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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 5: kill there's in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good evening today. You'd call Balentine suburban, but back then,
Speaker 6: at the start of the summer of nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 6: it was country, just a cluster of houses, some of
Speaker 6: them shacks on or near Valentine Road in the town
Speaker 6: of Cherlet, New York. And while June twenty fifth started
Speaker 6: like any other day, it would end in a nightmare
Speaker 6: in the devil at Genesee Junction. Veteran crime writer Michael
Speaker 6: Benson returns to his formerly rural hometown to take on
Speaker 6: the double homicide of his friends Kathy Bernhard and Georgie
Speaker 6: Anne Formacola that took place that night. The two girls
Speaker 6: were missing for a month and then found in the
Speaker 6: bushes horribly mutilated. The double homicide changed the author's childhood
Speaker 6: suddenly and drastically. He went from living in a rural
Speaker 6: playland to being encased in fear, wondering who among them
Speaker 6: was the werewolf who cut up Kathy in George Anne.
Speaker 6: This hain'tus crime was never resolved and didn't go away
Speaker 6: in recent years. The author is teamed up with a
Speaker 6: victim's mum and a local private investigator to delve deep
Speaker 6: into the June sixth, nineteen sixty six murders. Developing along
Speaker 6: the way some strong new leads and shocking details. Together,
Speaker 6: they have heated up the icy cold case, and their
Speaker 6: investigation has led them in a startling new direction. The
Speaker 6: book that we're featuring this evening is The Devil at
Speaker 6: Genesee Junction with my special guest journalist and author Michael Benson.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 6: for green to this's interview Michael Benson.
Speaker 4: Thanks Dan Pleasure, Thank you very.
Speaker 6: Much, Michael, and congratulations on what has to be one
Speaker 6: of your most personal, if not your most personal books.
Speaker 6: I'm sure and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was thinking about that. I mean, next to
Speaker 4: raising two practically perfect kids, just maybe my proudest moment.
Speaker 4: The book has literally been forty nine years in the making.
Speaker 4: I started writing sections of it when I was twelve,
Speaker 4: and those sections appear in the book, and I worked
Speaker 4: on it oft and on until earlier this year, when
Speaker 4: since then it's been a matter of getting it published.
Speaker 4: And holy cal, I can't believe this is actually happening
Speaker 4: after all this time.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's really is. I know it's not really a
Speaker 6: good description when they talk about it. It's part memoir.
Speaker 6: It's just I think the greatest true crime and the
Speaker 6: greatest nonfiction is when the author has the opportunity, or
Speaker 6: it is the necessity, or the project just again necessitates
Speaker 6: that the author is involved in the story. So I
Speaker 6: think it's fascinating that you're so involved in this and
Speaker 6: it becomes even a more profound story by Virtue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's like I didn't choose the subject.
Speaker 4: It shows me, as she said, when I was nine
Speaker 4: years old, George an Formacall. It was a friend of
Speaker 4: mine and my babysitter. She was fourteen at the time.
Speaker 4: She lived two houses away. She lived on a dirt
Speaker 4: road with a field that led back to a creek
Speaker 4: not far from the Genesee River. She and her friend
Speaker 4: Kathy Bernhard, we also knew, lived a little bit down
Speaker 4: the road. They went swimming in their two piece bathing suits.
Speaker 4: George and Say's brand News. She bought it at the
Speaker 4: mall just that day, and they went swimming in Black
Speaker 4: Creek next to an ancient stone trestle which was originally
Speaker 4: built back in the nineteenth century. There is a towpath
Speaker 4: for mules to pull barges up the Genesee Valley Canal.
Speaker 4: And this was in the town of chi Lai. Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 4: everybody from out of town pronounced to the Chile. It's okay,
Speaker 4: but it's Chilai and south of Rochester, New York, and
Speaker 4: the spot was adjacent to the Genesee Junction, thus the title,
Speaker 4: and that was where the Pennsylvania and New York Central
Speaker 4: railroads crossed again, not far from the river, just east
Speaker 4: of my dad's property. Back maybe in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 4: there was a little village there because that was where
Speaker 4: passenger trains stopped and people transferred from going east west
Speaker 4: to north south. But by nineteen sixty six it was
Speaker 4: pretty much a ghost town back there. The train still ran,
Speaker 4: but they were now freight trains, and there were maybe
Speaker 4: two buildings back there today if you want, if you
Speaker 4: went back to the Genesee Junction, it shows up as
Speaker 4: a town on maps still, but you went back there,
Speaker 4: you would find, you know, a path going through the weeds.
Speaker 4: It was graduation night at local high school. It was
Speaker 4: the first night of summer vacation. Then the girls went
Speaker 4: back there carrying nothing but two towels and a transistor
Speaker 4: radio and they never returned. Now, during the time the
Speaker 4: girls were missing, some folks said that they just run off.
Speaker 4: Experts from the Sheriff's office said they didn't think so,
Speaker 4: because girls who run away almost always take clothes in
Speaker 4: and makeup. The other theory was that they had drowned,
Speaker 4: but that also seemed unlikely. You know, both of them
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't drown, and they were excellent swimmers. And it
Speaker 4: never it didn't occur to me as a little boy
Speaker 4: that there was foul play involved. I just didn't think
Speaker 4: that way at that age. Well, a month went by
Speaker 4: and we kept waiting for the girls to be found,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe with boyfriends off someplace. But after a
Speaker 4: month long search, they were found by a farmer on
Speaker 4: a tractor who was investigating an unpleasant smell the site
Speaker 4: to the west of my dad's property. They disappeared on
Speaker 4: one side of our land and were found on the other.
Speaker 4: So I spent the rest of my childhood with the
Speaker 4: knowledge that, you know, a very real boogeyman had walked
Speaker 4: behind my house. I never looked out. I never looked
Speaker 4: out a window at night again after that, because there
Speaker 4: was too much of a chance that someone might be
Speaker 4: looking back. The girl's remains were in bad shape. As
Speaker 4: you said, it wasn't just from decomposition. They had been
Speaker 4: knife to death and horribly mutilated in a manner that
Speaker 4: civilized newspapers couldn't report at the time, although they handed
Speaker 4: at it. The details which I later learned are in
Speaker 4: the book. The sheriff told the press that they were
Speaker 4: looking for a sex maniac. So you know, again, from
Speaker 4: my nine year old perspective, I was learning about sex
Speaker 4: crimes before I had learned about sex. But the sheriff
Speaker 4: was right. Years later, when looking at suspects, I always
Speaker 4: asked myself that question up front. It's this guy a
Speaker 4: sex maniac, and some where some weren't, and if they weren't,
Speaker 4: they tended to be crossed off the list. And you know,
Speaker 4: as you noted that the murders had a terrible effect
Speaker 4: on my neighborhood in my childhood, we were sad, of course,
Speaker 4: but we were also terrified, you know, there was a
Speaker 4: monster on the loose. I've been living in a rural paradise,
Speaker 4: kind of a Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer type world,
Speaker 4: barefoot kids running around dirt paths through the fields because
Speaker 4: everybody took a bee line to each other's houses. And
Speaker 4: as soon as the bodies were found, all those paths
Speaker 4: grew over because kids who had been free to explore
Speaker 4: the creek area and the railroad junction on the other
Speaker 4: side were now kept on a short leash, never allowed
Speaker 4: out of Mom's site. So the bottom line was I
Speaker 4: grew up obsessed with the crime, and this may be
Speaker 4: the reason why I became a true crime writer in
Speaker 4: the first place. I don't think that's a coincidence at all.
Speaker 4: And the crime was never solved, possibly until maybe the
Speaker 4: very near future, but you know, we'll get to that.
Speaker 4: During the nineteen nineties, when I was in my thirties,
Speaker 4: I conducted my first investigation. At the time, I was
Speaker 4: a magazine editor, not dealing with crime at all, but
Speaker 4: with a little bit of knowledge of how the world worked,
Speaker 4: and I became obsessed with true crime books. It was
Speaker 4: a rather young genre at the time. I read them all,
Speaker 4: I think, and I was looking forms that matched our case,
Speaker 4: my case, and although I didn't know the precise details,
Speaker 4: I knew that there was sexual mutilation involved, and so
Speaker 4: I read them all. And the guy who fit the
Speaker 4: bill closest initially was Arthur Shawcross. I'm sure your listeners
Speaker 4: are familiar with him. He was a convicted serial convicted
Speaker 4: serial killer of prostitutes in Rochester during the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: There are a number of things about Shawcross's biography that
Speaker 4: got my attention as a youth, he established a pattern
Speaker 4: of traveling back roads by car, setting fires, and spending
Speaker 4: lengthy times alone in the woods.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: He turned twenty one years old in June of nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty six, nineteen days before the girls disappeared, and during
Speaker 4: that month he was floating around upstate New York looking
Speaker 4: for a job. That's what he's This is according to him,
Speaker 4: and as was his lifelong habit. When he was free.
Speaker 4: He liked to park his car and wander along streams
Speaker 4: and rivers looking for secluded places to fish. At least
Speaker 4: that's what he called it. In nineteen seventy two, around
Speaker 4: the time of his first two known murders, Shawcross's then
Speaker 4: wife Pandy, said that he'd gone on dozens of fishing
Speaker 4: trips during their time together, but he'd never once come
Speaker 4: home with any fish. So Chawcross was sexually messed up
Speaker 4: even as a youth, and he reportedly got a sexual
Speaker 4: charge out of lighting fires. He'd done to prison once
Speaker 4: for arson. He torched a factory in Watertown Factory Street,
Speaker 4: creating more than a quarter million dollars of damage, and
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty six, he'd been on parole for just
Speaker 4: over a year, he was expert with a knife. He
Speaker 4: hunted deer he could dress game. Later he would talk
Speaker 4: about wanting to kill a dough so that he could
Speaker 4: use his hunting knife to remove the animal's vagina. One
Speaker 4: of his jobs as a young adult was as an
Speaker 4: apprentice butcher. He had mis rated animals in Adams, New York,
Speaker 4: and he later boasted the for eighty five dollars a week.
Speaker 4: He learned to slaughter nineteen thowsand bowls a day and until,
Speaker 4: as he put it, the krick runs red. During the
Speaker 4: summer of sixty six, due to his domestic woes, he
Speaker 4: wasn't get along with his wife. He thought of himself
Speaker 4: as a bachelor again, and he was rambling around. He
Speaker 4: said that he did strange things that summer. He drove
Speaker 4: around in a hot looking fifty eight pontiac, picked up
Speaker 4: girls and had sex with them. He boasted, he couldn't
Speaker 4: stop himself, which sounds like he's describing rape or some
Speaker 4: sort of there was, you know, Romans and whatever it
Speaker 4: is he's describing. There now Kathy and Georgiana spirit in June,
Speaker 4: the values have found in July and in August, Shawcross
Speaker 4: and his wife separated for good and eight months later
Speaker 4: he was inducted into the army. He went to Vietnam
Speaker 4: and came back telling horrific stories in which he killed
Speaker 4: young females. But since they were in this again of quote,
Speaker 4: Viet Kong chicks, they weren't really murders at all. They
Speaker 4: were kills. You know. He was big a war hero.
Speaker 4: And in one story, he happens upon two teenage girls
Speaker 4: bathing nude in a stream, waist deep in water, and
Speaker 4: he bragged, quote, they were both VC. I mutilated them.
Speaker 4: After his Rochester arrest in nineteen eighty nine, he complained
Speaker 4: that that mutilation murder of the two girls in Vietnam
Speaker 4: haunted him most. Still, he considered his Vietnam kills his accomplishments,
Speaker 4: his achievements. He used post traumatic stress syndrome from the
Speaker 4: war as an excuse for his later murders. Now, his
Speaker 4: war stories were horrific, and they were also apparently untrue.
Speaker 4: According to his military records, he served two six month
Speaker 4: tours as a supply and parts specialist and was honorably
Speaker 4: discharged in April nineteen sixty nine. So he made those
Speaker 4: stories up? Or did he? I mean, he was confessing
Speaker 4: to something. I talked to psychologists, and they said, you know,
Speaker 4: he didn't make the stories are too detailed for them
Speaker 4: to be completely imaginary. But he may have taken incidents
Speaker 4: that happened elsewhere and put them in Vietnam so that
Speaker 4: his ego could deal with them. And he always blamed
Speaker 4: the war on his later murders. He committed his later
Speaker 4: murders because of post traumatic stress. Now, during the eighties,
Speaker 4: he murdered prostitutes and other vulnerable women in the street
Speaker 4: by strangulations and dumped them near or in the two
Speaker 4: Oynasee River, and several victims were mutilated post mortem in
Speaker 4: a way identical to the mutilations found in My Girls
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty six. So a comparison of Shawcross's behavior
Speaker 4: and that of the Genesee Junction killer was compelling, and
Speaker 4: so much though that in nineteen ninety nine, armed with
Speaker 4: my knowledge of Shawcross and my limited knowledge of what
Speaker 4: had happened to Kathy and George An, because the papers
Speaker 4: didn't print it and police wouldn't talk to me, I
Speaker 4: sent a written summary of my findings to the Monroe
Speaker 4: County Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigation Division, spoke with a detective
Speaker 4: sergeant there, who apparently was pretty impressed with the letter
Speaker 4: I sent, and I pretty much laid it out just
Speaker 4: as I laid it out for you. And they sent
Speaker 4: a team of interrogators to the Sullivan County Correctional Facility
Speaker 4: and asked Shawcross point blank if he knew anything about
Speaker 4: Kathy and Georgia Anne. And Shawcross put his chin on
Speaker 4: his chest, closed his eyes, all his hands in the fists,
Speaker 4: and refused to discuss it. I was told that it
Speaker 4: was the same reaction his interrogators got when they asked
Speaker 4: him questions about his mother. It was a standard response
Speaker 4: to what he considered a tough question. Now, sergeant told
Speaker 4: me that was all he could do, couldn't discuss it
Speaker 4: any further details because the case was still open. And
Speaker 4: I thanked him and he hung up, and for a
Speaker 4: time I felt great. I had, by proxy anyway got
Speaker 4: me in the shop across the space and confronted his
Speaker 4: entire ecosystem. He'd had a chance to deny that he
Speaker 4: was the Genesee junction killer, and he'd refused, And that
Speaker 4: was about it for my nineteen nineties investigation. I knew
Speaker 4: that I couldn't come to a conclusion about who killed
Speaker 4: the girls, though until I knew more about the initial
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty six investigation by the Sheriff's office. But how
Speaker 4: to do that? So exactly we skip We skip ahead
Speaker 4: to the first decade of the twenty first century, and
Speaker 4: I'm looking at the crime from all angles, and I
Speaker 4: came across an interesting thing, a conspiracy theory that I
Speaker 4: still find somewhat difficult to ignore. I still find the
Speaker 4: Shawcross evidence difficult to ignore. It's my philosophy that you
Speaker 4: don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to enjoy a
Speaker 4: good one. And this is the one I developed for
Speaker 4: this case. It started during the early days of my
Speaker 4: true crime career and I read this excerpt from a
Speaker 4: called the Satanic Bible, and it goes, Satanic Age is
Speaker 4: last one four hundred and fifty eight years. The last
Speaker 4: one where God was on top and Satan was cast
Speaker 4: down started in eighty fiveh eight. Consequently, the new Satanic
Speaker 4: Age began in nineteen sixty six, and this time Satan
Speaker 4: is on top. Nineteen sixty six is year one an
Speaker 4: Ol Satanas, the first year of the reign of Satan.
Speaker 4: And those words were written by Anton Leavey, founder of
Speaker 4: the Church of Satan right now. The original title of
Speaker 4: this book was six slash sixty six because the murder
Speaker 4: took place in June of nineteen sixty six and it's
Speaker 4: the Devil's number, but that was mixed by the publisher
Speaker 4: because numerals mess up search engines and make the book
Speaker 4: difficult to alphabetize. So we went with the devil a
Speaker 4: Genese junction, which I also liked very much, and we
Speaker 4: put the number of the beast in the subtitle. So anyway,
Speaker 4: that's getting out of order. Going back to my original
Speaker 4: discovery of this, I figured if there was Satanic significance
Speaker 4: to the month and year of the murders, you know,
Speaker 4: six slash sixty six had meaning, then the proximity to
Speaker 4: the Summer Solstice had meaning as well, because that's a
Speaker 4: Satanic holiday. The next Black holiday after Summer Solstice would
Speaker 4: feature Satan Goncore, and that turned out to be Lamas
Speaker 4: Day August first, nineteen sixty six, which was the day
Speaker 4: Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of
Speaker 4: Texas Tower in Austin and using a sniper rifle, killed
Speaker 4: sixteen people and will get thirty two others. People think
Speaker 4: of Columbine. I think as the event that made school
Speaker 4: spree killing a thing, but it actually happened years earlier
Speaker 4: in Texas. After Lama's Day came all hollow z nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty six, and that was when beautiful co ed Cherry
Speaker 4: Joe Bates was knife to death on the campus of
Speaker 4: Riverside Community College in Riverside, California. She was eighteen in
Speaker 4: a freshman and later a note apparently from the killer
Speaker 4: was found written on a desk in the college library.
Speaker 4: Now today because of compelling handwriting comparisons and a letter
Speaker 4: received by the press years later in which the purported
Speaker 4: killer referred to doing his thing in Riverside, the murder
Speaker 4: of Cherry Joe Bates is fought by many to have
Speaker 4: been one of the first murders committed by Northern California's
Speaker 4: notorious Odiac Killer. So you know Holy Cow year one
Speaker 4: ono Satanas? Indeed, Anton LaVey caius your chills, the guy
Speaker 4: who proclaimed nineteen sixty six is that year. Anton LaVey
Speaker 4: his biography will you know you gave even more goosebumps.
Speaker 4: He was the first to publicly list the Satanic holidays,
Speaker 4: which he admittedly stole from Wicca, and although no one
Speaker 4: has accused LaVey of participating in ritual abuse or human sacrifices. No,
Speaker 4: we're not so sure about his followers. There certainly could
Speaker 4: have been those who read his book and took the
Speaker 4: symbolism to heart. Some of LaVey's disciples might have just
Speaker 4: been used full experimenters and kids, being backy and weird,
Speaker 4: rebels against everything, contrarians who stood up when they were
Speaker 4: told to sit down. And for them, you know, upside
Speaker 4: down crosses, anything goes, attitude, you know, there's like catnip
Speaker 4: to cats. Some you know, they were vain. They dressed
Speaker 4: up in God fashion. They like they dressed like Wednesday
Speaker 4: Adams of the Adam's family.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they.
Speaker 4: Had little plays and ceremonies in black masses. As far
Speaker 4: as I could tell, you know, no one ever got hurt,
Speaker 4: but they were. They were into that. Their slogan was
Speaker 4: do as South Wilt, which means whatever you want to
Speaker 4: do goes. So it's uh so, Well, here's the fact.
Speaker 4: Hundreds of homicides each year can be deemed satanically or
Speaker 4: ritually inspired, and yet in the cases that have been solved,
Speaker 4: the perpetrators have rarely turned out to be members of
Speaker 4: any organized devil worshiping cult. But Richard Ramirez, the knight Stalker,
Speaker 4: he drew pentagrams on his hand. He said tail Satan
Speaker 4: at the scenes of his murders, but turned out to
Speaker 4: be alone, not not a member of any group. The
Speaker 4: closest link, that is, the least degrees of separation between
Speaker 4: Levey and actual Mayhem, came in San Francisco during the
Speaker 4: summer of nineteen sixty six, even as Monroe County Sheriff's
Speaker 4: Office deputies are looking for George and Cathy. At that time,
Speaker 4: Leavey produced a witch's review. It was sort of a
Speaker 4: vaudeville cabaret show for the devil were worshiping set and
Speaker 4: performing as a topless vampire. In the show is Susan Atkins,
Speaker 4: who later becomes notorious. Is Sexy Sady of the Charles
Speaker 4: Manson family, probably through the person who killed Sharon Tate.
Speaker 4: Bobby Bouselet, another Manson family member, was also co starred
Speaker 4: with LaVey in a theater production of a It was
Speaker 4: called Invocation of My Demon Brother, written by Kenneth Anger,
Speaker 4: who later had a best selling called Hollywood Babylon. So
Speaker 4: that brings us to twenty eleven, and this is when
Speaker 4: my investigation really took off. So you know, we've got
Speaker 4: a little sip of coffee. In June of twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: two events came together, you know, almost magically, now I
Speaker 4: think about it. Kathy Bernhard as a mom was still
Speaker 4: around Alice, and she was a friend of my mother,
Speaker 4: and they were at a party and the ladies are
Speaker 4: sitting in lawn chairs under a tree, and Alice Bernhard
Speaker 4: says to my mother, you know it's too bad your
Speaker 4: Michael can't write a book about my Kathy Wow died.
Speaker 4: My mom hadn't even gotten around telling me that yet.
Speaker 4: When on the anniversary of the girl's disappearance, I changed
Speaker 4: my Facebook status to a little bit moreium for Georgiana
Speaker 4: and Kathy, And one response as I got from that,
Speaker 4: came from a Bernhard family friend, Ebbie Douglas, who said,
Speaker 4: I should really call Alice. She would definitely be interested
Speaker 4: in speaking with me. So the bottom line is Alton
Speaker 4: and I partnered up. She said, bring me something to
Speaker 4: sign and I'll sign it. So she signed documents making
Speaker 4: me the family investigator and authorized me to see the
Speaker 4: police files from the initial investigation in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 4: Now I should know here that things were different then
Speaker 4: maybe I'm maybe not. But because the crime was so horrible,
Speaker 4: nobody ever told Alice exactly what it was that had
Speaker 4: happened to Kathy. Wow, they gave her saidatives and here
Speaker 4: it was forty some years later. Excuse me, and she's
Speaker 4: still she spent all this time wondering, you know what
Speaker 4: what happened back there? Yep, she's read the newspapers. But
Speaker 4: the newspapers refused to print details. She asked the police.
Speaker 4: They said, no, no, no, it's better than you don't know.
Speaker 6: Michael, excuse Michael. What didn't your mother say? And you
Speaker 6: write in a book that your mother had some inside
Speaker 6: information and you were told something about that mutilation. Weren't
Speaker 6: you of of of Georgia.
Speaker 4: Yes, so that is true. I had to. I had
Speaker 4: information from the neighbor lady who had come down to
Speaker 4: talk to my mom and dad, and I listened through
Speaker 4: the front window of our house, and the word I
Speaker 4: got was that, and I'm I'm sorry, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to give it a direct quote that what she said
Speaker 4: was Georgian's tits had been cut off, and that was
Speaker 4: that was what I knew, although that turns out to
Speaker 4: be the only part of the story. But no, but
Speaker 4: nobody had told now. Yeah, So I said, also, I promise,
Speaker 4: you know, if I find out anything, I'm going to
Speaker 4: tell you everything I learned, and I'm going to treat
Speaker 4: you like a grown up. And she says, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't care how bad it is, it's going to
Speaker 4: be better than wondering. So I told her that I
Speaker 4: would write a book, just as she'd ask my mom
Speaker 4: if I could find a publisher. But I wasn't promising
Speaker 4: anything because I had no reason to think that a
Speaker 4: publisher would be interested. I would investigate on her, behalf
Speaker 4: for free, for as long as it took. And she
Speaker 4: said fine, And she told me the point like that,
Speaker 4: there are two things I want you to do for me. First,
Speaker 4: you know, find out what happened to Kathy. And I
Speaker 4: don't think she meant who did it. I think she
Speaker 4: meant what happened you know what they did to her?
Speaker 4: And the other one was to get people to think
Speaker 4: about Kathy, because she was a girl who has forgotten
Speaker 4: the way too soon. And I said, I will sure
Speaker 4: do that for you. So every time I ever talked
Speaker 4: to anybody interviewed anyone, I said, you think to Kathy today,
Speaker 4: I'm still putting it on Facebook today. We're thinking about
Speaker 4: Kathy Bernhard. And so now that the book comes out,
Speaker 4: I called Alice the other day and I said, you know,
Speaker 4: now people are going to be thinking about Katy forever. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think she was pleased, and she was very pleased.
Speaker 4: So what we did. First thing we did is we
Speaker 4: put Alice on local news and she did great. She
Speaker 4: was interviewed by reporter Caroline Tucker, and she talked about
Speaker 4: Kathy when she was alive and how she disappeared, and
Speaker 4: she said, you know, if anybody knows anything, called Michael.
Speaker 4: And what we received in response was a series of
Speaker 4: women now in their late fifties, but who were ten
Speaker 4: to twelve years old at the time of the murders,
Speaker 4: who had disturbingly similar stories, almost identical stories, and stories
Speaker 4: that had absolutely nothing to do with Arthur Shacross. They
Speaker 4: told of being attacked by a monster in the neighborhood.
Speaker 4: They were told by him that if they squealed, they
Speaker 4: would be killed, and some of them had kept it
Speaker 4: a secret for all those years and were telling the
Speaker 4: story to me for the very first time, which again
Speaker 4: pretty chilling. Now one was attacked by the monster while
Speaker 4: one of the monster's brothers stood by and was lookout.
Speaker 4: And this was back by Black Creek, not far from
Speaker 4: where our murder victims were last seen over where they
Speaker 4: were heading at the time of their disappearance. One had
Speaker 4: a nice hell to his throat. Another was victim of
Speaker 4: a home invasion. Now, the original investigation, I learned, had
Speaker 4: interviewed the adults in the area and they talked to
Speaker 4: the friends of the victims, who were mostly teenagers. But
Speaker 4: the children of the neighborhood were never spoken to, and
Speaker 4: as it turned out, they were the ones who knew
Speaker 4: who the monster was. I'm so glad I was a
Speaker 4: boy because all of the little girls, all of the
Speaker 4: girls on my street, had been raped and we were
Speaker 4: a turn road of four houses. Now the investigation gathered
Speaker 4: momentum when I talked to private investigator Don Tubban. He'd
Speaker 4: gone to school with Kathy and Georgian. He graduated on
Speaker 4: the night that the girls disappeared. He'd spent years as
Speaker 4: a local town cop. In fact, we met for the
Speaker 4: first time when he was a town cop and I
Speaker 4: was an underage teenager. Drinking beer behind the town railroad depot. Okay,
Speaker 4: initial an initial meeting wasn't friendly, but we're good friends now.
Speaker 4: And Tupham later worked as a state investigator, and he
Speaker 4: became a private investigator, and he agreed to help with
Speaker 4: the investigation for free because if Alice had no money
Speaker 4: and who knew if the project was ever going to
Speaker 4: generate any income. And he became a stalwart locator and
Speaker 4: examiner of witnesses, had other help. I'm going to give
Speaker 4: you a list of names now, Don Campbell, Tom Weist,
Speaker 4: Amy minster Hood, act, Mary Anne Shils, Paul Johnson, Jerry Warren,
Speaker 4: Phillip Semraw. They all put in long hours taking photos,
Speaker 4: digging out facts, some of them a half century barried.
Speaker 4: So during the course of the twenty eleven investigation, I
Speaker 4: was asked repeatedly if I was writing a book about
Speaker 4: the case, and people think I just write them and
Speaker 4: they magically appear in the bookstore. And I told the truth.
Speaker 4: I said, I'd love to write a book about this.
Speaker 4: He Alice wants me to write a book about this,
Speaker 4: but I have no reason to believe that anyone would
Speaker 4: ever publish it, because I've talked to a lot of
Speaker 4: editors in the publishing world, and had been told that
Speaker 4: the case had none of the things that publishers like.
Speaker 4: It wasn't recent, wasn't neatly resolved, the victims were not
Speaker 4: rich and beautiful. And when I told those I interviewed
Speaker 4: that I didn't think there'd ever be a book, I
Speaker 4: was being sincere, although you know, we certainly wanted that
Speaker 4: to happen. I'm saying that because I think there might
Speaker 4: be an attitude from some people I spoke to that
Speaker 4: you said there wasn't going to be a book. If
Speaker 4: I'd know there was going to be a book, I
Speaker 4: would I wouldn't have talked to you. And you know, sorry,
Speaker 4: it's just how it things important. And did those people
Speaker 4: have their names changed in the book anyway? It's like
Speaker 4: I did my best not to embarrass anybody. So the
Speaker 4: final piece of the puzzle was the publisher Roman and Littlefield,
Speaker 4: which looked at the book proposals differently from any other publisher.
Speaker 4: Catherine Canegie there, to her credit, saw the manuscript not
Speaker 4: as a true crime book at all, but as a
Speaker 4: memoir my story as it related to the murders. And
Speaker 4: I'm certainly not sure I agree holy with that characterization.
Speaker 4: But I didn't argue the point because they said they
Speaker 4: would publish the book, and I said, okay. Now, because
Speaker 4: it was not published as a cheap paperback, it costs
Speaker 4: a little bit more than my previous true crime books.
Speaker 4: I'm really sorry about that. But it's also a much
Speaker 4: classier package, hardcover, beautiful photo photo by Philip Samra, designed
Speaker 4: by my daughter. And one thing's for certain, I can't wait.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to hand the copy to Alice. She
Speaker 4: had wanted reader Bension's Michael to write a book about
Speaker 4: Alice Bernhardt's Kathy, and together we made that wish come true.
Speaker 6: What we didn't talk about and you do have this
Speaker 6: in the book, and it's very very profound. So is
Speaker 6: that you really and again this is the value of
Speaker 6: this book as well for all those people that are
Speaker 6: fans of your books. For the first time they really
Speaker 6: get inside your childhood and you examine how profound this
Speaker 6: disappearance and this murder is of your basically your next
Speaker 6: door neighbor, George Anne. And even though you were younger
Speaker 6: by four years, four or five years, there was this
Speaker 6: profound effect on you. And so you include a lot
Speaker 6: of the things in there that's growing up in this little,
Speaker 6: very peaceful and innocent time and place, and then everything
Speaker 6: changed and the relationship you had with George Anne was
Speaker 6: very odd. And then now a culmination comes full circle
Speaker 6: where you're presenting very good evidence on who may have
Speaker 6: killed these young women at that time. One thing that
Speaker 6: you also included.
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Speaker 6: I guess I think it's important, and you were talking
Speaker 6: about satanic and ritualistic murders, is that at the three
Speaker 6: hours before Georgia Ann and uh Kathy were found that
Speaker 6: there was a dog slid open. So maybe you can
Speaker 6: tell us about that well and what the Mulligan woman said.
Speaker 6: Mulligan Wilson said about that once she saw that dog
Speaker 6: slid open, I think it was very important.
Speaker 4: Right. That's a woman we're referring to in the book
Speaker 4: as Francine Wilson. She and her two kid brothers are
Speaker 4: going for dog out. The dog has gone out do
Speaker 4: its thing and hasn't come back. And they go walking
Speaker 4: out and they get to the railroad tracks that separated
Speaker 4: their house from ours, and that would be the Pennsylvania Railroad,
Speaker 4: you know, one half of the Genesee junction. And she
Speaker 4: spots the dog lying on the railroad tracks and she
Speaker 4: tells her little brothers to go run home. And she
Speaker 4: figured that the dog had been hit by a train.
Speaker 4: But when she went to see she realized that it
Speaker 4: was much worse. That the dog had been slit and
Speaker 4: its entrails had been pulled out. Kick her here is
Speaker 4: that she is the wife of the monster. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: you know, holy cow, Arthur Shawcross didn't care about you know,
Speaker 4: Francine's dog. And the other suspects I'll discuss they didn't
Speaker 4: care about francine dog. But if this is a message
Speaker 4: to keep your mouth shut from her husband, who's a
Speaker 4: dirt bag and a half, then it was very effective.
Speaker 4: Because the although the guy who we like best appeared
Speaker 4: on the sheriff's suspect list, he'd been alibied by his wife,
Speaker 4: the very woman whose dog had been killed. She's not
Speaker 4: alibying him anymore.
Speaker 6: There was some witness testimony from some picnickers around that
Speaker 6: area at that time that evening. And of course you
Speaker 6: as an investigative journalist and along with your with Tubman
Speaker 6: the private investigator, you have to look at everything and
Speaker 6: eliminate everybody before you can zero in on anyone. So
Speaker 6: there's also that process so.
Speaker 4: That there is no shortage of suspects. I mean, what
Speaker 4: we found was this horrible cluster of pedophiles in my neighborhood,
Speaker 4: and it was it was a poor neighborhood. My dad
Speaker 4: had he was an insurance adjuster and we lived in
Speaker 4: the city of Rochester and he'd wanted to move to
Speaker 4: the country and have a little catch of land. He
Speaker 4: knew nothing about where he was moving in terms of
Speaker 4: the demographics, but it was a poor area that only
Speaker 4: recently had been inhabitable because the Mount Morris Dam had
Speaker 4: been filled, had been built, and before that the land
Speaker 4: flooded and you couldn't live there. So the first people
Speaker 4: to move in were almost experiments to see if make
Speaker 4: sure nobody drowned when the spring melt came. And then
Speaker 4: when that was determined that that didn't happen. Other people
Speaker 4: well better means moved in. But there were you know,
Speaker 4: there were lots of shacks with without houses. And just
Speaker 4: in on Kathy Street, I think we counted five different
Speaker 4: men who had histories of being sex criminals. They were
Speaker 4: either you know, exposers or child rapists or just generally
Speaker 4: pervy guys. It's a it's a little little bit scary again,
Speaker 4: you know, wow, Glad, I'm a boy.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So in that regard, when with the when I
Speaker 6: mentioned about the picnicker and that eyewitness testimony, who did
Speaker 6: that lead to in terms of for the police. And
Speaker 6: again you talk about in the book about bloodhound searches
Speaker 6: and then house to house searches in uh Scottsville, I believe,
Speaker 6: and Vanattine.
Speaker 4: So yet the initial suspect was a fellow. But then
Speaker 4: they were calling Jack Star. And I'm changing these things
Speaker 4: to protect the families, not the guys, right, because I
Speaker 4: got cooperation from brothers and kids and generally the families
Speaker 4: of these people helped a lot, but I don't want
Speaker 4: them to necessarily get the notoriety that they don't deserve.
Speaker 4: So we're calling him Jack Star. And he was George
Speaker 4: Anne's boyfriend, and he's been seen with george Anne and
Speaker 4: Kathy back by the swimming hall just a few hours
Speaker 4: before their disappearance. Now, the thing that the complicating factor
Speaker 4: here that I haven't brought up yet is that when
Speaker 4: george Anne was thirteen years old, she became pregnant and
Speaker 4: she had a child. Child was put up for adoption,
Speaker 4: and it was generally assumed that Jack Star was the father.
Speaker 4: But during our investigation we learned that, first of all,
Speaker 4: you know, the monster who's named in the book is
Speaker 4: Clint Wilson had been, you know, growing up and down
Speaker 4: the road, raping every adolescent female who didn't have a
Speaker 4: dad with a loaded shotgun pointed at him. He had
Speaker 4: he had raped the neighbor of Kathy. He had raped
Speaker 4: the girl who lived between me and Georgia Anne. Georgianne's
Speaker 4: older sister had called the Rochester police saying that he
Speaker 4: had raped her and Georgia Anne, at thirteen became pregnant.
Speaker 4: We're assuming there's a connection there, and what we found
Speaker 4: out we talked to a boy who who wasn't Georgianne's boyfriend,
Speaker 4: but it was her coffee down a friend of hers,
Speaker 4: and he said that Georgie Anne had told him that
Speaker 4: she told her mother that Jack Style was the father
Speaker 4: of her baby. But she has lied. And it occurs
Speaker 4: to me, the thirteen year old girl who has been
Speaker 4: raped by a married man who threatened to kill her
Speaker 4: if she told has a dilemma. What does she do?
Speaker 4: And I think what she might have done, what she
Speaker 4: might have found a boy in the neighborhood. She liked Jack,
Speaker 4: who came from a comparatively well to do family. He
Speaker 4: drove a corvette, he was twenty years old, had an
Speaker 4: affair with him, and then told him that he was
Speaker 4: the father of her baby, and he believed her, and
Speaker 4: there was talk. I think they wanted to get married,
Speaker 4: but Georgian's parents forbid it. So again we've got a
Speaker 4: scenario where it's all pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 6: Now, with your investigation, how do you proceed and are
Speaker 6: the people that you interview and you alluded to a
Speaker 6: few of the people that you're getting information from, like
Speaker 6: Clint Wilson's wife, tell us under the circumstances why she
Speaker 6: would say something contrary to what she said and provided
Speaker 6: for as an alibi for her husband. Tell us those
Speaker 6: circumstances that she would have changed her tune and given
Speaker 6: you different information.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that well, first of all, yeah, I
Speaker 4: kind of know how to give spoilers, Okay, but she
Speaker 4: was she was in a situation where she was no
Speaker 4: longer afraid of Clinton. Because if Clint's holding, you know,
Speaker 4: a knife to the little girls while he's raping them, he's
Speaker 4: probably got his wife terrified as well. I think that's
Speaker 4: that's a pretty good assumption. And we know that she's
Speaker 4: called the cops saying that he was trying to drown her,
Speaker 4: and she at one point tried to drive his motorcycle
Speaker 4: off of Scottsville Road, but she missed him. So she's
Speaker 4: afraid of him and wants to kill him. And now
Speaker 4: she's in a situation where she's not afraid of him anymore.
Speaker 4: And she says, well, he could have done it, which
Speaker 4: means to me that when she told the sheriff that
Speaker 4: he was with her that evening, she lied. Yeah.
Speaker 6: God, in terms of you, you you talk about signature
Speaker 6: in this book, and when you talk about Arthur Shawcross,
Speaker 6: you're talking about a very unique type of serial killer.
Speaker 6: And with this case, we didn't get into too much
Speaker 6: graphic detail. We alluded to it so people can use
Speaker 6: their imagination. You did mention a couple of things. Why
Speaker 6: is it that you think that that that level of mutilation,
Speaker 6: which is unusual is can be associated with Wilson.
Speaker 4: Wow, there is no reason. The only thing I can
Speaker 4: say is that what we have here is a well
Speaker 4: if the family where they are competitively sick. Ah Clip's father,
Speaker 4: in the last month of his life raped a five
Speaker 4: year old girl and the judge said, I'm going to
Speaker 4: let you go, and you can no longer be alone
Speaker 4: with the girl unless her parents are with her. And
Speaker 4: this just just strikes me as absurd, is bizarre, and
Speaker 4: the only way it makes any sense is if they're
Speaker 4: all living in the same house, which means that you know,
Speaker 4: he's probably lived his granddaughter, and before more than a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks can go buy, he dies unexpectedly on
Speaker 4: his daughter's kitchen floor, where we don't know what the
Speaker 4: cause of death was. What we do know is unexpected
Speaker 4: sens a care of itself. Yeah. Also, Clint's brothers, some
Speaker 4: of them, not all of them, had been in trouble
Speaker 4: for sect with these cases. None of them ever went
Speaker 4: to trial because in every single case, the victim refused
Speaker 4: to testify against them. Clint clint Our Clint. He also
Speaker 4: has an incident in his life in which he and
Speaker 4: we know this to be true, rapes his own granddaughter,
Speaker 4: which makes, you know, talk about a chip off the
Speaker 4: old block, something had in common with Dad. And you
Speaker 4: know that that also leads to two bad things happening
Speaker 4: to Clinton. So we what we have here is is,
Speaker 4: you know, a brood of evil. And of course some
Speaker 4: of the family turned out fine, and I don't want
Speaker 4: to paint the whole family with with a brush, but
Speaker 4: we have we have brothers who are bad, and if
Speaker 4: you get them together and they're competitively bad, you could
Speaker 4: get to a situation where, you know, a Jack the
Speaker 4: Ripper type incident could occur. But yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 4: there's also I suspect looking at the crime scene. I
Speaker 4: I suspect the first wound was George Anne's throat being cut,
Speaker 4: and this would match you know, him holding a knife
Speaker 4: to the of other victims, saying you make any noise,
Speaker 4: you're dead meat. And we have George Mulligan's ear witness
Speaker 4: testimony that you know he heard a scream coming from
Speaker 4: back by the creek. He said, behind your house a
Speaker 4: little bit to the left. Well at least it was close.
Speaker 4: But if she screamed, then that could have been the
Speaker 4: first the first uh, the first cut. And you know,
Speaker 4: who knows what happens all of a sudden, he's got
Speaker 4: a dead girl on his hands. What does he do then?
Speaker 4: You know, whatever he wants?
Speaker 6: What was the purpose? And we touched on Arthur Shawcross,
Speaker 6: but you also include Richard Speck and a few other cases.
Speaker 4: And you also have been clear he wasn't he was
Speaker 4: nowhere near. But then he was the initial suspect because
Speaker 4: he killed the nurses in Chicago between when Georgianne and
Speaker 4: Kathy disappeared and when they were found. The other really
Speaker 4: good suspect that I think anyway, is a fellow named
Speaker 4: John I. Miller. On September third, nineteen sixty six, a
Speaker 4: little more than two months after our murders, Miller's driving
Speaker 4: down a Pennsylvania road when he passed a small girl
Speaker 4: in her bathing suit riding her bicycle. Stops the car
Speaker 4: and tries to abduct her, but she screams, and he
Speaker 4: stabs her with a hunting knife until she's dead, and
Speaker 4: leaves her by the side of the road and the
Speaker 4: murder had a lot in common with ours. It was
Speaker 4: it both took place on a Saturday, the victims were
Speaker 4: in their bathing suits, and police like to that fetish
Speaker 4: a lot because the thing that they wasn't found. They
Speaker 4: found the transistor radio, and they found Georgianne's towel, but
Speaker 4: they never found Kathy's towel, and it had on it
Speaker 4: a picture of a girl in a baby ing suit
Speaker 4: with a big sombrero. So if bathing suits are his thing,
Speaker 4: that was the souvenir he took. Now. Now, Rochester authorities
Speaker 4: went down to Pennsylvania to interview Miller, but they found
Speaker 4: him mentally incompetent and but nonetheless case against him heated
Speaker 4: up when it was learned that he he drove a
Speaker 4: make and color of car very similar to one spotted
Speaker 4: the night after Kathy and Georgie and disappeared by a
Speaker 4: teenage girl on the same lover's lane where the girl's
Speaker 4: bodies were found. That sighting occurred on Sunday night, late
Speaker 4: on Sunday night, which a little bit of a discouraging
Speaker 4: factor because Miller shows up for work first thing Monday
Speaker 4: morning back in Pennsylvania, and technically he could have gotten
Speaker 4: in his car, driven to his to his work and
Speaker 4: reported for work on time, but it would have been
Speaker 4: you know, coacht Shay. It's not impossible that he was
Speaker 4: the killer, but I think the timing makes it less likely.
Speaker 4: The Rochester newspaper ran Miller's photo and a surprising number
Speaker 4: of people called in and said they'd seen them in
Speaker 4: the area, including a bartender on Scottsville Road, right near
Speaker 4: the where the murders took place. He was known to
Speaker 4: be fascinated by female anatomy. He kept a file of
Speaker 4: stories about murdered children, and he ended up I think
Speaker 4: serving twenty years for the for the murder of the
Speaker 4: girl on her bicycle, and he may be alive and
Speaker 4: walking among us down there still. But again, for him
Speaker 4: to be both the person on the lover's lane on
Speaker 4: Sunday night and the guy reporting for work on time
Speaker 4: on Monday morning would mean cutting it very close. You know.
Speaker 4: The other suspect we had where the fellow were calling
Speaker 4: Tom Armstrong. He was a local educator who, as the
Speaker 4: story went, and a lot of this is through the
Speaker 4: grapevine and nothing official about it at all, but the
Speaker 4: story goes that he confessed to his wife that he
Speaker 4: had killed the girls and soon thereafter committed suicide. Now
Speaker 4: we verified as much as we could of the story.
Speaker 4: He'd committed suicide all right, not long after resigning from
Speaker 4: a teaching and vice principal position. But when we asked
Speaker 4: the family about confessing the murder, we were told that
Speaker 4: it all happened a long time ago and we should
Speaker 4: leave the family alone. The response lacked one thing, a denial.
Speaker 4: I mean, if someone had written me a letter and said,
Speaker 4: you know, we think your dad committed a double homicide,
Speaker 4: I would have said, no way, my dad didn't do it.
Speaker 4: But the Armstrong family didn't say that. They merely had
Speaker 4: to be left alone. And it may just be that
Speaker 4: they didn't think it through. But anyway, I would like
Speaker 4: to know. I would like to know more about that guy.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, especially since also we have that where we
Speaker 4: found people who knew both Clint and Tom Armstrong and
Speaker 4: if if if they knew each other, wow, what a
Speaker 4: what a pair they were made.
Speaker 6: He also include the Devil's Disciples and Hell's Angels connection
Speaker 6: in here, So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Clint Flint was a biker and he at the time
Speaker 4: of the of the murders. He belonged to a Rochester
Speaker 4: bike game called the Hackers, and he the Hackers became
Speaker 4: the Rochester chapter of the Hell's Angels and soon thereafter
Speaker 4: Clint was kicked out because they found him to be
Speaker 4: a bad character. Now now us because he picked on
Speaker 4: people smaller and weaker than him rather than being a
Speaker 4: guy who you know, flought people his own size. And
Speaker 4: then maybe they knew something about him that that you know,
Speaker 4: we don't. But anyway, he didn't have the character to
Speaker 4: be a Hell's Angel, so he joined another biker group
Speaker 4: called the Devil's Disciples. And again this gets back to
Speaker 4: you know, six sixty six and Anton Levey. In addition
Speaker 4: to the creepy teenagers dressing up like the Adams family,
Speaker 4: the other group that really latched onto the LaVey symbolism
Speaker 4: were bikers. So yeah, as Clinton, Clint was the Devil's
Speaker 4: Disciple in addition to all the other things that he
Speaker 4: had going for him. But that's one thing I want.
Speaker 4: I want to point out that the book's written, books done,
Speaker 4: the investigation will go on forever. And if there's anybody
Speaker 4: listening who knows any of these people knows something that
Speaker 4: that's not in the book, or just wants to talk
Speaker 4: about it, they can contact me at Facebook www dot
Speaker 4: facebook dot com, forward slash Michael dot Benson dot nine
Speaker 4: four two one, and whatever you want to say. Let
Speaker 4: me know who you think did it. If if there's
Speaker 4: somebody's out there saying I think I'm I'm a Shawcross guy,
Speaker 4: love to talk to you about that. I never get
Speaker 4: sick to talk about Shawcross. And there are elements at
Speaker 4: the Shawcross story we didn't get to talk about tonight.
Speaker 4: You know, We're never gonna have a confession in this case.
Speaker 4: But I'm not convinced that it couldn't be a DNA
Speaker 4: case and that it can't be solved. You just taken
Speaker 4: off the books, so you know, along with being an
Speaker 4: entergy aim informed for people who like grisly murder stories
Speaker 4: and educational piece about how to distinguish and stop systemic
Speaker 4: child abuse, it's it's a bit of a call to
Speaker 4: action for the Mono County Sheriff's Office, who have the
Speaker 4: subpoena power exclamation, search warrants and the investigation investigative punch
Speaker 4: to solve this case once and for all. Like I said,
Speaker 4: Georgianne had a baby, and the father of that baby,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe our killer who knows you know, while
Speaker 4: they're in it, they may find a solution to the
Speaker 4: double initials murders as well. I don't know if they're
Speaker 4: familiarly with that's that the double initial murders happened a
Speaker 4: couple of years later and sort of made people forget
Speaker 4: about the childlie murders that the Genesee Junction murders. They
Speaker 4: were three little girls, all with the same first and
Speaker 4: last initial, who were abducted in the city of Rochester
Speaker 4: and then were raped and murdered and dunked in a
Speaker 4: town in the suburbs. It also started that same.
Speaker 6: You also talk about in in Eerie that people thought
Speaker 6: might have been connected to Georgia.
Speaker 4: For a long time. In fact, I when I first
Speaker 4: started investigating this case as an adult and a professional,
Speaker 4: I was talking to police detectives for the first time,
Speaker 4: and the Eerie case was considered to be very, very
Speaker 4: important because it happened very close to the same time
Speaker 4: and it was only forty minutes down the New York
Speaker 4: State Thruway ury Pennsylvania's on the other side of the border.
Speaker 4: They later caught a guy who looks good for looks
Speaker 4: good for that one. So we got to cross that
Speaker 4: one off the list. There was not enough crossing off
Speaker 4: of lists for my case. Like I said, we have
Speaker 4: a plethora of suspect Unfortunately.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I found in this book that maybe not a frustration,
Speaker 6: but maybe that's not exactly the word, but like you say,
Speaker 6: a plethora of viable possible suspects, and then you talk
Speaker 6: about all of the just the other heinous crimes that
Speaker 6: these other guys like Shatcross have done, and then the
Speaker 6: possible suspects here, like you say, are very viable. What
Speaker 6: was your conclusion at the end of this other or
Speaker 6: were I don't know if it was a conclusion, but
Speaker 6: how surprised Being this veteran true crime writer and many
Speaker 6: years involved in this, were you still surprised at the
Speaker 6: number of viable suspects and the amount of similarities in
Speaker 6: a lot of these crimes that would lead a more
Speaker 6: amateur investigator to draw conclusions in terms of suspects.
Speaker 4: I wonder again, it's it's the cluster of suspects, you know.
Speaker 4: I'm I love a good conspiracy theory and Holy Town.
Speaker 4: It's almost like there was a club of little girl
Speaker 4: loving men, and they all moved on to the same
Speaker 4: block that so they could organize their efforts. And I
Speaker 4: do know that there were there were men on Names
Speaker 4: Road who went to the local bar and were known
Speaker 4: to brag to the bartender about the young and as
Speaker 4: they nailed and it's just real grizzly stuff. And these
Speaker 4: were the fathers of kids I was going to school with.
Speaker 4: You know, they all seemed like nice kids to me,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure there they were, but their dads were
Speaker 4: all into this really, really horrible stuff. And I remember
Speaker 4: I was interviewing one poor girl who who had been
Speaker 4: abused as a She lived very close to Kathy, and
Speaker 4: I say, you know, it's amazing that any any of
Speaker 4: the girls on Names Road survived, and she laughses, I
Speaker 4: know what you mean. So I made perhaps because it
Speaker 4: was a poor neighborhood, that that maybe there's more of
Speaker 4: this than we realized. But it just does seem like
Speaker 4: there was an unnatural grouping of perversion right around the murders. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which which stout Benson's steered clear of.
Speaker 6: What about Ruth for Mcola in that family, what's well,
Speaker 6: it's going to be a great outcome for.
Speaker 4: Ruth. And uh and George Georgia's mom and dad, they left.
Speaker 4: They split for Florida not long after this all happened,
Speaker 4: and they also adopted a little boy who came down
Speaker 4: to visit us once and I swear he had Georgeanne's face.
Speaker 4: So we're looking for him still, but we're not getting
Speaker 4: a lot of cooperation from from Georgie Anne's sister or
Speaker 4: George's nephew, who we did find. And one of the
Speaker 4: favorite quotes in the book is that George's nephew says
Speaker 4: to Don Tubbin, you know the Wilson boys did it,
Speaker 4: but don't worry about it. We take care of our own.
Speaker 4: He used the pearl. And there are multiple Wilson boys
Speaker 4: who were killed by their wives or their girlfriends. And
Speaker 4: there would have been one more if fan Scene had
Speaker 4: managed to drive Clint off the road when he was
Speaker 4: on his motorcycle, but she missed.
Speaker 6: Incredible. Yeah, it's an very very compelling story. Here. What
Speaker 6: is your schedule now that this book is is going
Speaker 6: to be released very soon in the next few days.
Speaker 4: In terms of.
Speaker 6: Yeah, go ahead, sorry, uh, well, our.
Speaker 4: Schedule, I'm the book is supposed to be on sale
Speaker 4: on Monday, the sixteenth. We did have a report today
Speaker 4: on Facebook of somebody getting one in the mail, so
Speaker 4: apparently Amazon dot Com it is fulfilling pre orders. I'm
Speaker 4: guessing you got one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the book, I haven't.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen it yet, as you know. As you know,
Speaker 4: my mom passed away a couple of days ago, and
Speaker 4: I'm I'm at her. I'm at her apartment now and
Speaker 4: we're burying her on Friday, and so my books are
Speaker 4: heading towards my home in Brooklyn. So I've ordered a
Speaker 4: couple of extra to come here, but I may not
Speaker 4: see it for a few days yet. I'm very envious
Speaker 4: people who have the book and I don't, because I
Speaker 4: wanted to yell if they have the very first one
Speaker 4: I have. On next Wednesday, on the eighteenth, I will
Speaker 4: be appearing at seven pm at the Scottsville Free Library
Speaker 4: for a local Author Night and giving a little talk
Speaker 4: about how I became a writer. And then on the
Speaker 4: twenty first, on the afternoon of the twenty first, two pm,
Speaker 4: I will be at the University of Rochester Barnes and
Speaker 4: Noble signing books and anybody wants to come out and
Speaker 4: say hi, that'd be great. And right now I'm working on.
Speaker 4: My new book is going to be on but the
Speaker 4: Escape from Dana Moore Prison Escape Lad of the Summer
Speaker 4: and when I'm emphasizing at the moment what these guys
Speaker 4: did to get to Dani Mora in the first place,
Speaker 4: because how you know these two dirt bags could end
Speaker 4: up in the honor block is pretty boggling to me.
Speaker 4: And my next book to come out completely change of
Speaker 4: pace for me is called why in the Grateful Dead Matter,
Speaker 4: And it's about the rock band and my and my
Speaker 4: love for them since I was a kid.
Speaker 6: I was surprised at that my car really was so
Speaker 6: I was really interesting. The phenomenon of Grateful Dead is amazing,
Speaker 6: and so I've I was surprised that it took this
Speaker 6: long for somebody to chronicle it. So I'm very interested
Speaker 6: to see as a fan what you've got to say
Speaker 6: about it. So I think it's one of those things.
Speaker 4: There's something my agent and I had in common, and
Speaker 4: we had long conversations about the Dead And as it
Speaker 4: turns out, then a publisher was looking for someone to
Speaker 4: write a book, and my agent suggested me I really
Speaker 4: wanted to job bad. I wrote a proposal that was
Speaker 4: just I thought some of the best stuff I've ever written,
Speaker 4: and wrote an essay. I wrote an essay answers the question.
Speaker 4: Every chapter explains why they matter and then why they're
Speaker 4: going to continue the matter.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have to be a dead head to I
Speaker 6: think you've written that, write that proposal, so so as
Speaker 6: soon as the dead head reads it, then they know
Speaker 6: and that's that's it. So it has to be told
Speaker 6: by that somebody. There's no way you can do the
Speaker 6: investment wage otherwise.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 6: For those that might want to find out about more
Speaker 6: of your books. I know you mentioned some contact. Do
Speaker 6: you do the Facebook and a website? Could you just
Speaker 6: give that contact information again in case people might not
Speaker 6: work into more of your work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they can send me an email I'm
Speaker 4: at T Tech mat T e K m A T
Speaker 4: T at aol dot com. Or they can get me
Speaker 4: a Facebook and I'm I'm the Michael Benson with the
Speaker 4: white Beard in case you want just look at the pictures,
Speaker 4: or I'm Michael dot Benson dot ninety four to two
Speaker 4: one if you want to plug it into your search. Yeah,
Speaker 4: right on.
Speaker 6: Well, I wish you the best of luck, and I
Speaker 6: know that You're going to have a great reception from
Speaker 6: this this book. It's going to be very personal for
Speaker 6: the people in that area, and it's going to be
Speaker 6: a great not a celebration, but I think it'll be
Speaker 6: a welcome book and and a welcome addition to the
Speaker 6: history of that little area. And who knows. I think
Speaker 6: it really does have a good chance of becoming, like
Speaker 6: the East Area rapist, one of those kind of cases
Speaker 6: where people want to get involved and solve this thing
Speaker 6: once and for all. I think you've given so much
Speaker 6: information and clues and direction that it should you know,
Speaker 6: it could very well become a possibility. So I wish
Speaker 6: you the best in that pursuit.
Speaker 4: I would love to give Alice burn Heart absolute and
Speaker 4: final closure. That's been my goal all along.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, this is a good start and a very
Speaker 6: good beginning, and hopefully at least people will know what
Speaker 6: has happened and the story is out there and for
Speaker 6: people to discover and uh in a very very great
Speaker 6: tale written by you, Michael. So I want to congratulate
Speaker 6: you on.
Speaker 4: That, and thanks.
Speaker 6: My condolences about your your mother and your mom died.
Speaker 4: Recently as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very difficult time, but yeah, anyway, thank you very
Speaker 6: much Michael, you have a great evening and hope to
Speaker 6: talk to you and soon. Okay, pleasure, thanks a lot,
Speaker 6: thank you,