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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening school teacher
Speaker 4: Olivia dare Christian was murdered in her Hampton, Virginia apartment
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty one. Her killer left few clues, and
Speaker 4: the murder went unsolved. Three decades later, in twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: Next Generation detective Randy Mayer reopened Olivia's dusty cold case
Speaker 4: file and began unraveling the mystery. Mayor located a reluctant
Speaker 4: witness who was a teenager back in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 4: She recalled a suspicious man lurking outside Olivia's apartment the
Speaker 4: morning of the murder and provided a detailed description of
Speaker 4: the man. Detective Mayor then researched hundreds of cold cases
Speaker 4: hunting for a person who fit the description, and used
Speaker 4: a similar mo he identified a prime suspect, a Smithfield
Speaker 4: Foods employee, by then in his sixties, previously convicted of
Speaker 4: several brutal sex sexual assaults. Digging further, Mayor linked him
Speaker 4: to two other unsolved Hampton homicides. Was this man a
Speaker 4: serial killer? Mayor enlisted the help of FBI agent Lisa
Speaker 4: Ludovico cuter Phil Figura. Could the team uncover enough evidence
Speaker 4: to bring Olivia's murderer to justice? Is from nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: one identify him? And would a jury convict in a
Speaker 4: cold case based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The book that
Speaker 4: we're featuring this evening is Eyes of a Monster with
Speaker 4: my special guest, journalist and author, Ron Peterson Junior. Welcome
Speaker 4: back to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 4: this interview. Ron Peterson Junior.
Speaker 8: Thank you Dan, It's good to be with you.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much for this incredible story, Eyes of
Speaker 9: a Monster. Let's get right to this case and Olivia
Speaker 9: Derek Christian and the horrible crime September fourth, nineteen eighty
Speaker 9: one in Hampton, Virginia. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 9: Olivia Dere Christian and what was happening that Friday before
Speaker 9: Labor Day.
Speaker 8: Thanks Dan, and yes, as you described in your introduction.
Speaker 8: She was a thirty two year old school teacher in
Speaker 8: the town of Hampton, Virginia. Hampton's in the southeastern corner
Speaker 8: of Virginia, the area known as Hampton Roads, kind of
Speaker 8: a waterfront town. And it was the Friday before Labor
Speaker 8: Day weekend, and she was getting ready to go in
Speaker 8: the school for training and to get ready for the
Speaker 8: students to come to school the following Tuesday. And she
Speaker 8: was killed that morning at seven thirty am. And in
Speaker 8: a lot of murder cases, you know, the time of
Speaker 8: death is not for sure, but in this case, the
Speaker 8: murder weapon was her bedroom alarm clock. Her attacker had
Speaker 8: used it first to strike her in the head, knocked
Speaker 8: her unconscious, and then she was straggled with the court
Speaker 8: of the alarm clock. And as an analog alarm clock
Speaker 8: had showed the time of death, which was seven thirty am.
Speaker 8: And that was really one of few clues that the
Speaker 8: original investigators in nineteen eighty one had to work with.
Speaker 9: Right, how was it that she was found than by who?
Speaker 9: And then again what to how do police proceed?
Speaker 8: Well, she did not show up for work that day,
Speaker 8: and one of her coworkers had checked with the principal
Speaker 8: realized she didn't call in, and it wasn't until later
Speaker 8: that afternoon that a phone call was made to her parents,
Speaker 8: who lived in a neighborhood nearby. Her father went and
Speaker 8: checked on her, and it was late that afternoon, after
Speaker 8: five o'clock when he used a key that he had
Speaker 8: to enter her apartment. Immediately he could see signs of
Speaker 8: a struggle, and as he made his way through the
Speaker 8: apartment to her bedroom, he found her there and she
Speaker 8: was dead. The investigators came to the scene immediately. Hampton,
Speaker 8: it should be noted as a city that an average
Speaker 8: crime rate or motor rate, you know, for cities that size,
Speaker 8: probably about one or two a month on average. So
Speaker 8: investigators were were used to working homicide cases. A very
Speaker 8: good team of detectives who worked the case, among them
Speaker 8: a detective by the name of James Staveley and another
Speaker 8: one by the name of J. P. Jones, both of
Speaker 8: whom are now retired. But Hamps Belief basically had a
Speaker 8: full court press and the investigation, you know, was around
Speaker 8: the clock investigation, and then you know, the days afterwards,
Speaker 8: and it continued. There was a pool of as many
Speaker 8: as as five different suspects or persons of interests who
Speaker 8: were evaluated. Among them one of the neighbors who was
Speaker 8: a woman who you know might have had jealousy for
Speaker 8: some reason as a motive. Olivia Christian was a single woman,
Speaker 8: lived alone. She had a boyfriend for the past year.
Speaker 8: He was vetted as a suspect. The paper boy, who
Speaker 8: was a teenager was as well. There were at least
Speaker 8: a few mysterious men reported by neighbors in the apartment complex,
Speaker 8: and then also a man who lived nearby who was
Speaker 8: just suspicious by nature, whose name was Michael Austen, who
Speaker 8: the days after the investigation failed to polygrass, and then
Speaker 8: a tracking dog also led to his front door. But
Speaker 8: perhaps the best league came from a sixteen year old
Speaker 8: girl who was a neighbor of Olivia Christian lived across
Speaker 8: the parking lot in an apartment and the morning of
Speaker 8: the murder, about half an hour to forty five minutes
Speaker 8: before the time of death, the sixteen year old witness
Speaker 8: had observed a suspicious man drive in in a distinctive vehicle.
Speaker 8: She described it to police as an aqua green four
Speaker 8: door older Sedan. The paint faded the top a little
Speaker 8: lighter than the rest of it, and she described a
Speaker 8: man that was in the car in great detail, an
Speaker 8: African American man average height and build, with a mustache
Speaker 8: and a plain navy blue ball cap. According to this witness,
Speaker 8: he edited after watching the apartment complet for a while,
Speaker 8: had seen Olivia Christian that morning and exited his vehicle,
Speaker 8: went to her apartment window, looked in the window, actually
Speaker 8: entered the lobby of her apartment corridor, and she saw him.
Speaker 8: The witness saw him with his ear toward her door,
Speaker 8: leaning in on the door, apparently listening. At first, detectives
Speaker 8: believed she was credible. She provided under hypnosis. The sixteen
Speaker 8: year old witness provided a description to a police sketch
Speaker 8: artist and of what the man looked like a very
Speaker 8: good composite sketch. But as the investigation unfolded, just through
Speaker 8: a series of circumstances, the police came to doubt this
Speaker 8: young girl's story. Some of the neighbors had said she
Speaker 8: was prone to drama, and for a variety of reasons
Speaker 8: that my book gets into, her account was not found
Speaker 8: to be credible, and she was actually interrogated in great detail,
Speaker 8: and finally she was frustrated that they didn't believe her,
Speaker 8: so she said, hey, I just made it all up.
Speaker 8: So the investigation continued and the case, despite a full
Speaker 8: court press by the investigators, the case went unsolved.
Speaker 9: You say that there was reasons for the police doubting
Speaker 9: the eyewitness testimony of this Anita Purcell. But to compound that,
Speaker 9: you mentioned Michael Alston. How was it that Michael Alston
Speaker 9: was a suspect other than just suspicious nature. There were
Speaker 9: witnesses that police rather thought that they should listen to
Speaker 9: rather than Anita. Isn't that true exactly?
Speaker 8: Yes, there were other residents in the apartment complex and
Speaker 8: a couple that were visiting from out of the area
Speaker 8: who gave an account of seeing a man that looked
Speaker 8: like the prime suspect, Michael Alston. And he also had
Speaker 8: a reputation as a keeping tom and just kind of
Speaker 8: generally a nuisance in the He lived in a neighborhood nearby.
Speaker 8: And then remarkably, he looked a lot like the composite
Speaker 8: sketch that Anita of the sixteen year old witness put
Speaker 8: together on your hypnosis. So that fact, you know, made
Speaker 8: investigators believe that Michael Austen was the man that the
Speaker 8: witness had seen. She was interviewed again and again came
Speaker 8: to the police station. As I said, she was put
Speaker 8: under hypnosis and was also given a light detector test
Speaker 8: at one point. And in some ways, unfortunately, she was
Speaker 8: treated like a suspect because police, or I should say interrogated,
Speaker 8: you know, similar to the way they would interrogate the suspect,
Speaker 8: because police had reason to believe that the man she
Speaker 8: had seen was Michael Austin. However, she told them repeatedly
Speaker 8: the man I saw looked like Michael Austin, but it
Speaker 8: was not him. So and you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 8: putting yourself in her shoes, a sixteen year old girl
Speaker 8: under this kind of pressure. Finally, after being you know,
Speaker 8: grown by these investigators, she said, hey, I made the
Speaker 8: whole thing up, you know, in large part, just to
Speaker 8: just to remove herself from the situation.
Speaker 9: They didn't go any further into that recantation. But to
Speaker 9: further complicate this, you write of this fascinating canine handler
Speaker 9: bringing in a dog called harassed to tell us a
Speaker 9: little bit about this detour for police.
Speaker 8: Exactly at that point in time, there was a dog
Speaker 8: tracker by the name of John Preston who was from
Speaker 8: Pennsylvania and he made He was a former Pennsylvania State
Speaker 8: trooper who worked with Cave nines On in his job there,
Speaker 8: and he let the police force in Pennsylvania to work
Speaker 8: as a dog tracker. And he was hired by different
Speaker 8: municipalities in Virginia and throughout the country to come and
Speaker 8: helped them investigate cases in a lot of cases, murder cases.
Speaker 8: And the dog he had was a German shepherd, not
Speaker 8: typically known for their spent work, you know, you think
Speaker 8: more of bloodhounds, but the dog, by all accounts, had
Speaker 8: had remarkable skills. Now, this case, another case that I
Speaker 8: wrote a book about that happened about a year prior
Speaker 8: to this, was a no body murder case in Bradford, Virginia,
Speaker 8: the case of Jeina Rene Hall. And this dog tracker,
Speaker 8: John Preston, and his dog had worked to that case
Speaker 8: and he testified in the murder trial and essentially helped
Speaker 8: convict the killer in that case, Stephen Epperley. That was
Speaker 8: in nineteen eighty, about a year before this murder happened.
Speaker 8: So when he was able to come to Hampton to
Speaker 8: investigate this case, you know, the detectives and the police
Speaker 8: force in Hampton were really happy to have them there
Speaker 8: because of his work and his dog. About within a
Speaker 8: week after the murder, dog was scented on the murder
Speaker 8: weapon on that alarm clock that I mentioned, it was
Speaker 8: brought into the victims apartment. The dog was scented on it,
Speaker 8: and the dog followed a trail out of the apartment
Speaker 8: complex the end of the parking lot, down the road,
Speaker 8: across the four lane road and into a residential area
Speaker 8: and walked to the front door of the house where
Speaker 8: Michael Austen lived and alerted on his front door, so
Speaker 8: that the investigators believed, you know, was one of the
Speaker 8: one of several bits of proof that indicated that Michael
Speaker 8: Olson was the killer. He also took a polygraph test
Speaker 8: and failed the test, or I should say the results
Speaker 8: were inconclusive and leaned toward him being you know, lying
Speaker 8: on the on the polygraph and it should be not also,
Speaker 8: you know, in the years since polygraph science has really
Speaker 8: come under a lot of scrutiny. This was during a
Speaker 8: time period the early nineteen eighties where a lot of
Speaker 8: police departments really believed that polygraph tests with a good
Speaker 8: polygraph operator, you know, they were gospel. They believed they
Speaker 8: were very accurate. So those were two other other pieces
Speaker 8: of evidence that pointed at Michael Auston as a suspect.
Speaker 8: Hence all the pressure on this young sixteen year old
Speaker 8: witness to indicate that Michael Austin was the man she
Speaker 8: saw when she repeatedly existed, he I know Michael Austin,
Speaker 8: but that was not the man I saw. I saw
Speaker 8: a different man. He looked like him, but it was
Speaker 8: not him.
Speaker 9: And to Eve had even more complication and I know,
Speaker 9: this is just amazing at the beginning of this investigation,
Speaker 9: that there was a couple that was staying in the
Speaker 9: apartment complex at a friend's apartment that were originally from Baltimore,
Speaker 9: and that woman felt that Alston again was a good suspect.
Speaker 9: So there was that rabbit hole for police as well
Speaker 9: to investigate that claim.
Speaker 8: Was it exactly that's exactly right, Yeah, the couple from Baltimore,
Speaker 8: and it was you know, there are many things, you know, detective. Afterwards,
Speaker 8: it felt like the investigation was cursed for many of
Speaker 8: the reasons I mentioned, but also this couple from Baltimore.
Speaker 8: The investigators in Hampton were talking with them, but each
Speaker 8: on the telephone. The woman and the couple was originally
Speaker 8: from Germany had trouble understanding the English language, so there
Speaker 8: was some misunderstanding there. Initially, they said that they had
Speaker 8: seen Michael Austin acting suspiciously in the complex shortly after
Speaker 8: the murder, but once they were able to talk to
Speaker 8: them in person, they realized that their information was not reliable.
Speaker 8: Among other things, the night before, on a Thursday night,
Speaker 8: this couple had been out bar hopping very late and
Speaker 8: we're probably still intoxicated the next morning, you know. They
Speaker 8: finally admitted to that. So that was just one of
Speaker 8: the things that put their uh, This supposed eyewitness account
Speaker 8: from this couple that were visiting for the weekend from Baltimore.
Speaker 8: You know that that made it made them realize that
Speaker 8: was not a reliable account and one of the one
Speaker 8: of the few reasons why their case against Michael Austin
Speaker 8: fell apart. And you know, within months after the murder,
Speaker 8: they realized that that Michael Austin was probably not a
Speaker 8: viable suspect.
Speaker 9: Right after one year anniversary of Olivia's murder, the Hampton
Speaker 9: PD went to FBI's behavioral science units Roy Hazelwood and
Speaker 9: they got a profile. What was that profile that we created.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you said, uh, you know, Roy Hazelwood was
Speaker 8: a noted police profile. This was in the early days
Speaker 8: of profiling. I'm sorry I didn't have that in front
Speaker 8: of me. That was trying to, uh to locate that.
Speaker 8: But he felt it might have been, you know, firston
Speaker 8: younger and hold on just a second, I'll see if
Speaker 8: I can't find that. That profile that they found.
Speaker 9: Well it was, he was, I'll do it for you.
Speaker 9: He was eighteen to twenty four. He said he was
Speaker 9: close proximity. He lived and probably walked to the scene.
Speaker 9: Probably lived with his parents, likely a dropout, single, never married,
Speaker 9: likely owns a vehicle, likely unemployed, likely killed before low IQ, loner, daydreamer,
Speaker 9: may have speech impediment. But as you're right, as a
Speaker 9: result of that profile, there was no new candidates entered
Speaker 9: into this suspect pool and another year wack by without
Speaker 9: any developments. There is a little bit of an idea
Speaker 9: that maybe somebody, if an infamous serial killer, might be involved.
Speaker 9: Henry Lee Lucas was arrested and then people were looked
Speaker 9: at Lucas almost what happens in that regard, and then
Speaker 9: introduced Edgar Browning.
Speaker 8: Sure, will Yes, Yeah, it was an interesting development. You know,
Speaker 8: we used the term serial killer a lot nowadays, but
Speaker 8: it was a term that really was coined in the
Speaker 8: late seventies, shortly before this murder was happened. Happened, and
Speaker 8: it was not one that was used a lot. You know,
Speaker 8: the whole concept of the serial killer was not as
Speaker 8: prevalent as it is today. But within a few years
Speaker 8: in the murder, it was learned that there was a
Speaker 8: notorious serial killer who had actually been in Hampton Roads.
Speaker 8: His name was Henry Lee Lucas. He was originally from
Speaker 8: southwest Virginia with kind of a drifter who drifted around
Speaker 8: the country, and there was a Netflix theories on him
Speaker 8: recently called the Confession Killer and is just you know,
Speaker 8: really interesting background by him, but eaveslink to many many murders.
Speaker 8: He admitted to hundreds of murders, but police realized he
Speaker 8: had maybe exaggerated his claims. But he'd been arrested in
Speaker 8: Texas and he was interviewed in nineteen eighty three, and
Speaker 8: then in nineteen eighty four, Hampton police got a copy
Speaker 8: of that interview and actually had a state police officer
Speaker 8: sit down with him and talk to him to see
Speaker 8: if there was any link between him and the Olivia
Speaker 8: Christian murder and other murders that happened in the Hampton
Speaker 8: and Newport News area. And you know, after talking with him,
Speaker 8: they realized that there was not, but for a while
Speaker 8: that would look like a very promising lead.
Speaker 9: Tell us about Edgar Browning from the Hampton Police Department.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Edgar brown was a really interesting guy and also
Speaker 8: a very very good detective. He was one I mentioned
Speaker 8: the other two that also worked the case, but he
Speaker 8: was one that worked the case quite a bit. But
Speaker 8: he was an army veteran originally from Rhode Island who
Speaker 8: came to Hampton in the in the seventies, distinguished himself
Speaker 8: as a patrol officer, then became a detective and was,
Speaker 8: according to the folks I interviewed, you know, was one
Speaker 8: of the best at interviewing suspects. You know, nowadays we
Speaker 8: call it an interview. In the old days, they called
Speaker 8: it an interrogation. But you know, he read this kind
Speaker 8: of cocky guy. You know, people that the kind of
Speaker 8: guy you meet him for the first time, we'd probably
Speaker 8: rub you the wrong way. The people that worked with
Speaker 8: him and knew him, you know, really liked him and
Speaker 8: respected the kind of work he did. But he was
Speaker 8: he was the one that first came to realize, you know,
Speaker 8: in about nineteen eighty three, nineteen eighty four, that the
Speaker 8: dog tracker that we talked about, John Preston, was a
Speaker 8: fraud and that his work in this case was probably fraudulent.
Speaker 8: So Browning was, you know, was involved throughout the early
Speaker 8: years of the investigation. He recently passed away this this
Speaker 8: past year.
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Speaker 9: Now? You right that this despite everybody's hard work on this,
Speaker 9: this goes cold. This goes cold. So let's talk about
Speaker 9: Randy Meyer and what happens with his involvement in this case.
Speaker 8: Great and thank you. Yes. So the years go by
Speaker 8: and it's it's years and this is you know, Hampton
Speaker 8: was by and large of the homicide detectives in Hampton,
Speaker 8: or the detectives and their Crimes against Persons unit, you know,
Speaker 8: did an excellent job. But this was one of the
Speaker 8: few unsolved murders that remained. So thirty years later, next
Speaker 8: generation detected by the name of Randy Mayer, forty years old.
Speaker 8: Kind of an overachiever in the detective squad. The kind
Speaker 8: of the protocol there is there's enough active cases for
Speaker 8: the detectives to work in the Crimes against Person unit.
Speaker 8: There not only homicides, but rate sexual assaults, armed robberies,
Speaker 8: and you know, crimes against people. And once they're ahead
Speaker 8: on those cases, or all those cases are closed, then
Speaker 8: they may have time to work old cold cases. So
Speaker 8: they don't have a dedicated cold case unit. And that
Speaker 8: was the case with the Randy Mayer. He was working
Speaker 8: on another murder, a cold case murder from the eighties,
Speaker 8: and and happened just by happenstance, to come across the
Speaker 8: Olivia Christians cold case file. This was in twenty eleven,
Speaker 8: as we said, thirty years after the murder, and he
Speaker 8: brought the file home on a weekend, you know, did
Speaker 8: not have a lot to do that weekend, spent Saturday
Speaker 8: reading through the file from beginning to end, and then
Speaker 8: spent Sunday taking detailed notes and doing some analysis on it.
Speaker 8: Came back to work on Monday morning and said, you know,
Speaker 8: to his sergeant, he said, hey, I'd like to work
Speaker 8: this case, and his sergeant basically he said, go for it.
Speaker 8: Over the course of the next few years, Randy Mayer
Speaker 8: pretty much became obsessed with this case. You know, again,
Speaker 8: he had he was very busy with his active caseload,
Speaker 8: but any spare time he had, as well as evenings
Speaker 8: and weekends, he'd spend time going through the case, interviewing
Speaker 8: some of the old neighbors, some of the old friends
Speaker 8: of the Need of Olivia Christians, as well as some
Speaker 8: of the persons of interest. And he was able to
Speaker 8: eliminate some of the folks that were originally suspects. And
Speaker 8: the more he read through the file, the more he
Speaker 8: believed that the witness statement from the sixteen year old
Speaker 8: witness Anita was was credible that she was she was
Speaker 8: telling the truth, and that she only recanted because she
Speaker 8: was pressured so much. So he managed to locate Anita.
Speaker 8: She was by then, she was in her forties. She
Speaker 8: lived in a neighboring jurisdiction, and when he asked her,
Speaker 8: you know, hey, just tell me, were you telling the truth?
Speaker 8: If you relying, no problem, you know, I would just
Speaker 8: like to know, she immediately became emotional. She said, I
Speaker 8: was telling the truth. She said that man's face has
Speaker 8: haunted me almost every day of my life. She said,
Speaker 8: you know, I've had nightmares about it. And so they
Speaker 8: you know, they have a heart to heart and the
Speaker 8: conversation ends with, you know, Randy Mayer and her agreeing,
Speaker 8: you know, together, we're going to try to find this guy.
Speaker 8: And then that's when his investigation really gets underway. What
Speaker 8: he did in studying this case, Detective Mayor came to
Speaker 8: realize that the attack on Olivia Christian was sexually motivated.
Speaker 8: This was a sexual predator. His motive was rape, and
Speaker 8: it was only when Olivia Christian put up such a fight,
Speaker 8: literally the fight of her life, that you know, things
Speaker 8: tragically they accelerated and she was killed in this attack.
Speaker 8: You know, she you know, literally was not going to
Speaker 8: succumb to the to the rape, which is just, you know,
Speaker 8: a tragic scenario. So he then began looking. He was
Speaker 8: convinced that the Olivia's killer had probably attacked other women,
Speaker 8: had most certainly attacked other women in that timeframe. So
Speaker 8: he bracketed the time of the murder and looked at
Speaker 8: not only active cases, but police reports for a year
Speaker 8: prior to her murder in eighty one and also a
Speaker 8: year after. He cast a wide net, was not only
Speaker 8: looking at sexual assaults, but incidents of thought peeping tom
Speaker 8: in decent exposure, you know, any crimes of dominance or
Speaker 8: power over women. And as he did that, he came
Speaker 8: across a nineteen eighty two case that happened a year
Speaker 8: after Olivia Christian was killed. It was a rape in
Speaker 8: which a man was convicted, and the attacker's mo was very,
Speaker 8: very similar to that of Olivia Christian's attacker, a lot
Speaker 8: of similarities and a lot of the same stalking behavior
Speaker 8: that he realized had taken place in both incidents. He
Speaker 8: found a picture of that man who was convicted, who
Speaker 8: served a sentence, was by then in his sixties and
Speaker 8: still lived in Hampton after he observed fifteen years in
Speaker 8: prison on the rape. When he compared the picture of
Speaker 8: the composite sketch to the man's picture at the time
Speaker 8: of the other arrest in eighty two, it was almost
Speaker 8: a perfect match, you know, just just a dead ringer
Speaker 8: found a picture of the man's vehicle that he was
Speaker 8: arrested in, and sure enough it was an awkward green,
Speaker 8: older sedan with an awkwardreen tight top, lighter than the
Speaker 8: rest of the vehicle, exactly as the teenage witness had
Speaker 8: described it on the morning of the murder.
Speaker 9: And who is this person? And so what is the
Speaker 9: next step for a detective mayor.
Speaker 8: Well, before he approached this suspect, who, as I said,
Speaker 8: by then he was in his sixties, he did a
Speaker 8: great deal of background research on him, and I'll just
Speaker 8: i'll kind of give you a quick bio of this
Speaker 8: suspect and as well as his criminal history. His name
Speaker 8: was Ruben, Ruben Edward Moore. He was an African American man.
Speaker 8: His appearance, you know, a very very average looking blue
Speaker 8: collar sort of guy. Hampton and Newport News that the
Speaker 8: two jurisdictions there are both you know, racially integrated about
Speaker 8: fifty to fifty Caucasian and African Americans. So he was
Speaker 8: a guy that would would clearly blend in, you know,
Speaker 8: in the area. His appearance, you know, nothing distinctive about him.
Speaker 8: I would say. He was born in nineteen fifty one
Speaker 8: in Hertford County, North Carolina, an area about an hour's
Speaker 8: drive from Hampton Roads. He was one of fifteen siblings.
Speaker 8: He was his mother's fifth child when she was eighteen
Speaker 8: years old. When he was ten years old, his mother
Speaker 8: left him to run off with the preacher in their little,
Speaker 8: small rural area man named Henry Smallwood to live in
Speaker 8: Newport News. Left him behind and for three years he
Speaker 8: basically lived on his own under the care of his
Speaker 8: older brothers and sisters. His father was an alcoholic, you know,
Speaker 8: did not look after him, was not in the picture.
Speaker 8: And after three years living alone, he moved to Newport News,
Speaker 8: which borders Hampton by the Way, to live with his
Speaker 8: mother and the reverend, and he came to be a
Speaker 8: blended family of twenty one kids. So you know, I'm
Speaker 8: not a psychologist, but he was you know, most certainly neglected.
Speaker 8: In fact, his mother's ability to reproduce was so prolific
Speaker 8: that her obituary in nineteen ninety listed seventy five grandchildren.
Speaker 8: So you know, by all accounts, her son Reuven did
Speaker 8: slip through the cracks when he came to the area
Speaker 8: at age thirteen. He did not read or write. He
Speaker 8: enrolled in junior high school, you know, made straight fs,
Speaker 8: and dropped out at age fourteen to the job in construction.
Speaker 8: He first appeared on the police blodder in nineteen sixty
Speaker 8: five at age fifteen for an attack on a white female.
Speaker 8: He was convicted of that spent a year in his
Speaker 8: juvenile reform center in Richmond, Virginia. When he returned to
Speaker 8: Newport News, he was sixteen and soon became the suspect
Speaker 8: in a series of residential break ins. And then in
Speaker 8: nineteen sixty eight, at age seventeen, he was charged in
Speaker 8: a case that local residents still remember as the light
Speaker 8: bulb case. And what happened On March fourteenth, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 8: He broke into a woman's apartment through a bedroom window.
Speaker 8: She was sexually assaulted, beaten with his fists during and
Speaker 8: after the attack, and the investigators discovered that the light
Speaker 8: bulb at the extraor light picture had been unscrewed to
Speaker 8: provide darkness to cloak his entry through the window, and
Speaker 8: this actually matched the series matched them in a series
Speaker 8: of rapes and break ins over the previous year that
Speaker 8: they'd attributed to a man they'd come to call the
Speaker 8: light bulb racist. So he was charged in that case
Speaker 8: in nineteen sixty eight. The key evidence against him were
Speaker 8: his fingerprints on that light bulb, interestingly enough, but a trial,
Speaker 8: his attorney argued, but since the landlord bought the light
Speaker 8: bulbs of the local supermarket where Reuben Moore had occasionally shopped,
Speaker 8: he could have touched the light bulb in the score.
Speaker 8: The judge threw out the evidence, and then without this
Speaker 8: key evidence, he was found not guilty. Within a year
Speaker 8: there was he was charging another rape, attacking a woman
Speaker 8: a few blocks from his house. She was beaten, left
Speaker 8: for dead only you know, was basically dying of her
Speaker 8: wounds and luckily was found by the milkman. In that attack,
Speaker 8: he used a knife with a four inch blade, and
Speaker 8: part of that knife, part of the distinctive wooden handle,
Speaker 8: was found at the crime scene. The detectives obtained the
Speaker 8: search warrant to search his apartment and the other part
Speaker 8: of the knife was found, the wooden handle was missing.
Speaker 8: It matched up exactly and he was charged with sexual
Speaker 8: assault and attempt or rape and attempted murder. In that case,
Speaker 8: he was convicted in nineteen sixty nine. He was sentenced
Speaker 8: to life in prison, and from prison, he appealed that conviction,
Speaker 8: and his attorney based the appeal and the effect on
Speaker 8: the fact that the affidavit for the search warrant was vague.
Speaker 8: It only asked for it implements used to commit a felony.
Speaker 8: One of the things, you know, in the United States,
Speaker 8: our Fourth Amendment rights for search and seizure specify that
Speaker 8: an affidavit for a search warrant has to be specific
Speaker 8: and accurate. The appeals judges in the Junior Supreme Court
Speaker 8: when this case was appealed, they determined that that affi
Speaker 8: davit was faulty, which made the search warrant faulty, which
Speaker 8: made the key evidence what we would call fruits of
Speaker 8: the forbidden tree. So that evidence was thrown out. Was
Speaker 8: the conviction was overturned, and the prosecutor without that key
Speaker 8: evidence could not prosecute the case. So he was essentially
Speaker 8: a free man. He said, you know, just in those cases,
Speaker 8: some unbelievable luck for him. Then he was charged with
Speaker 8: another rape in your sexual assault and break in and
Speaker 8: attack in nineteen seventy one. In nineteen seventy two he
Speaker 8: was the prime suspect and a murder in which charges
Speaker 8: were not brought against him. But you know the folks
Speaker 8: I interviewed for that, the prosecutor and the lead detectives
Speaker 8: were one hundred percent sure he was the killer, but
Speaker 8: just did not have the evidence to prove it. And
Speaker 8: he was sentenced for rape in nineteen seventy two, served
Speaker 8: eight years, and came out in nineteen eighty, which, as
Speaker 8: fate would have it, was about one year before the
Speaker 8: fatal attack on Olivia. Christian.
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Speaker 9: Now you talked about his release. Where did he go
Speaker 9: and what did he do in terms of employment? Who
Speaker 9: was he living with? Tell us what happens immediately after
Speaker 9: he gets released.
Speaker 8: Well, he's released, he's employed at that time by the
Speaker 8: Newport New Shipyard, which the largest employer in the area,
Speaker 8: employed as many as thirty thousand people at their peak
Speaker 8: employment blue collar job there in the shipyard, and lived
Speaker 8: with with you know, with with family members. Was married
Speaker 8: shortly after he got out of prison at that time.
Speaker 9: Now, what happens with mayor and this interview, Well.
Speaker 8: Through the course of Randy Mayer's investigation, he's, you know,
Speaker 8: one hundred percent sure that ruben Moore was. And the
Speaker 8: book goes into some other things that you know that
Speaker 8: linked ruben Moore to Olivia Christian's murder. And then there's
Speaker 8: also the two other murders, one from nineteen seventy two
Speaker 8: and then another one from nineteen eighty two that ruben
Speaker 8: Moore is definitively linked to. Now, the best chance of
Speaker 8: a conviction is in the nineteen eighty one Olivia Christian murders.
Speaker 8: So you know that's the charge as they're they're pursuing.
Speaker 8: So Detective Mayor called him in for an interview, says
Speaker 8: he's he's investigating, you know, an old case. He gets
Speaker 8: a DNA sample from Ruben Moore cheek swab and because
Speaker 8: the original forensic evenance had degraded, you know, there's there's
Speaker 8: no forensic avenue to pursue there. But over the course
Speaker 8: of two interviews with Ruben Moore, where he voluntarily came
Speaker 8: in for an interview repeatedly, Detective Mayor accuses him of
Speaker 8: the murder and more. Does not confess, but he says
Speaker 8: some some very interesting things. First off, he he lies
Speaker 8: about many smaller aspects of the crime, you know, tells
Speaker 8: lies that can later be proven in court that he lied.
Speaker 8: And you know, for for a prosecutor prosecuting a murder case,
Speaker 8: if you can prove that the suspect has told a
Speaker 8: lot of little lies during their interview, then you can
Speaker 8: essentially prove the big lie you know, that they're lying
Speaker 8: about permitted the murder. Among the things Detective Mayor tells him,
Speaker 8: he says, there was a witness that saw you the
Speaker 8: morning of the murder, and I think you saw her too,
Speaker 8: and ruben Moore immediately replies, oh, I didn't see nobody
Speaker 8: out there, which you know puts him basically after scene.
Speaker 8: But he kind of just said it reflectively, without thinking
Speaker 8: and as the interview progressed, as ruben Moore admits, you know,
Speaker 8: and in this he's talking perhaps not specifically about this murder,
Speaker 8: but about his other assaults on women, which you know,
Speaker 8: there were as many as a dozen, you know, different
Speaker 8: ones in that time period. He says, Hey, you know,
Speaker 8: I admit I was evil as hell one time. I
Speaker 8: did things out of pure hell meanness. And these are
Speaker 8: direct quotes from him. And then he begins to plead
Speaker 8: with mayor, you know, because it happens so long ago,
Speaker 8: and because he had served fifteen years on the the
Speaker 8: other charge for rape that he basically you know, done
Speaker 8: his penance for that, he tells them, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: I don't even have that mindset anymore. I'm trying to
Speaker 8: move past my past. I did fifteen years. And then
Speaker 8: he even talks about himself in the third person in
Speaker 8: those interviews. He says, you know, Reuben wouldn't have killed
Speaker 8: nobody was something that he said repeatedly. And then, perhaps
Speaker 8: most deservingly, he speaks of demons. He says, you know,
Speaker 8: the fact, in the time period when he was committing
Speaker 8: these crimes, he tells the detective mayor, he said, I
Speaker 8: can remember being driven by demons. He says, I don't
Speaker 8: have those demons no more. And then, you know, in
Speaker 8: an effort to determine his motives, you know, it's obvious
Speaker 8: and these cases weren't un anomaly in that, you know,
Speaker 8: they were attacks outside his race. And the fact is
Speaker 8: that statistically, you know, a serial rapist will attack within
Speaker 8: race the vast majority of the time, you know, perhaps
Speaker 8: as much as eighty or ninety percent of the time.
Speaker 8: And this was an anomaly because you know, there was
Speaker 8: many a as like I said, six on the even
Speaker 8: as many as a dozen attacks, all of them on
Speaker 8: you know, white women. So it through the course of
Speaker 8: the interview, Reuven Moore makes it clear that his motive,
Speaker 8: that what was driving him to attack these women was
Speaker 8: the racism that he had faced. And just asn't the
Speaker 8: size you know, I can say, having grown up in
Speaker 8: this area, you know, first of all, there's still still racism.
Speaker 8: You know, racism is still in our society, obviously systemic racism.
Speaker 8: But back in those days, you know, it was sixty
Speaker 8: seventies and eighties, it was a tough time. The area
Speaker 8: where he lived was, you know, really run down area,
Speaker 8: and it was the fact that blacks were discriminated against.
Speaker 8: And this seems to have been his motive in that time.
Speaker 8: And Detective Mayor asked him, you know what, why did
Speaker 8: you do it? Why did you attack white women? And
Speaker 8: Ruben Moore's admits he says, because these are his direct quotes.
Speaker 8: He says, racially, the system was dirty, Blacks have always
Speaker 8: caught the hell and if I could get away with something,
Speaker 8: I'd do it. And then Detective Mayor asked him, you know, well,
Speaker 8: what were you like back then? He says, well, you know,
Speaker 8: I was a macho man. I was a macho black man.
Speaker 8: He said, what made me do it? If I put
Speaker 8: candy out and told you you can't have that candy
Speaker 8: because I'm human and I have a right to it.
Speaker 8: So yeah, that that was later presented as in court
Speaker 8: as his motives, and you know, was a kind of
Speaker 8: a unique part of this case.
Speaker 9: Now, you say, that two days later later, Mayor calls
Speaker 9: Anita and so she's having some health issues, but she
Speaker 9: calls back a few weeks later. What's their conversation and
Speaker 9: what what does he want Anita to do? Well?
Speaker 8: All along through the investigation and even when he's identified,
Speaker 8: you know, Ribbon Moore as his prime suspect, who he's
Speaker 8: sure committed the murder. Mayor having worked with a lot
Speaker 8: of witnesses in felony cases, he knows how difficult it's
Speaker 8: going to be for her to identify someone after having
Speaker 8: seen them for just a few moments thirty years earlier,
Speaker 8: and in the city of Hampton and most jurisdictions in
Speaker 8: Virginia in the United States. You know, we've all seen
Speaker 8: the old police lineups on movies or detective television shows.
Speaker 8: You know, they use a system called a photo array
Speaker 8: where where someone is shown usually six photographs, where a
Speaker 8: witness has shown six photographs one by one, and they
Speaker 8: picked the person who they witnessed out of those photographs.
Speaker 8: So they're leading up to this, Anita says, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: I saw him. I've never forgotten those eyes. The title
Speaker 8: of the book Eyes of a Monster comes from her
Speaker 8: quote that she always remembered his eyes because he had
Speaker 8: the eyes of a monster, and she never forgot what
Speaker 8: those eyes look like. So she's confident that she can
Speaker 8: pick this man out. The detective Mayor, on the other hand,
Speaker 8: is naturally a bit skeptical, so he meets with the
Speaker 8: prosecutor in Hampton, the Hampton Commonwealth Attorney, whose name was
Speaker 8: Anton Bell, and they agree, Hey, let's go ahead, have
Speaker 8: her do the photo line up. If she picks the
Speaker 8: wrong person, we can probably explain that to a jury
Speaker 8: if it goes to trial, and it won't hurt us
Speaker 8: too much. So they take a photo of Ruben Moore
Speaker 8: from the time of the Olivia Christian murder back in
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty one, the photo was actually taking eighty two,
Speaker 8: along with five other photographs he's picked out of other
Speaker 8: police files from that time period, and she's shown the
Speaker 8: photos one by one. She sits down with the detective
Speaker 8: protocol as you use a detective who's not involved in
Speaker 8: the case, who knows nothing about it, you know, another
Speaker 8: police officer, so that they're not giving you know, subtle
Speaker 8: clues or any type of you know, nonverbal clues on
Speaker 8: who to pick. And sure enough, when they get to
Speaker 8: the picture it's the fifth one. She immediately has this
Speaker 8: visceral reaction that's him, that's the man, that's the monster,
Speaker 8: you know, that's him, and and actually almost has a
Speaker 8: un emotional breakdown, you know, when she she sees him again.
Speaker 8: Then she's got to look at the sixth and final photo,
Speaker 8: which she does and says, Okay, that's sixth one is
Speaker 8: not him. So with that she'd made the positive identification.
Speaker 8: And the book gets a bit more into that, just
Speaker 8: you know how dramatic it was for her to pick
Speaker 8: this man out of a photo or array, you know,
Speaker 8: four decades later.
Speaker 9: Right now, is this enough for Detective Mayor to go
Speaker 9: go to the commonwealth attorney the prosecutor, to find out
Speaker 9: if there's any chance to be able to prosecute this
Speaker 9: case or does he probe other cases like Helen Sturgis
Speaker 9: and Julia Woolf. What's his next step?
Speaker 8: Well, he and along about that point he meets and
Speaker 8: he's messed throughout the process with the Hampton Commonwealth Attorney.
Speaker 8: His name is Anton Bell. Now, in other jurisdictions in
Speaker 8: the United States, you know, you've heard them called a
Speaker 8: district attorney or just a prosecutor, but you know he'd
Speaker 8: be the guy to prosecute the case if and when
Speaker 8: it goes to trial. He tells Randy Mayer, you know,
Speaker 8: it's a thirty year old case based on eyewitness identification.
Speaker 8: Is and I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, basically, it's
Speaker 8: too ify. We've got probable cause to indict him from murder.
Speaker 8: But if we're talking about convincing a jury of twelve people,
Speaker 8: you know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a very different
Speaker 8: call thing to do. So we need more evidence. So
Speaker 8: he has Mayor work with a few of the assistant
Speaker 8: prosecutors and intends to build a case against Mayor, I'm sorry,
Speaker 8: build a case against Ruby Moore. Even further, Detective Mayor
Speaker 8: continues to probe these other two homicides, the nineteen seventy
Speaker 8: two murder of Helen Sturgis and the nineteen eighty two
Speaker 8: murder of Linda Sykes, and you know, continues to investigate
Speaker 8: those and can't quite get any more evidence. And it
Speaker 8: becomes clear, you know, he's kind of banging his head
Speaker 8: against a brick wall, and you know, been building a case.
Speaker 8: So Mayor has a professional relationship with an FBI agent
Speaker 8: by the name of Liza Ludovico, who works out of
Speaker 8: the FBI's Norfolk office. She's just an outstanding investigator. She
Speaker 8: has some experience working in serial murder cases, and she
Speaker 8: agrees to help out with the case. And not only that,
Speaker 8: but together they enlist the help of a special prosecutor
Speaker 8: from the State Attorney General's office who specialize in specializes
Speaker 8: in prosecuting cases just like this and you know, hard
Speaker 8: to prosecute murder cases that are that are old cold cases.
Speaker 8: And his name is Phil Figura. So the three of
Speaker 8: them together become a team and continues to investigate Ruben Moore.
Speaker 8: Among other things. Phil Figura goes through the the video
Speaker 8: recordings of the interviews, you know, there's a few hours
Speaker 8: of interviews with Ruben Moore and realizes that he said
Speaker 8: enough things to not admit his guilt, but certainly to
Speaker 8: imply his guilt, you know, enough things that that could
Speaker 8: probably convince a jury of that. They go before the
Speaker 8: grand jury in Hampton and he is indicted. The suspect,
Speaker 8: Ruben Moore is indicted for first degree murder. He's arrested,
Speaker 8: brought in and they, you know, they realized before he
Speaker 8: lawyers up, they're gonna have one more opportunity to question him,
Speaker 8: you know, or again you know, we in the old
Speaker 8: days he used the term interrogate. Now it's you know, interview.
Speaker 8: So this time rise Aludavico does the interview, and you know,
Speaker 8: it's a long up gosha five or six hour interview
Speaker 8: with him at an FBI office, and I'll linked the
Speaker 8: interview in which he again he does not admit to
Speaker 8: the murder, but he says things that will later be
Speaker 8: used against him in court testimony.
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Speaker 9: Let's go back to Liza Ludovico and the strategy she
Speaker 9: employs when she goes to finally speak to him. This
Speaker 9: is a very dramatic part of the book. All of
Speaker 9: these interviews with him are fascinating, but this is a
Speaker 9: especially fascinating interview. Tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 9: how she approaches this interview completely.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, they've in the months leading up
Speaker 8: to his arrest, a special Agent Ludovico and Detective Mayor
Speaker 8: have continued to do more and more research into Rubnmore's
Speaker 8: criminal past. You know, essentially they know more about him
Speaker 8: than he knows about himself. They've even gone on to
Speaker 8: the schools he went to, got in school records, interviewed
Speaker 8: his family members, they interviewed his ex wife and the
Speaker 8: wife who he was currently married married to at the
Speaker 8: time of his arrest. So I've got a lot of information.
Speaker 8: And they've got a conference room at the FBI office,
Speaker 8: which is a satellite office in Newprint News, where the
Speaker 8: four walls in this room are literally literally covered with everything.
Speaker 8: Crime scene photos from the three murders, pictures of all
Speaker 8: the houses where he sexually assaulted women, pictures of the
Speaker 8: prisons he was incarcerated at. You know, the walls are
Speaker 8: liberally covered. Their's strings connecting maps of you know, the
Speaker 8: victim's house to the house he was living at the time.
Speaker 8: So it's almost like this, you know, like as I
Speaker 8: say in the book, it's like, you know, this is
Speaker 8: your life, Rubin Moore. It's you know, almost like an
Speaker 8: intervention where they sit down with him, or where Eliza Ludovico,
Speaker 8: the agent sits down with him, you know, to interview him.
Speaker 8: So they make it clear that, you know, they know
Speaker 8: everything he has done, his entire criminal past, and part
Speaker 8: of her strategy, you know, she's come to realize that
Speaker 8: in the years since we' even Moore got out of prison. Uh,
Speaker 8: he's apparently and I say apparently because it, you know,
Speaker 8: may not be the case, become very religious and you know,
Speaker 8: uses that as as you know, part of his actually
Speaker 8: part of his defense. So a lot of the interview
Speaker 8: was kind of a theological discussion about his need to
Speaker 8: you know, the biblical need for him to come clean,
Speaker 8: confess his sins and essentially you know, clean himself, and
Speaker 8: that if he is truly a Christian, truly a Christian man,
Speaker 8: he'd admit to what he did. And if he can
Speaker 8: do that, you know, she can can ask for the more.
Speaker 8: You know, if he confessed to the murder, there could
Speaker 8: be more favorable terms for him than if a jury
Speaker 8: finds him guilty. But you know, after this long interview. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: he uh, you know, he does not does not confess
Speaker 8: to the crime.
Speaker 9: Right. In part of the research for Mayor, he had
Speaker 9: found out that previous crimes, the star witness for the
Speaker 9: defense in defense of this man was the Gloria Mooor Daniels,
Speaker 9: just as you're right, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 9: her participation in enabling him over the years.
Speaker 8: You know what Detective Mayor came to learn from studying
Speaker 8: the trial transcripts, and these were transcripts I actually went
Speaker 8: back and you know and located in my research for
Speaker 8: the book also, but in three of his trials, and
Speaker 8: these weren't murder trials, you know, these were trials for
Speaker 8: the rape and the sexual assaults. In each of them, Uh,
Speaker 8: one of his sisters apparently, who he's pretty close to,
Speaker 8: had testified as an alibi witness for him each time.
Speaker 8: And the you know, it's clear that the alibis she
Speaker 8: was providing were false. And you know, the fortunate thing
Speaker 8: was in each of these cases, he was convicted in
Speaker 8: each of them and served a prison term. You know,
Speaker 8: for each one, the jury did also did not believe her,
Speaker 8: you know, her alibi that she actually took the stand
Speaker 8: and then sworn testimony, you know, presented an alibi to
Speaker 8: the jury for him at that you know that the
Speaker 8: time and date of the attacks. In one instance, she said,
Speaker 8: you know he was he lived with her at the time,
Speaker 8: and she said, you know, no, he couldn't have done
Speaker 8: this because you know, my husband and I were watching
Speaker 8: television in the living room and he was in his bedroom,
Speaker 8: you know, the entire time. So there's no way, you know,
Speaker 8: he could have left to do this. And you know obvious,
Speaker 8: I think for anyone who reads the transcript and reads
Speaker 8: the other evidence against him, that this was a false alibi.
Speaker 8: So in order to you know, the fear is that
Speaker 8: if he's in this current case in two thousand, you know,
Speaker 8: twenty eleven to twenty eighteen, if he's charged with this case,
Speaker 8: that his sister will again provide an alibi for him. So,
Speaker 8: along with with an FBI agents, detective Mayor traveled to
Speaker 8: Richmond in preparation for this to actually sit down with
Speaker 8: his sister to interview her and more or less in
Speaker 8: a subtle way to make it clear that you know,
Speaker 8: he knew that she had had testified on Ruben's behalf
Speaker 8: in the past and kind of get on record that
Speaker 8: you know, what she knew about at this time and
Speaker 8: whether or not she had an alibi for him this time,
Speaker 8: which it turned out she did not.
Speaker 9: Explain the phone call when he's in prison with his sister,
Speaker 9: and what's the content in relation to Olivia Christian.
Speaker 8: Well during the interview, during one of Randy Meyer's interviews
Speaker 8: of Ruben Moore, he made the comment he said repeatedly,
Speaker 8: he said, oh, you know, I've never I've never been
Speaker 8: to that apartment complex. I don't even know where it is,
Speaker 8: and you know, and insisted on that. So then when
Speaker 8: when he was arrested in charge with first degree murder,
Speaker 8: he was in Hampton Roads Regional Jail. And the thing
Speaker 8: about telephones, and you know the telephone community communication system
Speaker 8: in any of Virginia's prisons are those conversations are recorded.
Speaker 8: The only ones that are not recorded are privileged conversations
Speaker 8: with an attorney that are protected under attorney client privilege.
Speaker 8: All other phone conversations in prison of recorded. So there's
Speaker 8: a recording made of Ruben Moore calling his sister Gloria,
Speaker 8: and for the first part of the conversation, you know,
Speaker 8: it's just general conversation how's the family doing, how's this
Speaker 8: and that? Then it gets more specific and she asked
Speaker 8: him about his upcoming trial, about the charges against him,
Speaker 8: and she happened to ask him, you know, well, has
Speaker 8: you know have you have you ever been to those
Speaker 8: apartments before? And he says, and I'm paraphrasing here, but
Speaker 8: that you know, the book and the trial transcript had
Speaker 8: had the exact words. He said, Yeah, I've been there before.
Speaker 8: I used to do my laundry there, and he provides
Speaker 8: a description of the apartments. So this recording is is,
Speaker 8: you know, the prosecutor phil Figura and his routine due diligence,
Speaker 8: gets a copy of this recording and it's presented in
Speaker 8: eventually presented in court in his in his murder trial.
Speaker 9: Right, let's talk about this trial and who are the
Speaker 9: main witnesses at this that really impact this case?
Speaker 8: Right? Well, remember we said the investigation Randy Mayer basically
Speaker 8: reopens the case in twenty eleven. Then it's late twenty twelve,
Speaker 8: twenty thirteen when he finally identifies Ruben Moore as a suspect.
Speaker 8: And then you know, more years go by, so it's
Speaker 8: not until twenty fifteen that Ruben Moore is arrested and
Speaker 8: then in the case there's a series of continuances. First
Speaker 8: he hires his own attorney and then he gets two
Speaker 8: quart appointed lawyers to represent him. So the case has
Speaker 8: postponed a bit before that. There's a few postponements actually
Speaker 8: by the prosecution, and you know, in Virginia in the
Speaker 8: United States, there's the provision constitutional provision for a speedy trial.
Speaker 8: His attorney's waved his right to a speedy trial. So
Speaker 8: the case finally goes to court in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 8: he's represented by two very very good attorneys, defense attorneys
Speaker 8: that are appointed by the court. Of course, Phil Faguera,
Speaker 8: who we mentioned, is prosecuting this case, and it's a
Speaker 8: really unique case and it gets a lot of media
Speaker 8: attention because you know the sensational nature of it. But
Speaker 8: it's a murder case from you know, four decades ago,
Speaker 8: and the witnesses, you know, there's a great deal of
Speaker 8: strategy and a trial, and the book gets into that
Speaker 8: about the witnesses that are presented. The first witness is
Speaker 8: one of Olivia's old friends and teachers who she taught with,
Speaker 8: who's actually the one who made the phone call to
Speaker 8: her parents, Olivia's old boyfriend is presented as a witness,
Speaker 8: you know, to talk about Olivia as a person, and
Speaker 8: also because the prosecution knows that the defense is probably
Speaker 8: going to mention his name as a as a possible suspect,
Speaker 8: which you know, and she most clearly was not. One
Speaker 8: of the old detectives is brought in from nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 8: James Staveley, who's by then in his late sixties. He
Speaker 8: goes through the crime scene photos and you know, and
Speaker 8: talks about that. And then, of course, the star witness
Speaker 8: in this trial, and what makes it such a unique
Speaker 8: trial is when Anita Purcell, who's now in her forties,
Speaker 8: who is sixteen years old at the time of the murder,
Speaker 8: but she testifies and the jury's presented with the information
Speaker 8: of her picking out where even more in the lineup.
Speaker 8: Very dramatic moment when she actually points him out in
Speaker 8: you know, in the courtroom as as the man she
Speaker 8: saw that morning back then. Randy Mayer also provides his
Speaker 8: test DEMONI. And then one of the last witnesses is
Speaker 8: Eliza Ludavico, who who the FBI agent who talks about
Speaker 8: her interview of Ruben Moore and you know shares her
Speaker 8: her interpretation of that of that conversation.
Speaker 9: There isn't too much to the defense, uh case, Now
Speaker 9: what do they what's their theory of this and how
Speaker 9: do they proceed?
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's there's there's really not. Ruben Moore is represented
Speaker 8: by by two attorneys. One's name was Bob Harris and
Speaker 8: the other was Stephen Smith, both very both very capable attorneys.
Speaker 8: Stephen Smith in particular has done a great deal of
Speaker 8: criminal defense in a lot of high profile murder cases.
Speaker 8: So you know, this is most clearly not their their
Speaker 8: first rodeo. One of the witnesses they call is Detective Stavely,
Speaker 8: the original investigator. They call him back to the stands
Speaker 8: and you know, to try to to pain his testimony.
Speaker 8: You don't have much success in that. And then also
Speaker 8: you know, there's the big moment on cross examination. They
Speaker 8: had the opportunity opportunity to cross examine a need to Purcell,
Speaker 8: the sixteen year old witness from eighty one, and tried
Speaker 8: their best, you know, to to ding her testimony. But
Speaker 8: she did a you know, a just an excellent job
Speaker 8: of you know, keeping her composure and just confidently telling
Speaker 8: telling what she saw. So that's I guess that's kind
Speaker 8: of their their defense in a nutshell, they you know,
Speaker 8: and the book has several excerpts from both their opening
Speaker 8: statements at the begetting into trial and the closing statements,
Speaker 8: and you know, in a large part they go with
Speaker 8: kind of some other guy did at defense. You know,
Speaker 8: they talk about all the other suspects who were there
Speaker 8: and just how the passage of time, you know that
Speaker 8: it was it was a rush to judgment if the
Speaker 8: jury should find him guilty. And then also, you know,
Speaker 8: the big argument if you're on ruben Moore's side is,
Speaker 8: you know, how could someone who saw a person who
Speaker 8: saw the suspect for just a few moments, you know,
Speaker 8: how can you remember what they looked like three, you know,
Speaker 8: four decades later, thirty thirty six years later? You know,
Speaker 8: how could you do that? And that's essentially, you know,
Speaker 8: the question that the jury has to rely on. Now.
Speaker 8: It's interesting to note that I've talked a lot about
Speaker 8: Ruben Moore's criminal past, but one big challenge the prosecution
Speaker 8: had is they could not introduce his criminal history. They
Speaker 8: cannot talk about that one bit, and if they brought
Speaker 8: it up, it would be a mistrial. So they were
Speaker 8: handicapped in that so they had to just you know,
Speaker 8: just rely on one Anita's testimony, and to the other
Speaker 8: key evidence, of course, was the state. That's that we've
Speaker 8: been more made that we're not admissions of guilt, but
Speaker 8: were certainly you know, guilty ish.
Speaker 9: Yes, you you write that there was one very particularly
Speaker 9: a particular uh, dramatic scene where one of the exhibits
Speaker 9: is very close to the jury members and has an
Speaker 9: impact on them.
Speaker 8: Yes, early in the trial, as Detective Stably is testifying,
Speaker 8: you know, and he's they're introducing the jury to you know,
Speaker 8: the facts of the murder, the crime scene photos, and
Speaker 8: introduced into evidence is the alarm clock that I mentioned,
Speaker 8: you know, from from the apartment which had been in
Speaker 8: the evidence room in the Hampton Police Department, you know,
Speaker 8: for the for the last four decades, and it's probably
Speaker 8: still there by the way. But so when it was
Speaker 8: introduced by the prosecutor, there was sort of little a
Speaker 8: little shelf in front of the jury box, so you know,
Speaker 8: he took it out of the plastic bag it was
Speaker 8: in and set that clock, you know, right in front
Speaker 8: of the jury, some jurors only a few feet from it.
Speaker 8: And several people that were in the courtroom, you know,
Speaker 8: talked about how the you know, the jurors in that
Speaker 8: front row, you know, just how how squeamish they were,
Speaker 8: you know, to be that close to it, and that
Speaker 8: that was probably when it hit him. You know, wow,
Speaker 8: this you know, this was this was the murder weapon
Speaker 8: used to actually, you know, to kill Olivia Christian back
Speaker 8: in nineteen eighty one. And then in the jury deliberated,
Speaker 8: you know, that evidence was brought into the the jury
Speaker 8: room along with the crime scene photos and you know,
Speaker 8: was there on a on a table in the jury room.
Speaker 8: So I guess a lot of murder cases are that way,
Speaker 8: where the you know, the murder weapons, the jury is
Speaker 8: actually in close proximity to it.
Speaker 9: You talk about the verdict and the jury at the
Speaker 9: judge jen the jury, I believe, have an option rather
Speaker 9: than the first degree murder that he's charged with. What
Speaker 9: is the verdict and what is ruben Moore's reaction visible reaction.
Speaker 8: Well, when the jury goes to deliberate, they've got they've
Speaker 8: got three choices. Ruben Moore was charged with first degreed murder,
Speaker 8: but they've got the option of returning a verdict for
Speaker 8: first degree murder, for second degree murder, or of course
Speaker 8: not guilty verdict. And you know, as with any jury
Speaker 8: trial in the United States, if any one of the
Speaker 8: twelve jurors has you know, any reasonable doubt, any doubt,
Speaker 8: then their obligation is to vote, you know, to vote
Speaker 8: not guilty. So the Senate thing, and I'm sorry, I
Speaker 8: don't have that in front of me. I was just
Speaker 8: just looking for that. So the Senate thing, obviously, would
Speaker 8: you know, would would vary a great deal between second
Speaker 8: degree and first degree murder. The hope of the prosecution
Speaker 8: obviously was that they would arrive at a guilty verdict
Speaker 8: on first degree murder. For the book, I interviewed two
Speaker 8: of the jurors that I spoke to. Their names, you know,
Speaker 8: were on the public record in the case file, and
Speaker 8: they went and began their deliberations and a formal vote
Speaker 8: wasn't taken, but they kind of went around the table
Speaker 8: and two of them expressed that, you know, they might
Speaker 8: have a hard time voting guilty, that they still had
Speaker 8: a reasonable doubt. At that point, they went through the evidence,
Speaker 8: you know, item by item, you know, and just went
Speaker 8: over a little closer according to jury. For me. You know,
Speaker 8: there really wasn't any attempt on anyone in the jury
Speaker 8: to persuade other jurors, but one a vote was finally taken.
Speaker 8: You know, it was a unanimous decision, and he was
Speaker 8: found guilty of second degree murder. The jury recommended forty
Speaker 8: years center and in Virginia, the judge has the option
Speaker 8: of either officially pronouncing that sentence that the jury recommends,
Speaker 8: or with with if there's extenuating circumstances, he can do
Speaker 8: a you know, either more severe or more lenient sentence.
Speaker 8: And the judge went along with the jury, as most
Speaker 8: judges in Virginia typically do, and Sinnens would have been
Speaker 8: more to forty years in prison.
Speaker 9: Yeah, what was his visible reaction.
Speaker 8: His reaction, you know, according to people that were in
Speaker 8: the courtroom was just, you know nothing. He had had
Speaker 8: no expression that you know, no expression at all. And
Speaker 8: you know that seems to be the kind of person
Speaker 8: he was, you know, as a as a sociopath or psychopath.
Speaker 9: Anita Purcell was crucial to this entire case, to this
Speaker 9: story and to this trial. At one point she did
Speaker 9: not want with Mayor's detective Mayor's influence. She didn't want
Speaker 9: to she changed her mind a couple times. She didn't
Speaker 9: want to participate for various reasons, but then Olivia's brother
Speaker 9: sent her a letter. At the end of this trial,
Speaker 9: she was had something that Thomas had sent in that
Speaker 9: letter along with him trying to convince her to participate
Speaker 9: in the investigation and testify. What was that? What was Anita?
Speaker 9: What did she have with her that day of Olivia's.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was one of the great stories that came
Speaker 8: out of this. When when Detective Mayor first met with Anita,
Speaker 8: you know, her initial reaction was, you know, I'll help you,
Speaker 8: you know, together we'll find him. And then understandably she
Speaker 8: got cold seat. You know, she thought about everything she
Speaker 8: went back, went through back when she was sixteen, how
Speaker 8: she tried to help. But you know, it kind of
Speaker 8: blew up in her face and you know just how
Speaker 8: emotionally how tough that was, and how it had affected
Speaker 8: her whole life. So she told Detective Mayor, you know, hey, hey,
Speaker 8: you know, I just can't go through all this again.
Speaker 8: You have no idea what I went through back then,
Speaker 8: you know, I'm sorry. So Detective Mayor goes to Olivia
Speaker 8: Christian's brother, who's her his name is Thomas Christian. He's
Speaker 8: her only Olivia's only surviving relative. Her brother still lives
Speaker 8: in the parents' old house. It happens that he has
Speaker 8: Parkinson's disease and he's in the late stages under the
Speaker 8: care of a full time nurse and Olivia's brother. Thomas
Speaker 8: writes a letter to Anita says, hey, you know, I
Speaker 8: understand what you went through back then, but if you
Speaker 8: can find it in your heart to help out with
Speaker 8: the investigation, you know, we'd appreciate it. He says, both
Speaker 8: my parents died without knowing you know, who killed a lived,
Speaker 8: and I've got a terminal condition and I'm going to
Speaker 8: die without knowing you know, if you could please find
Speaker 8: it in your heart to help, please let us know.
Speaker 8: He writes this letter, and he puts it in an envelope,
Speaker 8: and he also puts an item in that envelope with
Speaker 8: the letter, hands it to Detective Mayor. Detective Mayor you know,
Speaker 8: reads them. He's seeing the letter, but he has no
Speaker 8: idea what the item she gave him was. So then
Speaker 8: Detective Mayor and again this in the early stage of
Speaker 8: the investigation, gives the letter to Anita. Anita reads the letter,
Speaker 8: does more soul searching, and you know that's the point
Speaker 8: when she agrees to help out and cooperate with, you know,
Speaker 8: with finding the suspect. So then you fast forward seven
Speaker 8: years and during the trial, during your testimony, Anita had
Speaker 8: something in her hands. She you know, she was clutching something.
Speaker 8: From distance, he could quite see what it was. So
Speaker 8: at the end of the trial, you know when they're
Speaker 8: very emotionally, you know, celebrating and I use the term
Speaker 8: celebrating hesitantly. You know, they're very relieved at the verdict. Yeah,
Speaker 8: Phil Figure, the prosecutor says, to a need of the witness,
Speaker 8: he says, by the way, you need it, you know
Speaker 8: what's that you have in your hand? I saw you
Speaker 8: had it on the witness stand and she shows him
Speaker 8: and it was a crucifix, a gold cross that that
Speaker 8: used to belong to Olivia that her brother had given
Speaker 8: a need. Yeah, So it was a really you know,
Speaker 8: a really really moving part of the trial, I guess
Speaker 8: for Phil Figure, and you know, just a really really
Speaker 8: moving part of the story.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, I want to talk thank you Ron Peterson Jr.
Speaker 9: For coming on and talking about Eyes of a Monster.
Speaker 9: For those that might want to take a look at this.
Speaker 9: You have a tell us about your website and uh
Speaker 9: and also we haven't spoken to you since last time
Speaker 9: Under the Trestle in twenty nineteen year last book. Just
Speaker 9: tell us where they might be able to take a
Speaker 9: look at other work.
Speaker 8: Well, thanks very much. Yeah, this book Isa a Monster.
Speaker 8: Probably the best place these days is Amazon. It has
Speaker 8: been a true crime bestseller on Amazon and against Isa
Speaker 8: a Monster by Ron Peterson Jr. I've also written two
Speaker 8: other books over the last three years. The first one
Speaker 8: was about another murder case in Virginia called Under the Trestle.
Speaker 8: The second one is another true crime book called Chasing
Speaker 8: the Squirrel. And my niche I guess, as it were
Speaker 8: as a writer, is true crime stories from the state
Speaker 8: of Virginia. But you know, they're certainly interesting to people
Speaker 8: all over the country or all over the world, and
Speaker 8: you know, it's typically what I write about. I've got
Speaker 8: a couple other books in the pipeline. I'm writing about
Speaker 8: other crime cases in Virginia. My author website is Ron
Speaker 8: Peterson Junior dot com. And the book's available you know
Speaker 8: wherever you buy books either you know, Barnesanmoble dot com.
Speaker 8: It is on the shelves and a lot of Barnes
Speaker 8: and Nobles, and also any of the online booksellers in
Speaker 8: addition to Amazon. But thanks for asking Dan.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much, Ron Peterson Junior. This has been fascinating.
Speaker 9: Eyes of a Monster. Thank you so much. You have
Speaker 9: a great evening.
Speaker 8: Good night, Well, thank you, Dan, I appreciate it.
Speaker 9: Good night, good night.
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