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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening, Ron Crisp invites the reader to follow him
Speaker 5: through his investigation of the Leslie Barry murder, the trial
Speaker 5: of Art and Zuris for the murder, the evidence that
Speaker 5: led him to his three suspects, how his investigation of
Speaker 5: the Barry murder led him to the defense of Angelo
Speaker 5: Bono in the Hillside strangler case, and what happened in
Speaker 5: his personal life as a result of his attempts to
Speaker 5: expose the systemic cover up in California versus Angelo Bono.
Speaker 5: The single most important clue in the case came from
Speaker 5: the statement of a fourteen year old boy on the
Speaker 5: night of the Bury murder. Crisp wasn't at the crime
Speaker 5: scene that night, but would read the statement in police
Speaker 5: reports a week and a half later when he read it,
Speaker 5: he was astonished that the police seemed to be showing
Speaker 5: no interest in this remarkable sixteen word statement from a
Speaker 5: friend of the victim. The cops ignoring evidence that could
Speaker 5: help crack a case that had baffled them for eighteen
Speaker 5: months caused Crisp to wonder if they were so stupid
Speaker 5: they couldn't connect these two simple dots, or if something
Speaker 5: more sinister was going on. A dozen books or more
Speaker 5: have been written about the Hillside Strangler case. Taking a
Speaker 5: q from the books, screenwriters have used the case in
Speaker 5: movies and TV cop shows to lend an air of
Speaker 5: credibility to their fictitious storylines. However, these movies and cop
Speaker 5: shows have kept the myth alive that Kenneth Bianchi and
Speaker 5: Angelo Bono were the Hillside Stranglers. Author Ron Crisp reduced
Speaker 5: the statement by the fourteen year old boy to four
Speaker 5: words and made it the title of his book. The
Speaker 5: book we featuring this evening is a Crossing of Paths,
Speaker 5: the true untold story of the Hillside Strangler Case, with
Speaker 5: my special guest, Private eye and author Ron Crisp. Welcome
Speaker 5: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 5: Ron Crisp, thank you for having me. Dan, thank you
Speaker 5: very much. Very incredible assertions and contention that you have
Speaker 5: in this book regarding the Hillside Stranglers.
Speaker 6: Well, you opened the book.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. You opened this book in South Pasadena, California. It's
Speaker 5: a little place about twenty five thousand, you write it
Speaker 5: lies between Pasadena and Los Angeles in Los Angeles County.
Speaker 5: You had a business Crisp and Marley you call a
Speaker 5: legal research and inquiry, and you had some dealings with
Speaker 5: a Mitch Millino. Tell us a little bit about this
Speaker 5: work that you were doing in South Pasadena and your
Speaker 5: experience with Mitch Millino and the call that came that
Speaker 5: one day from Mitch Millino. What was the gist of
Speaker 5: what Mitch Millino had to say and what was he
Speaker 5: talking about specifically that day.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, my office was at the Old Green Hotel
Speaker 6: in Pasadena, and I've done a lot of work for
Speaker 6: probably i don't know, twenty five maybe thirty regular lawyers
Speaker 6: and overall probably a couple of hundred lawyers around Los Angeles,
Speaker 6: and Mitch was one of those lawyers. He calls me
Speaker 6: one day and he wants to know if I've ever
Speaker 6: handled any criminal cases. I told him I've done a
Speaker 6: few drug cases, but nothing. Really. Why was he asking,
Speaker 6: he said, law He wanted to know if I had
Speaker 6: heard about the murder of the twelve year old girl
Speaker 6: in South Pasadena. I said, well, I heard about it
Speaker 6: over the weekend. Yeah, I was at a party and
Speaker 6: the host hostess mentioned it and said maybe it was
Speaker 6: the hillside train of the case. I just thought it
Speaker 6: was paranoia. Anyway, Mitch says, well, I just got a
Speaker 6: call from the father of the apartment manager at the
Speaker 6: complex where she was murdered, and he says his son
Speaker 6: is a suspect and he wants to hire me, retain
Speaker 6: my services to represent him. And so, uh, Mitch said,
Speaker 6: you know, I kind of told him, well, you know,
Speaker 6: I just wrapped up an interesting case where I found
Speaker 6: a horse. And Mitch went on to brag about, uh,
Speaker 6: some guy that he got off for assaulting a police
Speaker 6: officer over in Glendia, and so we we we changed
Speaker 6: stories there for a little bit, and then he said, well,
Speaker 6: here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna charge him
Speaker 6: an extra one thousand dollars on the retainer and and
Speaker 6: that that's that's the money that I will delegate to you,
Speaker 6: and I said that, yeah, that's fine. So anyway, about
Speaker 6: a week and a half later, I get a call
Speaker 6: from Mitch saying that Art has been arrested. And but
Speaker 6: Mitchell told me it, told me he wanted me to
Speaker 6: start a discrete investigation. But you know, there's no such
Speaker 6: thing as a discrete investigation. When you're talking about a
Speaker 6: murder case, you know everybody's going to talk about it.
Speaker 6: So you know you can't go around asking questions unless
Speaker 6: you want to tip the other side off that you
Speaker 6: know that you're concerned they're going to make an arrest.
Speaker 6: So they did. They had called Art and told him
Speaker 6: to come down from one last interview. He had already
Speaker 6: given him two very very lengthy interviews, like I think
Speaker 6: the first one was fourteen hours, the second one was
Speaker 6: something like sixteen hours. They kept him under the lights
Speaker 6: and grilled, and so they had called him for one
Speaker 6: last interview, and we'd already told him Mitch and told him,
Speaker 6: I told him, don't talk to the police anymore. They're
Speaker 6: not looking at anybody but you. You're the I don't
Speaker 6: know why you're the prime suspect, but you're the prime suspect,
Speaker 6: so don't talk to the police. But they called him
Speaker 6: and he said, well, I have a lawyer. He told
Speaker 6: the police, well, I have a lawyer. But h and
Speaker 6: wanted to know if he should bring the lawyer with him,
Speaker 6: and he was talking to Beck and Beck says, well,
Speaker 6: this is a deputy Beck. He says, well, you can bring
Speaker 6: your lawyer if you want. You certainly have the right
Speaker 6: to do that. You we readue your rights. You signed
Speaker 6: the Miranda card, so you can bring a lawyer if
Speaker 6: you want. But you know, we're just going to ask
Speaker 6: you a few simple questions, you know, just a few
Speaker 6: follow up questions. Uh, you know, uh uh. And so
Speaker 6: Arte said, okay, we'll come down. So someone his wife
Speaker 6: went down there, and they not more than two minutes
Speaker 6: ended the interview. They put him under arrest for the
Speaker 6: murder of Leslie Berry.
Speaker 5: Right now, you talk about the police, By the time
Speaker 5: you got involved in Mitch got involved, he had already,
Speaker 5: like you say, judiced himself to two interviews with police.
Speaker 5: And also in those interviews there was reason the reason
Speaker 5: why Art was accused was he was, along with his wife,
Speaker 5: the apartment manager of these two buildings four hundred Monterey
Speaker 5: Road and four four hundred and six Monterey Road, and
Speaker 5: also they discovered that there was that obviously Leslie and
Speaker 5: the family, Denise and Art and his family knew Leslie.
Speaker 5: Leslie had also babysat for the family, and according to Art,
Speaker 5: he had was one of the last people, if not
Speaker 5: the last person to see Leslie alive, according to the
Speaker 5: police timeline. In further questioning Art again, I guess if
Speaker 5: he had a more guilty mindset, he would have always
Speaker 5: and then kept his mouth shut. But he was forthcoming
Speaker 5: and talked about what he said was innocent contact with Leslie,
Speaker 5: like touching her butting breasts and joking that she needed
Speaker 5: a bra and patting her butt. But he said he
Speaker 5: did this in front of his wife, and his wife
Speaker 5: laughed and there was nothing to it. So you can
Speaker 5: understand why the police, at least without having any evidence,
Speaker 5: without having the scene, this crime scene examined yet by forensics,
Speaker 5: that they thought they had Kushner and Beck thought they
Speaker 5: had a great suspect in Art and Zuris.
Speaker 6: I'm not correct, Yeah, yeah, that's right. And Art did
Speaker 6: a lot of He's what you know, most of us
Speaker 6: would think, which was pretty bizarre behavior. You know, like
Speaker 6: like going back while the cops were there investigating the
Speaker 6: crime scene. He went inside, uh the apartment and they
Speaker 6: had to chase him off, and then uh before he
Speaker 6: was arrested. Uh, him and his wife went back, opened
Speaker 6: the open the user path, He opened the apartment, and
Speaker 6: they went in and got a photograph. It was just
Speaker 6: a regular you know, school photograph that she'd promised to
Speaker 6: give him, uh before she was murdered. And uh, so
Speaker 6: you know, they did stuff like that. You know, the
Speaker 6: cops said, you can't go back, and that's a crime scene.
Speaker 6: You can't go back into a crime scene. And so
Speaker 6: but he did it. And you know, all of this
Speaker 6: behavior kind of brought attention to him as a suspect.
Speaker 5: The crime itself. You'd take us back in your investigation
Speaker 5: that there was a certain timeline that the police subscribed to.
Speaker 5: There was a Leslie was home that day. Her mother knew.
Speaker 5: She had asked to stay home because she said she
Speaker 5: was sick. Her mother knew she wasn't sick, but let
Speaker 5: her stay home anyway. One of the conditions was that
Speaker 5: she was supposed to do some laundry and she got
Speaker 5: a call around four point thirty from her mother and saying,
Speaker 5: did you get that laundry done? And she said, well, no,
Speaker 5: because Art using the dryer as well, she used as
Speaker 5: an excuse, but she just hadn't remembered, and she'd been
Speaker 5: on the phone with her friend Sean Hagen, her best
Speaker 5: friend in the world, and then at some point her
Speaker 5: friend Lisa Balatore called. Right now in terms of Art
Speaker 5: and zus he saw her that day because as you write,
Speaker 5: the laundry room is next door, in the close proximity
Speaker 5: to the manager's office where he is in number two.
Speaker 5: He looked inside and saw that Leslie was putting washing
Speaker 5: and close in the washer. Now, he tried to joke
Speaker 5: with her, but he saw she was in a bad
Speaker 5: mood and he saw that as well, I'm not going
Speaker 5: to talk to her. And there's another laundry at four
Speaker 5: oh six, so he knew he could take his clothes
Speaker 5: there and not get in her way, according to him.
Speaker 5: So now, according to the mother, she called at four
Speaker 5: point thirty. The mother was supposed to be back at
Speaker 5: five o'clock. So she said, I'll be back shortly after five,
Speaker 5: meaning she would normally come home about five ten, and
Speaker 5: she did. Right now, now, tell us what the mother
Speaker 5: a investigation.
Speaker 6: As part of my investigation, I also drove from where
Speaker 6: a few works to her house and timed it, and
Speaker 6: it turned out to be about seven minutes a seven
Speaker 6: minute drive from where she worked, right, And the timeline
Speaker 6: was extremely important and that's why we were establishing.
Speaker 5: Now in that timeline, there was the phone call from
Speaker 5: Lisa Bellatori. Now you talk about this, and this is
Speaker 5: a very vivid scene in this book. She's talking to
Speaker 5: her friend. She has to call in the bedroom because
Speaker 5: the phone is in the bedroom and from the bedroom
Speaker 5: can't see the front Yeah, and she's so she can't
Speaker 5: see from her mother's bedroom the front door of the apartment.
Speaker 5: But she's expecting her mother home. Now she's talking to
Speaker 5: Lisa when she's probably supposed to be doing something else
Speaker 5: like the laundry, and doesn't realize the time. So what
Speaker 5: happens in that phone call when she's talking to Lisa Bellatori?
Speaker 5: What what is she? What happens around say five o'clock
Speaker 5: during this phone call?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's about well h as close as we
Speaker 6: could figure out, uh, based upon Lisa Valatori's statement, and
Speaker 6: I also asked her her her dad run Bellati, who
Speaker 6: was a swim coach at U C l A. I
Speaker 6: asked him if if if I could see the phone
Speaker 6: bill for that that month, so I could have some
Speaker 6: physical evidence, some physical idea about you know, Lisa's memory
Speaker 6: and stuff. And so, uh, she said that she had
Speaker 6: remembered when she talked to Leslie by ah By a
Speaker 6: telephone call she had had with her mother who lived
Speaker 6: down San Diego. Well, that's a long distance call, so
Speaker 6: it's going to show up on the on the phone bill, right,
Speaker 6: So so they provided me with the phone bill, and yeah,
Speaker 6: I could see there was there was actually two phone
Speaker 6: calls that I guess she had forgotten about one of them.
Speaker 6: But the last phone call was the one she was
Speaker 6: referring to in establishing her memory. And the phone call
Speaker 6: was that something like uh four forty five or something
Speaker 6: something of that nature, four forty six, something like that,
Speaker 6: and it was like a three minute phone call. And
Speaker 6: so we established that the timeline of that phone call
Speaker 6: between her and Leslie Berry had to have been you know,
Speaker 6: close to about uh five minutes to five. And of
Speaker 6: course this also was corroborated by by the babysitter who
Speaker 6: was trying to get her off the phone to get
Speaker 6: take her to So, yeah, the timeline on that end
Speaker 6: is pretty firmed up. You talk about it, Yeah, go ahead, sorry.
Speaker 5: You talk about Ana Barry. Her mother coming home out
Speaker 5: around five ten, and she goes to the carport and
Speaker 5: she opens the door and assumes for some reason this
Speaker 5: is odd, but she assumes her daughter because everything's dark
Speaker 5: in the apartment. She assumes her her daughter must be sleeping.
Speaker 5: Well that's very soon after this phone call, but she
Speaker 5: must be sleeping or in the laundry room. But her
Speaker 5: mother doesn't go inside the apartment per se. She just
Speaker 5: goes to get the mail. So she goes to get
Speaker 5: the mail, comes back.
Speaker 6: She actually did go inside the apartment. She put her
Speaker 6: she put her keys on her first on the kitchen table,
Speaker 6: and then she left the apartment. She didn't check on
Speaker 6: her daughter. There wasn't anything unusual going on that she noticed.
Speaker 6: Girls she would have probably you know, responded to her,
Speaker 6: reacted to it. So she goes to the front of
Speaker 6: the apartment building and gets gets her mail, which was
Speaker 6: right across from the laundry room by the way, And
Speaker 6: then when she comes back, that's when she she as
Speaker 6: soon as she opened the front door, she realized that
Speaker 6: the door to her daughter's bedroom, which you could see
Speaker 6: that was a straight shot from the front door to
Speaker 6: the to Leslie's bedroom was a straight shot, so you
Speaker 6: could see that. And she noticed that the door was
Speaker 6: open about I don't know, fourteen fifteen sixteen inches something
Speaker 6: like that, and that it was totally dark in the
Speaker 6: room and that except for the flickering light of the
Speaker 6: TV set, and the TV set was up. Really, so
Speaker 6: she went in there, went went to her daughter's bedroom
Speaker 6: immediately and and pushed the pushed on the door. She
Speaker 6: was just going to tell her to turn the TV down. Uh,
Speaker 6: and the door hit something and she realized that it
Speaker 6: was the body and the body of her daughter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're right, that she was still warm. The mother
Speaker 5: went right on the ground and start performing CPR on her. Uh.
Speaker 5: There was no response initially with a couple of minutes
Speaker 5: of doing that, so she called nine one one. She
Speaker 5: continued the CPR till the paramedics arrived about three minutes later,
Speaker 5: so they were there pretty quick. What she did notice
Speaker 5: right away, the mother was, Uh, this electrical cord. We
Speaker 5: what we didn't mention There was electrical cord around Leslie's neck.
Speaker 5: The mother. It was super tight. She couldn't get it off.
Speaker 5: She ran and got scissors and cut the the electrical
Speaker 5: court off first to pardon me, this is what she
Speaker 5: did in this panic. She still had this state of
Speaker 5: mind to be able to do this and did the CPR,
Speaker 5: and then they took her to the hospital and she
Speaker 5: was still alive.
Speaker 6: Now, well her body was warm anyway.
Speaker 5: Yes, well she's still alive. As you write that there
Speaker 5: isn't this isn't a homicide investigation till later. So initially
Speaker 5: she's still alive. So as we know, now, as you
Speaker 5: find out that the crime scene was compromised by medical
Speaker 5: paramedics and by South Pasadena police officers. So there's medical
Speaker 5: rappers and there is people that brought things into the scene,
Speaker 5: into the crime scene and out. And then you also
Speaker 5: write that the surrounding area was not contained and cordoned off,
Speaker 5: so a compromised crime scene initially. So now when you
Speaker 5: looked at when you finally got to look at the
Speaker 5: crime scene yourself, what are the kind of things that
Speaker 5: you noticed and you theorized about. Because Kushner, Detective Kushner
Speaker 5: felt that that art or a pardon me, not art, well,
Speaker 5: they felt it was art but that the killer was
Speaker 5: still in the apartment when the mother came home, when
Speaker 5: Ainta Barry came home, that he was still in the apartment,
Speaker 5: and so that while she went to get the mail.
Speaker 5: If they kept with this assumption, then he only had
Speaker 5: one particular route that he could go. Tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about what you found and what you thought
Speaker 5: and what you found at that crime scene with your partner,
Speaker 5: Mark Sutherland.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was really it was really kind of strange
Speaker 6: because Leslie's apartment, the Portcure apartment, kind of straddled a
Speaker 6: tunnel that led into the carpoard area and went underneath
Speaker 6: the apartment building and into the carport area, and there
Speaker 6: were steps that were led down there. So the only
Speaker 6: way that the killer could get out of the bedroom
Speaker 6: or out of the apartment without being detected, and nobody
Speaker 6: saw anybody go in or come out of that apartment.
Speaker 6: So the only way that he could avoid the mother
Speaker 6: coming back from the from the mailbox was to jump
Speaker 6: over the fORCH and into the stairwell, which was a
Speaker 6: hell of an athletic move. So you know, you know,
Speaker 6: right off the bat, this guy knows number one something
Speaker 6: about the apartment complex, because the escape had to be instantaneous, right,
Speaker 6: so you know you knew something about the apartment complex
Speaker 6: and that the guy was very athletic, because that was
Speaker 6: a very athletic jump, uh to escape. And but yeah,
Speaker 6: the interesting thing is that that Dave Kushner and and
Speaker 6: I came up with the same scenario based upon the
Speaker 6: fact uh, independent of each other. We didn't we we
Speaker 6: hadn't discussed until much until much later. But yes, that
Speaker 6: the time frame, the escape route, everything was just just
Speaker 6: very fast, very instantaneous.
Speaker 5: You also observed some small red spots and streaks downward
Speaker 5: in this and again affording the theory that someone must
Speaker 5: have jumped. Let's talk about the go ahead.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, I was going to say that on the
Speaker 6: on the wall of the stairwell leading into the tunnel
Speaker 6: was a spot mark. Sottlan noticed that. He's the one
Speaker 6: that found that. And it was obviously a blood spot.
Speaker 6: It was red, and it streaked down downward and it
Speaker 6: was on the far I guess you'd call it the
Speaker 6: north wall of the of the sharewell. So somebody's jumping
Speaker 6: over into the stairwell from that angle would hit that
Speaker 6: wall with his arm, and that's her hands and that's
Speaker 6: probably what caused the blood spot. And I might note
Speaker 6: here that when they were when when Beck and Kershner
Speaker 6: work interrogating Art, they did ask him they saw they
Speaker 6: noticed a cut on his or scratch on his right
Speaker 6: right knuckle her hand, and so they did ask him
Speaker 6: about that. So I know that they that they had
Speaker 6: seen that spot. They didn't do anything with it, but
Speaker 6: they had seen that spot.
Speaker 5: Tell us about again. Something that you found very profound
Speaker 5: in all of this was the Sean Hagen makes an
Speaker 5: interesting statement.
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Speaker 5: Tell us what a statement?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, well yeah, can you tell.
Speaker 5: Us about that statement?
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was a statement that I got on the
Speaker 6: night Art was arrested at from Sean Haagen that he
Speaker 6: thought it was the Hillside Strainer case because he knew
Speaker 6: one of the Hillside Stringer victims. Well, the statement didn't
Speaker 6: say which Hillside Stranger victim he knew. It didn't give
Speaker 6: any more details than that. But that was a pretty
Speaker 6: powerful statement because it established a solid link between leslie
Speaker 6: Bury and you know, at the time we didn't know,
Speaker 6: but one of the Hillside Stringer victims.
Speaker 5: Now you're referring to Dolores Sepeda. And the connection was
Speaker 5: that they all went to school together at one time.
Speaker 5: A Leslie and Dolores and so, and I guess and
Speaker 5: I guess Sean Hagen as well. So they all went
Speaker 5: They all had that commonality of going to school together.
Speaker 5: Can't you say that.
Speaker 6: All private school? Right? Yeah, there was a small private
Speaker 6: Stuth Pasadena, and Leslie hadn't gone there for long, uh,
Speaker 6: I guess it was some time after her mom and
Speaker 6: dad got divorced. She was going there. And of course
Speaker 6: none of this was in the police report. I got
Speaker 6: this from talking to Larry Paulin, who was Sean Hagen's stepfather,
Speaker 6: and he was as big a as much of a
Speaker 6: witness to the link between Leslie berry And and Dalli
Speaker 6: Sepaida as Sean Hagan was really because he's the one
Speaker 6: that picked him up from the school bought him home.
Speaker 6: And this was also confirmed by Mississipia when I talked
Speaker 6: to her. So there was a solid, solid link between
Speaker 6: Leslie berry And and Dolores Sepeda. And one of point
Speaker 6: out that the Lord of Peeda was the youngest of
Speaker 6: the hillside string or victims that she was twelve years old,
Speaker 6: Lesli very when she was murdered, when she was kidnapped,
Speaker 6: and Leslie Barry was twelve years old when she was
Speaker 6: murdered a year later, and it was exactly to the
Speaker 6: day that she was murdered. Yeah, Leslie Berry was murdered
Speaker 6: to the day that they found Dollar Paida's body.
Speaker 5: Very interesting too when somebody said, well, why with the
Speaker 5: signature being that the hillside stranglers would dump a body
Speaker 5: down a ravine in public, and your wife astuteley mentioned, well,
Speaker 5: he didn't have time to do what he wanted to
Speaker 5: do with the body with the mother coming home, or
Speaker 5: so that he didn't have the time to be able
Speaker 5: to demonstrate the same signature by leaving a body out
Speaker 5: in the open on the hillside.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we just don't We just don't know what the
Speaker 6: killer intended, the killer of lester Bury intended to do
Speaker 6: because the crime was interrupted by the mother coming home.
Speaker 5: So yeah, now you you write interestingly this dynamic that
Speaker 5: you have with this Beck and Kushner, these police officers
Speaker 5: that seem to have their mind up and arts is
Speaker 5: in there in there as a target for them, a
Speaker 5: prime suspect. You were given progressively more access to records,
Speaker 5: given arrest records, autopsy, crime scene photos. And what was
Speaker 5: interesting when you had a meeting with Sutherland and yourself
Speaker 5: and Melino and Beck and Kushner was that, Uh, Millino
Speaker 5: said a statement to Kushner regarding informants. And I thought
Speaker 5: this was interesting, considering what does happen? Tell us what
Speaker 5: that statement was?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was actually to Beck. Kushner was Kuscher was
Speaker 6: a senior, the senior detective on the case. But you know,
Speaker 6: it was like Beck was the one. You know, it
Speaker 6: was kind of strange because Kushner should have been the primary. Uh,
Speaker 6: but but you know, I just had the feeling that
Speaker 6: Beck was the one that was driving this whole thing.
Speaker 6: And so we were down to the Sheriff's department, laughed
Speaker 6: and arrested Art and and Kushners has gone to get
Speaker 6: us copies of all the statements and stuff that they
Speaker 6: had up until that time, all the initial stuff. And
Speaker 6: so Beck is kind of leaning back in his chair
Speaker 6: and Mitch and Mark and myself were standing there next
Speaker 6: to his desk, and Mitch's I hope you're not planning
Speaker 6: on putting a whole bunch of snitches in my on
Speaker 6: my client and Beck just I mean, he shot so
Speaker 6: many poison arrows with his eyes, wasn't funny. I mean
Speaker 6: he was really upset about Mitch's statement.
Speaker 5: Yeah, incredible. When we mentioned too, Dolly Sapita, you mentioned
Speaker 5: he was twelve years old and her friend Sonya Johnson,
Speaker 5: disappeared fourteen together. They were shopping at this Eagle Rock plaza.
Speaker 5: So you say, this is a Highland park, it's very close.
Speaker 5: And this led to this fear in this whole general
Speaker 5: area that there was another Hillside strangler murders in this area.
Speaker 5: So the whole place had everybody, all the women taking
Speaker 5: self defense classes, all kinds of handguns, guns were being
Speaker 5: sold out in stores. There was, not to be underestimated,
Speaker 5: an incredible climate of fear for women and husbands and
Speaker 5: family members of women in this area at that time,
Speaker 5: after two years of the horror or the fear instilled
Speaker 5: by the Hillside stranglers and their mercy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was, uh, you know, the panic,
Speaker 6: the public panic was just incredible the longer the investigation
Speaker 6: went on. And of course, you know, the media doesn't
Speaker 6: help any because they anytime there's a victim that's found
Speaker 6: that's been strangled, that they try to link it to
Speaker 6: the to the you know, the highest profile case around
Speaker 6: and that was the Hillside strangler case. So you know,
Speaker 6: if you're watching the news, it just seems like every
Speaker 6: day they find another body. You know. Of course the
Speaker 6: police for the task force was trying to hold the
Speaker 6: body count down to quell public panics, but you know,
Speaker 6: they were fighting against the media that just wanted to
Speaker 6: drive the body count up as far as it could.
Speaker 5: You write about another Hillside strangler victim potential or what
Speaker 5: was regarded as Christina Weckler incredibly was also found on
Speaker 5: November twentieth, nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 6: And the interesting thing about the Christina Wecker and why
Speaker 6: I included her in the connections, was because she went
Speaker 6: to the Art Center School of Design, which was up
Speaker 6: like on top of the hillside, overlooking Pasadena, overlooking the
Speaker 6: World bull And uh, when I came on my suspect,
Speaker 6: one of their previous addresses was up would have been
Speaker 6: on on the route between where Christina Weckler lived in
Speaker 6: Glendale and where she went to school, So the chances
Speaker 6: of and also uh, where her body was found on
Speaker 6: Wallona Street. That that that that was between the arts
Speaker 6: the arts center and her home. So and it was
Speaker 6: very close to where uh my suspect, my eventual suspects
Speaker 6: had lived at one point.
Speaker 5: Now, well this goes on. There's the we fast forward
Speaker 5: a little bit. There's the preliminary hearing for Art to
Speaker 5: see if there's enough evidence to proceed to trial. That
Speaker 5: lasted less than a week, and more jail health snitches emerge,
Speaker 5: and I guess that you you right that the judge
Speaker 5: sent the message to the prosecution that there was a
Speaker 5: weakness in their case because there's no physical evidence. There's
Speaker 5: really not much that they don't have much of a
Speaker 5: case except for apparently this confession from Art and Zura's
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit more about this jail
Speaker 5: health snitch development.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, the stitch is descended on him. The ninety
Speaker 6: was put in prison. One of them, I forget now
Speaker 6: which one it was, but one of them had approached
Speaker 6: him with a Bible and told him that the confession
Speaker 6: was good for the soul and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 6: you know so uh Art says he never made those statements.
Speaker 6: I mean he just slid out and nighted and the
Speaker 6: people that were in the jail cell with him. There
Speaker 6: were two two guys. It was a this is a
Speaker 6: four person cell, and so there was two other guys
Speaker 6: in the cell with him besides this the snitch. And
Speaker 6: both of the films said that Art did not make
Speaker 6: the statement that this guy that this first snitch was
Speaker 6: talking about, but that they were. It was a very uh,
Speaker 6: it was a very general kind of confession. Like he
Speaker 6: he said, I didn't mean the killer, uh, And that
Speaker 6: was the entire essence of the statement. And so it
Speaker 6: was pretty easy for the defense to attack that. So uh,
Speaker 6: they came up with another guy, uh Lyle Jackson, that
Speaker 6: they put more details into the into the confession. And
Speaker 6: it was like, you know, I went down to the
Speaker 6: courthouse and Mitch was standing out after it was after
Speaker 6: the hearing, the plimentary hearing, and Mitch was standing out
Speaker 6: in the hallway and I said, you know, they they
Speaker 6: just looked really down. And I said, what's going on, Mitch?
Speaker 6: And he said, there's another snitch. Only this guy's got
Speaker 6: more This guy has more details. I said, well, you know,
Speaker 6: that doesn't really surprise me much, he said. I said,
Speaker 6: I said, do you believe him? And He said, well,
Speaker 6: you know, he's more credible because of all the details
Speaker 6: he has. And I said, well, you know those details
Speaker 6: could have been supplied to him by.
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Speaker 6: The police and Mitch says lost, how would they get it?
Speaker 6: And I monitor monitoring uh family visits, uh to uh
Speaker 6: the art between his dad and his dad and mom
Speaker 6: were down there almost every day. I said, you know
Speaker 6: they were talking about the cave and those and those
Speaker 6: phone calls are monitors. So yeah, there was no no
Speaker 6: doubt in my mind. That's why why they how they
Speaker 6: got that information. They just supply it to the to
Speaker 6: the snitch to make them look more incredible. But you
Speaker 6: know these snitches. You know they don't. That's not direct
Speaker 6: evidence of any you know of anything. So you know
Speaker 6: there wasn't any physical evidence connecting Art to the to
Speaker 6: the murder.
Speaker 5: Yeah, incredible, And part of your investigation is to look
Speaker 5: again at other inmates, those other inmates, and speak to
Speaker 5: those other inmates to see if there's any truth to this.
Speaker 5: You suspected this. This was just a plant. They were
Speaker 5: provided this information, these informants were to shore up this
Speaker 5: weak prosecution case. Let's just use this as an opportunity
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Speaker 5: Ron Mulino and your team, Mark Sutherland and the Kushner
Speaker 5: everyone involved the play and your defense team is ready
Speaker 5: for the trial. Art was able finally to get out
Speaker 5: on a twenty five thousand dollars bail to be back
Speaker 5: with his family. But now he was in court. Tell
Speaker 5: us what happens at this trial and why?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the municipal court, the court judge was murdermer of
Speaker 6: Francis because and he didn't like what he had heard
Speaker 6: during emplimentary hearing. So he sets a low bail fraud.
Speaker 6: So Art's out. But you know, the prosecutor objected to
Speaker 6: the bail, saying there can't be a bail in a
Speaker 6: capital case. Bail in a capital case, and so the
Speaker 6: judge asked her, well, what's the case laws. He couldn't
Speaker 6: come up with it, so he he he set a
Speaker 6: low bail. Art was out for like maybe four weeks
Speaker 6: before the trial started, four to six weeks, and the
Speaker 6: first thing that the superior court judge did was revokeing
Speaker 6: bail and put him back in jail. So you know,
Speaker 6: so that when when they the trials started, the prosecution
Speaker 6: had a very weak case they you know, they had
Speaker 6: the snitches they called the detectives of course, who testified
Speaker 6: to what Art had told them during their interrogation of him.
Speaker 6: And in the case where they rested their case after
Speaker 6: about i'd say maybe a week and a half, they
Speaker 6: had very few witnesses. So I got I was in
Speaker 6: a daily argument with with Mitch about what witnesses to
Speaker 6: call because I wanted to establish the timeline of murder,
Speaker 6: but I also wanted to get Sean Hagen's statement in there. Uh,
Speaker 6: he didn't want to call Sean Hagen. I don't know why.
Speaker 6: I think he was afraid. I think he was afraid
Speaker 6: of making the connection because he didn't want the publicity.
Speaker 6: You know, he knew that that the mint the Hillside
Speaker 6: Stringer case he was brought up in court, that the
Speaker 6: whole of media would just descend on the case and
Speaker 6: he'd become a circus and it wouldn't be good for Art,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean with that kind of publicity, because
Speaker 6: all of a sudden stuff would come out, right. So, uh,
Speaker 6: I think that was the biggest reason why he didn't
Speaker 6: want to call. But you know, when you take these cases,
Speaker 6: you have to you know, you have to go with
Speaker 6: what with what the facts are? Aware of the facts, leady,
Speaker 6: you know, and he just wasn't willing to do that.
Speaker 6: And like I said, I think it was because he
Speaker 6: didn't want to the press to be there.
Speaker 5: You were also gone through and part of your investigation,
Speaker 5: and Denise and art were the apartment managers in on
Speaker 5: Monterey Road, and so you start looking through rental applications,
Speaker 5: and you also spoke to a person that lived in
Speaker 5: the apartment complex named Genie Merrick, and tell us what
Speaker 5: you heard from Genie Merrick, and also tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about that investigation into the apartment rental applications.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, uh, let's go back to what Artor told
Speaker 6: the police when they were they were gating about his
Speaker 6: activities of the day. And he said that while he
Speaker 6: was out cleaning the alley as one of his old
Speaker 6: friends from when he worked for the City of South
Speaker 6: Pasadaria stopped by and he was chatting with the with
Speaker 6: the guy Tony Barrett. And while he was standing there chatting,
Speaker 6: a car drove up up and he identified the firstson
Speaker 6: in the car to the police as Jean Merrick's brother.
Speaker 6: He didn't know the guy's name. Well, when I talked
Speaker 6: to Jean Merricks. She had She told me her brother's
Speaker 6: name was William Asper, and I went and talked to
Speaker 6: him to see if you know what he had to
Speaker 6: say about himself being over at the UH at the apartment.
Speaker 6: He said, well, I was over at the apartment. I said, well,
Speaker 6: well the owner white car? He said, no, I drive
Speaker 6: a red Porsche. So I went back and was reading
Speaker 6: the police reports, and Jean Merrick had made this statement
Speaker 6: that about two weeks before the murder, a guy had
Speaker 6: knocked on her door and was asking how many married
Speaker 6: and single women lived in the apartment complex and stated
Speaker 6: his name was Eddie. And this statement was backed up
Speaker 6: by another person, another woman in the in the apartment complex,
Speaker 6: who said it also happened to her. So I had
Speaker 6: two statements saying that this guy named Daddy had knocked
Speaker 6: on the door asked me how many married and single
Speaker 6: women lived in the apartment complex. So I was going
Speaker 6: back through the reports. I'd forgotten, I'd totally forgotten about it.
Speaker 6: I was going through the reports and one of the
Speaker 6: first things I had done with when I got on
Speaker 6: the case was to ask Denise to supplim me with
Speaker 6: all the rental applications from all the tendids that lived
Speaker 6: there and people that had applied for written to UH,
Speaker 6: had so a lot an application in the past, and
Speaker 6: so she did that. She supplied in the copies of
Speaker 6: all that, and so as arts trial approached, I was
Speaker 6: going through all the rental applications begin and I see
Speaker 6: this name Eddie on one of the applications. I wow, really,
Speaker 6: And it suddenly occurred to me as the statement that
Speaker 6: I just took this out of my mind, because you know,
Speaker 6: there wasn't any way I was gonna I'm gonna find
Speaker 6: a first name Eddie, you know in my mind when
Speaker 6: I heard the statements from Geen America and the other lady,
Speaker 6: and so I was going through these applications and it
Speaker 6: just struck me, just Eddie, Eddie. Yeah, And so I started.
Speaker 6: I called Denis up and I said, hey, Denise, tell
Speaker 6: me about this Eddie Cassy and she said, well, he
Speaker 6: lived in the apartment complex with with his cousin. WHOA.
Speaker 6: I'd already done plenty of research on the Hillside streng occasion.
Speaker 6: I knew they were looking for two people, two or
Speaker 6: more people, and that these people would be that these
Speaker 6: UH suspects would be related, possibly cousins or brothers. They'd
Speaker 6: have a symbiotic relationship. And so I was going through
Speaker 6: these the applications in it, and when I was talking
Speaker 6: to Denise about Eddie, I said, well what does he do?
Speaker 6: And she said, well, he's a dental student, I think.
Speaker 6: And I had already come to the because of the
Speaker 6: way Leslie was murdered, but the with the cord, the
Speaker 6: way the cord had been died around her neck, with
Speaker 6: three knots in the cord. Two of the knots on
Speaker 6: the side corresponded to pressure points on her neck. And
Speaker 6: so I'd come to the conclusion in my analysis of
Speaker 6: the fashion of the crime that whoever killed Leslie Berry
Speaker 6: had to know something about the anatomy.
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Speaker 6: I mean, who else wo know anything about pressure points
Speaker 6: or the nick and also be very adapted at time,
Speaker 6: not like surgical or not. And so I was looking
Speaker 6: for somebody who had some background in in medicine or
Speaker 6: the anatomy. And so when I found Eddie, he was
Speaker 6: a dental student. He would know something about time knotts,
Speaker 6: surgical knots uh, and he would know something about the anatomy.
Speaker 6: So I said, well, what about his cousin? What did
Speaker 6: his cousin do? And she said, well, uh, I think
Speaker 6: I think he went back to the Laredo, Texas where
Speaker 6: he was from, to become police officer. Oh well, that's
Speaker 6: pretty interesting, because what they were looking for in the
Speaker 6: Hillsize strainer case was somebody that was familiar with police procedures,
Speaker 6: and they really thought that that that the suspect would
Speaker 6: would have been would be a cop, the perpetrator would
Speaker 6: be a cop. And uh so that investigated, you know,
Speaker 6: everybody on the police force just about and had a
Speaker 6: lot of dirt turned up, a lot of dirt on
Speaker 6: on some of their own officers. So that's you know,
Speaker 6: I was talking to Denise and you know, she had
Speaker 6: no idea what she was telling me. I mean, it
Speaker 6: was it was incredible that that I'd come up with
Speaker 6: something with two suspects right away, just right off the bat,
Speaker 6: that fit with what they were looking for in the
Speaker 6: Hillside screamer case. They were related, and one of them
Speaker 6: was a police officer, he had majored in police science
Speaker 6: at U c l A. And the other one was
Speaker 6: fit my profile that I do developed in the Leslie
Speaker 6: Burry murder, that he would know something about the anatomy
Speaker 6: and a harder time lots.
Speaker 5: You looked into this possibility of Smith and Casilion, and
Speaker 5: you also looked at again the time frames of other
Speaker 5: Hillside strangler murders and disappearances. So and also that there
Speaker 5: was another person named Dennis Canto again tell us that
Speaker 5: there was any relation with these two people Smith and
Speaker 5: uh and Eddie and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: your investigation regarding Canto and then before you tell us
Speaker 5: about your approach to the Hillside Strangler task Force.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, one of the big, one of the big
Speaker 6: deals about the Hillside Stranger investigation was they were looking
Speaker 6: for somebody that knew a particular that knew a particular area.
Speaker 6: And uh, that was one of the reasons why they
Speaker 6: they they were so convinced that that Barno was Warner
Speaker 6: was the Hillside friend. It was because he lived in
Speaker 6: Glendale and was familiar with the Glendale passed the area.
Speaker 6: And but these guys also lived in the area. You know,
Speaker 6: they lived in a closer proximity to where some of
Speaker 6: the victims were either uh either disappeared or or the
Speaker 6: bodies were found. Then even Angela barn in Cannopy Hockey.
Speaker 6: So you know that that was a that was a
Speaker 6: very big, very big deal with the with the police.
Speaker 6: Now what I was looking at was not only the
Speaker 6: sinity they lived in, uh, what they did for a living,
Speaker 6: that they were cousins. I had not even uh done
Speaker 6: anything with with Dennis can too, can't you know? I
Speaker 6: was I was convinced that Eddie had killed Leslie Berry
Speaker 6: and that together him and his cousin had mewed uh
Speaker 6: Seppada and Johnson and and Chris and uh Christina Weckler
Speaker 6: and probably more. You know, I mean, where does it end?
Speaker 6: I just couldn't. I didn't have the resources to investigate
Speaker 6: more cases. So I was limiting my investigation to to
Speaker 6: the Cepada, Johnson and Weckler merge in the Hillsize Strainer case,
Speaker 6: and uh with a with a little bit into Elizabeth
Speaker 6: and Bias, which was the later murder that happened down
Speaker 6: in in the Pinko Revera area. So I'm sorry, did
Speaker 6: I get off track again?
Speaker 5: When you talked when you talk about approaching the Hillside
Speaker 5: Strangler Task Force, you're you're reluctant to do it, but
Speaker 5: you believe it's your duty to be able to inform them,
Speaker 5: give them the information you have, give them the theory,
Speaker 5: and and see what what their reaction is. So what
Speaker 5: is the reaction when you first call the the Hillside
Speaker 5: Strangler task Force?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, well I called it. I first called task
Speaker 6: force shortly after uh well, after coming up with the
Speaker 6: suspects with Cassie Young Smith. I got at add Henderson
Speaker 6: on the line, and the first time I called me
Speaker 6: just they didn't want to even hear it anything. They
Speaker 6: didn't want to take any down any information. The second
Speaker 6: time I called them, I had more information I learned
Speaker 6: to supply them. So they sent uh two detectives Bob
Speaker 6: Melliker and John hold Her out to my office in
Speaker 6: Pasadena and they sit there and listen to me for
Speaker 6: forty five minutes, and they had one asked me one question,
Speaker 6: and that was what the suspects looked like. And I
Speaker 6: had no idea. I hadn't met any of them, and
Speaker 6: I hadn't talked to any of them at the time,
Speaker 6: so I just didn't know. But they were not, you know,
Speaker 6: uh interested in pursuing the lead at all. You know,
Speaker 6: I think the first time I called him, all I
Speaker 6: really knew was about Seawan Eagen's statement, and that to me,
Speaker 6: that was enough. You know, they should have been interested
Speaker 6: just based on that statement. But the second time I
Speaker 6: called him, I'd come up to the suspects, so I
Speaker 6: had more information I wanted them to investigate. So after
Speaker 6: I talked to him, I talked to the nice because
Speaker 6: I was interested in how they left the apartment what not.
Speaker 6: And Denise told me that Denise Azuri's art's wife told
Speaker 6: me that they had left the apartment in a total mess.
Speaker 6: That she had found some some cut off electrical cords
Speaker 6: in the in one of the drawers, she said they
Speaker 6: found she found a speaker like the speaker you put
Speaker 6: on a police car, and uh, there were some boots
Speaker 6: hiking boots or something that that she had found. And
Speaker 6: she said, there looked like there was some blood or
Speaker 6: something on the on the boots. So I wanted to
Speaker 6: get the boots and see if they could do a
Speaker 6: blood test and stuff on them. And there was, you know,
Speaker 6: it was that sort of stuff. So I called, uh,
Speaker 6: mel your back because I thought that was pretty interesting,
Speaker 6: particularly the uh, the police car speaker item that they found.
Speaker 6: So I called the task force back and I said, uh,
Speaker 6: you know, I was just talking to my client's wife
Speaker 6: and and she said that she gave me a list
Speaker 6: of stuff and these guys left behind. And Melicker said, well,
Speaker 6: I'm not interested in any of that. I'm not going
Speaker 6: to investigate the case. I said why, he said, I'm
Speaker 6: just not not interested. And I was so pissed off
Speaker 6: I just slammed down the phone. I mean, I just
Speaker 6: didn't want to talk to him.
Speaker 5: You had the privilege, I guess, or the great interest
Speaker 5: to be able to be able to see what one
Speaker 5: of the Hillside Stranglers Byanki Kenneth Bianki had said, linking
Speaker 5: him to what they considered the Hillside Strangler task Force
Speaker 5: considered the seventh and eighth victims, which was Dolores Dolly
Speaker 5: Suppita and Sonia Johnson. You got to see what he said, specifically,
Speaker 5: any details that would would establish that he was telling
Speaker 5: the truth about that. Tell us about what you witnessed yourself.
Speaker 5: You got to see and read about what he had
Speaker 5: to say about his connection to the Subpita Johnson murders
Speaker 5: in this hill Strength Hillside Strangler case.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Beyonce's statements about in Johnson just in fact, in fact,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't know if I mentioned it in
Speaker 6: the book, I can't remember, but uh, Beyonce initially denied
Speaker 6: that that Sayda and Johnson were theirs. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: when he was confessing to the to the murders, he
Speaker 6: initially denied that that that he was, uh, that that
Speaker 6: he and Bono had killed in Johnson but then later on, yeah,
Speaker 6: they were, they were the task force really wanted to
Speaker 6: include to paid in Johnson for emotional impact on our jury.
Speaker 6: They wanted to include them in the in the in
Speaker 6: the case he's against Bonce. So his statements were just,
Speaker 6: you know, just outlandish. You know, he said that, uh,
Speaker 6: that dollars of Pete really knew what she was doing
Speaker 6: and giving all sex to him and Bob, you know,
Speaker 6: just just maligning the victims, you know, something awful. You
Speaker 6: could tell that he was, that he was lying. He's
Speaker 6: nothing he said about the case made any sense.
Speaker 5: So you know, now in your investigation here, you you
Speaker 5: had all you had a certain amount of time, you
Speaker 5: had a deadline to be able to find out information.
Speaker 5: But like you say, Melino disappointed you. You had a
Speaker 5: confrontation with him after you've figure that he failed Art
Speaker 5: and Zurous. What was the conviction, What was the sentence
Speaker 5: for Art? What was his fate in the end in
Speaker 5: that trial?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was, uh, he was found guilty of murder
Speaker 6: with special circumstances and sentenced to life in prison without
Speaker 6: proll And where he still is, he's still in the
Speaker 6: in the prison system. Yeah, I was. I was when
Speaker 6: he was convicted. I was really pissed. I went back
Speaker 6: to my office. Now he just knocked everything off the
Speaker 6: desk and picked up the phone threw it against the wall.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, it has been one one half
Speaker 6: of one argument after another in which you know, Lena
Speaker 6: was just just stone walling. It was beyond me. Why
Speaker 6: you know, I was, I was handing him uh a
Speaker 6: good defense in a in a in a basket, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, it was just, yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 6: Even now when I think about it, I want to
Speaker 6: start throwing things. Yeah. It he just I don't know
Speaker 6: the whole the whole thing. It wasn't just mists either.
Speaker 6: Later on, when I was on the case with Ruston
Speaker 6: and Wilcock, uh, they kept complaining about how uh Gerald
Speaker 6: Chails was interfering on the case and how he was
Speaker 6: friends with the with the presiding judge, and and that
Speaker 6: that that he shouldn't even have been there really, and
Speaker 6: you know, the whole system was just you know, it
Speaker 6: just seemed like the whole system was threw up.
Speaker 5: Talk about this incredible development that happens. You approach the
Speaker 5: task force numerous times, and you even meet with the
Speaker 5: task Force, but they just don't take your information seriously.
Speaker 5: The report that you read after speaking to these people
Speaker 5: for an hour is again angers you, frustrates you. Now
Speaker 5: tell us how you come to be involved incredibly on
Speaker 5: the defense team of Angelo Bono. Tell us how this
Speaker 5: occurs the circumstances which.
Speaker 6: I got all. I got a call from Chuck Wiswell,
Speaker 6: who was one of the investigators working for Jim Breston,
Speaker 6: and he said he told me that he had won
Speaker 6: the report, uh that uh that Melcher files on my
Speaker 6: meeting with him, and then he thought I was right
Speaker 6: about Leslie Burn murder, and they wanted they wanted to
Speaker 6: meet with me. So I went down and met with
Speaker 6: him in Orange County and uh, and I was really
Speaker 6: curious as to, you know, what the police had done
Speaker 6: with the with a forty five minute interview they that
Speaker 6: I gave him, and so I went down, uh to
Speaker 6: Boslo's office. I said, I want to see that statement.
Speaker 6: So Chuck goes through a bunch of papers, say that
Speaker 6: they had boxes and boxes of files on the case,
Speaker 6: and he finds the one that he's looking for. He
Speaker 6: hands it to me and it's three quarters of a
Speaker 6: page long, and it leaves out all the all all
Speaker 6: the information I gave them, all the relevant information, the
Speaker 6: similarities between the Spada Johnson murders and the Leslie Barry.
Speaker 6: For example, the date of the murder of Leslie Berry
Speaker 6: was exactly one year after the bodies of Spade and
Speaker 6: Johnson were found, right to the death November twentieth. Both
Speaker 6: girls were twelve years old at the time of their death.
Speaker 6: They lived a mile apart. They were both strangled. They
Speaker 6: died by ligiage strangulation, so you know, I mean, plus
Speaker 6: they had gone to the same school, private small private
Speaker 6: school together, so you know, there was all these similarities
Speaker 6: that that that that I had seen, and they weren't
Speaker 6: interest Nobody was interested in them. I mean, it was
Speaker 6: to me that was just amazing. It had to be.
Speaker 6: I couldn't figure out whether whether this was just uh,
Speaker 6: the stupidity of a couple of cops, or whether you know,
Speaker 6: something more sinister, like higher up was happening. You know,
Speaker 6: they they wanted to keep all this stuff out of
Speaker 6: the out of the news. I didn't know, you know,
Speaker 6: still don't in a way, I still don't, But you know,
Speaker 6: I think you have to come to the conclusion considering
Speaker 6: what happened with my with my investigation, my involvement on
Speaker 6: the Hillside ring of the case, that it was systematic,
Speaker 6: that systemic, Uh, the cover up.
Speaker 5: When you talk about this cover up, what is your
Speaker 5: reason for this cover up?
Speaker 6: What you know?
Speaker 5: They have Angelo Buono, they have a confession from Kenneth Bianchi,
Speaker 5: many people have just as you mentioned, you said there
Speaker 5: was problems with that the details or lack of details
Speaker 5: to corroborate the story. But is this a matter of
Speaker 5: somebody already making up their mind they have the fear contained?
Speaker 6: Is that what this is? So that's the think I
Speaker 6: think that's probably a big part of it. The other
Speaker 6: part of it is they just don't want to be wrong.
Speaker 6: You know, it's like they're their their credibility is on
Speaker 6: the line, and they just can't omit the wrong. They can't.
Speaker 6: They there's nothing in the system that makes it go
Speaker 6: put on the break when they when they get new information,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, it does happen once in a
Speaker 6: while you read about it, but most of the time
Speaker 6: it doesn't. They just they go full full steam ahead
Speaker 6: with whatever they're doing. And that's what they did in
Speaker 6: this case. And of course, you know, you also have
Speaker 6: the media and the media. H you know, they don't
Speaker 6: let facts get in the way of the story they
Speaker 6: want to tell a lot of times. And the story
Speaker 6: they wanted to tell was they all sides playing the
Speaker 6: case and been solved with Kenneth Bianki and Angelo Bono.
Speaker 5: And that's the end of the story, you know, now
Speaker 5: for you the end of the story. It still hasn't
Speaker 5: been the end of the story. And that's with this
Speaker 5: remarkable book. But you also followed up and called you
Speaker 5: got you were lucky and you got to call Eddie
Speaker 5: Castilian first, and your idea was that you would use
Speaker 5: one against the other. Smith and Eddie tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about the of the conversation. But what did
Speaker 5: you find out that sort of that also fit this
Speaker 5: profile which is very important of the Hillside stranglers.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, let's see. I think I I think I
Speaker 6: talked to Smith first by telephone. He was he was
Speaker 6: in he was in uh Laredo and uh living at
Speaker 6: uh Eddie Casti owns house with with with with Cassio's parents.
Speaker 6: And I talked to him first and about I don't know,
Speaker 6: forty five minutes uh talk. And he had told me,
Speaker 6: you know, he just seemed to know more about stuff
Speaker 6: than a normal person would know. Uh. For example, UH,
Speaker 6: when I was telling him about the Leslie Bury murder,
Speaker 6: he said, well, you know, you know the the girls
Speaker 6: used to play out there in the in the uh
Speaker 6: in the carboard area there Leslie and her girlfriend and
Speaker 6: uh and and and and an interesting note here, as
Speaker 6: a result of my book, I got a call, uh
Speaker 6: several years ago from a gal who said that she
Speaker 6: was a friend of Leslie Berry's and that the police
Speaker 6: had interviewed her and had shown her uh photo line
Speaker 6: up to see if she could pick the person that
Speaker 6: was watching her her and Leslie play down in the
Speaker 6: carboard area out of this photo line up. And of
Speaker 6: course Ansera's picture was in it, and she couldn't pick
Speaker 6: the She didn't pick, AND's a picture. I said, well,
Speaker 6: the reason he didn't picture you didn't pick, and there's
Speaker 6: the picture is because you didn't see Answers. The person
Speaker 6: you saw was was Martin Smith. He was watching. He
Speaker 6: admitted it to me. And so the other thing was
Speaker 6: that that that Smith had had brought up the uh
Speaker 6: Sepada Johnson murs in in his own way, you know,
Speaker 6: after mentioning you know, he said, well, there's you know there,
Speaker 6: there's those other girls that were were murders lived nearby there,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, how would he uh, why would
Speaker 6: he even think of that? You know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: it just seemed like he knew more about what was
Speaker 6: going on and yeah, than he was letting on. So anyway,
Speaker 6: after I talked to him, I wanted to Eddie was
Speaker 6: still in in school at USC Medicals or a USC
Speaker 6: Dental school, so I wanted to go down and talk
Speaker 6: to him, and I could talk to him faith to
Speaker 6: faith and see what his reasked would be. And so
Speaker 6: I asked Mark if he wanted to go along, if
Speaker 6: it go along with me, and he said, well, I'll
Speaker 6: drive you down there, but I'm not going to go
Speaker 6: in with you. So I said, well that's okay, you
Speaker 6: can you can wait out in the car if you
Speaker 6: want to. So he drove me down to the USC
Speaker 6: Dental school and and I met with Eddie and and
Speaker 6: and uh, I just fled out accused him of the crimes. Uh,
Speaker 6: I said, Eddie, I think you murdered Dolli Sepada and
Speaker 6: Cyny Johnson and Leslie Berry. He said, wasn't. Actually, I said,
Speaker 6: Leslie Barry first, and he said, no, that wasn't me.
Speaker 6: And then when I said Sepeta and Johnson, he didn't
Speaker 6: he didn't really respond to that. He didn't deny murdering
Speaker 6: thel Me, denied murdering Leslie Berry. I said, well, it
Speaker 6: was either one of two people. It was either you
Speaker 6: or your roommate, Dennis can Too. He said it wasn't Well,
Speaker 6: it wasn't me, and you'll have to talk to Dennis
Speaker 6: about that, which I thought was a little bit a
Speaker 6: bit of an odd.
Speaker 5: Response when you say, yeah, certainly. It's interesting too that
Speaker 5: one of the remarkable things was that a photo of
Speaker 5: Dennis can Too and Kenneth Bianchi tell us about.
Speaker 6: This, Oh yeah, Biyonchi and can Too. I was, I
Speaker 6: was sitting in my little cottage in Pasadena when I
Speaker 6: was what watching the news when they brought Kenneth Bianki
Speaker 6: back from Bellingham, Washington to stand Well, he wasn't going
Speaker 6: to stand trial. He he had already pled guilty but
Speaker 6: to uh five of the murders and exchanged for her
Speaker 6: sestimony and so uh they were leading him from the
Speaker 6: plane into the terminal, and the cameras, the TV cameras
Speaker 6: were there and I looked at him a cheg point.
Speaker 6: He looks for mere man. I can't believe it. And
Speaker 6: I went into to what I used as an office,
Speaker 6: uh in my cottage and got the file out, and
Speaker 6: I was going through it, I seem find the picture
Speaker 6: of Canton. Man. I cannot believe that this is just
Speaker 6: I mean, they were. They were dead ringers, absolute dead ringers.
Speaker 3: M hm.
Speaker 6: Which added, you know this one more thing, that circumstance
Speaker 6: that convinced me that they had the long.
Speaker 5: Guy in Beyonce in bono, it's interesting to you write
Speaker 5: about something that's again that unbelievable. No fiction writer could
Speaker 5: insert this and have any believability. Was in May seventy eight,
Speaker 5: there was a sex offender, Richard Reynolds. He was lying
Speaker 5: in wait for a woman named Roxanne Barnwell, who was
Speaker 5: alerted to the danger in the fear of the Hillside
Speaker 5: Strangler murders, and was prepared and had a gun. Now
Speaker 5: she was fearing this hillside strangler attack, and he got
Speaker 5: in the car and she shot him in the head,
Speaker 5: but he returned fire. So when the police found this scene,
Speaker 5: they saw Roxanne Barnwell and Richard Reynolds dead and then
Speaker 5: did an investigation about Richard Reynolds. They got kind of
Speaker 5: excited that he might be the Hillside strangler because of
Speaker 5: those other things that fit, but he was eliminated shortly after.
Speaker 5: Just an interesting, fascinating footnote to this incredible case as well.
Speaker 6: Right well, they also had George Shamshack. He was one
Speaker 6: of their primary suspects and looked very much the part
Speaker 6: he wasn't. I wouldn't call him a dead ringer for Biancy,
Speaker 6: but he had to look, you know, the the curly hair,
Speaker 6: the horse faces, that sort of thing. So he was
Speaker 6: a suspect for for quite a while. And finally Roger Kelly,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, Bob Grogan was pushing and Porson
Speaker 6: and Porson. They had Shamshack charge with Murs, but Roger
Speaker 6: Kelly kept saying, I've got to have evidence. I've got
Speaker 6: to have something to take to court. I can't just
Speaker 6: charge people with murder without without something. Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Now let's get to the Bono case. We know what
Speaker 5: the end result is, but you talk about some of
Speaker 5: the events there and what you thought the prosecutor felt
Speaker 5: and the judge felt.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: They charged him with pimping and pandering and procurement for sex.
Speaker 5: So they added all those charges, very much like they
Speaker 5: added additional sex charges to Art and Zuris's case, just
Speaker 5: to just to add, you know, malice to this thing,
Speaker 5: or to add some importance to the charges itself.
Speaker 6: Right, they add those things for special circumstances so they
Speaker 6: can they can turn it into a capital case. But
Speaker 6: with the with the Bono thing, you know that they
Speaker 6: Roger Kelly charged him with pimping and pantering, and uh,
Speaker 6: the judges decided, you know, this was really an incredible
Speaker 6: sleeve bag moved on my as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 6: But he severed the charges, the pimping and pandering charges
Speaker 6: from the murder case, and uh and appointed uh Gerald
Speaker 6: Tailiff to represent Hunt Bono on the pimping and panning charges.
Speaker 6: But it was just it was just a ruse to
Speaker 6: get to give Tailiff access to Bono. That's all that
Speaker 6: was all that was about.
Speaker 5: So you're saying that there was a dirty trick involved here,
Speaker 5: so that uh and as you explained in the book,
Speaker 5: that this person that was going to do the bidding
Speaker 5: for the judge to make sure this all went away
Speaker 5: despite the lack of physical evidence, and the too neat confession,
Speaker 5: and the problematic testimony of Kenneth Bianchi, and the problematic
Speaker 5: confession that he had with lack of incredible detail. Despite
Speaker 5: all of these reservations by everyone, you say this, he
Speaker 5: was convicted.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, I mean, uh, but but he wasn't given
Speaker 6: a good defense. I mean no, that was that was
Speaker 6: the whole purpose. That was the whole purpose of getting
Speaker 6: to jail upon there. You know, Califf was one of
Speaker 6: these guys that would go along to uh go along
Speaker 6: to get along. You know. Yeah. I think I think
Speaker 6: one of one of the one of his biggest ambitions
Speaker 6: was to become a judge, and to become you know,
Speaker 6: most judges in California are former prosecutors. Very few of
Speaker 6: them are chosen from the defense side of the wall.
Speaker 6: And and I think Caleff Califf wanted to ingratiate himself
Speaker 6: with the police so that he would potentially get a
Speaker 6: judge ship offer to him, which never happened.
Speaker 5: I think I think what's important too, when you talk
Speaker 5: about Jailiff and Judge Keene, is that what happens is
Speaker 5: that they the judge refuses uh Brussman's motion to declare
Speaker 5: him indigen and so that he doesn't have any money
Speaker 5: and he needs to be a quart appointed. So they
Speaker 5: fought through that and basically, as you're right, they starve
Speaker 5: out the defense team. And then later when this jailiff
Speaker 5: is appointed, because that's he is appointed by the judge.
Speaker 5: It's the way they can get things done. They'd said
Speaker 5: that his upholstery shop would give him the means to
Speaker 5: be able to defend himself properly, but it really didn't.
Speaker 5: He didn't have the means to defend himself properly.
Speaker 6: Well, what what Brusman had proposed to the judge was
Speaker 6: that bonnal would would sign all that stuff over to
Speaker 6: the to the state, and he changed for for uh.
Speaker 6: You know, his his sign over his polstery shop is
Speaker 6: properly in Glendale. All of his assets had turnover and
Speaker 6: exchanged for uh, the government paying for his defense. And
Speaker 6: and the judge denied that. He denied it until until
Speaker 6: Taylors was UH was appointed. I mean he he literally
Speaker 6: the judge literally starved Jim Brustman and Jim Willcox off
Speaker 6: the case. That's what it boils down to. And he
Speaker 6: did that because he wanted Taylorff to get the k
Speaker 6: and he wanted tailor to get the case, so the
Speaker 6: tailor roll over on borrow. That was that's the bottom line.
Speaker 5: Yes, you also talk about that the official story again
Speaker 5: from the media, But you write about an author named
Speaker 5: Darcy O'Brien, a profession of English literature and an old
Speaker 5: friend of Ronald George. Now tell us who Ronald George is,
Speaker 5: and tell us just briefly about how you think or
Speaker 5: why you think this Darcy O'Brien was able to write
Speaker 5: this book, and especially the way he did, with the
Speaker 5: tone he did.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Ronald George was the judge that presided over the
Speaker 6: trial evangel o'barro and after Roger Kelly had uh made
Speaker 6: the motion dismisscharges. Well actually even before then, uh at
Speaker 6: the at the at the beginning of the case, Ronald
Speaker 6: George called his old buddy, was talking to his old buddy,
Speaker 6: Darcy O'Brien about about the case, and Darcy O'Brien wanted
Speaker 6: to write a book about it, and he had an
Speaker 6: insight with the judge. So the judge invited him to
Speaker 6: come out and he would he would put in a
Speaker 6: wound with him, you know, with the with the with
Speaker 6: the cops to cooperate with him, and UH, I learned
Speaker 6: about this from I had gone back to UH Tulsa,
Speaker 6: UH after getting kicked off the case and having all
Speaker 6: kinds of albums, including a PTSD from my service in Vietnam.
Speaker 6: And so I was back in Tulsa and I was
Speaker 6: reading the Tulsa World and they were talking about Darcy
Speaker 6: O'Brien's book and they said right there in the article
Speaker 6: that he was the old college roommate of Ronald George
Speaker 6: of presiding judge. Something. You can't do that, that's that's
Speaker 6: against the judicial ethics for h for a judge to
Speaker 6: use his position on a case to help either himself
Speaker 6: or a or a friend or family member, you just
Speaker 6: can't do that. It's unethical. But George did.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so go ahead. Yeah, I've been in communication with
Speaker 6: Frank's learn know in the last few years, and you know,
Speaker 6: he had told he told Grogan and anybody that listened
Speaker 6: that it was that it was unethical. What George was
Speaker 6: doing was unethical, and having Darcy O'Brien, he said he
Speaker 6: didn't cooperate with Darcy O'Brien, He didn't give him any
Speaker 6: inside information. Born On and Finnigan, who were the two
Speaker 6: Sheriff's Department detectives.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: In this book, in the end you write a report.
Speaker 5: Your original report is included the report where you had
Speaker 5: done your investigation and provided the task force with information.
Speaker 5: This is report you also provided for Roger Kelly, the prosecutor.
Speaker 5: And so in this book you have done the good
Speaker 5: deed of looking at this and trying to free an
Speaker 5: innocent man Art and Zura's unfortunately you didn't, and try
Speaker 5: to get to the real perpetrator and the perpetrators of
Speaker 5: the murder of Leslie Berry and you believe as well
Speaker 5: some of the Hillside strangler victims. It's a very commendable
Speaker 5: effort that you've done and a very impressive book. For
Speaker 5: those that might want to take a look at this book,
Speaker 5: is there a website or Facebook page for a Crossing
Speaker 5: of Paths that people might want to take a look
Speaker 5: at Amazon?
Speaker 6: It's available on Amazon dot com. There's some reviews on
Speaker 6: Amazon too, you might want to look at those. The
Speaker 6: book got panned by a couple of people, but mostly
Speaker 6: people have been very supporting the book.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a remarkable story. I want to thank you
Speaker 5: very much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was I was just going to say that
Speaker 6: it can be Just google my name or or the
Speaker 6: title of Crossing a Pass and you can find it
Speaker 6: on Amazon.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thank you so much talking about a crossing a
Speaker 5: path the true untold story of the Hillside Strangler case.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Ron Crisp. If you have a
Speaker 5: great evening, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 6: Good night, Thank you, Dan, good night, good night.