Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathway Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley. Let's dive right
Speaker 2: into this week's case.
Speaker 3: February twenty sixth, nineteen eighty, Berkeley, California. Fifty one year
Speaker 3: old Al Mills, his forty year old wife, Jeannie, and
Speaker 3: Jeannie's sixteen year old daughter, Dapien are all shot to
Speaker 3: death execution style inside their home. Jeanie's seventeen year old son, Eddie,
Speaker 3: is left unharmed inside his bedroom, claims he didn't hear
Speaker 3: the murders take place. Since the family is defected from
Speaker 3: Jim Jones's call the People's Temple and become outspoken advocates
Speaker 3: against them, there is speculation that surviving members of the
Speaker 3: cult orchestrated their assassination. However, investigators suspect Eddie of being
Speaker 3: the perpetrator, and while they make a failed attempt to
Speaker 3: charge him with the crime, twenty five years later, the
Speaker 3: Mills family murders are never solved.
Speaker 1: After that, the path went Chiley. So today we're going
Speaker 1: to be covering a case in which three people were
Speaker 1: killed inside their home, the nineteen eighty murders of the
Speaker 1: Mills family. This story involves the fatal shootings of a
Speaker 1: couple and their teenage daughter. But what's truly unique about
Speaker 1: this crime is that it can all be considered an
Speaker 1: epilogue to one of the most infamous tragedies of all time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure pretty much all of you are familiar with
Speaker 1: the notorious reverend Jim Jones, who launched a religious movement
Speaker 1: slash calt called the People's Temple and went down in
Speaker 1: infamy after orchestrating a mass murders suicide involving himself and
Speaker 1: over nine hundred of his followers at his Jonestown settlement
Speaker 1: in Guyana. Well years before that, a couple named Al
Speaker 1: and Jenie Mills were high ranking members of the People's Temple,
Speaker 1: but they eventually grew very disturbed about Jones's cruel tactics
Speaker 1: and decided to defect from the group alongside their children.
Speaker 1: They soon became very outspoken opponents of Jones and his cult,
Speaker 1: publicly exposing their human rights abuses and launching a support
Speaker 1: group for other defectors from the organization. Naturally, this put
Speaker 1: them right at the top of Jones's enemies list, so
Speaker 1: an Al, Genie and Genie's sixteen year old daughter were
Speaker 1: all shot to death inside their house fifteen months after
Speaker 1: the Jonestown massacre took place. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: speculation that they were killed by a vengeful hit squad
Speaker 1: consisting of loyal surviving members of the People's Temple. However,
Speaker 1: the big complication is that Genie's seventeen year old son, Eddie,
Speaker 1: was inside his bedroom when the murders took place and
Speaker 1: left unharmed, and he always maintained that he never heard
Speaker 1: a thing. The authorities found enough suspicious discrepancies to make
Speaker 1: them believe that Eddie murdered his mother, stepfather, and sister himself,
Speaker 1: but they lacked the evidence to build a successful case
Speaker 1: against him. Opinions are still sharply divided about whether the
Speaker 1: Mills family were murdered by intruders or if Eddie was
Speaker 1: the real perpetrator. So we're going to explore both sides
Speaker 1: on this series of episodes.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, as soon as you started describing this murder,
Speaker 2: I immediately thought of Donnie Henson and the case where
Speaker 2: he survived the death of his two sisters, and they
Speaker 2: eventually you really were convinced that he had done the killing.
Speaker 2: His parents had survived, and so as soon as you
Speaker 2: described it, I almost thought we were talking about the
Speaker 2: same case, because you have a family who's killed, the
Speaker 2: teen son survives and supposedly doesn't even witness or understand
Speaker 2: anything that's happening in this scene. So an incredibly eerie
Speaker 2: similarity to that case. And then when you tie in
Speaker 2: the People's Temple, well, that is one of the most
Speaker 2: tragic and heartbreaking cult cases I've ever researched. I used
Speaker 2: to teach a cult class, and I used to expose
Speaker 2: students to group think and different kinds of psychological tactics
Speaker 2: that we use and we see even in corporations and
Speaker 2: things like that. But People's Temple takes the cake for
Speaker 2: me because of how incredibly significant that end tragedy was,
Speaker 2: where I call it a mass murder, that even the
Speaker 2: people who thought they were willingly taking their lives had
Speaker 2: been so brainwashed. Is that truly a suicide? But it's
Speaker 2: interesting to me because there is an idea of this
Speaker 2: was a violent group. When they were pushed to extremes,
Speaker 2: when they thought that their group was in danger, they
Speaker 2: had this incredibly violent reaction where they're shooting the congressmen
Speaker 2: when they are attacking his team and then they start
Speaker 2: to actually execute and kill all the members of the
Speaker 2: People's Simple in Guyana. But I don't know that I
Speaker 2: would see people fifteen months later actually go after people
Speaker 2: who had stood up against that group. I almost feel
Speaker 2: like that was such a shocking moment. Would people remember
Speaker 2: there weren't many survivors that actually were in Guyana. There
Speaker 2: were I think about eighty that survived, or it might
Speaker 2: have been even less than that because they happened to
Speaker 2: be away for the day. But I don't know that
Speaker 2: there would have been many people who truly said everything
Speaker 2: that happened is okay when that was the end result,
Speaker 2: even if they loved Jim Jones, even if they believed
Speaker 2: in the mission. I think that an event rocked people
Speaker 2: that had stayed in the United States and still subscribed
Speaker 2: to his mission. So I want to hear more about
Speaker 2: this surviving sun and what happened there, because again, it's
Speaker 2: reminding me more of another case where we watched a
Speaker 2: son basically get away with murdering his two sisters.
Speaker 1: If I recall correctly, yes that is true, because Donnie
Speaker 1: Hansen did go on trial, but he was found not guilty,
Speaker 1: so technically that case is still unsolved, even though the
Speaker 1: consensus is that Donnie did it and may have had
Speaker 1: accomplices as well. The key differences between the two cases
Speaker 1: is that in the handsome case, the home was set
Speaker 1: on fire, so there was chaos going around while he
Speaker 1: was killing his sisters. But here Eddie was the surviving
Speaker 1: teenage son was just sitting in his bedroom and apparently
Speaker 1: his mother's, stepfather and sister were all killed right down
Speaker 1: the hall from him, and he didn't even notice, which
Speaker 1: some people found unbelievable. But at the same time, they
Speaker 1: were unable to turn up much of a motive for
Speaker 1: Eddie to have done this, and there was really not
Speaker 1: much in the way of evidence. So it makes you
Speaker 1: wonder if it wasn't Eddie, if it wasn't surviving members
Speaker 1: of the People's Temple, then who actually could have done this.
Speaker 3: Our story begins in Berkeley, California, in nineteen eighty Two.
Speaker 3: Of our central figures are fifty one year old Al
Speaker 3: Mills and his forty year old wife, Jeanie Mills, who
Speaker 3: are currently living in a suburban cottage, alongside Genie's two
Speaker 3: children from a previous marriage, Seventeen year old Eddie and
Speaker 3: sixteen year old dayphen. At around nine twenty pm on
Speaker 3: the evening of February twenty sixth, Al's mother, who lived
Speaker 3: in a nearby rest home, arrived at the Millses Cottage
Speaker 3: for a visit, but made a horrific discovery when she
Speaker 3: entered the main bedroom and came across the bodies of Al, Jeannie,
Speaker 3: and Daphene. After she let out a scream, Eddie suddenly
Speaker 3: emerged from his bedroom across the hall and joined his grandmother,
Speaker 3: so the Berkeley Police Department were immediately contacted and summoned
Speaker 3: to the scene. It turned out that all three victims
Speaker 3: had been the victim of an execution style shooting with
Speaker 3: a twenty two caliber weapon. Al was lying face down
Speaker 3: on the bedroom floor and had been shot through the
Speaker 3: back of the head. Jeanie was lying dead on the
Speaker 3: floor in the adjacent bathroom and was also shot in
Speaker 3: the back of the head. Daphene was lying on top
Speaker 3: of the bed with two gunshots to her right temple,
Speaker 3: but she was still alive and was rushed to the hospital.
Speaker 3: She remained in critical condition for the next two days,
Speaker 3: but had suffered such extensive brain damage that she was
Speaker 3: neurologically dead and had zero hope of recovery. Daphene was
Speaker 3: kept alive long enough so that one of her kidneys
Speaker 3: could be used for a transplant before she was taken
Speaker 3: off life support. Eddie claimed that after taking a long shower,
Speaker 3: he had gone inside his bedroom to smoke some marijuana
Speaker 3: and watch television, but maintained that he did not hear
Speaker 3: any gunshots and had no idea a crime had even
Speaker 3: taken place until he heard his grandmother screaming. When the
Speaker 3: Mills's neighbors and other local residents were interviewed by police,
Speaker 3: they also claimed that they did not hear gunshots or
Speaker 3: anything unusual. Two family friends had visited the residents at
Speaker 3: around five pm and said everything seemed normal with the
Speaker 3: Millses and that the atmosphere was friendly. There were no
Speaker 3: signs of forced entry or any struggle at the cottage,
Speaker 3: but one neighbors said that was not uncommon for the
Speaker 3: Millses to leave their front door unlocked so that their
Speaker 3: children's friends could enter and exit the house with these
Speaker 3: If nothing appeared to have been stolen from the residence,
Speaker 3: robbery was ruled out as a possible motive for the murders,
Speaker 3: but rumors immediately started circulating that the crime may have
Speaker 3: been a professional hit, since the Mills family had an
Speaker 3: extraordinary backstory.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's take a peek at at Eddie. Eddie.
Speaker 2: Obviously there were friends that had visited the residents around
Speaker 2: five pm. The bodies are found at nine twenty, and
Speaker 2: basically Grandma has to run in and wake Eddie and say, hey,
Speaker 2: by the way, your whole family has been slain, and
Speaker 2: he says, I had no idea. There's a four hour
Speaker 2: and twenty minute gap there. Do we know when the
Speaker 2: examinations were done on the bodies, about how long police
Speaker 2: believed that they had been in that condition before they
Speaker 2: were discovered by the grandmother.
Speaker 1: It has never really been revealed the exact time of death.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they tried to make an estimate,
Speaker 1: but it's never been released publicly, so I technically don't
Speaker 1: know how long they were dead by the time before
Speaker 1: the were discovered. And I always think if Eddie was
Speaker 1: in the shower, then maybe he did not hear the gunshots.
Speaker 1: But you're also thinking, well that her intruders wouldn't They've
Speaker 1: got into the shower and heard it and killed Eddie
Speaker 1: as well. So there are certain reasons like maybe he
Speaker 1: was listening to music with headphones on, where you think
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have been able to hear the gunshots.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he was just so close
Speaker 1: across the hall that you can understand why the police
Speaker 1: became suspicious of him immediately. Oh.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the fact that he was stoned could definitely be
Speaker 3: a contributing factor if somebody is just so out of it,
Speaker 3: and the fact that the neighbors didn't hear it. Is
Speaker 3: it possible that if somebody came in, they could have
Speaker 3: used a silencer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well, because nobody reported
Speaker 1: hearing gunshots, that if this was a professional hit, they
Speaker 1: could used silencers. And maybe they just would have been
Speaker 1: quiet enough that if Eddie was stoned or he was
Speaker 1: listening to music, that he just honestly did not hear
Speaker 1: the gunshots.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Do we know if there was any kind of
Speaker 2: insurance policy set up where he would have been the
Speaker 2: sole beneficiary if his sister and his parents had passed away.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily an insurance policy, but he was set to inherit.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about this later. Part of a sizeable estate,
Speaker 1: and because Al had other children from his previous marriage,
Speaker 1: he would have to divide it with them, but Eddie
Speaker 1: would technically get like the largest percentage because he was
Speaker 1: the only surviving member from Genie side of the family.
Speaker 1: So before they were known as al and Jeannie Mills,
Speaker 1: the couple used to go by their birth names Elmer
Speaker 1: and Deanna Myrtle. Before they even met, Almer and Deanna
Speaker 1: had already both been married to other people and had
Speaker 1: a total of five children between them. Deanna had Eddie
Speaker 1: and day Feene, while Elmer had three children named Steve, Linda,
Speaker 1: and Diana. They officially got married to each other in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, but within a year, Elmer had quit
Speaker 1: his job at Standard Oil so that he and Deana
Speaker 1: and their five children could join the People's Temple, a
Speaker 1: new religious movement founded by the Reverend Jim Jones, which
Speaker 1: was situated at Californi, Orny's Redwood Valley at that time.
Speaker 1: As most of you probably know, it would turn out
Speaker 1: that the People's Temple functioned like a cult as its
Speaker 1: members were brainwashed by Reverend Jones, who forced them to
Speaker 1: turn over all of their property, possessions, and assets and
Speaker 1: swear their undying loyalty to him. According to Deanna. When
Speaker 1: Eddie was only eight years old, she believed that he
Speaker 1: had developed in a regular heartbeat. While Eddie was never
Speaker 1: diagnosed by a doctor, Jones performed telepathy on him and
Speaker 1: convinced Diana that he had miraculously cured his condition, which
Speaker 1: played a major role in her family's decision to devote
Speaker 1: their entire lives to Jones and the People's Temple. The
Speaker 1: Murders became key players in the organization, as Genie served
Speaker 1: as head of their publications office, while Elmer functioned as
Speaker 1: the official photographer, and they were both members of the
Speaker 1: group's governing council known as the Planning Commission.
Speaker 2: This makes me so angry. The abuse of religion and
Speaker 2: using spirituality and spiritual healing and things like that as
Speaker 2: a weapon and tool to convince people to follow you
Speaker 2: and to donate their lives to you is so frustrating.
Speaker 2: You know, this was not the first time Jones did
Speaker 2: stuff like that. There's one case where Jones had a
Speaker 2: packed house. I mean, he used to have hundreds upon
Speaker 2: hundreds of mixed race individuals worshiping in his temples and
Speaker 2: in his churches. And Jim Jones performed a quote miracle
Speaker 2: on a woman who could not walk, and she was very,
Speaker 2: very elderly and fragile, and by the end of it,
Speaker 2: she's dancing and running up and down the aisles. He's
Speaker 2: telling her, put one foot in front of the other,
Speaker 2: you can walk. Now you're healed. And it's this crazy
Speaker 2: celebration where almost everyone in attendance is giving their life
Speaker 2: over to Jim Jones, not Jesus Jim. And when that happens,
Speaker 2: come to find out that was a secretary who was
Speaker 2: very able bodied and she was faking right, acting that
Speaker 2: she had been healed. But by convincing somebody that their
Speaker 2: child had been medically healed, I mean no wonder. They
Speaker 2: gave everything to that organization, to that church. They felt
Speaker 2: he was led by the Holy Spirit. He's being this
Speaker 2: man who's been blessed with the ability to perform miracles
Speaker 2: via their faith. And so it makes me so mad,
Speaker 2: But I don't blame them. I think that was a
Speaker 2: tactic he used because he knew it worked. And you
Speaker 2: had this very successful couple who ends up quitting and
Speaker 2: using all their resources and talents to further the people's temple.
Speaker 2: And so what a crazy start for this couple. And
Speaker 2: now it's interesting they change their name and we're trying
Speaker 2: to live a life basically devoid of that history they had.
Speaker 3: It totally reminds me of Rasputen and like the influence
Speaker 3: that he had over the Romanovs when he was treating
Speaker 3: their son Alexei. He was able to have these people
Speaker 3: like devote everything to him. It was so intense, and
Speaker 3: I think Jim Jones had a similar magnetism where he
Speaker 3: was able to convince people of almost anything, and he
Speaker 3: could sell himself. He could be what they needed him
Speaker 3: to be in that moment, and that was such a
Speaker 3: powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're going to talk more about this later.
Speaker 1: But the Joneses would become friends with one person who
Speaker 1: said that I became convinced that Jones was the real
Speaker 1: deal because I saw him perform this miracle on a
Speaker 1: woman who was in a wheelchair and she just suddenly
Speaker 1: got up and walked. And of course it turned out
Speaker 1: that was a complete fraud. It was only used to
Speaker 1: learn new members in because they believed he could perform miracles.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty much the same thing they did with
Speaker 1: the Mills family, where they thought that he cured Eddie's
Speaker 1: heart ailments even though he did nothing.
Speaker 3: However, as the years went on, the Myrtles gradually became
Speaker 3: disillusioned with the People's Temple, particularly after witnessing Jones perform
Speaker 3: numerous acts of cruelty, such as frequent beatings of his followers,
Speaker 3: including the children. The breaking point occurred in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: four when the Myrtles witnessed Jones used a two foot
Speaker 3: long paddle to spank Elmer's daughter, Linda, who was sixteen
Speaker 3: at the time. According to Jones, Linda had embraced a
Speaker 3: friend of hers, whom he considered to be a trader,
Speaker 3: and spanked her with a paddle seventy five times as punishment.
Speaker 3: After spending the next year working up the courage to leave,
Speaker 3: the Myrtles finally decided to defect from the People's Temple
Speaker 3: with their children. When they originally joined the group, Elmer
Speaker 3: and Diana were forced to turn all of their properties
Speaker 3: over to Jones and grant him full power of attorney
Speaker 3: over them. To prove their loyalty, Jones also demanded that
Speaker 3: his members signed false confessions to committing to such horrific
Speaker 3: crimes as molesting their own children, which he could use
Speaker 3: against them if they ever decided to leave in order
Speaker 3: to avoid all the powers Jones had over them. Elmer
Speaker 3: and Diana Myrtle officially changed their names to Al and
Speaker 3: Jeannie Mills.
Speaker 2: I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine. You've given your life
Speaker 2: and your finances, and your belongings and your time and
Speaker 2: your family over to this church family, and then you
Speaker 2: start to see behind the curtains when it almost feels
Speaker 2: like it's too late, when everyone is trained not to
Speaker 2: speak of troubling issues, when they're all trained to look
Speaker 2: the other way or report when people are talking negatively
Speaker 2: about the group. So in many ways, they probably felt
Speaker 2: very stuck when they started to see these kind of
Speaker 2: the facade fall down. And yet, just like groups like
Speaker 2: scientology and those other types of organizations that we see
Speaker 2: functioning that are able to keep their members so much
Speaker 2: in their palm right and in control of their lives
Speaker 2: because they use things like blackmail and confessions and these
Speaker 2: kinds of things where they're asking you to in this case,
Speaker 2: actually lie about things that you've done, and in other
Speaker 2: groups they convince you you've done these horrible things, and
Speaker 2: if you leave, it's held over your head. And so
Speaker 2: I'm incredibly impressed because I know it took nothing short
Speaker 2: of true trust in one another to leave that organization
Speaker 2: and trust that they were going to be okay, because
Speaker 2: the fear and the psychological damage and the spiritual warfare
Speaker 2: being used against them couldn't have been anything other than
Speaker 2: absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 1: So, after the Mills family moved to Berkeley, Alan Jini
Speaker 1: became outspoken opponents of the People's Temple and wanted to
Speaker 1: help others who followed their example and defected from the cult.
Speaker 1: The couple established the Human Freedom Center, a halfway house
Speaker 1: which functioned as a sanctuary for defectors and refugees from
Speaker 1: the cult when nowhere else to go. The Mills has
Speaker 1: also worked alongside another defector named Timothy Stowen, a former
Speaker 1: People's Temple attorney who had once served as Jones's right
Speaker 1: hand man, and together they formed their own organization called
Speaker 1: the Concerned Relatives of People's Temple Members. It served as
Speaker 1: a support group for defectors and their families and sought
Speaker 1: to deprogram them and help them readjust to normal society again.
Speaker 1: In July nineteen seventy seven, New West Magazine published an
Speaker 1: expose about Jones and his organization, titled Inside People's Temple,
Speaker 1: in which the Millses and other former members exposed the
Speaker 1: cruelty and human rights abuses which took place there. They
Speaker 1: continued to exert pressure on the media and the government
Speaker 1: to take action against Jones and his group. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: Jones was outraged by the Mills' actions and would reportedly
Speaker 1: deliver angry rants to his followers in which he referred
Speaker 1: to the Mills as traders and vowed to get revenge
Speaker 1: on them. During this time period, the Millses claimed that
Speaker 1: they received a number of threatening phone calls and found
Speaker 1: threatening notes on their doorstep. At one point, a bomb
Speaker 1: went off at the bank where the Millses kept a
Speaker 1: safety deposit box, and they soon found a note on
Speaker 1: their front porch in which the People's Temple took credit
Speaker 1: for the bombing. On one occasion, Al's daughter Diana, reported
Speaker 1: seeing eight or nine armed men in the yard of
Speaker 1: her home.
Speaker 2: This is so sad, So this is this group of
Speaker 2: the concerned relatives of the People's Temple. They were people
Speaker 2: who were saying, look with my loved ones. Have been
Speaker 2: convinced that anyone who's not part of the People's Temple
Speaker 2: is evil. That there's some kind of danger to them
Speaker 2: if they're interacting with the general public, if they are
Speaker 2: speaking to people who are not in the group, if
Speaker 2: they support any of these quote traders, And so when
Speaker 2: you have that kind of tension and struggle where they're
Speaker 2: saying this is no longer optional. For my family members
Speaker 2: who are there, I feel like they're stuck, that they
Speaker 2: can't get out. And you have people like the Millses
Speaker 2: who are sharing experiences where there's a reason we almost
Speaker 2: couldn't leave as well. We know that we're not the
Speaker 2: only ones who experienced these things. We saw it, and
Speaker 2: so it's not just people who are concerned, it's people
Speaker 2: who know legitimate dangers operating inside this group. And it's
Speaker 2: it's the reason why this group is the reason why
Speaker 2: the big threat quote unquote to Jonestown down in Guyana
Speaker 2: started in the first place, is because this is where
Speaker 2: Congressman Ryan's going to fly down to investigate and try
Speaker 2: to give peace to these family members and show is
Speaker 2: there a danger or are these people happy? Are they
Speaker 2: choosing to be there? And you guys know it goes
Speaker 2: at first this kind of angelic experience for the congressman
Speaker 2: and very quickly, he starts to realize maybe there are
Speaker 2: people who want to leave and can't.
Speaker 1: The concerned relatives of People's Temple members eventually helped convince
Speaker 1: Leo Ryan, a Democratic Congressman from sam Matteo, to perform
Speaker 1: an investigation into the organization and their practices. By this point,
Speaker 1: Jones had already established the People's Temple Agricultural Project aka Jonestown,
Speaker 1: our most settlement in the Jungles of Guyana, which was
Speaker 1: the primary base of operations for Jones and his followers.
Speaker 1: Ryan and his delegation, which included his staff, some media representatives,
Speaker 1: and several relatives of People's Temple members, decided to travel
Speaker 1: to Jonestown on a fact finding mission, but a devastating
Speaker 1: tragedy would soon take place. On November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: after Congressman Ryan and his entourage paid a visit to Jonestown,
Speaker 1: they left the settlement with a group of People's Temple
Speaker 1: members who expressed their desire to defect, and traveled to
Speaker 1: an airstrip in Port Kaituma in order to board a
Speaker 1: pair of transport planes to leave. It wasn't long before
Speaker 1: some People's Temple gunmen opened fire on the group, killing
Speaker 1: five people, including Ryan, and wounding nine others, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it wasn't long before Jones orchestrated a mass murder suicide
Speaker 1: at Jonestown, in which his followers were forced to drink
Speaker 1: flavor aid laced with potassium cyanide. Four followers died the
Speaker 1: People's Temple headquarters in Guyana's capital city of Georgetown, while
Speaker 1: nine hundred and nine of them died at Jonestown, and
Speaker 1: the whole incident would become known as the Jonestown massacre.
Speaker 1: Jones elected to end his own life by shooting himself
Speaker 1: in the head, but before he did so, he recorded
Speaker 1: a final forty four minute piece of audio, which became
Speaker 1: known as the Death Tape. At one point, he specifically
Speaker 1: made mention of Deanna Myrtle, who was known as Genie
Speaker 1: Mills by this point, blaming her and Timothy Stowin for
Speaker 1: causing the whole situation. He seemed to imply that surviving
Speaker 1: members of the People's Temple from their former headquarters in
Speaker 1: San Francisco would get revenge, stating quote, the people in
Speaker 1: San Francisco will not be idle. They'll not take our
Speaker 1: death in vain, you know. End quote.
Speaker 2: So in this moment when there when Jim Jones is
Speaker 2: melting down, there had actually been a plan, right they
Speaker 2: went to Guyana because they had already felt the political
Speaker 2: pressure and he had convinced everyone that this was going
Speaker 2: to be a place where they could have refuge and
Speaker 2: they didn't have the American government kind of breathing down
Speaker 2: their neck in the United States. And then you know,
Speaker 2: he gets down there and it's supposed to be heaven
Speaker 2: on Earth, but people who lived there said every time
Speaker 2: he came in it was like this dark cloud and
Speaker 2: almost like a storm was coming every time he came
Speaker 2: into town, because it was getting worse and worse with
Speaker 2: his paranoia, his drug use, those kinds of things. And
Speaker 2: so when this massacre occurs, there is this sense of
Speaker 2: this congressman came, people are leaving. Now we're going to
Speaker 2: be exposed, and that kind of meltdown occurs and people
Speaker 2: are begging him, let's not do this. You promised we
Speaker 2: could move to Russia, that we could take our church
Speaker 2: to Russia and then no United States oversight would be there,
Speaker 2: and he's saying it's too late, right, We're going to
Speaker 2: have to go ahead and take care of our elderly
Speaker 2: and our kids and kill them. And the fact that
Speaker 2: he literally blames Deanna known as Jeanie Mills now and
Speaker 2: then another individual who's also helping lead up this family
Speaker 2: organization back in the United States is so scary. But again,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, by the time all this breaks and it
Speaker 2: starts to get dissected, how many people do you think
Speaker 2: still existed in the US that said that all was
Speaker 2: something to be avenge? Like, I know, there's still people
Speaker 2: that would be radically influenced by Jonestown, but without their leader.
Speaker 2: And by seeing this horrific nine hundred and nine people
Speaker 2: which is laying dead covering the ground where you can't
Speaker 2: even see the ground from the aerial pictures, do you
Speaker 2: think that people were really there to quote get revenge
Speaker 2: or do you think that for most people would have
Speaker 2: sparked this. This is wrong. Something went dramatically wrong from
Speaker 2: what we had been promised.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll talk more about this later, but during this
Speaker 1: time period, there were always urban legends about people's temple
Speaker 1: hit squads, about how these surviving members of the cults
Speaker 1: were going to go and wipe out all the Jones's
Speaker 1: enemies and it would essentially be a suicide mission for
Speaker 1: them because they had nothing else to live for since
Speaker 1: the great Leader was now dead. But they were never
Speaker 1: able to find any real documented proof that these hit
Speaker 1: squads existed, Like even though the Mills family did get
Speaker 1: murdered sixteen months after the Jonestown massacre, they never found
Speaker 1: any other documented cases where people's temple survivors decided to
Speaker 1: get revenge on people who defected from the cult and
Speaker 1: try to get rid of Jim Jones's enemies.
Speaker 2: And I think if he had been alive, that would
Speaker 2: have been more probable, you know, like if he had
Speaker 2: been able to continue the mission, then there's something to
Speaker 2: kill for. By the time sixteen months rolls around after
Speaker 2: this massacre, I wonder how much is left to defend.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean, you do see these tactics, like
Speaker 2: you know, if you watch things about scientology and people
Speaker 2: who speak out against scientology, please don't come after me,
Speaker 2: but if you see people who speak out about organizations
Speaker 2: like that, you do see harassment and bullying and those
Speaker 2: kinds of things too. You know, lawsuits where people can't
Speaker 2: afford to defend themselves and so they end up, you know,
Speaker 2: having to settle or take all their finances and invest
Speaker 2: in defending themselves against Scientology, and so I wouldn't be shocked.
Speaker 2: But without their leader there, I wonder what it looked
Speaker 2: a little bit different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Scientology when l Ron Hubbard stepped out of
Speaker 3: the way, they had David Missgavige, who I think brought
Speaker 3: Scientology to a whole new audience and it seemed to
Speaker 3: just grow exponentially. So it looks a little bit different there.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to Jim Jones, he didn't have
Speaker 3: a successor, and basically all of the followers were gone.
Speaker 3: So it's just you're right, it's an entirely It just
Speaker 3: seems like a strange scenario that people would just be
Speaker 3: so fervent in their.
Speaker 4: Beliefs still after all of those deaths, that.
Speaker 3: They would go and try to exact revenge.
Speaker 1: So, needless to say, Once worried about what happened in
Speaker 1: Jonestown reached Berkeley, the Mills family, along with other former
Speaker 1: members of the People's Temple and their families, were placed
Speaker 1: under police protection for a while. There was fear of
Speaker 1: potential retribution from Jones's most loyal People's Temple survivors, and
Speaker 1: there were rumors that a hit list have been circulated
Speaker 1: among the organizations remaining followers with instructions to kill as
Speaker 1: many people on the list as possible. The FBI and
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Police Department would perform an intelligence detail
Speaker 1: to look into the possible existence of People's Temple hit squads,
Speaker 1: but never found any evidence to corroborate these rumors and
Speaker 1: ultimately came to the conclusion that the so called hit
Speaker 1: squads did not actually exist and were nothing more than
Speaker 1: an urban legend. In nineteen seventy nine, Genie published a
Speaker 1: memoir about her experiences titled Six Years with God, Life
Speaker 1: inside Jim Jones's People's Temple. Both her and al would
Speaker 1: tour the lecture circuit in order to share their story.
Speaker 1: He continue their work assisting People's Temple defectors, but by
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighty Genie seemed ready to move on with
Speaker 1: her life, and only a few weeks before her death,
Speaker 1: she made this statement before a gathering of students. Quote,
Speaker 1: I pretty much put all that behind me now. I'm
Speaker 1: tired of being an ex member of the People's Temple.
Speaker 1: I really want to get on with the business of living.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of respect for that there's so
Speaker 2: much abuse and trauma that she's dealing with, not just
Speaker 2: for herself, but for her whole family. There had to
Speaker 2: be a mense guilt. I subjected my children's to children
Speaker 2: to this organize. I probably told on people in the
Speaker 2: organization and got them in trouble. I helped foster and
Speaker 2: grow this organization, and it's one that caused nothing but
Speaker 2: hurt and trauma and at the end, catastrophe and the
Speaker 2: loss of almost a thousand people. So that weight and
Speaker 2: having to be known as a survivor of People's temple,
Speaker 2: and that being her identity, that's not all that she is.
Speaker 2: She had been a huge warrior for her family. She
Speaker 2: had skills that she wanted to turn into a career.
Speaker 2: She had a family she wanted to raise. So I
Speaker 2: can totally see her saying, hey, this was a wonderful
Speaker 2: chapter of my life getting to help people and to
Speaker 2: kind of break away from this organization. But I need
Speaker 2: peace away from this to heal so that I can
Speaker 2: be just Genie and not the former cult member.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: She wanted to be more than that, And then the
Speaker 2: fact that she lost her life shortly after that is
Speaker 2: so sad.
Speaker 1: That is sad because I've always wondered what kind of
Speaker 1: life they would have lived if they had not been murdered.
Speaker 1: Would they have just gone on and experienced a happy retirement.
Speaker 1: I know this was like a time period when Eddie
Speaker 1: and Daphene were getting old enough where they could they
Speaker 1: could attend college or university if they wanted to, and
Speaker 1: move into adulthood. And I think because they had such
Speaker 1: a traumatic childhood, I think Alan Jeanie probably wanted to
Speaker 1: devote more time to their children to make sure that
Speaker 1: they could become well rounded adults and put the whole
Speaker 1: People's Temple behind them. But unfortunately they just never got
Speaker 1: that opportunity.
Speaker 3: Of course, once Al Jeanie and day Fene were shot
Speaker 3: to death, rumors started circulating again about them being the
Speaker 3: victims of an assassination from a People's Temple hit squad.
Speaker 3: By this point, Al's children from his previous marriage were
Speaker 3: no longer living at the family's residence in Berkeley, but
Speaker 3: around nine point thirty PM on the night of the murders,
Speaker 3: his daughter Linda claimed that she received an odd phone
Speaker 3: call at her home from an anonymous female who told
Speaker 3: her a quote, Alan Jeanie are dead. If I were
Speaker 3: you I would the door. There would also be an
Speaker 3: eyewitness account from an eighteen year old former boyfriend of
Speaker 3: Daphine's who said that he was walking past the Mill's
Speaker 3: residence sometime between eight forty five and nine p m.
Speaker 3: And saw three young men exiting the home. They then
Speaker 3: climbed into a Pontiac grand Am being driven by a
Speaker 3: fourth man before they left. Police apparently did not find
Speaker 3: this young man's account to be credible since he had
Speaker 3: a history of run ins with the law, but when
Speaker 3: they gave him a lie detector test, he did wind
Speaker 3: up passing. However, this would turn out to be the
Speaker 3: only sighting of potential intruders at the cottage that night.
Speaker 3: Investigators uncovered an odd piece of evidence when they noticed
Speaker 3: the Millses had attached a tape recorder to a telephone
Speaker 3: answering device, which would automatically record all of their calls.
Speaker 3: They soon found a cassette containing an older phone conversation
Speaker 3: between Dayphene and one of her friends, where Dayphene was
Speaker 3: asked when she was going to get the family's cottage
Speaker 3: and she replied, I guess when I killed my parents. However,
Speaker 3: since day Fene was shot twice in the head, and
Speaker 3: there was no gun found of the scene. Investigators discounted
Speaker 3: the possibility of the crime being a murder suicide.
Speaker 1: How old was Dayphene sixteen?
Speaker 2: Okay, so she's a brat at the time, which I'm
Speaker 2: saying that out of pure love because I'm a mom
Speaker 2: and when you have teenage kids, I think those kinds
Speaker 2: of comments come out of this kind of immaturity and frustration.
Speaker 2: It's like, I hate you, you ruin my life. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna kill them then, you know it's I
Speaker 2: think it's these comments that they don't think through and
Speaker 2: it's a reaction because they don't have the ability to
Speaker 2: express themselves in any other way. So my thought is
Speaker 2: that it's her being an immature child who's expressing anger
Speaker 2: with her parents, because let's say she's grounded, there's incredibly
Speaker 2: strict boundaries on her, especially with what they've been through.
Speaker 2: So I would say her saying, when I kill my parents,
Speaker 2: that's a kid being a rotten child. That's not really
Speaker 2: a child wanting to kill their parents. In most cases, right,
Speaker 2: We've seen cases where you have children who do kill
Speaker 2: their parents, But here, I don't see that. I see
Speaker 2: this being a frustrated teenager who says, hey, yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess when I kill them, I'll get to go out
Speaker 2: of frustration more than reality. But I'm fascinated because in
Speaker 2: the initial description, I really went with my gut. I thought, Hey,
Speaker 2: I've heard this case before. I bet it's Eddie. But
Speaker 2: there's a lot of other things happening here that point
Speaker 2: away from Eddie. Where you have this anonymous girl calling
Speaker 2: another one of the children about ten minutes after the
Speaker 2: bodies are found and says that, hey, they're dead, right Alan,
Speaker 2: Jeanie are dead. If I were you, I'd lock the door.
Speaker 2: That's terrifying. And then you have an eyewitness who passes
Speaker 2: a lie detector test, which has its limitations, but admits
Speaker 2: to seeing multiple people leaving the house, and that puts
Speaker 2: a whole nother like white on this case away from Eddie,
Speaker 2: or at least Eddie could have been an accomplice with
Speaker 2: these these three or four individuals. But this would have
Speaker 2: been about twenty minutes before the family was discovered de ceased,
Speaker 2: so definitely a valid possibility. Here.
Speaker 3: We would be his motivation for lying and to fabricate
Speaker 3: that you would think that obviously he had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with it, so wouldn't he want to get to
Speaker 3: the bottom of what happened to day Feene. But I
Speaker 3: also agree that day Feene was speaking in a way
Speaker 3: that was hyperbolic. I don't think that she actually meant
Speaker 3: that she was going to kill her parents. I think
Speaker 3: the kids don't have fully developed frontal lobes, and I
Speaker 3: think that they often speak so dramatically like that, and
Speaker 3: it's not something that you would go, oh, yes, every
Speaker 3: time you hear that, you need to be worried that
Speaker 3: a child is going to kill their parents.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I think it's just one of those recordings
Speaker 1: which turned out to be an unfortunate coincidence where if
Speaker 1: she had just said it and her parents had not
Speaker 1: been killed for real, then nobody would have paid any
Speaker 1: attention to it, because it was just a teenager mouthing
Speaker 1: off because she was angry with her parents. And since
Speaker 1: actually mentioned the Donnie Hanson case, that was one where
Speaker 1: there were some neighbors who saw a couple of other
Speaker 1: men outside the flaming house when the crime took place,
Speaker 1: and I think that was enough to generate reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: that Donnie wound up being acquitted at trial. And you
Speaker 1: can't rule out the possibility that those men seen outside
Speaker 1: were accomplices. I personally think that's what happened in the
Speaker 1: Hanson case. I mean, I don't necessarily say that these
Speaker 1: men seen outside the Mills residence were Eddie's accomplices, but
Speaker 1: I do think that if Eddie was guilty, it probably
Speaker 1: would have been impossible for him to do it alone
Speaker 1: because the woman who gave the person who gave the
Speaker 1: threatening phone call to Al's daughter Linda around the time
Speaker 1: of the murders, that was a woman, and obviously Eddie
Speaker 1: himself could not have made the call, which makes me
Speaker 1: think that if he was involved, there were other people
Speaker 1: around who had inside knowledge.
Speaker 3: Refresh my memory in the Henson case, was the person
Speaker 3: that was spotted said to be like lurking in the
Speaker 3: driveway and then they ran away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much where they didn't stick around for the
Speaker 1: police and the fire department to arrive. So, and I
Speaker 1: know that one witness thought they saw Donnie yelling get
Speaker 1: out of here at someone when the fire took place,
Speaker 1: which could be assigned if these were his accomplices and
Speaker 1: he was telling them to flee the scene. So by
Speaker 1: this point, most of law enforcement's suspicion was directed towards
Speaker 1: the only surviving member of the household, Eddie, who continued
Speaker 1: to maintain that he had been inside his bedroom when
Speaker 1: his family was murdered and he did not hear a thing.
Speaker 1: Eddie was given a GSR aka gunshot residue test, which
Speaker 1: turned up microscopic traces of gunshot residue on his right hand.
Speaker 1: A criminologist pushed forward the theory that Eddie could have
Speaker 1: washed or wiped his hand after firing a weapon, which
Speaker 1: would explain why there was such a small amount of
Speaker 1: GCR remaining. A Berkeley police spokesman addressed this issue by stating, quote,
Speaker 1: there was some trace of gunpowder on his hands, but
Speaker 1: it was such a small amount that it conceivably could
Speaker 1: have been come by innocently. The key word here is conceivably.
Speaker 1: Eddie Mills is not a suspect in the case in
Speaker 1: the sense that we are actively focusing on him, but
Speaker 1: he has not been eliminated, and that is significant. A
Speaker 1: number of doubts we have have not been cleared up.
Speaker 1: Even though Eddie was a high school dropout and it
Speaker 1: experienced issues with adjusting to a normal life after spending
Speaker 1: his childhood with the People's Temple. He was described as
Speaker 1: a quiet, non violent person who was currently helping his
Speaker 1: stepfa the remodel old homes as student rentals, and show
Speaker 1: no signs of being capable of murdering his family. The
Speaker 1: biggest obstacle in the police's investigation was that they couldnot
Speaker 1: find the murder weapon, and even after searching the properties
Speaker 1: of about a dozen homes located near the Mills residence
Speaker 1: that came up empty. The Berkeley PD even received a
Speaker 1: Department of Justice list of all small gun purchases which
Speaker 1: had taken place in the Bay Area in the six
Speaker 1: months prior to the murders, but after interviewing each person
Speaker 1: who bought one, they still hit a dead end. Eddie
Speaker 1: hired an attorney who advised him not to take a
Speaker 1: lie detector test. Eddie would move to Oakland to live
Speaker 1: with his half brother Steve. Genie and al left behind
Speaker 1: an estate which included thirteen properties and was worth over
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand dollars, and in nineteen eighty three it
Speaker 1: would be dispersed among their surviving relatives. Since Eddie was
Speaker 1: Genie's only surviving biological air, he wound up collecting the
Speaker 1: largest portion of the estate and received around two hundred
Speaker 1: and ten thousand dollars. The investigation into the murders would
Speaker 1: reach a standstill, though the Alameda County District Attorney's office
Speaker 1: described all of the surviving Mills family members as being uncooperative.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, in some ways this is intriguing because
Speaker 2: when you look at it, Eddie ends up moving in
Speaker 2: with his half brother Steve, who would have been I
Speaker 2: believe Al's child could have been Genie child.
Speaker 1: But it was Al's child, Okay, Al's.
Speaker 2: Child, Steve right, So if Steve had any inclination that Eddie,
Speaker 2: who's a kid and I don't think could necessarily parade
Speaker 2: around and keep, you know, keep an appearance as well
Speaker 2: as someone who's thirty or something like that. It's interesting that,
Speaker 2: you know, Steve says you're coming to live with me,
Speaker 2: You're gonna live with me after the death of our parents,
Speaker 2: and he knows the experiences that Eddie's been through. I
Speaker 2: think that speaks volumes in the relationship between Eddie and Steve,
Speaker 2: and Steve clearly didn't think that Eddie killed their family.
Speaker 2: And the fact that all the surviving Mills families being uncooperative,
Speaker 2: they've been through a lot, a lot of mistrust of authority,
Speaker 2: abused by authority. Yes it was spiritual abuse, but it's
Speaker 2: still abused by authority. And so the fact that this
Speaker 2: family's gonna shut down and reserved Eddie's been is a suspect.
Speaker 2: There's concern for the only surviving person in that home.
Speaker 2: So I could easily see why the family becomes very
Speaker 2: insulated and quote uncooperative or at least putting up barriers
Speaker 2: between law enforcement and themselves.
Speaker 1: Yes, that pretty much h be a recurring theme of
Speaker 1: this case, as all of Eddie's half siblings, where Al's
Speaker 1: children from his previous marriage, have always defended him, like
Speaker 1: they've never said that they believe he was capable of
Speaker 1: murdering Al Jeanie and Dave Fiend, and they've supported him
Speaker 1: NonStop for the past few decades and they probably know
Speaker 1: him better than anyone thinking that this is not someone
Speaker 1: who's capable of committing such a heinous crime like this.
Speaker 1: And I think the fact that they were described as
Speaker 1: being uncooperative is not because he has something to hide,
Speaker 1: but I think they just feared that the authorities have
Speaker 1: developed tunnel vision on Eddie and are probably going to
Speaker 1: railroad him, So that's why they pretty much held the mindset,
Speaker 1: we're not going to talk to them at all because
Speaker 1: that could turn out badly.
Speaker 3: So in two thousand and three, the Berkeley Police Department
Speaker 3: decided to reopen the investigation into the Mills murders, which
Speaker 3: would be led by Russ Lopes, a retired lieutenant who
Speaker 3: was specifically brought in to re examine unsolved cold cases.
Speaker 3: By this point, Eddie was living in Japan with a
Speaker 3: wife and two children, who was still the focus of
Speaker 3: the investigation. His surviving relatives were reinterviewed and asked to
Speaker 3: turn over any additional evidence they might have had that
Speaker 3: Eddie was responsible for the crime, but most of them
Speaker 3: believed that he was innocent and maintained there was no
Speaker 3: evidence to give. On December third, two thousand and five, Eddie,
Speaker 3: who was forty three years old, decided to make his
Speaker 3: first trip to the United States in several years in
Speaker 3: order to visit family for the holidays. But after his
Speaker 3: light landed at San Francisco International Airport, Eddie was detained
Speaker 3: by customs officials, and he would soon be arrested on
Speaker 3: three counts of murder and taken to the Berkeley City jail.
Speaker 3: Russ Lopes had spent the past two years putting together
Speaker 3: a case against Eddie and submitted it to the Almeda
Speaker 3: County District Attorney's office. If Eddie was charged, he would
Speaker 3: be prosecuted as a juvenile since he was only seventeen
Speaker 3: years old when the crime took place. However, he could
Speaker 3: only be held for a maximum of forty eight hours
Speaker 3: while the District Attorney's office decided whether or not to
Speaker 3: charge him. In the end, they felt there was still
Speaker 3: some questions about the evidence and considered forty eight hours
Speaker 3: to be an inadequate amount of time to perform a
Speaker 3: thorough review, so they ultimately declined to file charges. Eddie
Speaker 3: was released from custody and soon returned to Japan, where
Speaker 3: he continues to live with his wife and children to
Speaker 3: this day. Well reuss Lopes did not hesitate to express
Speaker 3: his belief that Eddie was guilty of the murders. Eddie's
Speaker 3: half sister, Linda, publicly voiced her support. She did not
Speaker 3: think that Eddie was the perpetrator and openly criticized the police,
Speaker 3: stating quote, they don't want to do the flipwork to
Speaker 3: find out who really did this, so after forty five years,
Speaker 3: the Mills family murders continued to remain unsolved.
Speaker 1: So I guess you could say the path went chili Okay.
Speaker 2: So they arrest Eddie and then they say, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: I guess we don't have enough evidence. Did the district
Speaker 2: attorney initially say we're going to proceed with this? They
Speaker 2: issued her an arrest warrant for him.
Speaker 1: I think it was just kind of a holding thing
Speaker 1: where they felt, because as Eddie is returning to the country,
Speaker 1: this might be our only opportunity to get him. We're
Speaker 1: going to hold him, and the district attorney is going
Speaker 1: to review the case. But they obviously thought that the
Speaker 1: evidence wasn't strong enough to proceed further. I think if
Speaker 1: there had been strong enough evidence, they would have gone
Speaker 1: through with it. But all they really had were minute
Speaker 1: traces of GSR on his hand, which was hardly enough.
Speaker 2: That's incredibly interesting. I wonder too, when you look at that,
Speaker 2: is there another innocent explanation? Was he someone who operated firearms?
Speaker 2: Is there a way because if he was asleep and
Speaker 2: hidden away from the family, it wouldn't have been transfer residue, right,
Speaker 2: Or did he touch their bodies or anything?
Speaker 1: That is possible. We're going to go into more detail
Speaker 1: in this angle in part two, but one explanation has
Speaker 1: been pushed forward that if Eddie shook hands with a
Speaker 1: police officer who had fired a gun or handled a
Speaker 1: gun earlier that day, minute traces of GSR could have
Speaker 1: gone on his hand. There are documented cases of wrongful
Speaker 1: convictions where people have been falsely accused of firing a
Speaker 1: gun because they innocently touched something and got small traces
Speaker 1: of GSR on their hand. Anyway, I'm sure many of
Speaker 1: you are already familiar with the story of the People's
Speaker 1: Temple and the Jonestown massacre. We elected not to go
Speaker 1: into too much detail about it on this series of
Speaker 1: episodes because it has already been so well documented and
Speaker 1: their other true crime podcasts like case File, who have
Speaker 1: already provided a thorough account of this story. But I
Speaker 1: do have a major fascination with unsolved mysteries that have
Speaker 1: a connection to famous events. Even though Jim Jones and
Speaker 1: most of his followers had already been dead for fifteen
Speaker 1: months by the time the Mills family murder took place,
Speaker 1: did the People's Temple still have leftover survivors who would
Speaker 1: have been loyal enough to get revenge by committing this crime. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to admit that when I first became familiar
Speaker 1: with this case many years ago, I initially believed that
Speaker 1: there was only one possible explanation for what happened here. Generally,
Speaker 1: when an entire family is murdered inside their home and
Speaker 1: there is one survivor who is left completely unharmed, you
Speaker 1: have to be suspicious of them. I have seen a
Speaker 1: number of home invasion murder cases in which several victims
Speaker 1: were killed and the lone survivor decided to stage the
Speaker 1: scene by inflicting a wound on themselves to make it
Speaker 1: look like they were attacked by outside intruders. Yet in
Speaker 1: this case, not only was Eddie Mills left completely unharmed,
Speaker 1: but he claimed that he was in his bedroom directly
Speaker 1: across the hall from the shooting and did not hear anything.
Speaker 1: And if that wasn't enough, there were traces of gunshot
Speaker 1: residue on his hands. On the surface, that seems pretty damning.
Speaker 1: But the more I thought about the case, the more
Speaker 1: I realized that it wasn't nearly as cut and dried
Speaker 1: as I originally thought. I mean, this was a pretty
Speaker 1: brutal crime, and if you believe Eddie did it, you
Speaker 1: have to believe that a seventeen year old performed an
Speaker 1: execution style shooting of his mother, stepfather, and sister and
Speaker 1: did such a successful job at getting rid of the
Speaker 1: murder weapon that no one has ever found it after
Speaker 1: forty five years. As far as I know, the only
Speaker 1: evidence against Eddie which has been shared publicly is the
Speaker 1: gunshot residue on his hands. When a case was submitted
Speaker 1: to the District Attorney's office to charge Eddie with the
Speaker 1: murders in two thousand and five, It's unclear what, if
Speaker 1: any new evidence they managed to uncover which compelled them
Speaker 1: to charge him after so many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting when you look at this, I mean,
Speaker 2: to arrest somebody for the murder of their family and
Speaker 2: to say that you're going to charge them with three
Speaker 2: counts of first degree murder, you would think that was
Speaker 2: a pretty flawless case that they had built, right, that
Speaker 2: this is something that's huge. He has a family, this
Speaker 2: is already a trauma that's happened to he and his
Speaker 2: siblings and things like that, and so for Eddie to
Speaker 2: be kind of snatched out of his family and threatened
Speaker 2: with this idea that he's going to be charged with
Speaker 2: the murders. Yes, it's very possible that Eddie's one of
Speaker 2: the people who was involved, because he's the only surviving
Speaker 2: member in that home, but there's not clear cut proof,
Speaker 2: and so it seems pretty pretty powerful that they would
Speaker 2: move forward and then have to take that back. It seems,
Speaker 2: I don't know, kind of kind of wild to.
Speaker 1: Me, and I really think the only reason that they
Speaker 1: did it is because Eddie was living in Japan and
Speaker 1: they knew that this was going to be one of
Speaker 1: the rare times that he was going to be on
Speaker 1: American soil and they'd have a chance to take him
Speaker 1: into custody. But I do think that they got really
Speaker 1: over zealous because regardless of whether you think Eddie is
Speaker 1: guilty or innocent, when you look at the evidence that
Speaker 1: has been released publicly, there's just no way you could
Speaker 1: have ever taken him to trial and got a conviction.
Speaker 3: There's also a question of motive, but you also have
Speaker 3: to consider the fact that Eddie had an abnormal childhood.
Speaker 3: To see the least, he was raised in an environment
Speaker 3: where children were often subject to beatings and psychological torture
Speaker 3: such as sleep deprivation, and even though his family managed
Speaker 3: to escape the People's Temple, it sounds like both Eddie
Speaker 3: and his sister had issues adjusting to normal society. But
Speaker 3: could the whole experience have messed up Eddie so much
Speaker 3: that it drove him to murder or his family before
Speaker 3: he even reached adulthood. Before we talk more about Eddie,
Speaker 3: we have to discuss the victims. If you search on YouTube,
Speaker 3: you'll be able to find a clip of Al Mills
Speaker 3: being interviewed during a news segment for k QUED in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, which aired on November twentieth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: just two days following the Jonestown massacre. You can tell
Speaker 3: that Al was completely shaken up by the whole situation,
Speaker 3: and he speaks directly to Carlton Goodlett, a civil rights
Speaker 3: activist who had worked as Jim Jones's personal physician. Al
Speaker 3: is obviously distressed by the fact that Goodlett almost seems
Speaker 3: to be acting as an apologist for Jones, even though
Speaker 3: it has just come out that Jones has been responsible
Speaker 3: for the deaths of over nine hundred people. The Millses
Speaker 3: had played a role in convincing Congressman Leo Ryan to
Speaker 3: pay a visit to Jonestown, which is what ultimately led
Speaker 3: Jones to the decision to orchestrate a mass murder suicide.
Speaker 3: Even if Ryan had not made the trip, I think
Speaker 3: there's a good chance the whole tragedy was inevitable and
Speaker 3: that Jones still would have done the same thing at
Speaker 3: another point in the future. But I'm sure this still
Speaker 3: must have been a heavy burden for the Millses to
Speaker 3: bear at the time the news interview was recorded. It's
Speaker 3: unclear if Al had found out that Jones specifically mentioned
Speaker 3: his wife on the final death tape and applied that
Speaker 3: his followers would seek revenge, but the Mills were genuinely
Speaker 3: concerned that surviving members of the People's Temple would come
Speaker 3: after them. Even though Alan Jeanie both played prominent roles
Speaker 3: in their public crusade against the People's Temple, I'd say
Speaker 3: that Genie was the more high profile figure of the two,
Speaker 3: especially after she published her memoir Six Years with God
Speaker 3: one year later. If you go on YouTube, you'll also
Speaker 3: find a fascinating documentary title Deceived the Jonestown Tragedy, which
Speaker 3: was filmed in nineteen seventy nine and features interviews with Al, Jeanie,
Speaker 3: and Daphene. It's quite chilling to see the three of
Speaker 3: them talk about their experience in the People's Temple and
Speaker 3: how they managed to escape, knowing that they would all
Speaker 3: be rutally murdered less than one year later.
Speaker 2: My heart breaks when you describe Al being interviewed and
Speaker 2: you hear about the family you know, sharing their story
Speaker 2: and advocating for change and reform and healing for people.
Speaker 2: Because Al sitting there and he's listening to this person
Speaker 2: who's an apologist, an apologist who's making excuses for Jim
Speaker 2: Jones and defending Jim Jones, and Al's thinking, I saw
Speaker 2: it with my own eyes, the abuse you put people through.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but the world saw right. This
Speaker 2: idea of the world is going to see this right.
Speaker 2: He's convinced this is before the massacre when he's having
Speaker 2: this interview, but he's having to basically share why he
Speaker 2: left and having somebody laugh at that and say that's
Speaker 2: not true, that doesn't happen. And he knows it happened
Speaker 2: to his own family and again likely was part of
Speaker 2: it happening to other families in Jonestown, right, because you
Speaker 2: were told, or in the People's Temple, because you were
Speaker 2: told to tell on your neighbors, to tell on other
Speaker 2: people if they were speaking ill of the organization. And
Speaker 2: so I think the weight would have been enormous for
Speaker 2: this family. And then there's a massacre where nine hundred
Speaker 2: and nine people lose their lives. Think about that. There's
Speaker 2: this idea that we asked the congressman to go, and
Speaker 2: it caused this trauma and this this tragedy, It did
Speaker 2: not cause it. Jim Jones was losing control, and any
Speaker 2: surviving members that you see in documentaries talk about that
Speaker 2: his drug addiction had gone insane, that he couldn't even
Speaker 2: speak without slurring his words, that the audio recordings he
Speaker 2: played throughout Jonestown on a normal basis were all about
Speaker 2: threats and attacks and how they had to be ready
Speaker 2: to sacrifice or flee, and so that was already in
Speaker 2: his mind that this was not going to end well.
Speaker 2: And then the congressman comes. So I think it was
Speaker 2: a ticking time bomb, like you said, Jules, that it
Speaker 2: was going to happen because of something because someone left,
Speaker 2: because there was no investigation. It was not at all
Speaker 2: a cause by Congressman Ryan's visit, it was just the
Speaker 2: icing on the cake, and it was the moment Jim
Speaker 2: Jones lost control of himself and snapped. So, man, the
Speaker 2: whole thing is just really pitiful. And like you said,
Speaker 2: they broke free from that. They survived this organization that
Speaker 2: many people did not, and yet you go a little
Speaker 2: over a year and they're going to lose their lives
Speaker 2: and at this point we have no idea to who.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you ever have time, I suggest going
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole and trying to seek out a
Speaker 1: lot of these old interviews and documentaries involving the Mills family,
Speaker 1: because even though they were obviously filmed before these murders
Speaker 1: took place, they're quite fascinating to see all the work
Speaker 1: they did and how this had such a profound impact
Speaker 1: on their life. And it's always haunting when you do
Speaker 1: a cold case and you're actually able to find old
Speaker 1: footage and interviews of the victims before they became the
Speaker 1: victims of an unsolved crime. So I think that about
Speaker 1: that brings an end to Part one. Join us next
Speaker 1: week as we present part two of our series about
Speaker 1: the Mills Family murders.
Speaker 4: Robin do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
Speaker 1: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids the
Speaker 1: cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first
Speaker 1: episode that I did a commentary track over was the
Speaker 1: episode featuring this case. So if you want to download
Speaker 1: a commentary track in which I make more smart ass
Speaker 1: remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
Speaker 5: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
Speaker 5: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've bought our
Speaker 5: Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
Speaker 5: they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
Speaker 5: turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
Speaker 5: so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
Speaker 4: We'll link them in the show notes.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
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Speaker 1: until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
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Speaker 4: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy