 5: and seventeen.
Speaker 6: Well, again, this is another part of a very complex situation.
Speaker 6: When Forton completed his shift on the morning of January thirteenth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy seven, after shooting the three kids, he filed
Speaker 6: an official report with the NP command that he had
Speaker 6: shot he had fired six rounds of ammunition to dispose
Speaker 6: of dogs in hunting area at twenty and that he
Speaker 6: had dumped their bodies at the stump dump on Fort
Speaker 6: Leonard Wood. He had to account for the rounds that
Speaker 6: were missing from his ammunition that he turned back in.
Speaker 6: The official document is named social security number. He signed
Speaker 6: it in front of a couple of people, admitted to
Speaker 6: everybody he fired these shots, and that was one of
Speaker 6: the key pieces of evidence in the trial. Well, then
Speaker 6: going back several months, the night of October the ninth
Speaker 6: and tenth, the morning of the tenth, two other kids
Speaker 6: on a double date on Fort leonard Wood, Alfred Marshall
Speaker 6: and Teresa Gossig turned up missing. Their car was found parked,
Speaker 6: they were not there, and that's basically all the military
Speaker 6: police had to go on at the time. Now, it
Speaker 6: was especially horrifying to the local population because especially the
Speaker 6: people that knew Al Marshall, because Al was a you know,
Speaker 6: the sports figure at the high school, of the jock.
Speaker 6: He always wore his letter jacket everywhere he went, and
Speaker 6: he always carried a hair brush everywhere he went. And book,
Speaker 6: the jacket and the hair brush are in his locked
Speaker 6: car and he's nowhere in sight, and nobody hears anything
Speaker 6: from them then are ever. So basically it's a huge mystery.
Speaker 6: We don't know what happened to him, for sure, we
Speaker 6: strongly suspect we know. But the big difference is is
Speaker 6: that the Thornton murder case with the three kids has
Speaker 6: been fully adjudicated in federal court, and at fifty cents
Speaker 6: a page, you can get as many thousand copies of
Speaker 6: documents from that file as you want, well, the case
Speaker 6: with Marshall and Gossige is an open case and you
Speaker 6: can't get it. You can't get any papers from it,
Speaker 6: and he reports. But the federal agents who worked both
Speaker 6: of them, and they a bunch of agents worked on
Speaker 6: both of these cases, tell me that there is a
Speaker 6: similar report that Thornton said he shot dogs the morning
Speaker 6: October the tenth, and there is a report to that
Speaker 6: effect in the file which I cannot get. So we
Speaker 6: simply have to take that as the word, and that
Speaker 6: word is devastating to the families of Marshall and Gossage.
Speaker 5: Absolutely absolutely. I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about Frozen Tears the Fort Leonard
Speaker 5: Wood MP Murders. For those that might want to take
Speaker 5: a look at more information about this, do you have
Speaker 5: a Facebook page and a website that people might refer to.
Speaker 6: We've established in a public group on Facebook. We're using
Speaker 6: the title of the book, Frozen Tears the Fort Leonard
Speaker 6: Wood MP Murders. Log into that group you'll find all
Speaker 6: kinds of discussion, questions and answer. Several of the sisters
Speaker 6: and nieces of one of the victims have posted their
Speaker 6: own heartfelt messages on that page. It's an interesting page
Speaker 6: and you can get a lot of information on their
Speaker 6: Plus on that page, you'll see several different ways that
Speaker 6: you can actually order the book if you want a copy.
Speaker 5: Yes, I wanted to say too, this is a Red
Speaker 5: Engine Press publishing your book as well. And also I
Speaker 5: just wanted to also say that you do put a
Speaker 5: thanks for to Sandra Miller Lindhardt, which is the co
Speaker 5: author of this book as well.
Speaker 6: Well. It's a case where I wrote the book and
Speaker 6: Sandy came along behind me and rewrote it, which is
Speaker 6: kind of complex because I have a tendency when I
Speaker 6: write to start talking, and he did this, and he
Speaker 6: did this, and he did this, and he did this well.
Speaker 6: Sandy broke it up into four sentences and made the
Speaker 6: book a whole lot more readable. And at the same
Speaker 6: time she did not lose track of what my message
Speaker 6: was in that particular paragraph of that particular page and
Speaker 6: kept right on track. So Sandy earned her pay on
Speaker 6: this one big time.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yes, we didn't have time to get into the
Speaker 5: aftermath of this particular thing, what the military did to
Speaker 5: ensure that that this would never happen again, but also
Speaker 5: just the effect on the community and people. Years and
Speaker 5: years later, you have antidotes of people who's reaction to
Speaker 5: the MPs and even fear over this incredible case with
Speaker 5: Johnny Lee Thorton, I want to thank you very much
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about Frozen Tears, the Fort
Speaker 5: Leonard Wood MP murders incredible. Thank you very much. Dabe King.
Speaker 5: Good night, Thank you for inviting me, thank you, good night,
Speaker 5: good night,