Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the deli, I guess.
Speaker 3: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 2: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 4: In the car before my kids pta meeting?
Speaker 2: Really? Yes?
Speaker 4: Excuse me?
Speaker 3: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win? And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 4: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky Landsloughts dot
Speaker 4: com play for free right now?
Speaker 2: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 1: No, we're just necessary boyde.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be my long eighte plus terms and conditions
Speaker 3: of pluck sets every details.
Speaker 4: Okay, Round two, name something that's not boring.
Speaker 5: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 2: Huh ah.
Speaker 6: Sorry, we were looking for chumbu Casino to chum. That's right,
Speaker 6: chumbucasino dot com as over one hundred casino style games
Speaker 6: joined today and play for free for your chance to
Speaker 6: redeem some serious prizes.
Speaker 4: Chum Chumbacasino dot.
Speaker 6: Combers eighty plus start the conditions of plus like retails.
Speaker 4: Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 4: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 4: fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but
Speaker 4: I like fun too. It's a thing. And now the
Speaker 4: truth is out there, I can tell you about my
Speaker 4: favorite place to have fun, Chumbu Casino. They have hundreds
Speaker 4: of social casino style games to choose from, with new
Speaker 4: games released each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere,
Speaker 4: and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 4: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 4: chumbacasino dot com.
Speaker 3: No pursiness, every dapod where, every by lost in terms
Speaker 3: conditions eating.
Speaker 4: Plus it is Ryan here and I have a question
Speaker 4: for you. What do you do when you win?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 4: Are you a fist pumper, a woo, a handclapper, a
Speaker 4: high fiver? I kind of like the high five. But
Speaker 4: if you want to hone in on those winning moves,
Speaker 4: check out Chumbuck Casino. At chumbacasino dot com, choose from
Speaker 4: hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to
Speaker 4: redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly,
Speaker 4: plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait start having the
Speaker 4: most fun ever. At Chumbu casino dot com.
Speaker 3: They're idly by Lost Your Regnitions eighteen class.
Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 1: Former social worker SR. Reynolds has never forgotten the mishandled
Speaker 1: case of fifteen year old Michelle Anderson, a vibrant beauty
Speaker 1: who went missing from reynolds Knoxville, Tennessee neighborhood. Ears ear.
Speaker 1: Aided by her old professor, famed forensic anthropologist doctor Bill Bass,
Speaker 1: founder of the University of Tennessee's Body Farm, Reynolds picks
Speaker 1: up the trail of this cold case. As she presses
Speaker 1: neglected pieces of the puzzle into place. Reynolds on Earth's
Speaker 1: a string of heinous kidnappings and rapes across the South,
Speaker 1: crimes that span decades. A picture begins to form, Patterns appear,
Speaker 1: and all that evidence points to one man, convicted sex offender,
Speaker 1: Larry Lee Smith. As a result of Reynolds's efforts, the
Speaker 1: Knoxville Police Departments reopened the cold case in Michelle's dis disappearance.
Speaker 1: But Larry Lee is about to be released from a
Speaker 1: Georgia prison where he served time for related crime. A
Speaker 1: similar transaction the book that we're featuring this evening, a
Speaker 1: similar transaction, A true story with my special guest journalist
Speaker 1: and author S. R. Reynolds. Welcome to the program. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for agreeing to this interview. Sr.
Speaker 2: Reynolds, Thank you, Yes, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Let's jump right into this because
Speaker 1: this is a complicated story spanning, as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the introduction, decades and your extraordinary effort along with various
Speaker 1: victims and victims families members to bring this Larry Lee
Speaker 1: Smith to justice. So let's get right to that, and
Speaker 1: we start starting your book with the introduction of Katherine McWilliams. Now,
Speaker 1: this is fourteen year old girl. She just moved from
Speaker 1: New York with her father to Florida with her mother.
Speaker 1: Our parents were separated, and on July twelfth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: she is out with friends. It gets late, she has
Speaker 1: a curfew and her friend Tom, which was a ride
Speaker 1: or could be a ride, wasn't ready to leave at
Speaker 1: that point. She was wanted to meet that curfield. She's
Speaker 1: still she needed a ride, and a young main man
Speaker 1: named Larry Lee Smith volunteers. Now, as you write the
Speaker 1: Tom writes down the man's license plate number and his
Speaker 1: own phone number and hands it to Katherine. Now what
Speaker 1: happens on that ride home with Catherine and Larry Lee.
Speaker 2: Okay? Well, he travels into the city of Clearwater from
Speaker 2: the beach where they've been, and he tells her that
Speaker 2: before he takes her home, which is about thirty minutes away,
Speaker 2: he needs to stop by his friend's apartment and pick
Speaker 2: up something, and she says okay, And they get there
Speaker 2: and he convinces her to come upstairs to the apartment
Speaker 2: with him, telling him, or telling her rather, that he
Speaker 2: wants her to meet his friends, and she's just anxious
Speaker 2: to get home, so she gives in and goes up
Speaker 2: with him, just to kind of keep things moving along.
Speaker 2: She isn't yet seeing him as any kind of dangerous person.
Speaker 2: She isn't afraid at this point, but she's kind of alert.
Speaker 2: Once they are in the apartment, however, she realizes that
Speaker 2: there's no one else in there. They're alone. Suddenly he
Speaker 2: grabs her by the neck and shoves her into the bedroom.
Speaker 2: He chokes her, which is kind of one of his
Speaker 2: signature things. He chokes her, punches her, throws her down
Speaker 2: on the bed, and he rapes her. He threatens to
Speaker 2: kill her if she tells, kill her family if she tells,
Speaker 2: And she's sort of astute for a young girl, so
Speaker 2: she decides that a good survival strategy would be to
Speaker 2: play along with him. She's utterly alone at night with him,
Speaker 2: so she gives into his demands to a degree. She
Speaker 2: begins to act like she's okay with what's happening. He
Speaker 2: even asks her afterwards if she enjoyed the ordeals or rape,
Speaker 2: and she says, yeah, yeah, sure, keeping him humoring him.
Speaker 2: Before leaving, he has her bathe in an effort to
Speaker 2: erase any evidence. I guess you thought he was pretty clever.
Speaker 2: He also gets the piece of paper from her with
Speaker 2: a tag number on it. When they get down to
Speaker 2: his truck, he tells her to slide down cover her eyes,
Speaker 2: you know, determining that she can't see where they're leaving from,
Speaker 2: so she won't be able to identify where they've been. Uh.
Speaker 2: And on the way home, he makes chatty, flirty small
Speaker 2: talk with her, feeling like maybe she actually likes him
Speaker 2: her she's kind of convinced him, and then she has
Speaker 2: him drop or once they return to Port Richie neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: she has him drop her about half a block from
Speaker 2: her actual house, so we won't know really where she lives.
Speaker 2: He drives off and then she races down the street,
Speaker 2: bursts through her front door, and you know, the screams
Speaker 2: to her mother, I've been raped.
Speaker 1: Now her mother, Jane, calls the police. They take her
Speaker 1: to the hospital. At some point she's a rape kid
Speaker 1: is conducted, she cooperates with them. She's got the presence
Speaker 1: of mind that she can work on a composite drawing.
Speaker 1: So a composite drawing that she thinks really looks good
Speaker 1: is done, completed, and then she helps Catherine, helps the
Speaker 1: police find the address, draws it, makes a drawing. She
Speaker 1: was aware of her circumstances, like you had mentioned, when
Speaker 1: she was after she was taken back to her home,
Speaker 1: which leads to the rest. A few weeks later, he
Speaker 1: is arrested for kidnapping and rape, and the trial was
Speaker 1: December nineteen eighty one. By by January nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: it was dealt down to in voluntary sexual battery and
Speaker 1: he was given five years and at that point there
Speaker 1: was a recommendation by the judge for psychiatric evaluation. Now,
Speaker 1: once in prison, what was that diagnosis and what crucial
Speaker 1: information did he tell a psychiatrist at that time about
Speaker 1: his six year old niece.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, over the length of his prison stay, he's
Speaker 2: given a number of different diagnoses actually related to his
Speaker 2: mental health and status at the time, mental status including
Speaker 2: one called psychogenic amnesia, which isn't even used anymore, but
Speaker 2: this was the eighties. But regarding his sexual behaviors and charges,
Speaker 2: he's diagnosed as a mentally disordered sex offender. He consults
Speaker 2: with a number of psychiatrists while he's in the prison,
Speaker 2: and he admits to one of them some of his
Speaker 2: prior sexual offenses, including an attempted rape of his pet,
Speaker 2: h wife's friend, and he tells the psychiatrist that he's
Speaker 2: attempted to rape his niece. He tells the psychiatrist's niece
Speaker 2: was eight when he was probably about fourteen or fifteen.
Speaker 2: She was actually just six, And from my research, that
Speaker 2: rape was consummated, so he didn't attempt to rape his niece.
Speaker 2: He actually did rape her when she was actually six,
Speaker 2: and he tells the psychiatrist that he would like to
Speaker 2: understand why he's attracted to young girls now while he's
Speaker 2: in the prison. He well, it's recommend The psychiatrist recommends
Speaker 2: that he enters a program for mentally disordered sex offenders
Speaker 2: at the State Psychiatric Hospital. He agrees to that plan.
Speaker 2: It is a program that requires one to be committed
Speaker 2: to doing the treatment. It's called a self help program.
Speaker 2: You have to be willing, you can't be forced into it.
Speaker 2: He's there about a year, but they determine that for
Speaker 2: the most part, he's non compliant. He's defiant, he breaks rules,
Speaker 2: he won't do his therapeutic assignments consistently, he doesn't cooperate
Speaker 2: in group when they give him personality inventories. He fakes
Speaker 2: his answers in order to influence a test one way
Speaker 2: or another. He's just kind of conning. And after about
Speaker 2: a year he tells them that he no longer wants
Speaker 2: to be in the program, that he wants to be
Speaker 2: discharged and return to the general prison population. That he
Speaker 2: thinks he can get out sooner that way. And I
Speaker 2: guess he'd probably maybe do what he was talking about
Speaker 2: because they did discharge him back to the general population.
Speaker 2: His discharge diagnoses from the sex at Her treatment program
Speaker 2: was mentally disordered sex offender unimproved, and they actually had
Speaker 2: a prognosis that he was probably more aggressive, more likely
Speaker 2: to violently act out. But then eight months later he
Speaker 2: is parolled from the Florida prison after having served just
Speaker 2: under half of his five year sentence, and he remained
Speaker 2: in Florida about another year year and a half until
Speaker 2: sometime in nineteen eighty six, and then he returns to
Speaker 2: his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Now in Knoxville, Tennessee. On January tenth, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: Michelle Anderson doesn't come home one night, and she lives
Speaker 1: with her mother, Anita, her brother Doug Junior, Michelle's father
Speaker 1: Doug Doug Senior, lives in Florida, and her boyfriend is
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Chaz. Now Anita calls so No. Anita
Speaker 1: calls Michelle's best friend Marcy, and she doesn't know where
Speaker 1: her friend is. Then Anita speaks with Chaz, and soon
Speaker 1: Chaz tells Anita a story about meeting up with Larry
Speaker 1: Lee Smith. What happened according to Chaz that night with.
Speaker 2: Michelle Well Anita. As you said, Michelle's mother had gone
Speaker 2: out for a little while that evening, and while she
Speaker 2: was out, Michelle and some of her friends, including Chaz,
Speaker 2: they slipped off to a party and the kids had
Speaker 2: been drinking. Chaz and a few of the other kids
Speaker 2: walked from the party they were at to a convenience
Speaker 2: store to get some more beer, but the clerk refuses
Speaker 2: to sell it to them because they're underage, and they
Speaker 2: meet a stranger in this convenience store who overhears this
Speaker 2: interaction and who offers to by the beer for them.
Speaker 2: And this stranger is Larry Lee Smith. He invites himself
Speaker 2: back to their party, and then afterward he invites Chad
Speaker 2: and Michelle and another girlfriend to come over to his
Speaker 2: party and or excuse me his apartment and continue to
Speaker 2: the party to party a little longer. Not the smartest
Speaker 2: thing to do, but everybody's been drinking. I guess judgments
Speaker 2: were not too good. Some things go on there. There's
Speaker 2: some questionable things, and Chaz and Michelle get into an altercation.
Speaker 2: They begin to have an argument, voices get loud, Michelle
Speaker 2: runs out of the apartment, and Larry Lee tells them
Speaker 2: that he will take them home now, but he makes
Speaker 2: Chaz sit in the back. It's below freezing at this point.
Speaker 2: So January night, he makes him sit in the back
Speaker 2: of his truck in the bed, and he and Michelle
Speaker 2: are up in the cab and he drops Chaz off
Speaker 2: near his house first. And the understanding that Chad has,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that Michelle had too, was that Larry
Speaker 2: Lee was going to drop her off next but that
Speaker 2: did not happen. He I'm sorry to put my trailers
Speaker 2: out there. It's freezing out, so, like I said, so
Speaker 2: he drives off with Michelle, and so Chaz thinks that
Speaker 2: she's been taken home when Michelle doesn't return home the
Speaker 2: next morning. Ever, when she never returns home that night
Speaker 2: and the family contacts Chas and says, do you know
Speaker 2: where Michelle is? He tells them the story that I've
Speaker 2: just shared about Larry Lee and him riding off with
Speaker 2: Michelle to take her home. So they all go over
Speaker 2: to Larry Lee's house to try to get some answer.
Speaker 2: He's not there initially, then he shows up. He sees
Speaker 2: him outside, he panics. He runs out of his apartment
Speaker 2: without saying anything to them, jumps in his truck and
Speaker 2: speeds away. The police are called. The police take statements
Speaker 2: from both parties. They tell me that they'll look for Michelle,
Speaker 2: that they'll begin a search, but everybody's told to go
Speaker 2: home for the rest of the night. And they never
Speaker 2: questioned Larry Lee again that night about Michelle's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Now you say police don't question Larry Lee about this,
Speaker 1: They just break up this altercation and just take reports
Speaker 1: regarding that. So how do police proceed in this missing
Speaker 1: person's case?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a sign. The case is assigned to Detective
Speaker 2: Jerry McNair, and he had once he received the complaint.
Speaker 2: He apparently talked to Larry Lee prior to actually meeting
Speaker 2: with Anita that following Monday, and Larry Lee made the
Speaker 2: claim to Detective McNair and then also to Anita that
Speaker 2: he didn't actually take her home. After he drove off
Speaker 2: from Chazzis. He tells them that Michelle was upset because
Speaker 2: of her argument with Chads, and she wants to talk
Speaker 2: to Larry Lee and that they just go riding around
Speaker 2: and talking and then it's like a couple of hours later,
Speaker 2: he claims and Michelle says instead of being taken home,
Speaker 2: she wants to be dropped off at the corner near
Speaker 2: Chasit's house, you know, in the wee hours of the morning.
Speaker 2: And so he claims that's what he did. He claims
Speaker 2: that the last time he saw Michelle, he had dropped
Speaker 2: her back. Dear chat has housed and detector McNair determined that,
Speaker 2: based upon Larry Lee's story, she must have run away,
Speaker 2: which really made sense to no one. I mean, her
Speaker 2: friends didn't think she ran away. Manita didn't think she
Speaker 2: ran away. But he was the detective in charge. He
Speaker 2: said he looked at Larry Lee's police record, the local one,
Speaker 2: and that it wasn't that bad. Of course, he didn't
Speaker 2: discover the record of sexual assault in prison and imprisonment
Speaker 2: in Florida just a few years earlier, and he doesn't
Speaker 2: know anything about that early isn't going to tell him
Speaker 2: that obviously, So you know, there is no investigation into
Speaker 2: her disappearance until her potential kidnapping because the detective in
Speaker 2: charge treats it like a runaway. He tells the Needa
Speaker 2: to go to her family court on missing person's report,
Speaker 2: you know, a pickup orders, which is the thing that's
Speaker 2: issued for a run away is you know, but there's nothing,
Speaker 2: So there's no real investigation at all by the police
Speaker 2: at that point in time.
Speaker 1: Now you have a really heartbreaking part of this is
Speaker 1: that Anita had just wanted to believe that her daughter
Speaker 1: would come home, that you'd be found, something would happen.
Speaker 1: She had hesitated to call Doug Senior and tell him
Speaker 1: the truth about her daughter and her disappearance. Incredible, Now
Speaker 1: finally she does about a month later. Meanwhile, Larry Lee
Speaker 1: had called you writ in a book every day of
Speaker 1: that first week to ask about her, and you write
Speaker 1: that Larry Lee's car was vandalized. And then the next day, coincidentally,
Speaker 1: a note appeared on Anita's door, Shelle's mother. What was
Speaker 1: written and contained in that note, Well, this again.
Speaker 2: Was the nineteen eighties, and there was a cultural phenomenon
Speaker 2: happening across the country during that time that in retrospect
Speaker 2: has been called the Satanic Panic, and it was in
Speaker 2: full force during these days.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Adita and family members and friends of Michelle's had really
Speaker 2: begun a search. They put it up posters in this
Speaker 2: just in this week's time. They were doing what the
Speaker 2: police were doing. They were fervently searching for her. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if Larry Lee thought somebody connected to
Speaker 2: their party had vandalized this car. Maybe he knew did
Speaker 2: it whatever, but he A note appears on Anita's door,
Speaker 2: and it is written in Satanic verses. It says Michelle
Speaker 2: something like Michelle is with us, she is ours forever,
Speaker 2: come close again and she will suffer more Dante of Hell,
Speaker 2: blood of the Virgin and other nonsensical ramblings. And there's
Speaker 2: a couple of drawings that look like they're made in blood,
Speaker 2: and there's a duplicate copy placed on the friend of
Speaker 2: the car, of a friend that had also been participating
Speaker 2: in the search. So you know, at first the notes
Speaker 2: given to the detective McNair, I don't know what he
Speaker 2: made of it. It doesn't take I mean, it's too
Speaker 2: long to come to the conclusion that it's probably a
Speaker 2: tactic by Larry Lee or someone in his circle to
Speaker 2: throw them off. You know, he's probably getting a little
Speaker 2: scared if he's responsible for her death so or her
Speaker 2: disappearance rather so, anyway, that's what happened with that, the
Speaker 2: Satanic verses written on her door.
Speaker 1: Now you write to Larry Lee had said that told
Speaker 1: Anita that you thought Michelle ran away because she was
Speaker 1: pregnant with a man named Lynn. Now Nita didn't really
Speaker 1: believe it, you say, but she still followed everything. She
Speaker 1: followed it up, and she happened to meet a former
Speaker 1: attorney for the Smith family, Larry Lee's Smith's family, and
Speaker 1: he told her what Larry Lee is. What did he
Speaker 1: tell her about Larry Lee and the family, the Smith family?
Speaker 2: Right? She did? That was sort of an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: A lot of amazing things happened in this journey that
Speaker 2: the family was sort of on on her own. But
Speaker 2: she followed up on any and every lead she possibly could.
Speaker 2: And she heard about this, and she's trying to contact
Speaker 2: Larry Lee to follow up on his accusation about Lenn,
Speaker 2: but she can't get him to talk, and she's making
Speaker 2: contact and she stumbled sent to this contact with a
Speaker 2: family attorney. Somebody probably did call him, and she did
Speaker 2: and he was amazingly open with her. He had worked
Speaker 2: for the family previously. He told her that they were
Speaker 2: pretty rough folks, and he tells her this is the
Speaker 2: very first time she learned that Larry Lee has in
Speaker 2: fact is in fact, the convicted felon that he did
Speaker 2: was charged with kidnapping and rape of a teenage girl
Speaker 2: in Florida just a few years earlier and had served
Speaker 2: time in a Florida prison. So this is amazing and
Speaker 2: shocking new information. She immediately relates it to Detective but Naire.
Speaker 2: He tells her that he will get on it, that
Speaker 2: he will send for those Florida records. But to the
Speaker 2: best of everyone's knowledge, e've been up to the present day,
Speaker 2: that didn't occur at that time. But you know, Anita
Speaker 2: certainly learns that she's dealing you know, her fears keep growing.
Speaker 2: She's really I realize that she's really dealing with a
Speaker 2: pretty dangerous character.
Speaker 1: Here you write of another extraordinary event, again beyond coincidence, certainly,
Speaker 1: in December eighty seven, about almost a year later, Anita
Speaker 1: receives a phone call and it was a woman apparently
Speaker 1: that saw a number on the back of something, and
Speaker 1: it happened to be one of the flyers missing flyers.
Speaker 1: But she thought originally that maybe her man was fooling around,
Speaker 1: and so she wanted to know if there was some
Speaker 1: connection in that way, and they began to talk and
Speaker 1: again amazingly beyond coincidence. She stated that she knew Larry
Speaker 1: Lee's twenty four year old ex wife, Sarah, which led
Speaker 1: to Anita meeting Sarah. Now, what did Sarah tell Anita
Speaker 1: about living with Ruby and her son Larry Lee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was an amazing Sarah in diibitous call that
Speaker 2: Anita's mother actually took at her house. Anita was out
Speaker 2: and her mother's stopped by her house to pick up something,
Speaker 2: and the phone rang and she answers it, and it's
Speaker 2: this unusual caller who ends up knowing Sarah. And so
Speaker 2: this woman sets up a meeting with Anita and her
Speaker 2: boyfriend's head and Sarah. Sarah was a lovely young woman,
Speaker 2: really striking, who had endured a horrible early childhood. She
Speaker 2: experienced the neglect, she was molested by various various family members,
Speaker 2: and then when she was fifteen, she met Larry Lee.
Speaker 2: They began a relationship. She doesn't see his dark syd
Speaker 2: yet before long she's pregnant and she moves in with him.
Speaker 2: He has a basement apart base in the bedroom in
Speaker 2: his mother's house, and they move in and at first
Speaker 2: things seem okay, but then when she's bet in her
Speaker 2: seventh month of pregnancy. She begins to see episodes of
Speaker 2: his other behaviors and she went through extensive abuse, so
Speaker 2: she tells Anita. After she listens to Anita story about
Speaker 2: Michelle being missing and last being seen with Larry Lee,
Speaker 2: you know it weighs very heavily upon Sarah. She's a
Speaker 2: very caring, empathetic person, and she begins to describe to
Speaker 2: Anita how she had literally escaped from Larry Lee after
Speaker 2: being subjected to regular meetings by him, torture. She'd actually
Speaker 2: been held prisoner for a while by him. He pimped
Speaker 2: her out to other men. He had her working as
Speaker 2: a dancer, a stripper, and she finally managed to plan
Speaker 2: an escape when she was allowed to keep the baby.
Speaker 2: She wouldn't leave without the baby. Joey and his mother,
Speaker 2: Ruby and Larry Lee managed to keep control of the
Speaker 2: baby all the time, but there was one particular night
Speaker 2: when they had come to trust her and they both
Speaker 2: had to work and they agreed that she could keep
Speaker 2: Joey and that was her opportunity. She called her mother,
Speaker 2: who had actually been abusive as well, but now she
Speaker 2: was her rescuer in the ironically, and her mother allows
Speaker 2: her to return back to her house, so she actually
Speaker 2: escaped from him at that point, and she tells Ruby
Speaker 2: along the way about Larry Lee's horribly abusive behaviors. I
Speaker 2: mean she she'll say she had said he nearly killed
Speaker 2: her multiple times, but Ruby will never believe it. She
Speaker 2: enabled him. She will never believe in the negative thing
Speaker 2: about him. He's her youngest son is a baby. Sarah
Speaker 2: also confirms to Anita that what she heard about Larry
Speaker 2: having been in prison in Florida is accurate and it
Speaker 2: was her raping a teenage girl. And then she lets
Speaker 2: need to know that when he returned to Oxford, he
Speaker 2: brought a girlfriend from Florida with him, but by the
Speaker 2: time of the meeting of Sarah and Anita, that girlfriend
Speaker 2: had actually escaped as well with her young son, and
Speaker 2: she had fled back to Florida. And ironically, she fled
Speaker 2: back to Florida just weeks before Michelle disappears, So it
Speaker 2: was kind of an interesting possible connection in Larry Lee's
Speaker 2: life between those events. After hearing Sarah's account of Larry
Speaker 2: Lee's nature in its history of abusive behaviors as well
Speaker 2: as the kidnapping and rape, Anita you know, she becomes
Speaker 2: even more hopeless. She had held on a fire of
Speaker 2: hope that Maybee Mayor knew something she couldn't understand. Maybe
Speaker 2: Michelle really did run away and she was going to
Speaker 2: see her again. But after she listened to Sarah's story,
Speaker 2: she she pretty much gave up hope that she would
Speaker 2: ever see her again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now again beyond coincidence again with Anita. Now, Anita's
Speaker 1: cousin meets FBI special agent Joe Devono and told him
Speaker 1: about Michelle, and he promised, because he was dutifully moved,
Speaker 1: he promised to look into the Knoxville Police Department investigation,
Speaker 1: but lo and behold, was nothing to find. Now, tell
Speaker 1: us how you knew about forensic anthropology professor doctor Bass
Speaker 1: and the body farm and how he was involved with
Speaker 1: the case. Tell us how you were involved with doctor
Speaker 1: Bass and how he was involved with this case.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I'll start with Joe Evano first. That, yes,
Speaker 2: he was a pretty fresh new agent in the FBI
Speaker 2: field office in Knoxville. And Devona, as you said, was
Speaker 2: just really a compassionate, great guy. And he does meet
Speaker 2: Anita's cousin in the bank, and she knows he works
Speaker 2: for the FBI, and she sees he's pretty warm and approachable,
Speaker 2: and she tells him about her cousin, her young cousin, Michelle,
Speaker 2: who's at that point been missing for nearly two years,
Speaker 2: and she tells him how the case is been handled
Speaker 2: or not handled. He feels some concern. He calls detective
Speaker 2: McNair talks to him a little bit, and then he
Speaker 2: convinces and Devano convinces to supervisor barely to allow him
Speaker 2: to open a kidnapping case that normally the FBI would
Speaker 2: not be involved, but since they don't know where she
Speaker 2: is or she's been taken across the state line, his
Speaker 2: supervisor says, Okay, I'm going to let you do this,
Speaker 2: but you have thirty days to find something, and so
Speaker 2: he contacts McNair. McNair gives him the proposal that Michelle
Speaker 2: is still alive and he begins a search. Now, when
Speaker 2: Michelle first went missing, as you said, I was living
Speaker 2: in Knoxville and I didn't know Michelle, but my son
Speaker 2: had a class with her and he told me about
Speaker 2: her disappearance. I first learned of her disappearance through my
Speaker 2: teenage son, and I was concerned about some of the
Speaker 2: things I was continuing to hear about the handling of
Speaker 2: the case. And I actually knew Detective McNair professionally because
Speaker 2: I had done some abuse and neglect investigations when I
Speaker 2: worked as a social worker for the Department of Human
Speaker 2: Services and I was assigned he was he would be
Speaker 2: an officer assigned to some of the cases I had.
Speaker 2: We had a rotating officer schedule, and in the cases
Speaker 2: I shared with him the two cases, i'd been very
Speaker 2: concerned about his lack of initiative. He was a pretty
Speaker 2: passive guy or passive officer, and that wasn't my experience
Speaker 2: with the others, but it was with McNair, So I
Speaker 2: had concerns early on when all of this just began.
Speaker 2: But then Michelle was not my case. I had no say,
Speaker 2: no right to be in that case. I did call
Speaker 2: him and talk to him briefly, but I had no
Speaker 2: role in this case. And then soon after it occurred,
Speaker 2: I was offered a job in Alabama, so I moved away,
Speaker 2: and I really didn't know what had unfolded. After my moves,
Speaker 2: the case kind of stayed with me but moved to
Speaker 2: the back of my mind. In the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: I mean living in Tuscalous, Alabama, and my husband and
Speaker 2: I were watching an episode of Forensic Files on television.
Speaker 2: It was a pretty new show then, and to my surprise,
Speaker 2: they began profiling a case of a teenage girl whose
Speaker 2: remains had been found in the mountains of East Tennessee,
Speaker 2: about an hour outside Knoxville. Definitely got my attention. I'd
Speaker 2: lived in Knoxville for a little more than a decade,
Speaker 2: and it turned out the case was Michelle. They show
Speaker 2: her picture and suddenly I'm hearing about Michelle's case, and
Speaker 2: the story said they'd found her remains two years to
Speaker 2: the month and she disappeared. It remained unsolved, they said.
Speaker 2: And then there was doctor Bass on the screen being
Speaker 2: interviewed for the case. He was the Tennessee state forensic
Speaker 2: anthropologist who had been called in to excavate Michelle's remains
Speaker 2: when they were found two years after she went missing
Speaker 2: in January of nineteen eighty nine. I might be jumping
Speaker 2: a bit of it here, but I suddenly was watching
Speaker 2: him on the show, and I actually had some history
Speaker 2: with him. I had minored an anthropology at the University
Speaker 2: of Tennessee when doctor Bass was over the program there.
Speaker 2: He was the director of the entire program, and he'd
Speaker 2: actually admitted me to their graduate program where I had
Speaker 2: studied for about a year under his late wife, doctor
Speaker 2: Maryanne Bass. So I had again, I had that personal
Speaker 2: history with him when I lived in knox bill And
Speaker 2: this story, this forensic File episode, was the first guy
Speaker 2: knew for certain what had happened to Michelle, that she
Speaker 2: had in fact been murdered when she disappeared.
Speaker 1: Now, meanwhile, Larry Lee Smith is being watched by police,
Speaker 1: and apparently he knows it. You write that his brake
Speaker 1: lines had been cut, and so he took off, and
Speaker 1: now instead of Knoxville, he's residing near Atlanta, Georgia. On
Speaker 1: October thirteenth, you write nineteen eighty nine in Stone Mountain, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and eighteen year old Beauty was out front a billiard's
Speaker 1: joint where her boyfriend worked, and her car was not working,
Speaker 1: so she was and he was stuck inside, and so
Speaker 1: she was frustrated. She had her hood up and she
Speaker 1: was frustrated and she started crying, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: a man named Larry Lee offered to help her. He
Speaker 1: jumped in soon had her car running, and so he said, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: why don't you just jump in and we'll test it further,
Speaker 1: make sure it's not the clutch. She had said maybe
Speaker 1: it would have been the clutch. What happened after she
Speaker 1: got into her own car, after this good samaritan had
Speaker 1: got her car running? What happened next?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, as you said, after Michelle's remains were found
Speaker 2: in January of eighty nine, Larry Lee Smith actually came
Speaker 2: under significant scrutiny by the Knoxville Police Department. Unlike when
Speaker 2: she first disappeared, and he was kind of ignored. Now
Speaker 2: he was being looked at. There was a new investigator,
Speaker 2: assign McNair was removed from the case and investigator Ran
Speaker 2: New York took over, and he York is pretty good.
Speaker 2: He's got a good reputation. He's retired now, but he
Speaker 2: has a good reputation, and he's very diligent, and he
Speaker 2: was really putting some pressure on Larry Lee. So and
Speaker 2: then there was this event regarding the break line, which,
Speaker 2: as you said, somebody cut his brake line and he's
Speaker 2: I guess he got nervous with all of that happening,
Speaker 2: and he pleads to Georgia as investigated likes to say
Speaker 2: he boogied over to Georgia, and sometime in the spring
Speaker 2: or some of that year, he actually has another lesser
Speaker 2: assault that occurred in July, but in October of that year,
Speaker 2: he encounters Amanda Sanders. Pretty eighteen year old Amanda Sanders.
Speaker 2: She's got a hood up. He's coming out of a
Speaker 2: shop next door to the billiards parlor where a teenage
Speaker 2: billiards parlor where her boyfriend worked. He sees her with
Speaker 2: a hood up, and he codes over to her and
Speaker 2: asks any help. He manages to get the car running,
Speaker 2: and as she said, once, he's actually in the driver's seed.
Speaker 2: He's got it in first gear. She's looking at him.
Speaker 2: He's in her car.
Speaker 1: She you know.
Speaker 2: He says, come on, get in, let's take it for
Speaker 2: retest ride. And she doesn't know how to say no
Speaker 2: because she can't let him take her car off. And
Speaker 2: she jumps in. And that's his perfect pattern, that's his
Speaker 2: perfect scenario. A pretty young girl, teenage fatite, needs help.
Speaker 2: He's there all for help. He gets her in a car.
Speaker 2: That's his that's his pattern, that's what he that's his trigger.
Speaker 2: And so once he had her alone in the vehicle,
Speaker 2: he kicked his impulses kicked in. He pulls behind business.
Speaker 2: He begins choking her. At one point he actually tries
Speaker 2: her unconscious. He's attempting to sectually assault her. She's really fighting,
Speaker 2: She's really is daylight. She says, you know, I have
Speaker 2: a chance here. I'm gonna fight. Even if he's gonna
Speaker 2: kill me, I'm gonna fight. So she fights back hard.
Speaker 2: At some point she regains consciousness before he realizes she has.
Speaker 2: She stays very still. She begins kicking and screaming. When
Speaker 2: they reach a red light and there are people around
Speaker 2: and and she doesn't escape the car at that point,
Speaker 2: but she does alert her actions alert a driver in
Speaker 2: front of them. He was actually a professor from the
Speaker 2: local art college and he has a little daughter with him.
Speaker 2: He secures her in the seat. Larry freaks out. He
Speaker 2: actually pulls off to the side, goes across the yard,
Speaker 2: starts flying down for an intersecting road, and this witness
Speaker 2: begins pursuing him. He gives chase and literally panics. He
Speaker 2: manages to get back to the billiards where his car
Speaker 2: actually is. It's a borrowed car, but his borrowed a
Speaker 2: mc pacer. He gets back, jumps out of Amanda's car,
Speaker 2: gets into his car and tear.
Speaker 4: Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 4: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 4: fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but
Speaker 4: I like fun too. It's a thing. And now the
Speaker 4: truth is out there, I can tell you about my
Speaker 4: favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds
Speaker 4: of social casino style games to choose from, with new
Speaker 4: games released each week. You can play for free, anytime, anywhere,
Speaker 4: and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 4: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 4: Chumba casino dot com.
Speaker 3: No, we're necessary, d I lost the terms conditions eighteen
Speaker 3: plus is off.
Speaker 2: But the one of the witnesses, actually your boyfriend's side,
Speaker 2: seized the car, leaving manages to write down the license
Speaker 2: plate number, and the next morning, Larry Lee is arrested
Speaker 2: in an adjoining county early in the morning. Everybody told
Speaker 2: you he was probably getting ready to leave to flee
Speaker 2: back to Knoxville, but they Albolo had been put out.
Speaker 2: A detective of a deputy at Sheriff's deputy recognized his
Speaker 2: car and he was arrested without major event, and he
Speaker 2: was tried in April of nineteen ninety and was given
Speaker 2: a twenty year sentence in a Georgia prison for that assault.
Speaker 2: And an interesting development there was Kathy McWilliams, the Florida
Speaker 2: victim who had not actually testified because they had done
Speaker 2: a plea deal, was now a young woman in her twenties.
Speaker 2: And really Devano, this is Devano's blessing. He gave he
Speaker 2: when he learns of Larry Lee's arrest in Georgia, he
Speaker 2: at the last minute, truly, he lets he makes that
Speaker 2: prosecuting attorney da he informs her about the Florida charge.
Speaker 2: And there is something in the Federal rules of Evidence
Speaker 2: called a similar transaction. It's a rule that allows evidence
Speaker 2: to be admitted in a criminal trial if for a
Speaker 2: prior crime, if it reflects a pattern for the defendant,
Speaker 2: if it reflects scheming and planning, and things that reflect
Speaker 2: the pattern we know, like like a serial killer. Celia
Speaker 2: Rape was somebody who is a serial robber, SI or whatever,
Speaker 2: so she's able. George is a little bit more liberal
Speaker 2: with that, as I understand it. I'm their legal scholar,
Speaker 2: but George is a little bit more liberal with a
Speaker 2: similar transactions evidence in sexual sense crime. So luckily this
Speaker 2: DA is allowed this the DA is allowed to fly
Speaker 2: Catherine up to talk to testify at Amanda's trial, so
Speaker 2: she is kind of the final surprise witness. She's brought
Speaker 2: in to talk about her assault and the similarities. Of course,
Speaker 2: the DA makes a big point of the similarities between
Speaker 2: the cases and that sense, So he is, he is convicted,
Speaker 2: and he and he begins serving his prison sentence. Back
Speaker 2: in Knoxville, Devano another FBI agent named Grade Steed and
Speaker 2: investigating York. They continue to try to solve Michelle's murder,
Speaker 2: but they aren't successful at it. Eventually, the FBI closes
Speaker 2: its case and at the Knoxville Police Department. In the
Speaker 2: Knoxville Police Department, the case just grows cold. Larry Lee's
Speaker 2: in prison for twenty years in Georgia, and it's all
Speaker 2: but forgotten at that point.
Speaker 1: Now you take the reader back to Knoxville and your
Speaker 1: first contact with Anita and now your new contact with
Speaker 1: Anita again, and why Larry Lee is forty six in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven will get out as you write
Speaker 1: soon enough, what did you tell Anita? And what does
Speaker 1: Anita tell you.
Speaker 2: Well, after I had been really blessed to make contact
Speaker 2: with doctor Bash, and he sent me sort of just
Speaker 2: again saren diviously, but he sent me his old forensic report,
Speaker 2: twenty year old report, and some newspaper clippings and things
Speaker 2: that were related to the time when her remains were
Speaker 2: found to years after her disappearance. So I jumped right
Speaker 2: back into the case. I've never forgotten it. It's always
Speaker 2: haunted me. And so with doctor Bass's assistant, I learn much.
Speaker 2: I determined a way to contact Anita after all these years.
Speaker 2: I had actually called her right after Michelle's disappearance, just
Speaker 2: a stranger in the neighborhood when I learned the Ketchus
Speaker 2: McNair had the case and was saying she was a runaway,
Speaker 2: and I just called to ask, do you think your
Speaker 2: daughter ran away? She told me she didn't, But again,
Speaker 2: I had no role in the case. And then I
Speaker 2: moved away shortly afterwards. So now it's two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: it's twenty or nearly twenty years later, and I contact
Speaker 2: her again. She's apprehensive but sort of thrilled, I guess
Speaker 2: maybe or plead to hear that somebody wants to talk
Speaker 2: about this case. It's been twenty years, it's never been resolution.
Speaker 2: You know, the family's just been tortured forever by it.
Speaker 2: So she sends me some things that she'd written about
Speaker 2: the case. She sold me in over the phone. She
Speaker 2: gives me the information about how to look up Larrile
Speaker 2: in his Georgia prison inmate page, which I do. That
Speaker 2: gives me additional information about court numbers and court cases,
Speaker 2: and I just begin compiling information I get. I actually
Speaker 2: purchased the entire court transcript from the Georgia trial. I
Speaker 2: found reports and records. I begin interviewing people. I interviewed
Speaker 2: all the former officers. Everyone that had worked on the
Speaker 2: case twenty years earlier was retired so they could all
Speaker 2: talk to me. I interviewed the victims, the Florida victims, Catherine.
Speaker 2: I interviewed Amanda, the Georgia victim. I interviewed Anita, doing
Speaker 2: the family members, friends, and I begin to sort of
Speaker 2: put the pieces together, and it's clear that there's a
Speaker 2: pattern here, just as a similar transaction evidence indicated. There's
Speaker 2: a clear pattern to his crime, even though he spent
Speaker 2: so much of his adult life incarcerated for them, and
Speaker 2: I'm telling you to that I begin, you know, so
Speaker 2: a lot of the information I get to the police
Speaker 2: and things she's never seen, because often, you know, the
Speaker 2: family isn't told about the investigation, and since the investigation
Speaker 2: was never completed, the crime has never solved. I had
Speaker 2: much more information than Anita did, really about the police
Speaker 2: side of the equation, so I fill her in. I
Speaker 2: talk about his patterns, and eventually, when I have enough
Speaker 2: information compiled that I feel I can present an argument,
Speaker 2: I contact a local police the National Police Department, and again,
Speaker 2: as I said, everyone who had worked on it previously
Speaker 2: is now retired and no one currently there, specifically Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Doug Styles over the violent Crimes units. They don't know
Speaker 2: anything about this case. They've never heard of Michelle Anderson,
Speaker 2: her disappearance or death, none of it. So I meet
Speaker 2: with them and I give them what I have, and
Speaker 2: I tell them what I know, and it's reopened. Michelle's
Speaker 2: kidnapping and murder is reopened as a cold case by
Speaker 2: the Knoxville Police Department, and in October of two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, two years after I walked back into the case,
Speaker 2: he is he has completed his Georgia prison term and
Speaker 2: he's released, and he returns home to Knoxville, to his
Speaker 2: hometown of Knoxville, and he is then a registered sex
Speaker 2: offender at Knoxville.
Speaker 1: Now you take us to a young woman named Ayasha Mac,
Speaker 1: a black young woman, and you take us this apartment building,
Speaker 1: and she had just learned of her boyfriend's arrest. She
Speaker 1: was fragile in this relationship. She was distraught, and again,
Speaker 1: as you say, a patron an mo Larry Lee was
Speaker 1: there to console her. He grabbed her by the neck
Speaker 1: and choked her and quickly from under a bed. He
Speaker 1: had a chain of neckties, a secure and now he's
Speaker 1: a two hundred and fifty pound man on top of
Speaker 1: her about the raper.
Speaker 2: What happens next, Well, yes, Larrly, as I said, has
Speaker 2: moved back to Knoxville, and he's now a registered sex
Speaker 2: offender living in Knox County. And he moved into a
Speaker 2: volunteer studio. It's a former holiday inn where ironically he
Speaker 2: once worked as a young man. It's been converted into
Speaker 2: studio apartments in downtown Knoxville. It is a place where
Speaker 2: transience and others who might have difficulty renting elsewhere can
Speaker 2: get a place. And Larally is among them. He met
Speaker 2: Aisha just a couple of weeks prior to this assault
Speaker 2: through her boyfriend Cameron, who has dealt drugs to Larily
Speaker 2: and others in the building. When Tamary gets arrested that day,
Speaker 2: and Aisha is alone and just heartbroken and panicked, and
Speaker 2: she stops by Larially's apartment needing to use a phone.
Speaker 2: She's feeling desperate and she needs to make a call,
Speaker 2: doesn't have her own phone. She's waiting in his apartment.
Speaker 2: She's told to wait there for a few minutes that
Speaker 2: a friend is going to get a phone. So she's
Speaker 2: sitting there waiting and she's crying, and she's trying to
Speaker 2: get herself together, and he asks her to help him
Speaker 2: move something on the side of the room. She thinks,
Speaker 2: we're weird at request, but you know, how do you
Speaker 2: say no? It's still benign. So she turns to do it,
Speaker 2: and he makes this move, his signature move, which is
Speaker 2: to begin choking her. He nearly choked her unconscious, she
Speaker 2: begins to lose and he begins to rape her. Ah,
Speaker 2: there is this odd opportune knock on his apartment door.
Speaker 2: He says, go away, I'm not I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm busy, as he lets up on her throat
Speaker 2: for those few seconds it takes for him to say that,
Speaker 2: and Aisha scream, I'm here. You know I'll be right,
Speaker 2: And so she never did know who knocked on the door,
Speaker 2: but that panicularly he backed off. She begins to put
Speaker 2: her clothes on, backing away, determined that she's going to
Speaker 2: get out of there one way or another. There's a balcony.
Speaker 2: It's the second floor. She's backing toward the balcony. She'll
Speaker 2: jump if she asks to, but there's an opportunity to
Speaker 2: actually flee out the door a few moments later, and
Speaker 2: that's what she does. She fleed out, and she goes
Speaker 2: down to the apartment manager's desk and she reports the assault,
Speaker 2: and the police are called and he's arrested once again.
Speaker 2: So he's been out two years. He made it two
Speaker 2: years after serving twenty before his demons provoked him once more.
Speaker 1: Now he makes these statements. Soon as police arrive, he
Speaker 1: acts like he's he's not going to escape. So he says, well,
Speaker 1: she asked for it, she wanted me to. Now they
Speaker 1: interview him. Now he's trying, as you write, he tries
Speaker 1: to account for things police have mentioned and also things
Speaker 1: he thinks might come up. He's sort of anticipating things
Speaker 1: like explain when he talks about in terms of the
Speaker 1: vaginal secretions and the DNA. They're talking to him, so
Speaker 1: explain what he says in response to their questions and assertions.
Speaker 2: Well, he was he's actually at the police station and
Speaker 2: they're questioning him now in the past when he was
Speaker 2: a younger man and he got arrested and his mother,
Speaker 2: Ruby was in his life. And Ruby, by the way,
Speaker 2: has passed away within the two years he's been out,
Speaker 2: so he no longer has Ruby's money to hire attorneys with,
Speaker 2: So now he's sort of on his own, and they
Speaker 2: would always tell him to shut up, but he's he
Speaker 2: doesn't shut up this time so easily. So he knows
Speaker 2: they're going to they're going to go back to schen.
Speaker 2: He knows they're going to find some of the evidence
Speaker 2: Aisha has already told him about, and he knows that
Speaker 2: they'll probably find his DNA on her from the assault.
Speaker 2: So he tells them that he he says, you know,
Speaker 2: I touched her. You know it's going to be there
Speaker 2: because I touched her, And they think he's implying consent,
Speaker 2: but his story evolves and changes over time. He then
Speaker 2: later says, he just meant I hugged her, you know,
Speaker 2: I comforted her, So he changes his story. But they
Speaker 2: do in fact have the opportunity to find vaginal DNA
Speaker 2: or his DNA and her vagina rather, so he begins
Speaker 2: trying to make an excuse, and he actually he actually
Speaker 2: has a telephone that he only uses for pictures that
Speaker 2: isn't operational for calling. But he tells the the investigating
Speaker 2: officer on the latest assaunt of Baisha, to bring his phone,
Speaker 2: and he wants to show her something, and he pulls
Speaker 2: up a picture of a woman on his bed bound
Speaker 2: by some something around the wrist, and his logic seems
Speaker 2: to be that he's gonna convince this officer that this
Speaker 2: is something he does with consensual women, Aisha probably being
Speaker 2: consensual too, you know. He doesn't come out and say
Speaker 2: it directly, he implies it. Then they go to his apartment,
Speaker 2: they collect some evidence. They come back and the officer says,
Speaker 2: I'd like to see your phone again. I'd like you
Speaker 2: to show me those pictures again. She brings it in
Speaker 2: but he he says, you're gonna use these against me, right,
Speaker 2: you know he can't think so trad He's just all
Speaker 2: stretched out and panicking. And she says, well, you know
Speaker 2: it's your call. You don't have to show me the
Speaker 2: pictures because he's yet to be a resident. She's being
Speaker 2: very non forceful and very respectful to him. Is all
Speaker 2: being recorded, and he sits there really right in front
Speaker 2: of the camera without his realizing that he's being recorded,
Speaker 2: and he proceeds to erase the pictures he just showed her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we jump ahead to the grand jury.
Speaker 3: You say that the.
Speaker 1: Takes it to the grand jury. The preliminaries waived, but
Speaker 1: you have created because of the information that you have
Speaker 1: that's no one else has exclusive information, and the majority
Speaker 1: of the information you are working with the Knox County
Speaker 1: Assistant DA at least providing them a timeline. So tell
Speaker 1: us again about tell us about this timeline that you
Speaker 1: divide for them, but also of this eventual the hooking
Speaker 1: up of Anita and Sarah and what you call a
Speaker 1: band of sisters at one point. But tell us about
Speaker 1: this relationship that you have developed, at least a working
Speaker 1: relationship with Leslie Nascios the DA before you tell us
Speaker 1: about how you connect or how the women in this
Speaker 1: story are connected.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was all really amazing. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: just working on the story and feeling like I was
Speaker 2: being able to put together answers anders per Anita that
Speaker 2: she never had after all these years. And then as
Speaker 2: the trial and the legal proceedings for the latest assault,
Speaker 2: the one that happened. So I used to after you've
Speaker 2: gotten out of prison and after I'd walked back into
Speaker 2: the case, the ability to help move some things along
Speaker 2: was really gratifying. But I was very much an outsider.
Speaker 2: I mean, whereas when I walked into the Knoxville Police
Speaker 2: Department saying, you know, I've got this evidence I've collected
Speaker 2: of about this old crime, there were just you know,
Speaker 2: all you know, all gung ho, like I was the
Speaker 2: person with the info. But on the new case that
Speaker 2: was currently active, you know, I was just some koop
Speaker 2: writing of a story. You know, I wasn't necessarily given
Speaker 2: credibility except by the victims that Anita, so I had
Speaker 2: to kind of earn that in the current current case.
Speaker 2: So I may contact via email with the prosecuting attorney,
Speaker 2: a woman, as she said, named Leslie Nacio, and I
Speaker 2: asked her, I'm trying to think, how can I get
Speaker 2: this information to her? She didn't, you know, she's not
Speaker 2: going to meet with me. I'm not buddy that she's
Speaker 2: not going to discuss the case with me. So I think, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I could compile a timeline for an outline and
Speaker 2: just roughly run through everything I know about this guy
Speaker 2: and the crimes up into the current events.
Speaker 1: And she.
Speaker 2: Sends me an email that says, sure, send it on
Speaker 2: you whatever, and so I do. It takes me a
Speaker 2: few days to complete it. It's eight or nine pages,
Speaker 2: and I send it to her, and Anita becomes thrilled
Speaker 2: to know that a Da is actually interested in Michelle's
Speaker 2: case as well, even though she's only prosecuting the current event,
Speaker 2: the current assents the Suto Ayisha. So she actually meets
Speaker 2: with Anita, which is truly a blessing and it gave
Speaker 2: a need a lot of comfort, even though we didn't
Speaker 2: really solve anything. And then eventually Anita and I show
Speaker 2: up for just a hearing that was actually called off
Speaker 2: prior to his trial, and since Anita's met with Nazios,
Speaker 2: they have a first you know, they have a face
Speaker 2: to face recognition I don't live in state. She doesn't
Speaker 2: know what I look like, even though I corresponded with
Speaker 2: her via email. And we walk out and she says
Speaker 2: that you guys want to come over into our conference
Speaker 2: and we'll talk for a few minutes. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe it. I'm going to be able to
Speaker 2: discuss this case finally with the prosecuting attorney. And we
Speaker 2: do that, We go into her office, and really, I
Speaker 2: think her main motive was to be kind to Anita.
Speaker 2: She felt such compassion for what Anita had gone through
Speaker 2: and never had an answer, and I think she probably
Speaker 2: bought into the idea that Larry Lee was responsible for
Speaker 2: the kidnapping of death of Michelle. So she met with
Speaker 2: us and she talked with us, and I was able
Speaker 2: to run ideas by her that I thought and she
Speaker 2: shared some and that was just a major blessing, and
Speaker 2: we had her attention and I was able to really
Speaker 2: make a point about the similar Tree transactions evidence. Now,
Speaker 2: the difference between Georgia. Apparently in Knoxville. Again, I'm no
Speaker 2: legal scholar, but in Georgia, it was pretty easy for
Speaker 2: that prosecuting attorney prosecuting DA to bring the similar transaction evidence.
Speaker 2: I ny Catherine from Florida to Georgia to testify, but
Speaker 2: Leslie had a snow pretty quickly. That wouldn't happen in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: She said, she'd be much more likely to get evidence
Speaker 2: admitted if it was a burglar who always wrote a
Speaker 2: certain kind of notes, you know, or who used a
Speaker 2: certain kind of gun. But in sexual senses, they rarely
Speaker 2: ever allowed similar transaction evidence, even though there was a
Speaker 2: clear pattern here, so she knew about it. The thing
Speaker 2: that the outline had done was it managed to make
Speaker 2: her aware. It managed to get her alerted that nobody
Speaker 2: was going to do a plea deal in this case.
Speaker 2: He was going to go to trial.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: I think that's answering your question, not my head of
Speaker 2: myself here, but that was what happened with regarding Leslie
Speaker 2: Natio's prior to going to trial. And also, oh, you
Speaker 2: asked me about the women. And during this time, of course,
Speaker 2: you know, when I'm building my informational base, I go
Speaker 2: to Atlanta and I interview Amanda, who's now grown women
Speaker 2: with children. I go to North Carolina. Catherine has moved
Speaker 2: from Florida. She's living in Charlotte at that point I
Speaker 2: go there, I interview her as as an adult woman
Speaker 2: about her history. I've met with the family members of
Speaker 2: Michelle and everybody. Everybody, of course, was concerned about each
Speaker 2: other's trauma, but all of the women who's been his victim,
Speaker 2: including his niece, and I also had contact to a
Speaker 2: strange set of events which I won't go into here.
Speaker 2: I actually interviewed via phone and email, the niche he
Speaker 2: draped when she was six. She was also now a
Speaker 2: woman at Foy's, very compassionate about the other victims, and
Speaker 2: even she everyone felt tremendous empathy for Anita and what
Speaker 2: she'd gone through losing Michelle, and that he'd never been
Speaker 2: held accountable. So when I actually managed to have contact
Speaker 2: finally with Ayisha and learned firsthand her version of what
Speaker 2: it transpired when the assault her assaults by lar Lee
Speaker 2: in Knoxville, and when her trial comes up there there's
Speaker 2: a grand jury. Ayusha's life was pretty fractured at the
Speaker 2: point in time that she was Larity's victims, so there's
Speaker 2: a problem, and the subpoena they sent for her and
Speaker 2: her mother to come to the grand jury gets her turn.
Speaker 2: It goes to the wrong address but ironically, because I've
Speaker 2: been talking everybody and I've kind of become a sub,
Speaker 2: you know, among the spokes. Just not long before the trial,
Speaker 2: they'd lost contact with Ayisha and she calls me and
Speaker 2: she tells me about this odd visit she'd had from
Speaker 2: Larry Lee's attorney, and she's talking with me and she
Speaker 2: tells me she's lost contact, and I refacilitate the contact.
Speaker 2: I immediately emailed the DA's office the next day. I say,
Speaker 2: here's her new number.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I get everything squared away, and it all works out.
Speaker 2: They bring Aisha in for the trial. We all come
Speaker 2: in for the trial, the Florida victim, the Georgia victim,
Speaker 2: everybody comes in for the last trial. And it's really
Speaker 2: amazing and moving. At least it was to me, and
Speaker 2: I think it was to everybody else. For Anita, it
Speaker 2: was tremendously healing because she's looking at these other women
Speaker 2: they were assaulted by this man too. She felt so
Speaker 2: responsible that how she'd failed her daughter. But she looked
Speaker 2: at these other women and she's like, you know, it
Speaker 2: happened to them too, and it just gives her a
Speaker 2: lot of healing and belief. And we all tend to
Speaker 2: trial together, and we all go out to dinner the
Speaker 2: night before the trial and meet one another, and then
Speaker 2: go to the we all show up the band of
Speaker 2: sisters what we dubbed ourselves, and we all show up
Speaker 2: for the trial.
Speaker 1: Now this trial, of course, the police had done Ayasia
Speaker 1: had provided quite accurate of information, like they found the
Speaker 1: chain of neckties. And Larry Lee might think he's clever,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't really too clever in his responses because
Speaker 1: they got the goods on him on this one. And again,
Speaker 1: the last ditch effort for a guilty man is to
Speaker 1: think he's smart enough, and the lawyer has to allow
Speaker 1: him to take the stand. So tell us just the again,
Speaker 1: you capture it. But the extraordinary Larry Lee testifying on
Speaker 1: his own behalf cross examined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean none of this is funny. Of course
Speaker 2: it's it's a tremendous tragedy. But he provided a little
Speaker 2: bit of entertainment. I have to I should admit he
Speaker 2: could not be dissuaded apparently from testifying his own behalf.
Speaker 2: The judge indirectly sort of tries to discourage him. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know this can work against you, and it might
Speaker 2: not be the wisest moves, and Larry Lee says, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm my only witness. I think if I don't testify,
Speaker 2: big things can go against me. I don't know. As
Speaker 2: a lot, he must have thought that Aisha, having sort
Speaker 2: of a fractured life at that point, was vulnerable and
Speaker 2: he would come off looking better. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: he does. He gets up and he testifies, and Leslie
Speaker 2: Nauci Goes is pretty confident. She's very good at this,
Speaker 2: and she does a really good thorough cross examination. When
Speaker 2: we arrived, we noticed that he is dressed entirely in
Speaker 2: shades of gray. Don't think about it much, just observe it.
Speaker 2: But as he begins to testify, he talk as you said.
Speaker 2: They found this chain of neckties, one tied to the
Speaker 2: next and a loop formed on each end. And it
Speaker 2: all happened so fast. I Usha had actually not known
Speaker 2: for sure what it was that would bound her, but
Speaker 2: she thought it was some neckties. She couldn't really quite
Speaker 2: make sense of it. They do go to the apartment,
Speaker 2: they do find this chain of necktie. So he's being
Speaker 2: questioned about her on the stand by Nazio's and I
Speaker 2: don't know I guess again he thought he was being clever.
Speaker 2: But he turned to the jury and he says, I'm
Speaker 2: sure by now all of you read fifty shades of
Speaker 2: Gray and you know it's this. I'm sure you can
Speaker 2: put fifty shades of grays. And he claims that he's
Speaker 2: a fan of the of the book and the theories,
Speaker 2: and that he plays games and he uses the neckties
Speaker 2: to play games, and he tells them about it, and
Speaker 2: everybody's sort of shocked. I think I think some people
Speaker 2: in the audience actually wanted to suppress a laugh. They
Speaker 2: were so stunned. And while she can't bring in similar
Speaker 2: transaction evidence, she is able to extract one piece of real,
Speaker 2: valuable information from his testimony. He announces that he gets
Speaker 2: story changes. He has all these different versions, and she
Speaker 2: uses that against him. You told this version, this version,
Speaker 2: this version, this version. And one of the versions was
Speaker 2: that Asha had tried to get him to enter a
Speaker 2: drug dealing scam with her to raise some money, and
Speaker 2: that in his defense, in his refusal, he said to her,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that. That would get me
Speaker 2: a felony. That first felony would put me in jail.
Speaker 2: So that was a boom for her. She caught that
Speaker 2: immediately and that allowed her to bring in testimony about
Speaker 2: prior felony. So during a recess, she asked the judge,
Speaker 2: he has two prior felonies, your honor, there for sex
Speaker 2: offenses like this one. He has just said that he
Speaker 2: that would be his first selony. I'd like to impeach
Speaker 2: his testimony. And the judge, again using that Tennessee caution,
Speaker 2: he says, okay, you may bring in. You may question
Speaker 2: him about prior felonies, but you may not indicate that
Speaker 2: they were related to sexual offenses. So it was really
Speaker 2: difficult for her to make this case, but she does that.
Speaker 2: He does admit that he has too prior felonies. They
Speaker 2: don't discuss the nature of them. He has found guilty
Speaker 2: of all the charges in this last trial. And then
Speaker 2: at sentencing is when she can do it. At sentencing
Speaker 2: she is able to bring in the prior similar transactions,
Speaker 2: the prior sexual assault, and it determines a sentence. He
Speaker 2: gets them, and what is that sentence? He gets life
Speaker 2: in prison with no chance of school, so he can
Speaker 2: never get out again. To do this, you tell him,
Speaker 2: you know the point I'm making. The book too. Is
Speaker 2: you know, he he's his own victim as well. He
Speaker 2: cannot control these impulses he has. He cannot, even after
Speaker 2: twenty years in prison. I thought it would be amazing
Speaker 2: if he didn't a thought again, and of course he did.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: He is serving time in a Tennessee State prison and
Speaker 2: is not eligible for proll. He's in his fifty sound.
Speaker 1: And regardless of the situation, he is still adamant about
Speaker 1: his position regarding Michelle Anderson.
Speaker 2: Is he there is some The cold case investigator did
Speaker 2: finally interview him once he was arrested for the last time.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about why that timeline was what it was,
Speaker 2: but he continued to deny. He has continued to deny it.
Speaker 2: You know, at the end of the book, as my
Speaker 2: editor said, you really are talking directly to him. I've
Speaker 2: never I never have talked directly to him, but I
Speaker 2: guess I do in the books. You know, he's got
Speaker 2: nothing less to lose. The family truly needs closure. They
Speaker 2: need to hear what happened that night to their daughter
Speaker 2: when she was found. When Michelle's remains were found, her
Speaker 2: body had just been deposited in this remote wood. She
Speaker 2: didn't have shoes or underwear on, they're not there with
Speaker 2: her clothing remains, her pelic girdle, the jeans was still
Speaker 2: somewhat intact, so they could tell that she actually didn't
Speaker 2: have them on when her body was placed there, So
Speaker 2: somebody had removed those things from her prior to taking
Speaker 2: her body there that night. You know, he could easily
Speaker 2: he's got nothing less to lose, he can't get out
Speaker 2: of prison. He could easily give the family the benet
Speaker 2: fit of knowing what happened. Did he he choked all
Speaker 2: his victims? That was a big part of his pattern.
Speaker 2: Did he choke her an accidentally killer? Did he intend?
Speaker 2: You know, I can't let another victim escape me. Once
Speaker 2: I've done this, I have to get rid of the victim.
Speaker 2: Had he actually progressed, you know, the killing his victims? Now,
Speaker 2: we'll never know for sure unless he chooses to come
Speaker 2: clean and tell. So that would be the last goal
Speaker 2: in all of this, All the goals have sort of
Speaker 2: been met. What the last goal would be for him
Speaker 2: to tell the truth finally, if he's capable.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it's remarkable the end of the book and
Speaker 1: the trial, and it seemed to be cathartic for everyone involved. Unfortunately, Sarah,
Speaker 1: Larry Lee's ex wife, passed away before this, much before this.
Speaker 1: But again you talked about Sarah's son Joey, that interviewed
Speaker 1: him as well.
Speaker 2: So, oh, yes, it's so.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, I guess in fitting, I mean to
Speaker 1: bring this man to justice for the prosecutors, and you
Speaker 1: did get some success, and a lot of success basically
Speaker 1: in having the story hit the pages of the newspaper, properly,
Speaker 1: explain the story properly so that there was again attention
Speaker 1: from the media, attention from prosecutors. You were involved with that,
Speaker 1: so there was there's never closure. I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: a cliche, it inappropriate. But there was a cathartic It
Speaker 1: seemed like a cathartic occurrence. There was a cathartic for
Speaker 1: these women and yourself at this trial that you all attended.
Speaker 2: It was. It was very cathartic, and ironically to some degree,
Speaker 2: even for members of Lurley's family, certain ones, his son
Speaker 2: primarily and his knee. And now, as you said, I
Speaker 2: failed to mention that but Sarah, who had been so helpful.
Speaker 2: I had interviewed Sarah a number of times. She was
Speaker 2: so helpful, but she was still pretty abusive to her
Speaker 2: own body. She had some issues with addiction of her
Speaker 2: own and in the middle of all this, after his
Speaker 2: last assault, she had died. So suddenly she died. And
Speaker 2: so when we all met, the women all came together
Speaker 2: a band of sister. Sarah was not with us. That
Speaker 2: was a sad note. We all honored her, but were
Speaker 2: very sad. But one of the things that did happen,
Speaker 2: I did manage to interview Joey Literally's son. That was
Speaker 2: pretty amazing that I was able to do that. And
Speaker 2: of course Ruby his grandmother, Larry's mother who actually she
Speaker 2: became his adoptive mother. She raised their son. She had
Speaker 2: not said much to him at all about the event,
Speaker 2: so my coming in to the scene was painful for
Speaker 2: him but also illuminating. And he had not ever really
Speaker 2: known what to make of Sarah's addictions and Sarah's behaviors.
Speaker 2: But once he read the book, and once well before
Speaker 2: the book was even written, actually before Sarah passed away,
Speaker 2: he was able to understand much more about her life
Speaker 2: and they made peace. Before her death, he met with
Speaker 2: her and then he had a family cookout. He brought
Speaker 2: in her daughter that she'd also given up at age
Speaker 2: six months his sister. He found her, she'd been adopted.
Speaker 2: They all got together. So for Sarah, this was an
Speaker 2: amazing healing. It felt like there was this sort of
Speaker 2: through this tragedy of this story, these horrible events, there
Speaker 2: was this sort of a magic threat of healing, enclosure.
Speaker 2: And even though I was the catalyst, I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like I was necessarily guiding it. I always felt I
Speaker 2: don't know if it works like this. I'm not claiming
Speaker 2: it does, but I used to feel like doors just
Speaker 2: kept opening, like I was being guided, you know. I'd
Speaker 2: feel like that, Chelle, you know, are you doing this?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it was very magical in its tragedy.
Speaker 2: It truly was. At least that was the perspective of.
Speaker 4: Some of this.
Speaker 2: So and Joey has actually told me he's glad I
Speaker 2: wrote the book. It's very difficult for him to read
Speaker 2: this book. He couldn't read it all the one sitting.
Speaker 2: He's a good guy, Larry Lee's son, and it's been
Speaker 2: hard for him to digest this history that he's largely
Speaker 2: protected from prior. But even for him, he says, I'm
Speaker 2: glad you wrote this. I'm glad I understand this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, extraordinary, extraordinary story. I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: coming on and talking about similar transactions. Ay. Thanks, incredible story.
Speaker 1: For those people that might want to contact you, do
Speaker 1: facebook page, website tell us how they might do that.
Speaker 2: There is a website Similar Transactions dot com. There is
Speaker 2: a Facebook page. It's similar, No, it's it's sim Tran author.
Speaker 2: Sim Tran Author. It's available right now, primarily on Amazon.
Speaker 2: It is available as a four hundred page paperback. It's
Speaker 2: available as an ebook, it's available to audible and also
Speaker 2: participates in the Kindle Unlimited program. It has a lot
Speaker 2: of leaders to that program. So those are the ways
Speaker 2: one can obtain the book.
Speaker 1: Now, well, that's great. Thank you very much. Thanks spashup
Speaker 1: for coming on talking about similar transaction. Incredible true story.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. You have a great day.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you Dan. Thanks, goodbye, good bye,