Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening.
Speaker 2: Joseph Weldon Brown confessed to more than a dozen murders
Speaker 2: across seven states. He was convicted and sentenced for killing
Speaker 2: a woman whose body he dismembered and scattered across three
Speaker 2: Indiana counties. In prison, he hogtied and strangled his cellmate,
Speaker 2: then asked the judge to lock him up for life
Speaker 2: because if he was released, he would continue killing. Police
Speaker 2: Detective Rick Reid was on the scene when Brown led
Speaker 2: authorities to the scattered remains of Ginger Gasaway in two thousand.
Speaker 2: After Brown's arrest, he confessed to a shocking number of
Speaker 2: other heinous crimes, the torture and murders of drifters and
Speaker 2: sex workers, the cold case of a naked woman's body
Speaker 2: found in a roadside ditch, even the murder of his
Speaker 2: own mother. Detective Reed was the one man Brown opened
Speaker 2: up to and the only one to cut through the
Speaker 2: deceptions and lives and learn the terrible truth. In this
Speaker 2: newly updated edition, now retire detective Reed reveals his personal
Speaker 2: theories and insights into one of the darkest minds ever
Speaker 2: encountered and one of the most terrifying crime stories ever told.
Speaker 2: The book that we're featuring this evening is Blood Trail,
Speaker 2: The Hunt for a Serial Killer with my special guest,
Speaker 2: retired detective sergeant and author Rick Read. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: the program, and thank you very much for this interview,
Speaker 2: Rick Reid, Thank you, Dan, thank you so much, and
Speaker 2: congratulations on this new updated version of Blood Trail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a little bit of a surprise to
Speaker 3: me because the book came out in nineteen I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, so it's almost twenty years old now.
Speaker 2: Yes. Absolutely. You say that you were a newly appointed
Speaker 2: sergeant on the Evansville Police Department, you had spent most
Speaker 2: of your working years dealing with violent people, and you
Speaker 2: take us to this very first just in the prologue,
Speaker 2: just before we introduce Joseph Welden Brown and his history
Speaker 2: and Ginger Rose Gasaway. You're, like, I say, a newly
Speaker 2: appointed sergeant on the Evansville. Evansville Police Department, and you're
Speaker 2: looking through some of these love letters, and what's characteristic
Speaker 2: of these love letters that it's it's all talking about
Speaker 2: a theme of reconciliation between Joseph Weldon Brown. The letters
Speaker 2: were written by Joseph Weldon Brown, the ginger rose gasaway
Speaker 2: and it talks about reconciliation. But you say it stops
Speaker 2: just short of threats of violence if this love is
Speaker 2: not reciprocated, And so you talk about this case became
Speaker 2: the job of the Evansville Police Department to find out
Speaker 2: who was responsible for one of the most vicious crimes
Speaker 2: in the state of Indiana.
Speaker 3: Evansville was a very quiet community. I think in two
Speaker 3: thousand we may have had ten murders. The entire time.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of violence, a lot of shooting, stabbing,
Speaker 3: those kind of things where people were injured and nearly died,
Speaker 3: but as far as murders, it wasn't really on the
Speaker 3: radar that much as it is now now at eleven
Speaker 3: is a monthly figure. So this was something very serious
Speaker 3: still is Back then when a ginger was attacked and
Speaker 3: killed and dismembered, that was something that hadn't been on
Speaker 3: our radar for at least twenty or thirty years. Evansville,
Speaker 3: like I said, was pretty quiet. Everybody there was working,
Speaker 3: We had very low unemployment. It was a pretty calm community.
Speaker 3: I thought where my job was serious enough that I
Speaker 3: always dealt with the violent crimes, and I had enough
Speaker 3: of those to deal with. But then actually when this occurred,
Speaker 3: I was working in bunco fraud, which is like bad checks,
Speaker 3: fraud on banks, fraud on other people, charity frauds, those
Speaker 3: kind of things. And this happened all because I got
Speaker 3: a notification by Old National Bank that a person that
Speaker 3: I was looking for had been in their branch that
Speaker 3: morning and was trying to pass a check on Ginger
Speaker 3: Gasaway's Citizens Bank account. The guy showed an Indiana driver's
Speaker 3: license for Joseph W. Brown, and the teller remembered I'd
Speaker 3: put out an alert on those stolen checks and for
Speaker 3: Joe Brown. The reason I had the alert, I was
Speaker 3: because he'd been passing bad checks all over town at
Speaker 3: different banks. He would take a check from one bank,
Speaker 3: write it out, go to another bank and deposit it
Speaker 3: and open an account with them, and then he could
Speaker 3: use that bank account to open an up the bank
Speaker 3: account and take out all the money. So he was
Speaker 3: going pretty strong, and this was near the holidays, and
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, we need to put an end
Speaker 3: to this, and I put an alert out but didn't
Speaker 3: have any luck, and then all of a sudden, I
Speaker 3: get an alert that he had been in the branch.
Speaker 3: So that's where it all started, was me trying to
Speaker 3: find him to arresting, and trying to find Ginger to
Speaker 3: have her make a complaint so I could do an arrest.
Speaker 3: The way the arrest works on these things, they have
Speaker 3: to almost be immediate where they had passed a bad
Speaker 3: check and you went and found him. Otherwise, we were
Speaker 3: pretty well advised to get a warrant and arrest him
Speaker 3: on a warrant later. Well, I thought we just needed
Speaker 3: to get him right now, So I tried to find
Speaker 3: Ginger to get her to sign a report, and it
Speaker 3: all went from there. I couldn't find her, couldn't find him, and.
Speaker 4: It looked like.
Speaker 3: They'd either left together or it was a missing person,
Speaker 3: or there might have been some violence incurred with it.
Speaker 3: But I had no idea that she had been murdered
Speaker 3: until we found him in Ohio, and he confessed of
Speaker 3: murdering and dismembering her. So that went on for three,
Speaker 3: four or five days with me just looking for her
Speaker 3: and him.
Speaker 2: What did you find in your investigation? At first? She
Speaker 2: hadn't shown up for work, and she had worked for
Speaker 2: years at this TJ Max fourteen years, so it's quite
Speaker 2: unusual for her not to show up at work. And
Speaker 2: her daughter also worked at TJ Max, or daughter Lisa.
Speaker 2: So tell us how you discovered that or thought maybe
Speaker 2: that there was something amiss in that, something like not
Speaker 2: showing up for work quite atypical for her.
Speaker 3: When I was trying to find her, I had gone
Speaker 3: to her apartment and knocked on the door and there
Speaker 3: was a note on the door for her daughter saying
Speaker 3: that she would be back, and her daughter was expecting
Speaker 3: to help her pack her things to move to a
Speaker 3: new apartment, so that she had missed that date by
Speaker 3: a couple of days. Found out where she was moving
Speaker 3: to and went there and they said that she had
Speaker 3: missed the date to pick up her keys for that apartment,
Speaker 3: and that was unusual. I talked to the daughter again
Speaker 3: and she said her mom was moving and that she
Speaker 3: was supposed to help her, and it was unusual because
Speaker 3: she'd been by there and she wasn't home. So I
Speaker 3: took another detective and went back to the apartment where
Speaker 3: she was living at Village Green and asked the manager
Speaker 3: if they would let us in the apartment to look around,
Speaker 3: because I thought maybe she has hurt herself, or she's
Speaker 3: injured somehow or whatever. But I had to finally almost
Speaker 3: prod the manager into letting us get in the apartment
Speaker 3: because the manager was getting ready to go on vacation
Speaker 3: and she.
Speaker 4: Didn't want to do it.
Speaker 3: But when we got in, it just there were boxes
Speaker 3: packed all over the place. There were bills set out
Speaker 3: on a table with a calculator and a pin, and
Speaker 3: even on the stove there was a skillet with dried
Speaker 3: or congealed bacon grease in the bottom, and a pitch
Speaker 3: or a little fork thing where somebody had ate recently.
Speaker 3: I looked in the bathroom. The shower was dry, the
Speaker 3: tub was dry. The only thing missing was a shower curtain,
Speaker 3: but she could have used There was a shower curtain,
Speaker 3: but the plastic one was not there. I didn't even
Speaker 3: know if she had a plastic one, so that wasn't
Speaker 3: a real tip off. There was no sign of any
Speaker 3: injury or a struggle or a fight taking place in
Speaker 3: that apartment, which later we found out that that's where
Speaker 3: he had actually killed her and cut her into pieces.
Speaker 3: So you would think there he would have left some
Speaker 3: kind of sign in there, but we didn't see anything,
Speaker 3: and found out.
Speaker 4: That he had cleaned it all with bleach.
Speaker 3: He scrubbed everything down but a wall by the bed,
Speaker 3: and when we got in there later after he confessed
Speaker 3: to the murder. We got in there later and we
Speaker 3: found with the blue light we found bloodstains up a
Speaker 3: wall where it looked like it had been spattered all
Speaker 3: up a wall and on the mattress. It kind of
Speaker 3: looked like a slaughterhouse in there with the lights, and
Speaker 3: that I should have had it done immediately, but like
Speaker 3: I said, I had no idea that she'd been heard.
Speaker 3: I just thought we had a missing person. Part of
Speaker 3: the reason for that was they were both addicted gamblers.
Speaker 3: They had had themselves evicted from the casino there in
Speaker 3: Evansville so that they couldn't come back, but they had
Speaker 3: spent a ton of money. That was one of the
Speaker 3: reasons that Ginger had gotten a divorce from her husband,
Speaker 3: and she had lived with Joe for a while because
Speaker 3: they were both gamblers and every dime that she made
Speaker 3: went into gambling.
Speaker 4: Didn't work.
Speaker 3: But the daughter told me she was working at TJ
Speaker 3: Max and I called them and they said she hadn't
Speaker 3: been there for at least two days, that she hadn't
Speaker 3: shown up for work on her schedule days, and they
Speaker 3: were kind of worried about her, but they said she'd
Speaker 3: never missed work before. I found out from them that
Speaker 3: she had also worked at the airport, in a little
Speaker 3: restaurant there in the airport in Evansville. And I talked
Speaker 3: to them and they said she hadn't been to work
Speaker 3: for three or four days, and that wasn't like her either,
Speaker 3: because she needed the money, so she was always working,
Speaker 3: and come to find out, she was really supporting Joe
Speaker 3: Brown with all the money she was making working extra jobs.
Speaker 3: And the daughter really gave us a lot of information.
Speaker 3: But the daughter had told me Melissa told me that
Speaker 3: it was possible that she and Joe had left together
Speaker 3: and gone off gambling somewhere because that's what they'd done
Speaker 3: in the past, right, And that kind of it made
Speaker 3: me back off a little bit about her being hurt
Speaker 3: or anything like that. But I was still looking for
Speaker 3: her pretty seriously and had contacted the apartments and everybody
Speaker 3: I could think of. If it work all of those,
Speaker 3: if she shows up or calls or anything, you call me,
Speaker 3: here's my home phone. Didn't hear from anybody. The daughter
Speaker 3: told me when we were looking in the apartment, I've
Speaker 3: called her. She said that her mom had a green
Speaker 3: Ford Taurus and a red Mustang. Well, the green Turus
Speaker 3: was the one the mom drove, and the red Mustang
Speaker 3: she had bought for Joe Brown to drive. And the
Speaker 3: Mustang wasn't there. The green Turus wasn't there, and there
Speaker 3: was no way we could prove anything. So I put
Speaker 3: a bl out on the cars and on Ginger and
Speaker 3: on Joe, and later that day I think this was
Speaker 3: oh maybe let's see that. The second I got to call,
Speaker 3: the second of September in two thousand, I got a call.
Speaker 3: Officer had found the cars on the parking lot of
Speaker 3: a grocery store, maybe a thousand yards from her apartment.
Speaker 3: The keys were still in the ignition. He looked inside.
Speaker 3: He didn't see anything in their blood or anything obvious
Speaker 3: where there'd been a fight.
Speaker 4: The car. But it's very unusual for a.
Speaker 3: Car to be left with the keys in it near
Speaker 3: there because there were a lot of apartment complexes and
Speaker 3: there were a lot of thefts in that area, carjackings
Speaker 3: and car thefts, et cetera. So we didn't know how
Speaker 3: long the car had been setting there and sitting there
Speaker 3: with the keys in it. It should have been stolen,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't. So we looked in the trunk and
Speaker 3: there was a piece of carpet in the trunk. Blow
Speaker 3: and behold right, And it was the same color as
Speaker 3: her carpet, and almost the same type of carpet, but
Speaker 3: it was just a square of carpet. There wasn't anything
Speaker 3: on it. It didn't look like it had been cut
Speaker 3: out of anything. And so I tried to check the
Speaker 3: apartment again, but we didn't really get any luck. And
Speaker 3: I had put a bol out on her and him,
Speaker 3: and I'm looking through their records again and I found
Speaker 3: out Joe had beat her up, like in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: something when they had gotten together.
Speaker 4: He beat her up once.
Speaker 3: There was a battery report on it, but she didn't
Speaker 3: pursue it. And there was a theft report on something
Speaker 3: and a stalking report, So there were a few things
Speaker 3: on him that looked like he was a serious criminal
Speaker 3: that was messed up with her and he wasn't about to.
Speaker 4: Let her go.
Speaker 3: I didn't know any of that until I got really
Speaker 3: deep into the case. And like I said, I was
Speaker 3: working bunko fraud. I'm looking at the checks end of it,
Speaker 3: mostly where I'd worked quite a few murders at that point,
Speaker 3: but nothing like this where somebody had been missing. But
Speaker 3: I found out that he had beat her up at
Speaker 3: the apartments that she lived in, and the manager there
Speaker 3: was going to kick her out if Ginger didn't go
Speaker 3: down and clean up the laundry room where there was
Speaker 3: blood on.
Speaker 4: The floor, which I thought was very callous of them
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 3: And that was why Ginger was looking for a new apartment,
Speaker 3: because Joe had beat her up in there and he
Speaker 3: thought he left her for dead. After he beat her up,
Speaker 3: he had fled to one of his family's house and
Speaker 3: said that him and Ginger had a big fight and
Speaker 3: he didn't think she was okay or he was worried
Speaker 3: about her, and nobody reported that to us, so the
Speaker 3: only thing we had was that report later from a
Speaker 3: battery at the apartments and there wasn't much too. It
Speaker 3: was a mist in her battery, no real details in it,
Speaker 3: and it was pretty sketchy, and it was still keeping
Speaker 3: fingers crossed it. Maybe they had had a fight again
Speaker 3: and maybe he beat her up, maybe he stole her checks,
Speaker 3: and that they she was still okay somewhere, maybe beat
Speaker 3: up in a shelter or whatever. So I started checking
Speaker 3: shelters and I didn't find her. And then I had
Speaker 3: a family reunion coming up on September second that I
Speaker 3: had set up for like six months to a year,
Speaker 3: and I just had gotten to the family reunion because
Speaker 3: I was off duty for about two days of this
Speaker 3: and working it all my time off, and I just
Speaker 3: got to the family reunion, I got a call that
Speaker 3: told me the Taurus was found on the parking lot
Speaker 3: there at Great Scott. So I went out and looked
Speaker 3: at the car, and then I started putting out bols
Speaker 3: and I didn't get anything back on that, and then
Speaker 3: I had a chance to do a news conference, so
Speaker 3: I put out a conference and put the car in there,
Speaker 3: both cars, well, the one car, the Mustang and Ginger
Speaker 3: and Joe, and that I was looking for her. She
Speaker 3: was a missing person and might be an endangered person.
Speaker 3: And that was about all I could put out because
Speaker 3: I didn't really have anything else to prove it. At
Speaker 3: that point, I thought it was going to be done.
Speaker 3: I went home and tried to get some sleep. Everything
Speaker 3: was done, and I got a call again like six
Speaker 3: o'clock that morning by Ohio State Police. They'd found Joe.
Speaker 3: They found the red Mustang and a truck stop in
Speaker 3: e Lebanon, Ohio, and he was very agitated and almost
Speaker 3: fought the take trooper there and they had taken him
Speaker 3: in on I put out with the bol I put
Speaker 3: out an arrest warrant and get this failure to here
Speaker 3: for anger management. That was the only thing I could
Speaker 3: find on him, which I thought was kind of iran.
Speaker 3: But I had put that out with the warrant just
Speaker 3: hoping that maybe he'd get stopped and they could arrest
Speaker 3: him on something, because I knew about all the checks.
Speaker 3: But like I said, they didn't want us to make
Speaker 3: an arrest on these checks unless we got a warrant. Well,
Speaker 3: prosecutor wouldn't give me a warrant on the checks.
Speaker 2: Yet, Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to
Speaker 2: hear these messages. Now you talked about that you only
Speaker 2: had this misdemeanor warrant in which potentially be able to
Speaker 2: arrest him. So let's fast forward to his arrest, as
Speaker 2: you say, but then the request to speak to you,
Speaker 2: and how this confession came to be.
Speaker 3: Ohio State Police had arrested him and took him to Elebanon, Ohio,
Speaker 3: to the jail there in Warren County, and we got
Speaker 3: the call and me and another detective drove to Elevenon.
Speaker 3: It was about a five hour drive from Evansville. They
Speaker 3: got Joe back in a classroom with like stadium seating
Speaker 3: for the state police, and he was I'm sorry. It
Speaker 3: was the jail's classroom and he was sitting at a
Speaker 3: table by himself, and the two street troopers I talked
Speaker 3: to said he won't talk to you. He's pissed off,
Speaker 3: he's cussed everybody. He got a fight in the jail.
Speaker 3: He said he won't talk to anybody. They had him handcuffed,
Speaker 3: sitting at a table for me, and I looked and
Speaker 3: they had a video of him being read his rights
Speaker 3: and he refused to sign anything. He said, I know
Speaker 3: my rights, and that was about it. So we walked
Speaker 3: in the door and I took the state troopers in
Speaker 3: with me and another detective. And protocol, says one detective
Speaker 3: one interview, you don't have several people disturbing or distracting.
Speaker 3: But I wanted this troopers in there because he hated them.
Speaker 3: So they set up in the stadium seats where he
Speaker 3: could look over and see them. But they weren't disturbing,
Speaker 3: but he was really angry that they were in there.
Speaker 3: And he looked at me and he goes, you might
Speaker 3: as well get the f out of here. I'm not
Speaker 3: talking to you, I'm not talking.
Speaker 4: To them, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And I had taken a class from this guy with
Speaker 3: State Department, and I just kind of leaned over and
Speaker 3: held my arms out like wow. And I've said, Jesus Christ, Joe,
Speaker 3: my ex wife doesn't talk to me like that. And
Speaker 3: I could see him starting to smirk. So I had
Speaker 3: opened the door to an interview with that, and I
Speaker 3: told him, you don't have to say a word. I
Speaker 3: just want to sit down and talk to you. I'm
Speaker 3: from Evansville. I'm looking for Ginger. I'm afraid something has
Speaker 3: happened to her and I have to find her, and
Speaker 3: so he let me sit down and he said, I'm
Speaker 3: not talking to you, but you can tell me. After
Speaker 3: about maybe two and a half three hours, he looked
Speaker 3: at me and he goes, you don't want to find her,
Speaker 3: and I said, what did you say? And he said,
Speaker 3: you don't want to find her. Believe me, Rick, you
Speaker 3: don't want to be the one to find her because
Speaker 3: I had come off during the whole interview as the
Speaker 3: week Nelly. And he actually protected me a couple of
Speaker 3: times during the interview with my other detective who was
Speaker 3: getting on my case like good cop, bad cop, right,
Speaker 3: and he would get on that other detective and go, no,
Speaker 3: he's doing a good job. And I've told Joe I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know why they sent me. I'm a horrible detective.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be doing this. Something's going to happen to
Speaker 3: Ginger and I won't be able to find out and
Speaker 3: that just makes me sick. I need to quit, and
Speaker 3: he go that's when he said, you'll never find her.
Speaker 3: And so we went from there and he finally confessed
Speaker 3: that he had killed her and did all curious. I go,
Speaker 3: what do you mean you killed her? What did you do?
Speaker 3: And he said I killed her, and I said, no,
Speaker 3: you didn't, and he goes, yes, I did.
Speaker 4: Rick. I said, well, what did you do?
Speaker 3: And he said, well, I cut her into I strangled her,
Speaker 3: and I cut her into pieces and spread body parts everywhere.
Speaker 4: So that kind of shocked me.
Speaker 3: And we went from there and he confessed to how
Speaker 3: he did the murder and where, so we knew we
Speaker 3: had a murder involved. We didn't have a body, we
Speaker 3: didn't really have a crime scene, and all we had
Speaker 3: was him in the car and his record. But I
Speaker 3: contacted our prosecutor back in Indiana and he went ahead
Speaker 3: and issued a warrant for the bad checks for me,
Speaker 3: so i'd have some reason to arrest him. The Ohio
Speaker 3: State Police luckily charged him with fleeing prosecution, leaning the
Speaker 3: state to avoid prosecution. And that was better than our
Speaker 3: misdemeanor charge because with a misdemeanor charge could pick him up,
Speaker 3: but they couldn't hold him unless we told them to
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor, it's really hard for them to make an
Speaker 3: arrest and make it stand unless the agency issuing the
Speaker 3: warrant or the charge will stand behind it and ask
Speaker 3: for extradition. So with a felony warrant. Now you have
Speaker 3: a lot better grounds to stand on. So we got
Speaker 3: the felony warrant and I told Joe, I said, well,
Speaker 3: we're going to have to do an extradition hearing, and
Speaker 3: it has to be in the court here in Warren County.
Speaker 3: And then if you will, I want you to come
Speaker 3: back to Evansville with me and show you where, show
Speaker 3: me where you put these body parts. And he goes,
Speaker 3: I'll show you, but I won't. I won't go tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I'll go right now. He said, you got to take
Speaker 3: me out of here now. He said, I can't stand
Speaker 3: this place. So I called my prosecutor back. They called
Speaker 3: Warren Counties prosecutor and they agreed that if he agreed
Speaker 3: to go, he could sign a paper and I could
Speaker 3: sign it like I was checking him out to take
Speaker 3: him out to eat. So I signed it and we
Speaker 3: got in the car. And there's one little side thing
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell you. When we left with him,
Speaker 3: I handcuffed him behind his back, set him in the
Speaker 3: back seat. I got in the back seat of the
Speaker 3: car with him. The other detective is driving. I had
Speaker 3: not taken a gun into the police department with me,
Speaker 3: I just had a phone call and I didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't carry a gun off, did he because I wasn't
Speaker 3: playing on shooting anybody. But I'm sitting in a back
Speaker 3: seat with him, and I don't even have a gun,
Speaker 3: and it's pitch blackout you can't see anything. They've had
Speaker 3: us follow them to State Police headquarters where they filled
Speaker 3: us up on gas because we were almost out.
Speaker 4: And while we're sitting.
Speaker 3: Under dark and my partner is in the State Police
Speaker 3: office getting some coffee and waiting for them to come
Speaker 3: out and fill the car up, sitting next to me,
Speaker 3: and he goes, I'm not going to jail Rick, And
Speaker 3: the way he said it, I felt my heart start
Speaker 3: pounding because I thought he's got out of the handcuffs
Speaker 3: and he's going to kill me. I couldn't see whether
Speaker 3: he did or not. I couldn't even see him. I
Speaker 3: just had a voice, So I told him. I said, Joe,
Speaker 3: you know you're going to jail.
Speaker 4: You have to. You told me what you did to Ginger.
Speaker 4: You have to do this.
Speaker 3: I said, I'll be nice to you, but you have
Speaker 3: to do this. That's up to you. I said, you're
Speaker 3: doing the right thing. Keep doing the right thing. So
Speaker 3: he didn't say anything else, and come to find out,
Speaker 3: he button't out of his handcuffs. But we went back
Speaker 3: to Evansville, and when we got almost into town, we
Speaker 3: were on Highway I sixty four Interstate sixty four. You
Speaker 3: could look off to the right and there was this
Speaker 3: abandoned gas station that had a huge parking lot. It
Speaker 3: used to be a truck stop, and there must have
Speaker 3: been twenty thirty police car in there, canines, crime scene units, ambulance,
Speaker 3: all kinds of things in this or rescue squads in
Speaker 3: this parking lot, and most of them had their lights
Speaker 3: going because they knew we were almost there. Joe looks
Speaker 3: over and he goes, is that for me? And he grinned,
Speaker 3: and I thought, you sick person.
Speaker 2: So he.
Speaker 3: Was really wanting to He was really wanting to be
Speaker 3: something special. And I told him, I said, yad, Joe,
Speaker 3: it's all it's all there for you because you're doing
Speaker 3: such a good thing here. I said, can you imagine
Speaker 3: somebody doing what you did, confessing to it, and then
Speaker 3: going to help us find all the body parts so
Speaker 3: that we can bury her. I said that just amazes me.
Speaker 3: And he said, I think God has abandoned me, and
Speaker 3: I had to stop him because you can't always be
Speaker 3: the weak person. And I said, Joe, you know that
Speaker 3: that's not true. You abandon God when you did this.
Speaker 3: You know that, don't you And he kind of hung
Speaker 3: his head and he goes, yeah, I know. So after
Speaker 3: that I was kind of in charge. But he took
Speaker 3: us out with different departments, like in Gibson County and
Speaker 3: Posey County and Warwick County. He took us with officers
Speaker 3: from each county and they're crime scene people and pod
Speaker 3: ever dogs and he would take us down a country
Speaker 3: road or out in the cornfields and.
Speaker 4: He'd go with his head.
Speaker 3: He'd nod right over there, you're going to find legs,
Speaker 3: or right over there, you're going to find the head.
Speaker 3: And it was very gruesome because it was still pitch blackout.
Speaker 3: All we had were flashlights and we're walking through cornfields
Speaker 3: and wheat fields and just junk fields with him. It
Speaker 3: was like being in a horror movie with him out there.
Speaker 3: I had him the arm, he was still handcuffed, and
Speaker 3: I'm walking him too all these places and we'd almost
Speaker 3: walk up on the body part and he'd go right
Speaker 3: over there, and crime scene would take pictures and lo
Speaker 3: and behold there was a bag with arms in it,
Speaker 3: and it had butted open because it'd been on the
Speaker 3: ground so long in that heat that the asses that
Speaker 3: build up had the bag explode, so you could see
Speaker 3: these half decayed arms. When we found Ginger's head, he
Speaker 3: had actually beheaded her, and her skull, most of the
Speaker 3: hair was hanging off to the side, and the skin
Speaker 3: had come off her face. Animals had eaten all the
Speaker 3: skin off her face, in her nose and all that,
Speaker 3: so it was partly a skull and then partly hair.
Speaker 3: And I asked him, why did you do that? Why
Speaker 3: didn't you behead her? He goes, I'll put the head
Speaker 3: here because her daughter, Misty, lives right over there across
Speaker 3: these fields. And I always hated Misty and she hated me,
Speaker 3: and I wanted her to look out and see her
Speaker 3: mom every time she went in her backyard.
Speaker 4: Wow, this is the guy.
Speaker 3: That's the reason I'm saying all these things is he
Speaker 3: has this killer instinct in him, but he's also got
Speaker 3: this evil part of him that doing all that was
Speaker 3: for a reason, But it was for a sick reason,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't just I'm mad at her for kicking
Speaker 3: me out, or I'm mad at her for not having money.
Speaker 3: I'm going to hurt her. I'm going to hurt her family.
Speaker 3: I'm going to hurt her. And cutting her up meant
Speaker 3: nothing to him, which you would think that that would
Speaker 3: be very hard for even a serial killer to do,
Speaker 3: but I know they do. But for him, he didn't
Speaker 3: seem like that kind of person initially, And the more
Speaker 3: we got into it, the more I could see it.
Speaker 3: And I tried to keep him talking, which I had
Speaker 3: to tell him how he was doing a good thing.
Speaker 3: And I had told him, I said, we found all
Speaker 3: these parts because we want to be able to put
Speaker 3: her in a casket and have the family bury her.
Speaker 3: I said, you told me that your brother died, and
Speaker 3: your father died, and your mom and you never got
Speaker 3: to go to the cemetery. He'd been there maybe once.
Speaker 3: And I said, so you didn't really have any place
Speaker 3: to go and grieve them, to say, there they are,
Speaker 3: they're in the ground. I can get rid of that
Speaker 3: thought in my head that maybe they're not dead. I said,
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to do that for Ginger's family, I said,
Speaker 3: and her one daughter really likes you, and talks good
Speaker 3: about you, which was not true, and she just thinks
Speaker 3: she's surprised, she shocked that you would do this. She
Speaker 3: couldn't believe that you were like this. So we need
Speaker 3: to get all these body parts so we can bury
Speaker 3: her and let Melissa go and grieve her mom and
Speaker 3: know she's right there. So he was very cops have
Speaker 3: took us to all the parts.
Speaker 4: And later.
Speaker 3: He said, well, since they're going to be able to
Speaker 3: get all the parts of her, all her body pieces,
Speaker 3: do you think they'll have an open casket?
Speaker 1: Yikes?
Speaker 3: I don't think he was joking. I said, I don't
Speaker 3: think so, you know, because even the face was gone.
Speaker 4: But I've got.
Speaker 3: Pictures of all of these crime scenes in the autopsy,
Speaker 3: and I still had nightmares about this because that was
Speaker 3: probably the case I've ever dealt with where I had
Speaker 3: that many, that much parts of a body of a
Speaker 3: dead body. And I've seen almost everything, but that was
Speaker 3: a first for me.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now let's take it too, because there's so
Speaker 2: much to go further in this story. We've just only
Speaker 2: unfortunately Begne. You talk about the first appearance the preliminary
Speaker 2: or Joe Brown as his September sixth, two thousand and
Speaker 2: this is only a preliminary, so nobody expects anything to
Speaker 2: happen unusual. And yet right at that preliminary Joe Brown
Speaker 2: with his attorney standing by him, a judge Helt is presiding,
Speaker 2: and his defense attorney's Bury Standley, and right away he
Speaker 2: gets up and says, I'm guilty. I killed her and
Speaker 2: I cut her up, and even the judge tells him
Speaker 2: to sit down and let his attorney speak for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was very angry that they wouldn't let him
Speaker 3: confess because he told me he didn't want to go
Speaker 3: to court. He would admit all of his crimes. He
Speaker 3: didn't want to go to court. He didn't want to
Speaker 3: waste his time. He wanted to go on to prison.
Speaker 3: And so when they started reading the charges to him
Speaker 3: and telling him his rights and all this stuff, and
Speaker 3: this is a preliminary, they just tell him what he's
Speaker 3: charged with. They didn't even have a bond hearing yet,
Speaker 3: and he jumped up, leaned over the table and he goes,
Speaker 3: I'm guilty of your owner. I just want to go
Speaker 3: on to prison. I killed her I cut her up.
Speaker 3: He said, if you don't send me on to prison
Speaker 3: now and you let me out, I'll kill again. He said,
Speaker 3: I'll just keep killing. So the judge kept telling him
Speaker 3: to sit down and shut up, and the attorney was
Speaker 3: trying to get him to sit down, and Joe looked over.
Speaker 4: At me, like, see, I told you I would confess.
Speaker 2: Let's fast track to the trial, which was eventually set
Speaker 2: for February twenty sixth, and now he has some defense team,
Speaker 2: including an attorney, John Goodrich and a private investigator, Mark Maulbray.
Speaker 2: But basically the trial comes down to they have a
Speaker 2: two pronged approach. You approach you right, that basically they're
Speaker 2: going to attack the constitutional rights of Joe Brown, his
Speaker 2: rights being violated by not being properly mirandized. And so
Speaker 2: let's just go to what happens at this trial, because
Speaker 2: again the story almost has a new beginning. Afterwards.
Speaker 4: I went to court, oh like.
Speaker 3: For a week at a time, maybe five days at
Speaker 3: a time, and I was on the stand most of
Speaker 3: that time. They had Ohio State Police come in and
Speaker 3: testify too, because they had read him his miranda rights
Speaker 3: in the police car with the camera on him. And
Speaker 3: he told him he knew his rights and he wasn't
Speaker 3: going to talk to them. He knew his rights and
Speaker 3: they were wasting their time reading them to him, so
Speaker 3: he just refused to sign. You just have to prove
Speaker 3: that you read them their rights. They don't have to
Speaker 3: sign and waive their rights, right, You just have to
Speaker 3: prove that you read it to him. Now, he said
Speaker 3: he didn't want to talk, so at that point he
Speaker 3: should have said, I want an attorney, but he didn't
Speaker 3: ask for an attorney. He knew he was going to
Speaker 3: be arrested. He just went on to jail because he'd
Speaker 3: been there so many times. So we had that videotape
Speaker 3: of him confessing, had the state police officer saying that,
Speaker 3: and the other Both of those state policemen were in
Speaker 3: an interview room when I read his rights to him
Speaker 3: and he refused to sign. He did the same thing
Speaker 3: to me he did to them, except he didn't say
Speaker 3: I'm not talking to you, or that I want an
Speaker 3: attorney and I'm not talking to you without an attorney present.
Speaker 3: He didn't go through that. But their biggest thing was
Speaker 3: the extradition, and I was worried about that to begin with.
Speaker 3: That's why I called our prosecutor. Usually for extradition, you
Speaker 3: would make the arrest and then the next available court date,
Speaker 3: which this was like ten o'clock at night, nine or
Speaker 3: ten o'clock at night or maybe earlier that he was arrested,
Speaker 3: but we didn't charge him with a felony or say
Speaker 3: we were going to bring him back, and extra died
Speaker 3: him until late that night, so there was no court.
Speaker 3: The next court available was the next day at eleven am,
Speaker 3: so we had until eleven am to talk to him,
Speaker 3: and he confessed a course, and he said he wanted
Speaker 3: to come back and he would go back with me,
Speaker 3: but he didn't want anybody else talking to him. And
Speaker 3: I had to sign him out of jail, so it
Speaker 3: was in my name, which made me culpable. But the
Speaker 3: prosecutors had both agreed that we could bring him back
Speaker 3: to Evansville as long as we got him back in
Speaker 3: Ohio for that eleven o'clock hearing. And that's what the
Speaker 3: law says, is that they have to be in court
Speaker 3: by the next available court.
Speaker 4: Date, and we made it.
Speaker 3: But he showed us body parts all night, and.
Speaker 4: The defense was that if he hadn't, if we.
Speaker 3: Hadn't taken him illegally from Ohio, we wouldn't have had
Speaker 3: the body parts to prove that he'd killed her. It
Speaker 3: was just a confession at that point, right, And so
Speaker 3: they had they had a good case. But this went
Speaker 3: on for almost a year and I would have to
Speaker 3: go to court and set through four or five days
Speaker 3: of six hours on the stand, right, uh, defending myself.
Speaker 3: And I found out they'd also they were Joe told
Speaker 3: me this anyway, I don't know it from the attorneys. Joe,
Speaker 3: I had put him in a different county in jail
Speaker 3: because he hated Vanderberg County, and he said if I
Speaker 3: put him in Vanderberg County jail, he would get in
Speaker 3: a fight every day. And I didn't want to do
Speaker 3: that to them. So I called Posey County and I said,
Speaker 3: well you take him over here. He said, he'll come here.
Speaker 3: If he gives you any problems at all, you call
Speaker 3: me at home and I'll come and get him. And
Speaker 3: so he went to Posey County jail. But then he
Speaker 3: would tell his attorneys on court dates. He'd go, I
Speaker 3: don't want you.
Speaker 4: Coming to get me.
Speaker 3: I want Rick Reid and Larry Nelson, who were the detectives.
Speaker 3: I want them to come and get me and take
Speaker 3: me to court.
Speaker 4: So we'd have to go.
Speaker 3: Over and pick him up from a jail and drive
Speaker 3: him to Evansville Court, And on the way to court,
Speaker 3: he would just run off at the mouth about all this,
Speaker 3: tell us what his attorneys were doing, what their defense was,
Speaker 3: and he would laugh about it. And he said, I
Speaker 3: keep telling them I'm guilty. I want to plead guilty.
Speaker 3: I want to go on to prison.
Speaker 4: He said. They shouldn't be doing this, he.
Speaker 3: Said, and they're talking about putting you in prison, Rick,
Speaker 3: for taking me illegally from Ohio. He said, they're going
Speaker 3: to file federal charges against you for kidnapping. And I thought,
Speaker 3: only cow. You know that if they had, I would
Speaker 3: have been in a world heard. I probably would have
Speaker 3: been out of a job for a long time until
Speaker 3: that was done. But that was their defense, was that
Speaker 3: we had taken him illegally against his will to another state.
Speaker 3: And that would have been true because there was a
Speaker 3: lot of in the past, a lot of problems arising
Speaker 3: from extradition because one county in a different state would
Speaker 3: just be mad at this person and have them extra
Speaker 3: diided back where they would hurt him, and I knew
Speaker 3: all that. You know, I was already teaching some of
Speaker 3: the stuff at the time, and I just didn't want
Speaker 3: to go through all that. But you know, as it
Speaker 3: turned out, that's what we had to do until they
Speaker 3: finally decided that I hadn't violated his rights and all
Speaker 3: the evidence stood, and that's when he got to plead
Speaker 3: guilty and got his sentence.
Speaker 2: What was the sentence.
Speaker 3: He got life without parole, which a life sentence in
Speaker 3: Indiana is twenty five years, but you get good time
Speaker 3: with that, which most people do, like seventeen of that
Speaker 3: twenty five got life without parole, which means or possibility
Speaker 3: of parole, which means he would never ever get out.
Speaker 3: He's in prison forever. He was telling me that day
Speaker 3: that they sentenced him. I had to take him back
Speaker 3: to jail, and we transported him to prison, even when
Speaker 3: he was riding to prison from work or from Posey County.
Speaker 3: He told me on the way there, he said, I
Speaker 3: got some other things to tell you, but I can't
Speaker 3: tell you.
Speaker 4: Now because they'll give me the death penalty.
Speaker 3: He never did tell me until a couple of years
Speaker 3: later he told me what he was talking about I
Speaker 3: suspect that he had done more, but you know, you
Speaker 3: can't beat information out of a prisoner, and he was
Speaker 3: afraid of the death penalty. He didn't want to die,
Speaker 3: so we were never able to get it out of
Speaker 3: him until later, and he contacted me and wanted to
Speaker 3: confess to thirteen other murders, which it really didn't surprise me,
Speaker 3: but he would do that and give me the information.
Speaker 4: He did.
Speaker 3: Kind of surprised me that he would be so open
Speaker 3: about it, but he was in.
Speaker 4: Prison for the rest of his life. He didn't care.
Speaker 3: He actually had been in prison for long enough that
Speaker 3: he said, I don't want to even live anymore. I
Speaker 3: just want to get this over with.
Speaker 2: This as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: You write in this book that you categorize or characterize
Speaker 2: Joe Brown as a newshorre and that's evident when he
Speaker 2: contacts Maureen Hayden and this isn't a letter in August
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, and he starts off with this
Speaker 2: is no prank, this is no joke. Contact Detective Rick
Speaker 2: Reid at the Evansville Police Department. I have information on
Speaker 2: thirteen murdered women between nineteen ninety five and two thousand
Speaker 2: and He also talked about if the time is right,
Speaker 2: I'll turn over the IDs I have of these murdered
Speaker 2: women and I'll confess to all thirteen murders. So tell
Speaker 2: us about this letter that you also received as well,
Speaker 2: and what happens as a result in terms of trying
Speaker 2: to determine the truthfulness and ID these victims. Apparently he
Speaker 2: has all these identifications, Say tell us what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was like.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and three and he'd been in prison for
Speaker 3: a little while. He contacted Mariene Hayden. He actually called
Speaker 3: and they had to accept charges for him to talk
Speaker 3: to her in any center letter, but he talked to
Speaker 3: her on the phone and told her that he'd committed
Speaker 3: all these murders and she should check with me. And
Speaker 3: so she called me and talked to me about it,
Speaker 3: and they wanted to be involved in interviewing him about
Speaker 3: this and put it on the news, and I didn't
Speaker 3: want to go with that, obviously, but I had not
Speaker 3: contacted him back yet. He contacted another news station reporter,
Speaker 3: I think Channel fourteen or forty four, and she was
Speaker 3: a very good looking woman, and he had he liked
Speaker 3: her a lot, like the way she looked, and so
Speaker 3: he wanted her to come and interview him about this
Speaker 3: and put him on TV. And she called me and
Speaker 3: we talked, and I finally ended up going to prison
Speaker 3: and talking to him, and I took another detective with
Speaker 3: me and a crime scene officer to videotape everything, and
Speaker 3: we talked to him over about a two week period.
Speaker 3: Every day he was in isolation what they called B
Speaker 3: East Unit B on the East Side, but everybody called
Speaker 3: it the Beast, and that's where they kept him alone
Speaker 3: in a cell and away from everybody, and the only
Speaker 3: way he got out was for thirty minutes a day
Speaker 3: to take a shower and maybe use the phone.
Speaker 4: But they had a.
Speaker 3: Dog leash on him, handcuffed behind his backs or around
Speaker 3: his neck ankle chains. They led him that way to
Speaker 3: the phone in the shower because he would fight him
Speaker 3: and if he got squirrely with him, they would jink
Speaker 3: that leash and he'd go down on his face. That's
Speaker 3: how they controlled him, because he was like a mad dog.
Speaker 3: He told me about that and when they when we
Speaker 3: went up to get him and talked to him, and
Speaker 3: at prison, they had him hooked up like that with
Speaker 3: the leash coming down from his arms between his legs,
Speaker 3: and it was about eight foot long. And they handed
Speaker 3: it to me and they said, if he gives you
Speaker 3: any problems, you just yank this and he'll go down.
Speaker 4: And cow.
Speaker 3: So we got him in a room and I said,
Speaker 3: I need all this off of him, which was kind
Speaker 3: of risky, but they took everything off, including or they
Speaker 3: left the handcuffs on him in the front. He said,
Speaker 3: in her and he confessed all thirteen of these murders,
Speaker 3: and he went through them briefly, all the way through once,
Speaker 3: and then I stopped him and I said, let's go
Speaker 3: back one at a time. And he gave me all
Speaker 3: of these murders in order, thirteen of them, and then
Speaker 3: we went back and I said, now, when you were
Speaker 3: in such and such city, which might be murder number five,
Speaker 3: tell me about that one. And he would be able
Speaker 3: to tell me all about that one. And I took
Speaker 3: him back and forth in time between these things in
Speaker 3: different states, and sometimes just a description and I'd say,
Speaker 3: this girl looked like this or that and the other.
Speaker 3: Tell me what happened, and he could come up with
Speaker 3: the entire story like he told me, but he made
Speaker 3: one mistake in the timeline and he said he stopped
Speaker 3: and he said, no, that's not right. He said that
Speaker 3: was before this one. And he said, I'm so sorry, Rick.
Speaker 3: He said, I apologize. He said, you'll never believe me anymore.
Speaker 3: And I said, Joe, you caught your own mistake, told
Speaker 3: me about it. That's fine, just let's go on. And
Speaker 3: so he told me about all the other ones. Well,
Speaker 3: that went on, and he told me about a murder
Speaker 3: that he had done in Evansville, a couple of murders
Speaker 3: in Evansville, and we were able to find a case
Speaker 3: that kind of matched what he said, and we looked
Speaker 3: into it, and this was after he had already gone
Speaker 3: to prison, of course.
Speaker 4: We looked into.
Speaker 3: It and found a murder of a known prostitute that
Speaker 3: happened the same year that he said it happened. The
Speaker 3: description he gave was exactly her. And told me where
Speaker 3: it happened. Well, we didn't know. We couldn't prove that
Speaker 3: it happened right where he said, but that was a
Speaker 3: street block that a lot of hookers and prostitutes frequented
Speaker 3: and they got picked up there. He told me he
Speaker 3: found her there and he went to a motel right there,
Speaker 3: and that he'd killed her in the motel because after
Speaker 3: they got done having sex, she got in his wallet
Speaker 3: and took more money than he gave her, and so
Speaker 3: he knocked her down and killed her. And he stripped
Speaker 3: her naked again, put her in the boot of this
Speaker 3: little car and drove her out in the county to
Speaker 3: a Gibson county and threw her out in this ditch
Speaker 3: dark naked, said how she was laying in the ditch,
Speaker 3: and that he had details like she had very small breast,
Speaker 3: almost not having breast, and this victim was the same way.
Speaker 3: He told me what her hair looked like, about how
Speaker 3: tall she was. All that stuff matched, and he said
Speaker 3: he'd turn her out in this ditch and just left
Speaker 3: her laying on her side. Well, that's what their police
Speaker 3: report said when they found the body. And he told
Speaker 3: me her he only knew her by the name slick right,
Speaker 3: But we were ever enable. We weren't able to find
Speaker 3: that name. But we showed him a lineup of six women,
Speaker 3: and one of them was a policewoman that did that
Speaker 3: detail sometimes, and they all looked real similar. Well, he
Speaker 3: picked her picture out immediately and he goes, that's slick. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that one I still believe he did that one.
Speaker 3: The Gibson County Sheriff thought they had good suspects. They
Speaker 3: found DNA seamen in a car that was owned by
Speaker 3: these two guys that admitted they'd had sex with her
Speaker 3: that night or the night before, so they were wanting
Speaker 3: to charge them, but they didn't have enough to charge them,
Speaker 3: so they just cleared the case. They thought that they
Speaker 3: were the ones and they were done, and they wouldn't
Speaker 3: believe that Joe actually committed that murder. Joe was really pissed.
Speaker 3: He wanted to come clean and he wanted to us
Speaker 3: to know about all of them and find one so
Speaker 3: he could prove that's what he did. But we had
Speaker 3: DNA run on the DNA that they had and DNA
Speaker 3: from Joe. That was a special test, and it didn't
Speaker 3: really show anything because there was so much material when
Speaker 3: they took it from her that.
Speaker 4: It could have been anybody.
Speaker 3: You know, she was with maybe five or ten guys
Speaker 3: a night, so it was hard to say what was
Speaker 3: whose or if you could even say this was somebody's right.
Speaker 3: We were pretty well done with that and we never
Speaker 3: got a conviction on it. They didn't want to press charges,
Speaker 3: and our prosecutor said, well, if they're not going to
Speaker 3: do it, we don't want to bring him over here
Speaker 3: and lose the case.
Speaker 2: You talked about. The person you mentioned was Andrea Hendrik Steinert.
Speaker 2: And one of the other compelling reasons you believe that
Speaker 2: it was her that Joe was talking about is that
Speaker 2: he mentioned that he thought she just had a baby,
Speaker 2: and then this woman had previously had a baby. But
Speaker 2: in the two thousand and three as opposed to the
Speaker 2: two thousand confession, Joe Brown also talks gives a different
Speaker 2: story to you about the motivation and some of the
Speaker 2: things that occurred at Ginger Gasaway's apartment and the reason
Speaker 2: for the murder in the first place. The two different
Speaker 2: stories tell us what he said in two thousand and
Speaker 2: then the change in two thousand and three and the
Speaker 2: details he included.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he he was pretty well wanted to come clean
Speaker 3: about the whole thing. And when I was talking to him,
Speaker 3: he said that he had gone over to her apartment.
Speaker 3: He knew she was going to move, and he knew
Speaker 3: where she was going to move to. He'd followed her
Speaker 3: and he had stopped outside of her apartment in the
Speaker 3: parking lot and saw her ex husband's car pull up
Speaker 3: and her giver ex husband a kiss and get out.
Speaker 3: So he thought that she was getting back with her
Speaker 3: ex husband, and he was really jealous of that because
Speaker 3: she was his meal ticket.
Speaker 4: He had been in prison.
Speaker 3: Since nineteen seventy seven, I believe nineteen seventy five or
Speaker 3: seventy seven, and he'd been in boys school quite a
Speaker 3: bit before that, so he had a lot of problems
Speaker 3: with violence.
Speaker 4: He was very angry with her.
Speaker 3: Plus she was wanting her car back, that Mustang, and
Speaker 3: he was in love with at Mustang. He thought it
Speaker 3: made him look cool, and he said women really liked it.
Speaker 3: So she wanted the car back because he wasn't paying
Speaker 3: her for it, which he promised to do, and she
Speaker 3: had told him, I want the car back, I want
Speaker 3: you to leave me alone. He had a work truck.
Speaker 3: She'd set him up in business Dingane and he was
Speaker 3: stealing all the money and going gambling with it, and
Speaker 3: so she took he sold the truck and she got
Speaker 3: it back, and so she wanted the car because he
Speaker 3: wasn't working and she'd kicked him out. He was pretty
Speaker 3: angry about that and then seeing her ex husband with
Speaker 3: her set him off, so he said he went to
Speaker 3: her apartment and waited until he knew she was asleep
Speaker 3: at about three o'clock in the morning, and he waited
Speaker 3: and outside her door, crouched down until he knew she
Speaker 3: was going to get up and go to work at
Speaker 3: TJ Max. It was about four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 3: and he heard her getting in this closet by the door,
Speaker 3: which kind of squeaked. It was a metal folding door,
Speaker 3: and he heard her go into that, and he knew
Speaker 3: from habit that she'd be opening the door going to work,
Speaker 3: and he said as soon as she opened the door,
Speaker 3: he yanked it on her and knocked her backwards and
Speaker 3: got her by the throat and drug her back to
Speaker 3: the bedroom him or pushed her back there by the
Speaker 3: throat and told her she knew what was going to
Speaker 3: happen because she had cheated it on him or whatever,
Speaker 3: and he was going to kill her, but she talked
Speaker 3: him out of doing that because she told him she
Speaker 3: still loved him and pretty well tried to talk him
Speaker 3: down and begged him not to die. But he had
Speaker 3: her get naked completely and they had sex couple of times,
Speaker 3: and she told him that she loved him, and then
Speaker 3: he said, well, if you're going to get back with
Speaker 3: your husband or your ex husband or whatever, I'm going
Speaker 3: to do this. And he was going to kill her anyway,
Speaker 3: and she got mad and she said, me and Hobert
Speaker 3: spent the night together. I don't want you ever to
Speaker 3: come back. Get out of here and don't come back.
Speaker 3: And that's when he strangled her. So I found out
Speaker 3: later from the autopsy pictures that we found all of
Speaker 3: her body parts and they were all She had been
Speaker 3: naked when he cut her up. But he used a sawsle.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know what that is, yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it's got a long blade on it. Well, he
Speaker 3: cut her up with that and a butcher knife on
Speaker 3: that plastic shower curtain that I never found on the
Speaker 3: floor by the bed, and he that's how the blood
Speaker 3: got all up the wall was from him cutting her.
Speaker 3: And he said that the sawsole wasn't doing a job
Speaker 3: because it wouldn't go through the meat and the bone.
Speaker 3: He went back to home depot where he got the saw,
Speaker 3: got the sawsle and told him this didn't work, and
Speaker 3: this blade doesn't work. And they said, well you cutting
Speaker 3: up and he said bones. And so the guy said,
Speaker 3: if you're going to cut up bones, you need this blade,
Speaker 3: and they gave him a different blade, and he went
Speaker 3: back to cut her up. But he he took all
Speaker 3: of her clothes and bagged them, threw them away in
Speaker 3: one place, like some of them at Vanderberg, some in
Speaker 3: Warwick County. He threw the sawshole in a pit that
Speaker 3: was left over from coal mining, and it was full
Speaker 3: of water, so we never found that.
Speaker 4: We found the box to it.
Speaker 3: And he threw all the clothes in a dumpster there by,
Speaker 3: the apartments or some of them, and we never found
Speaker 3: those because it had been too long and the dumpster's
Speaker 3: had been emptied. But that was another thing, was him
Speaker 3: saying he took all the clothes to a dumpster by
Speaker 3: where he killed her, And that turned up later in
Speaker 3: the two thousand and three confessions to the other murders.
Speaker 3: He disposed of some of these bodies and dumpsters, Yes,
Speaker 3: And I had a hard time getting other detectives to
Speaker 3: believe that that could possibly happen, because they said, if
Speaker 3: a body is in a dumpster, they're going to find it.
Speaker 3: When they empty it, well, not necessarily no, and you know,
Speaker 3: so that was really their reason for thinking he was
Speaker 3: a liar. But I really believe that he killed this
Speaker 3: Andrea Hendricks for sure, and a couple of the other
Speaker 3: ones because he told me too much detail that he remembered,
Speaker 3: and he remembered it like he was enjoying it, like
Speaker 3: it was something to be proud of. And that's what
Speaker 3: he did when he told me about killing Ginger. He
Speaker 3: acted the same way. So it wasn't like he was
Speaker 3: just sitting there going, uh.
Speaker 4: You know. Then I.
Speaker 3: Was telling the whole story like better than I'm talking
Speaker 3: to you. So we found we found all the body
Speaker 3: parts and stuff. And he said that after he cut
Speaker 3: her up, actually after he killed her, he sat on
Speaker 3: the edge of the bed and he wondered what he
Speaker 3: was going to do. He had no idea what he
Speaker 3: was going to do. And he had been in prison
Speaker 3: and he heard somebody in prison say, if you ever
Speaker 3: kill somebody, you cut them into pieces and throw the
Speaker 3: pieces in different counties and they'll never find all the
Speaker 3: body parts because the animals will take it away.
Speaker 4: So that's what he did because that's what he had been.
Speaker 2: Told that Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages you talk about right after he does this
Speaker 2: heinous crime, and he distributes these body parts all over
Speaker 2: the place. You say that he takes about fifties. He
Speaker 2: says he takes about fifty thousand dollars of Ginger's money
Speaker 2: and blows it on gambling immediately after this, and then
Speaker 2: that's the beginning of his further spree. You talk about
Speaker 2: that in two thousand and four, just when you think
Speaker 2: you're not going to hear from Joe Brown again, and
Speaker 2: you've investigated these murders, and like you say, many police
Speaker 2: don't believe his stories at all because the only body
Speaker 2: you found other than Ginger's body parts were this Andrea
Speaker 2: Hendrick Steiner. So were you surprised or alarmed or dismayed
Speaker 2: when you got notification September thirtieth, two thousand and four
Speaker 2: from Joe Brown.
Speaker 4: A little bit?
Speaker 3: And during that talk, that interview, he told us about
Speaker 3: a girl that he almost killed, but he said she
Speaker 3: was the one that got away, so she wasn't in
Speaker 3: the thirteen. She was another one. And he told us
Speaker 3: when that one happened, and all he knew her by
Speaker 3: was the name September because that was her dancer name
Speaker 3: and she was a hooker also.
Speaker 4: He picked her up.
Speaker 3: And offered her one hundred dollars to have sex with him,
Speaker 3: and he took her to Read Kentucky had rented a
Speaker 3: motel room and it was a really rundown dump that
Speaker 3: I don't think they had anybody there. He took her
Speaker 3: there and we found her and she led us to
Speaker 3: the motel room and she said, he took me in there,
Speaker 3: and I was going to have sex with him, but
Speaker 3: when I walked in there there was plastic lane on
Speaker 3: the floor, clothesline on the counter, and a knife.
Speaker 4: She said.
Speaker 3: She told him a sob story about how her life
Speaker 3: had been miserable and her parents had mistreated her and
Speaker 3: her dad had molested her, and she said none of
Speaker 3: it was true, but I just wanted to feel sorry
Speaker 3: for me, and she said it worked. He said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to take you home. He says I had a
Speaker 3: life just like that. He said, I am so sorry
Speaker 3: or something, and he took her back to where he
Speaker 3: picked her up and left her. Which she never reported
Speaker 3: any of that to anybody, but we got it later.
Speaker 3: He was definitely going to do what he did before.
Speaker 3: He picked a hotel room and he was going to
Speaker 3: kill her and cut her up like he did Ginger.
Speaker 3: But it was it was pretty scary what she she
Speaker 3: found out that he had done this to Ginger, and
Speaker 3: she almost fainted because it's like, oh my god, I almost.
Speaker 4: Did I.
Speaker 2: You get this letter and he's requesting you again, but
Speaker 2: he wants to tell you some information and it does
Speaker 2: have some relevance to the Ginger Gassaway story in terms
Speaker 2: of where these bodies supposedly are that he's reaching out
Speaker 2: to you about. Tell us about what he says and
Speaker 2: the search.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had contacted the FBI their profiling unit, a
Speaker 3: unit called VISCAP program and entered all the information we
Speaker 3: had on his case, body parts, what he said he
Speaker 3: had done to all the victims, what they looked like,
Speaker 3: all the things that were pertinent to a search, a
Speaker 3: computer search of other cases around the US, because he
Speaker 3: said about these murders he had done them all the
Speaker 3: way across the United States, and so we were looking
Speaker 3: for other murders that matched what he had told us
Speaker 3: that were unsolved, and we found a couple that were
Speaker 3: pretty close, but they didn't really have anything that we
Speaker 3: could work with to prove that he had done them.
Speaker 3: And he never did give us the IDs that he
Speaker 3: claimed he had from all of them because he said,
Speaker 3: after I killed him, I kept their driver's license to
Speaker 3: their ID card or something like that, right, and we
Speaker 3: never found those.
Speaker 2: Well, basically, he tells you details of where these bodies
Speaker 2: are buried in relation to where Ginger Gasaway's body parts
Speaker 2: were buried, particularly her head. So what happens with the
Speaker 2: search for the veracity of what he has said and
Speaker 2: what he has claimed.
Speaker 3: He took us back to several of the places where
Speaker 3: he had disposed of Ginger's body, and one place in
Speaker 3: particular he was certain that he had buried a victim
Speaker 3: like he did. One of his first victims was a
Speaker 3: farm with cornfield, and he told us about how far
Speaker 3: he'd walked out in the cornfield, and he dug down
Speaker 3: about three feet and he put the body in it
Speaker 3: and buried her in the cornfield, thinking that she would
Speaker 3: be dug up and eaten by animals. And we had
Speaker 3: a backo come out and we dug up an area
Speaker 3: that was probably twenty by twenty foot and six foot deep.
Speaker 4: Found nothing. It didn't mean that.
Speaker 3: That she hadn't been there, but we had kadaver dogs
Speaker 3: go over the area and never found anything. So we
Speaker 3: never found any of these things. And I had the
Speaker 3: feeling when we were doing that one they don't allow
Speaker 3: him to smoke in prison, you know, legally anyway, and
Speaker 3: he was wanting to go and have a smoke and
Speaker 3: go for a trip. So he used me and the
Speaker 3: fact that I believed him to get out of prison
Speaker 3: again and go riding around different counties and relive what
Speaker 3: he had done, because we drove by a couple of
Speaker 3: places where he had left Ginger's body, so that was
Speaker 3: what he was wanting to do. I think I believed
Speaker 3: at the time that he might have been telling the
Speaker 3: truth about the one, or I wouldn't have gone to
Speaker 3: that much work. But my thinking at the time was
Speaker 3: I have him confessing to thirteen murders. All of these
Speaker 3: people are the type of person that would not be
Speaker 3: missed very badly because if they disappeared, people would think
Speaker 3: they were either a hooker and they left town, or
Speaker 3: they had just disappeared because they wanted to stay away
Speaker 3: from family and everything. So they were kind of disposable people,
Speaker 3: and that's what he was killing, was people that nobody
Speaker 3: would miss. And all the people that he was telling
Speaker 3: us about were that way, and you really couldn't find
Speaker 3: anything on them. It's not like somebody was killing somebody's
Speaker 3: mother and the daughters are missing her. The only one
Speaker 3: that he did like that was Ginger. And I asked
Speaker 3: him why was Ginger different and he said, because I
Speaker 3: hated her kids. He said, I knew that you would
Speaker 3: find me eventually because I was connected to her, And
Speaker 3: that gave me a little more truth and to his
Speaker 3: other confessions, because he was not connected to them, but
Speaker 3: he was connected to Ginger. He had a history with her.
Speaker 3: The other thing he said was when he went to Ohio,
Speaker 3: he said his mom, he's telling me about his family
Speaker 3: dying and worried man and getting a dishonorable discharge when
Speaker 3: he was like nineteen teen, seventeen, eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 4: But he said he.
Speaker 3: Was molested as a child and his mom found out
Speaker 3: that he'd been molested and did nothing about it except
Speaker 3: tell his father. And the father was a bricklayer two
Speaker 3: and the father was a drunken, abusive and his father
Speaker 3: just beat the hell out of him and called him
Speaker 3: names like he had asked for that like that's what
Speaker 3: he was. So he hated his mom for that, and
Speaker 3: his sisters, he said, we're pretty much the same way.
Speaker 3: Where one of them woke up with a knife buried
Speaker 3: in the floor by her bed and she told the
Speaker 3: mother that he did it, and he got a beating
Speaker 3: for that too, and he said he didn't do it,
Speaker 3: but the way he said it out that he did.
Speaker 3: He said when his mom died, she had drowned in
Speaker 3: the bathtub and he was the one that found her.
Speaker 3: And this was when we were in Ohio still, and
Speaker 3: I asked him, did you kill your mother? And he goes,
Speaker 3: I can't say that. Wow, So I knew did that
Speaker 3: one too. He hated his mom and she was found
Speaker 3: dead drowning about TB. He's the one founder his dad
Speaker 3: supposedly committed suicide with a gun. He hated his dad
Speaker 3: for beating him all the time. He hated his sisters
Speaker 3: because they had turned him in for probably trying to
Speaker 3: molest him. And he hated his brother because none of
Speaker 3: them had come to prison while he was in prison
Speaker 3: and brought him money for commissaries so he could get cigarettes.
Speaker 3: That was back when they could still smoke, and so
Speaker 3: he hated all of them because they had never given
Speaker 3: him money for anything, or helped him or visited or
Speaker 3: answered mail or anything. And he had told me this
Speaker 3: was in Ohio. Still, he said, it's a good thing
Speaker 3: you caught me when you did, because I wasn't done yet.
Speaker 3: And I said, what are your names? You weren't done?
Speaker 3: What were you going to do? And he said, my
Speaker 3: brother lives in Zanesville. It was about ten miles away
Speaker 3: from where he was. He said, he lives in Zanesville,
Speaker 3: and he's married and got two kids. He said, I
Speaker 3: was going to go kill him and his wife and
Speaker 3: the kids.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then he was going to go down to marry
Speaker 3: out to Georgia and kill his other sister. I don't
Speaker 3: know whether any of that was true, but he was
Speaker 3: very close to his brother's house.
Speaker 4: To have you gotten there.
Speaker 2: You say in the end, in the afterword, that you
Speaker 2: say you believe strongly that of course he killed Ginger,
Speaker 2: he killed Andrea Hendrix Steinhert, but also you believe he
Speaker 2: killed his mother. But also it's very, very a good
Speaker 2: glaring example of how dangerous this person continues to be.
Speaker 2: Just tell us briefly about the cellmate and his fate.
Speaker 3: This was after he had burned himself out with us.
Speaker 3: You know, we weren't going to take him out of
Speaker 3: jail anymore unless he would tell us where a body
Speaker 3: part was or a body and then we'd find it,
Speaker 3: we might get him out. He knew he'd burned up
Speaker 3: any chances of getting out with us, and he had
Speaker 3: been transferred to another prison where at doc Department of
Speaker 3: Corrections they allowed him to have a cat, and he
Speaker 3: wanted to have a cat. But when they send him
Speaker 3: to this other prison, I think it was Miami facility
Speaker 3: up north, they wouldn't allow him to have animals, and
Speaker 3: he was in solitary a lot of the time, and
Speaker 3: then they put him out in population and he was
Speaker 3: really pissed about not being able to have a cat,
Speaker 3: and he couldn't talk to me anymore. I refused to
Speaker 3: talk to him, and nobody believed him about anything, and
Speaker 3: he was going to be in prison the rest of
Speaker 3: his life. So his salemate, he said, was a child molester,
Speaker 3: and they put him in with this guy, and he
Speaker 3: didn't want to be in there with him, and the
Speaker 3: guy got on his nerves.
Speaker 4: So Joe used the rope.
Speaker 3: From their laundry bag and strangled this guy, left him
Speaker 3: on the bunk, strangled, made coffee, and then sat on
Speaker 3: the bunk and hollered over the speaker system. You better
Speaker 3: come and get him because he's going to start stinking.
Speaker 3: And this is what I heard from the prison. I
Speaker 3: didn't talk to Joe. I was in New York at
Speaker 3: my publishers at the time that the prosecutor from there
Speaker 3: called me and he said, Joe Brown wants to talk
Speaker 3: to you, and I said, well, I don't want to
Speaker 3: talk to him. And he said, well, he's killed his
Speaker 3: cell mate and the only one he'll confess to is you.
Speaker 3: And I said, he was in a cell locked in
Speaker 3: with this guy.
Speaker 4: And killed him, right.
Speaker 3: He goes, well, yeah, if you don't need me, no,
Speaker 3: I don't want to.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: I'm in New York and I really don't want to.
Speaker 3: So I didn't, and they found him guilty and he
Speaker 3: got another life without parole.
Speaker 4: Sims.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fitting end to the story. I want
Speaker 2: to thank you so much for coming on and talking
Speaker 2: about Blood Trail the Hunt for a Serial Killer, and
Speaker 2: this is the new updated version release just recently this
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four tell us when it was released, and
Speaker 2: if you do any social media and if you have
Speaker 2: a website, you can refer us to.
Speaker 4: Okay the book. It's got a new cover, of course.
Speaker 3: It was released as a paperback in two thousand and
Speaker 3: four two thousand and five and ran for a long time,
Speaker 3: and then it became an ebook only and now it's
Speaker 3: a paperback and an e book. It was released in
Speaker 3: July this year. If you need to contact me or
Speaker 3: you want to, this book is pretty exciting. It's got
Speaker 3: maybe ten or twelve pages of pictures, yes of the scenes,
Speaker 3: and I think I describe some of the love letters
Speaker 3: that he wrote in it and some of his reasoning
Speaker 3: doing these killings. So if you need to contact me,
Speaker 3: you can get me through my website. It's rickreadbooks dot com.
Speaker 3: And I've also got a Facebook page. It's just under
Speaker 3: rickread and you'll see my picture on there as a writer,
Speaker 3: and it'll show all my books. So you can use
Speaker 3: either one of those to get links to Amazon. All
Speaker 3: of my books are for sale at any of the
Speaker 3: bookstores as an ebook or paperback. You have to order them.
Speaker 3: At this point in time, there's no hardback hardcovers, but
Speaker 3: it's still a very interesting book. The story has still
Speaker 3: bothered me to this day where I have nightmares like
Speaker 3: I'll wake up in the middle of the night's sweating
Speaker 3: and wanting to fight. Wow, because I believe that Joe
Speaker 3: Brown has gotten out of prison and he's found me
Speaker 3: because he's mad at me, because I don't want to
Speaker 3: talk to him anymore.
Speaker 2: Incredible, incredible, the enduring legacy of this crime on so
Speaker 2: many people, but especially you, Rick Reid. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming on and talking about this very very
Speaker 2: personal story for you, Blood Trail, the Hunt for a
Speaker 2: serial killer. Thank you so much for this interview, and
Speaker 2: you have a great evening and good night. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you,