Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 5: We're joined today by Kathy Scott here to talk to
us about and Rule, everybody's favorite true crime writer.
Speaker 3: Kathy, thank you for joining us today, My pleasure, Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 5: I just mentioned an Rule is a name that is
familiar to most people in the true crime space, and
you've joined us today because you're working on a biography
about her. Right now, so start by telling us why
you chose and rule.
Speaker 3: As your subject. I never go out and look for
all topic of a book. All my books really their
true crime, mostly about deaths, and they just come my way.
But I got to know Anne when her attorney wanted
her attorneys contacted me after she filed the lawsuit against
the Seattle Weekly and to write an article because they
didn't think coverage was being done wasn't balanced in Seattle,
and she was upset about it. She didn't like an
article written by It's a complicated case, but she didn't
like the article, but she especially didn't like the headline
because it said her reporting was sloppy. So she stood
them for the word sloppy. And I asked her. I said,
this is a weekly. It's not getting a lot and
it's a local weekly. It's not getting a lot of
coverage outside of Seattle. And if I write about it,
you're going to be spreading it. And why did you
just let it go? And she said no, I have
to preserve my name and they can't get away with it.
And I wrote about it, interviewed her attorneys, did a
Q and A, and then I did a separate piece.
I write for Psychology Today periodically, and so I did
two more articles on her. So I did three articles
before she died. And this was probably about three and
a half years before she died in twenty fifteen. The anniversary,
by the way, was two days ago. I've heard. Yeah.
But we became friends. We talked and stuff, and then
she wasn't as conventional as a writer as she appeared
to be. So there were things about her that were
quite interesting, and I looked into different things and she
became quite an interesting study. Plus we were friends, so
we chatted a lot. She she always called me her
dog loving friend. But hell and I had planned to
go and see her with a mutual friend. We had
were in touch with Anne and we were it was
like three weeks before she died and we were all
set to go, and then she unfortunately died. But she's,
as I said, she's an interesting study. She wrote thirty
seven books. Thirty five one was I'm Not Fiction, and
thirty six were true crime, and thirty five were New
York Times bestsellers. And so she she's interesting and there's
a lot that people don't know about her that I
think I'm flashing out her story and they're going to
know exactly who she was. She had such an impact
on the two crime genre that it's worthy of a book.
Speaker 2: Was she successful, by the way, in this lawsuit against
the paper that was saying her work was sloppy?
Speaker 3: She was, Yet she lost and then and they said
that it wasn't that saying sloppy was not defamatory. I
think she sued for libelk and she of course appealed it.
She losst again, and then there was another it's complicated
it in the book, but there's another suit that she
had filed now hadn't reconciled yet there was no decision,
and then after her death, it too was dismissed. The
suit she filed against the paper were dismissed. The bad thing,
and I my heart goes out to her because of this.
The person who wrote the editor, he was a freelance editor,
and what he was writing about her sloppy reporting. He
called it. She wasn't a reporter, she didn't come from journalism.
She came from the tabloids. But he called it slapping reporting.
And that's my dog's back breathing the background. Sorry, But
the guy who wrote it, it was about a book
Anne had written about a woman who had killed her husband,
and she was her fiance. It was the Oregon case.
It was in the Pacific Northwest, which Anne liked to
write about. He was her fiance and a month or
two after the story was published, he married her. So
he was just reamed and didn't know it at the time.
But of course, and the paper did not know that
he had a relationship with the woman who was featuring.
And this was a feature story. It was a full length,
magazine size article. She didn't know that at the times,
so it really it's in her favorite but she didn't
know it at the time, but really in her favor.
But it didn't help her because that was what the
suit was about. The suit was libels.
Speaker 2: So he escaped, if you will, prevailed on the basis
of more of a free speech kind of thing. In
other words, you can say her work was sloppy.
Speaker 3: Freedom of the press exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Wow, So I think that it is entirely possible that
people could have read Anne's books but not know about
her background as a Seattle police officer. Can you tell
us a little bit about Anne's background.
Speaker 3: Well, she had an uncle, a grandfather, a cousin, she
had maybe a couple of uncles and aunt who all
were in law enforcement. I think there were five of them,
and that's in the book too. And all she wanted
to do since she was five years old was she'd
here siren. Then she wanted to go out and see
what was going on perfect she wanted to be a
So after she graduated from college, she immediately applied for
the She moved. She was born in Michigan, and her
family moved around a lot, and then she ended up
transferring and cinnyshing her degree at the University of Washington.
Upon graduation, she immediately applied for position, but it was
a woman's position. This was she graduated from high school
in forty nine, so she would have graduated college what
fifty three got out four years so she so nineteen
fifty three they had a woman's arm of the police department,
and they had a badge, no pistol, no billy klob,
and they were more social workers than police officers. After
a year and a half, she had an eye test
because she was trying to transfer to become a real officer,
and they had very few women at that time, and
she was deaned blind blind, so she couldn't get on
and that was and at the time though she so
at that point she got to know some homicide cops
and that sort of thing at the Seattle Police Department
and she started writing for the tabloids. She started writing.
It took her a long time, took her gosh, three
four years I think before she got anything published. But
once she hit the tabloids, that's why you have this story.
As Annie used to describe it, you know, part of
the story. She'd go to homicide, say hey, what stories
are you working on? What crimes? And they tell her
whatever murders were going on, and then she'd add to
it and finish this story herself. And she got all
of those published and she was doing like three articles
a week and she did that for several years. So
that's where she learned to write. But she also had
a little bit of prelance work early on as well.
So Nat she always said it broke her heart to
leave the police department, but then she got to cover crime,
and I think that really fails her. But it wasn't
by design. She didn't choose to write about crime other
than for the tabloids. She never planned to write a book.
Speaker 2: Then how does that come about? Anne's first book? And
many people think of it as a true crime classic.
I think we both agree is The Stranger Beside Me?
Now we've talked about Ted Bundy on our podcast Mind
Over Murder here, but we don't want to focus too
much on Bundy. But since he's such an integral part
of and story, do you mind telling us a little
bit about how she met him and how that prompted
her to write The Stranger Beside Me?
Speaker 3: Yell her husband became a teacher and she married, and
she had they had four kids, and the kids were
getting a little bit older, and this was like nineteen
seventy four, and I think two kids were already out
of the house by that time. She had four two boys,
two girls, and her brother. And she always gives him
credit for her becoming an author. He committed suicide when
he was twenty one and a creet. It was very
difficult for her, so she decided she had time, and
they had an opening at the Seattle Suicide Hotline and
she decided to volunteer there. And it was a night shift.
Her partner on the night shift one night a week,
and occasionally she would work. She'd do Sundays, but sometimes
she would do Tuesdays. So she worked with him for
a year or so, almost a year and a half,
I think, with Ted Bundy, and so there's time when
called are coming in. That is how she met Ted Bundy.
And at some point while she was there, he became
a suspect, but she would never accept that and it Yeah,
so she thus The Stranger Beside Me, and he was
fifteen years older than hers, so she was more of
a big sister an aunt to him.
Speaker 5: That I can't even wrap my head around. But what
that does to somebody to realize that you have been
sitting next to a serial killer, working with them, talking
to them, and that they're just seemed like a normal
person when in fact they've been doing the most deviant,
terrible things.
Speaker 3: You can imagine.
Speaker 5: You were telling me off air something quite interesting, which
is that The Stranger Beside Me was not a New
York Times bestseller when it first came out. I assumed
it would have smashed every record there was. But you
said it wasn't.
Speaker 3: True crime, especially a woman, and was there were very
few women writing true crime back then, and it was
all men. Jack Olsen in Seattle. She knew him. He
was a bid true crime author and he wrote I
think thirty one books. They knew each other. They weren't
fond of each other though, that's a story in itself.
But she paved the way for people like me my
first I was a police reporter for a long time,
but my first book was The Killing of Tupac Shakur.
And even that was a big deal for me to
be the one who wrote it, because I remember someone saying,
and it was published that who does she think she
is a middle aged white hole writing about Tupac Shakor
a black man.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, as if that would disqualify you because
you were a white woman.
Speaker 3: But good thing is, so I don't react to things
like that. I tried to as a reporter. You have
to have some thick skin. You guys probably know that.
And so afterward, when the book came out, it was
a Los Angeles instant, Los Angeles Times bestseller. Oh sure, yeah,
and so everyone. So it got a lot of kudos,
and so they respected the work because it was just
I laid out what happened because police weren't solving It's
the only reason I wrote it. And then Viggie Smalls
died and that became the second ones but really broke
the ground for us and she so as she was
a for US women. So when she was at the
hotline volunteering, she learned that he was a person who
interests became before he became the main suspect, there were
a couple of others, but before he became the main one,
she completely denied it, didnet accept it, and kept in
touch with him and at one point so her deal
was as soon as the story started. All that there
were stories out about missing women and women being murdered
at the University of Washington students and then in the
Pacific Northwest. It spread out to a few other states
and Utah included, and she pitched a magazine story and
got an assignment, so he deal with She was going
to be writing an article about profiling the women who
were missed, see and kill, and most of them at
that point were found. And then as it became more
and more murders and an agent contacted her, she contacted
the agent. I haven't been able to nail that down.
The agent's no longer with us either, And then anyway,
they got in touch with each other and she wanted
to do a book. Wanted and to write a book,
but she said, I, you cannot do a book until
there's a suspect named. We need at least a name,
not a conviction or an arrest, just a name, and
so she pursued. She lost track Ted for two years,
so that agent was very patient and literary agent, and
she lost track of him. And so there's been a
little bit of criticism that she stayed in touch with
him because of the book. But she did see in
touch with him. She didn't come two terms with he
really did it until she saw him on the stand
and he went off on an attorney and met when
it hit her really hard. And upon his conviction, of course,
and that's how she landed the book deal. And so
as soon as soon as he was named a suspect,
she contacted the editor and she started writing the books.
So she met I think the last time she met
with Ted was for three and a half hours, and
the police had him under surveillance, so that I heard
every word they said. But she's at a restaurant in
Seattle and just picked his brain and she knew he
was a suspect when he knew he was a suspect.
And she got quite a bit out of him, so
there was no love lost. In the end, he was
and there's a netflix. Stephen Michel and his writing partner
did it, and he wanted to even say her name
on air, so they referred to an older woman who
was a writer and that that once. So they didn't
want to give her any ink, which I'd find fascinating.
So for whatever reason he wasn't. Probably if you could,
you know about her sharing the book with him.
Speaker 2: Now tell us more though, because our listeners would love
to hear this, because we obviously have a lot of
annual fans.
Speaker 3: He was going to he wanted to write a book
and he wanted to write it with her, and so
she said okay, And she says that and a stranger
beside me, but I go into more detail, but she
said okay. And then so he was telling her stuff
and who knows how much of it was true because
the man was crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and an inveterate liar, so it was part of
his makeup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so she and it was almost like the
two of them were using each other. Yeah yeah, And
I could just say that out loud, but she she
kept him going. And then when the and then she
told him she'd pay him percentage and number one. As
journalists and as writers and books and authors, you don't
pay for interviews. That's called because I'll spreset. They'll spre
set up for you better. You cannot as co check
book journal as in me them with an author, you
can't do it. But she so once she had enough
for the book that that three and a half hour
interview with him. It was Barcelona, something that was down.
The restaurant was in downtown Seattle. It's in the book,
and the cops were listening to every word. She had
enough and that's when she went to her She had
enough for a book, and that's when she went to
the agent and said, Okay, I'm done and she finished
the book. And yeah, it wasn't because she was a woman,
I think, and she wasn't known other than if you
read the tabloids in the Pacific Northwest. I don't think
her stories went nationwide. You want to have known who
she was. And it was her seventh book that became
New York Times bestseller, and they did another edition, All
the Stranger Beside Me, and that became a bestseller.
Speaker 2: Too. Interesting that as Kristen said not right out of
the shoot. The Stranger Beside Me wasn't an instant hit
when it was first published.
Speaker 3: But it grew. It slowly grew because she wrote a
few books in between, and mostly about they were murders,
but mostly in the Pacific Northwest. That's what she was
looking for. I don't look for crimes. She was good
at that, and she looked for it. I don't know.
If there's a big one it comes up. I may
have an agent or a publisher asked me to do it,
but for the most part, they I hear about it
and I become just one with the story, and you know,
I have three in waiting to be done, Sophie, But yeah,
that's how I come about it. But it's an interesting
transversing how it all happened, and it came together quite
nicely for her. So we had Caroline Frasier on a
couple of weeks ago, and she was talking about the
fact that the Pacific Northwest is overstuffed with serial killers
and she's got her theories as to why that might be.
So I imagine the dan Ruhl had quite a bit
of material to choose from. How did she ultimately decide
this is the next case. I'm reading my book on.
She would see newspaper clips she would get She read
the daily newspaper every single morning, at local news, and
she would go through and she would clip, and then
her readers, as her fan base as she called them,
her fan base grew, or they called themselves, they would
send her ideas as well. That mostly she was looking,
and she would she talked about that a lot, but
she was mostly looking for I don't do this. That
she was mostly looking for attractive men, men who were
nice looking, who were killers. She said she didn't want
to write about ugly men, that they weren't appealing, and
so she never went for the ugly ones, which I
really find I find that fascinating.
Speaker 2: Did she admit this publicly?
Speaker 3: Yes, she did. It's in her, it's in it's in her.
She said it a couple of She had a tendency.
I got her off off track, I think tithfully. But
she had a tendency to be wrote. So she would
from energy to interview. It's just the same thing over
over you. You hear the same thing about Ted. You hear
the same thing about how I became, how I did it.
My thing was the glean the things that weren't said
five hundred times. It's easy to do when you're being interviewed.
Speaker 2: That she would go into some month almost autopilot.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, really, sincerely, that's what they were. That was
interesting when I first noticed it, and I'm like, he
did she say that before? And then it would the
oldest the same words literally word for word. But she
staid that a couple of times on some TV shows
that she didn't go for bad looking, she didn't go
for ugly killers, she went for the handsome ones.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, did you ever challenge, as you said you
became friends, did you ever challenge her on this that
she was doing the same thing over and over again?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think at that point. I don't think
at that point what was that? Yeah, I don't think
at that point that I was into the book that much.
I did. I had written about her, so I had
notes and I had done interviews on her, but I
wasn't at that point. I think, you know, maybe I'll
write a book about her at some point. It did happen,
But she was so interesting that it was when I
learned some oft to be in path things that made
her so interesting. I think this was just I don't
know that she even realized. I think it became easy
for her because energy is are work. You've got to
get dressed up, you're under lights saying you've got to
get there, and your questioned, and it's easy to just
come out with the same things. I think because it
is it looks easy when that we go there, But
it's a job. I look at all of these things
and this is fun. But I look at all the
undressed in sweats and a dog is on my lap,
and I've got a lot of tangents to me. So
I'm quite comfortable and I'm own. But it is part
of the job, and it is you go under the
bright lights. I've done in a million times, and it
is work, and it's easy to go into. I've tried
into the automatic response. I've tried not to do that
because I don't want to be boring because I've said
the same thing. I don't think Anne was boring, but
I think she got into the habit as the same responses.
Speaker 2: And one of the challenges I think, and Kristin and
I have tried to freshen up our approach so that
we're not always asking the same questions and so on.
But if you're being interviewed, which we both have been
in interview subjects a number of times, and they're asking
the same questions over and over again, the answers are
going to be somewhat the same. If the questions are
the same questions you've heard dozens of times before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with Tupac and Biggie Small's with those books. I do,
especially Tupac. My gosh, when there was that recent arrest,
I was on in three days. I was on like
I can't even count the number of stations, right. We
included three shows on CNN, every everything, and newspapers, and
so I tried to be fresh, not to just have
the same in because I did so many of them.
But also one thing I found when you are being
when you are being and you guys have probably found this,
when you are being interviewed, something will spark that you forgot,
you amount insane and it freshens up. I don't intentionally,
I don't memorize. I think about what I'm going to say.
I do. They give me questions like you did in events,
but I don't memorize or say the same thing over
and over. I try to be in the moment, and
I but I think that you do. You probably do
say things differently and maybe add something or leave something
out at you when you're asked the same questions. I
imagine you guys do that too.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
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Speaker 3: Let me ask you this.
Speaker 5: Anne was obviously a She was absolutely paving the way
for women in the true crime space as writers and reporters.
Speaker 3: How else did she affect the true crime space?
Speaker 5: I know that she felt like it was important to
be an advocate for victims of crime. Can you talk
a little bit about what her life was like after
SEATTLEPD and in the midst of this sort of rise
to fame as a true crime author. How important was
it to her that she do some advocacy and make
sure that the victims were represented.
Speaker 3: I don't think that happened in the beginning, and only
because there's there's been a lot of self set about it,
and she focused the Bundy book. She focuses on that
she originally started doing profiles on the Limit, but she
tet is the focus of that book. Sure, and then
her second book and the third book, and I think
as she went alone, and there is something that happened.
I'm not going to share it, but there is something
that happened along that path that after that she really
started focusing on the victims and not the killers. And
I think it was the true It's I think a
Nancy transition, But it was a transition because she was
new to the world of books and and new to
really journalism writing, because she wrote for the tabloids where
half of it was made up, and she says about herself,
she's filled in the blank. So you can't do that
in books. If it's true crime, it's true crime. You
don't make up, you don't fill in the blank. So
I think for her she was still learning the process.
I've always said, the first book teaches you how to
write the second one. You guys have written at least
one of you have written that. Both of you have
written books.
Speaker 2: We both have books in development. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: Well, let's put it that way. Everybody's got a book
in them. That's it feels like it. Yeah, the first
book does teach you how to write the second one.
Although I came from journalism. So my first book there
it was out, it's now out in third edition, The
Killing of Tupaksha Court. But it was very journalistic and
I had to jump and get out of the box
and be more introspective and that sort of thing and
diagnostic and whatever and analyze it. And I'm so much
better and I'm such a better writer now than not bragging,
but I am. You get better.
Speaker 2: It's like interskill.
Speaker 3: And writing is a skill, no doubt about it. The
more you do it, the better you get. And now,
of course it's quite different for me. I get into
the sociology and psychology in my books as well. And
Anne it is not out of that. She's in that too,
but I think it's important as when we're interviewing people,
and especially someone who's a big name. She became I
also old word when she's got millions of followers, and
that's and she's not just some writer out there who
wrote thirty six books. She became quite thirty seven. She
became quite quite an author and paid the path, as
I said, for the rest of us women. And I'm
here as a crime author because of her. I wanted
to ask canon Edna Buchanan wrote to get a chance
read it, and she's My understanding is Edna is in
and it is in hospice care. Now. She got to
know Ann. She was a Miami police reporter. She is
the reason I became a police reporter. I read The
Corpse had a familiar face that you have to read
it one of the best books I've ever written. She
goes to a crime scene and she knows the dead guy. Yeah,
the Corps outed Jameilia Jays. Shewn assinating writer. And it's interesting.
She and Anne thought to know each other and Cora
Edna is in aspice and I think she's God. She
might be ninety, but she and I texted, not texted,
but emailed back and forth. Early in my career, reached
out to her. I also reached out to I reached
out to Edna when I became a reporter. I reached
out to Anne in nineteen ninety six when I was
writing ninety seven. Tupac was killed in ninety six, so
ninety seven when I got the contract, I reached out
to Anne. So that was my first contact. I think
it was an AOL chat room, but she was old school, yeah,
back in the day, and she didn't remember me. But
she she had so many people in that chat room
and she still has diehard fans and they're dying too,
They're dying to read the book. I'm not the only
one who's writing a book. I think find will be
the definitive one.
Speaker 2: But oh, we hope so.
Speaker 3: But her friend friend of hers, Anne another Anne, wrote
hot book that she's self published something but it was
also was biographical, but it was also autobiographical. She wrote
about herself quite a bit and probably a third of
it and the book and that was self published and
it came out a few months ago. And then Aunt,
one of Vane's daughter's, is writing a biography of her
brother and that is due out I think mid year,
mid mid year. Mine will probably mine will be after hers,
because she's ahead of me, I believe in the process.
Speaker 2: Was Anne aware of the fact that you were also
working on this biography?
Speaker 3: Now, I haven't started the biography when I interviewed her
for the articles, right, three articles about her, and there
was there and I did say to myself, at some point,
maybe I'll write a book. I was in the middle
of other projects, so maybe I'll write a biography of her.
Because I typically write about murders. But I have written
two dog books in the middle there. Yeah, I went
down to Hurricane Katrina, wrote Popkins of Katrina with a
rescue group. I went for two weeks two and a
half ways and stay for four and a half months,
allowed of New Orleans, and I love the people and
I love their pets. And it took home my proofs
long ear tool from Hurricane Katrina. And then a photographer
I worked down with and during Hurricane Katrina because we
were all over the streets during the flat and it
was quite quite something. And I was rescuing as well
because there I was in the boat sent on the
play toxic Land. And a photographer was a former marine
and he wanted to do a book of Marines and
their service dogs, so we did Unconditional and their wounded
warriors and their dogs. So those are my two offbeat bugs.
So true.
Speaker 2: But your dog Lever creeps through there in a big way.
Speaker 3: Does I still rescue fourteen cats cross caught them across
my road because they would have been three hundred if
I hadn't done it. I still am involved in rescuing
it and hopefully small ways in the future. But if
something comes along, I do jumped in.
Speaker 5: One of the things that I admire about and role
is that she became an author in true crime, in
a genre that is still very largely even today, populated
by men. So in what specific ways did Anne as
a female writer make her mark on the true crime genre.
Speaker 3: She made her mark in a lot of ways by
ultimately painting the picture of the dictum higher profile in
her books. And we talked about that then the killers
and we'll say mail all, but she did write about
a couple of killer women. But I think she made
her mark also because she became so big and she
made herself available. She spoke before the Senate in what
year was at eighteen nine? I think I just was
finishing that chapter a couple of weeks ago. And she
also was on a House committee for Victims of violent crimes.
But she spoke before the Senate and it was a
serial killer task force, and she became part of that
was to get into the mind of a serial killer,
and so they interviewed her quite a length, went to Washington,
d c. For that. That was quite a moment for her.
So I think she put herself out there, she made
herself available and with law enforcement and her. Everybody thinks
she was a cop for a long time. She wasn't.
It was a very short time that she came from
a family of police officers and her grandfather was a
sheriff and want to colemb County, Michigan, and Anne with
stayed summers with her grandparents, and she lived in the
jawn and she slept.
Speaker 2: If you want, and what a weird thing to do.
Speaker 3: It's not in the email cells because there were two
beds and two cells and they were right next to
the kitchen. So what Anne would do is she would help.
Her grandmother started doing this when she was a little kid,
and just her brother didn't go with her. And she
would spend summers with her grandparents. Every day she would
see the inmates. She would carry the trays and stick
them in the slots, and she got to know the inmates.
And one gallon there have been the book that has
the same thing in it. I already had that in
my book as well. But her name was Viola. I
can't bind a viola anywhere, and all the things I've
gone through, so I don't know if her name was different.
I've looked at femail women during that era who stayed
in that Montreal County jail. So she and guess what
magazine her grandfather liked, True Detective. True Detective.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, i'spective out to child.
Speaker 3: So it's not so that tells me that's what led
her to crime. This is and so the biggest thing
I should say it, but I'm going to the biggest
takeaway I get from it. She was not afraid of
criminals because she talked to them every day and she
thought they were nice people of white Grandpa, Are they
in jail? What did they do? They seemed so nice?
And I think that I think that is the moment
that sort of set her course in either law enforcement
or writing. But reading that such True Detective is quite fascinating.
Speaker 2: Do you think she was trying to separate the crime
from the criminal in some way?
Speaker 3: I think she did that with Ted. I think she separated.
She had a very hard time wrapping her brain around
the fact that Ted was that she was to kill her.
She she knew it, but she really didn't want to
accept it. And I don't know why. I've got my
own suspicions. But she needed him, he needed her in
a lot of ways. She became which is really unusual
for a writer. She became the conduit between him and
the homicide cops. She didn't want to be interviewed. They
wanted to interview him, and so he'd say he'd call
her up and say, can you ask the cops this question?
And she'd go and ask him, and she would give
him the answer. So she was which is an unusual
position to be. She begained part of the story and
they of course he was afraid, and then she was
still needed. She lost track of him, and she called
a homicide cop and asked him to look it up,
and I'll give you the last name if you look
it up for me, And so she provided them with Ted.
But she was nothing. She thought she was the only one,
but she wasn't. She may have gone to her DEATHBEDKKI
she was the only one. It wasn't. There were three
or four other people, including his wide who called police
and turned him in, So it wasn't. She thought for
years he had ignored they had ignored her tip. They
did it because they already had his last name. And
then she said he didn't drivee a VW. So she
didn't think it was him, and they said absolutely, I
looked him up. He dust drive it and that was
that was the Dave Reichert I think was the was
it cop? She the Dave Riker was in Utah. It
was another one to forget his last name. Now that
she was friendly with the homicide because they were used
to seeing her because she would go in for the
stories for True Detective and so they all knew her.
She hung out with him, she liked him, had a
crush on one of them. So that's what I do.
I look up details when I get into I get everything.
Speaker 2: Here we are with the handsome men thing again.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, so I got to know a lot of
cops myself. You'd get you're on the beat. You do
have to keep up. You have to keep You can't
have relationships with the people you write about that you
do become they call you, they become sources. They call
you and you side a sources telling you something. And
I had lots of sources within all the police departments
I covered, and that's part of the job. And they
were her sources as well.
Speaker 2: There's an intimacy there between a writer and a source,
and a lot of times things are shared off the record,
which means essentially, we're keeping secrets here. Do you think
that was part of this thing? She was very sympathetic
to police and law enforcement because she grew up in
a law enforcement family. But that intimacy, it almost sounds like,
even though there might not be a romantic or sexual
component to it, it's not a dating relationship, that there
was something to you that helped.
Speaker 3: It would be that he was married, But go ahead.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that she hoped it would be.
Speaker 3: And it would have been. When you're writing a book
and you're covering it, you cannot cross that line. You
cannot and it's a fair boat and but it's just
absolutely not. You'll lose your job over it. And you
can't because then you become you can't you become sympathetic
to the person or something. You can't. You have to
keep your distance. You become friendly, and you joke a lot.
They tell dirty jokes, by the way, a lot. I
was standing with homicide cop once that crime scene and
he'd been murdered, so he set his trailer on fire.
Was down in the desert near Lake Meat and I
was standing next to the homicide cop as they rolled
his body out right next to us, and he was charred,
and the cop just verse out laughing that this is
this was a homicide sergeant. He burst out laughing because
the big toe was sticking out, it wasn't covered, and
he looked at it. And my thing is, I didn't
look at that as insensitive. I looked at that as
this is a human being who was murdered and burnt
to death. And that's how they keep their sanity if
they can. If you cry over every single one, I
think it would get to you. But to me, I
looked at him as it wasn't rude or anything. The
guy's dead, but I think that's his way of coping
with what they deal with every day. And you see
those you see those things, you're there, you're there, and
a lot of those guys. Tupac Shakur, I gotta call
it midnight or it happened eleven thirty, so it's about
one am, no night. Hey, go down to the Las
Vegas Strip. It was onmside comp Go down the Las
Vegas Strip. The big rapper by the name of Tupac Shaker.
They couldn't even say his aim of gods before just
got shaw and get so I just threw my clothes
and grabbed my notebook and my scanner and headed down.
I had a scanner at home. I had a scanner
in my car and went at my in the newsroom
at my desk. That so I was at the scene.
I was the only only reporter at the scene. And
then I was at the hospital when he died. The
TV station was there, but no other print media. I
wrote the story in my notebook when that I was waiting,
there's a picture of me as Shug Night is walking by,
because people say, you weren't there. Now there's a photo
of me that with the TV station and somebody took
his still of it at some point and posted it.
But ell and so I I waited for the doctor
to come out and give it. We all knew, but
we didn't. I didn't have it a family that I
was with his rappers who rapped with him on stage.
It's just the saddest atmosphere. And I wrote in my
notebook I called it in on the radio before cell phones.
I called it in on the radio and we broke
the news that the newspaper afternoon paper, they held the
deadline and we broke lows that Tupakshakor had died and
it was such a sad moment being there. But you can't.
I'd appro and I didn't approach some of the people.
I saw his rappers crying and stuff, I didn't. I
approached him the next day, but I didn't do it
that day because it was because his mom came in.
They were still in town. They've held tons of people,
went to the coroner's office, and they got it and
gone pretty fast out of out of Las Vegas because
it was so high profile. Oo's dad. When you're doing it,
but you can't. I tear up sometimes that I tear
up talking about it. But you can't become a part
of the story. You have to dislocate yourself from it.
You have to separate yourself from it because you have
to be objective and that you do learn a lot
from your sources.
Speaker 2: It almost sounds like you don't tap into the emotion
of it until sometimes later.
Speaker 3: True I do. I interview, I knock on doors, I
go interview victims, families, victims who are alive. I've done
that if that's part of the beat, when telephone them
and catch them both guard But you I do go
after the emotional side of it too. But I don't
become a part of the story myself, but I do
try to give the victim voice as well as the
families and that sort of thing. Some of them don't
want to talk that then they'll pick up the phone.
I said, here's my number, to pick up the phone
and call me back or show up in the newsroom.
And because they do, you do. I always tell people
this is going to do. This is going to tell
people who your family member was and you it's a
way of also keeping them their spirit a lot and
the same thing with the same thing with Anne. I
hope I did goodbye her shatted foibles. Everybody does that
for betting body of her rights about me. None of
us live in glass houses.
Speaker 5: But the fuck if you had to ultimately put into
words what you think Anne's legacy is in the true
crime space, what would you say is her legacy?
Speaker 3: I think two things, Like I said before, paving the
way for women writers. Also for being so prolific in
writing book after book, and she never tired from it.
That was her job and she was just dedicated to it.
The job came before everything else, And so you have
to give that to her, that she was a hard worker.
I think her body of work speaks for itself, and
also giving the victim voice, which I said wasn't immediate,
but eventually it was. She brought the women and men
who were murdered to lie and more about them than
about the victims. But that was a dedeba. Took her
a little bit to get.
Speaker 2: There, believe it or not. We're at fifty minutes, five
oh minutes.
Speaker 5: Okay, So Kathy tell us when the book is going
to be out, when can we pre order it and
all sorts?
Speaker 3: And then what else are you.
Speaker 5: Working on right now? Or is the ann rule book
the big focus? The annual book right now is the
big focus. But my agent is it's.
Speaker 3: A matter of going to I do have a publisher,
a senior editor is with the Big Five. One of
the Big five publishers has asked to see it. So
that we're waiting on that, and I'm waiting for the
agent too. She was on vacation and she has a
proposal which has three chapters. Then it's forty pages long,
and so that in the meantime I'm writing, trying to
finish the chapters because it's twenty nine chapters. Because when
I land the publisher. I'm going to begin in a
contract that will give me a timeline and it could
be six months, which I could be three months, could
be longer, but I think they're going to want to
get it out in a hurry. So that's why I'm
manically writing right now. I did cover the Crome. I
did cover the mob when I was in Las Vegas.
I love writing about the mob, and we all hated
she said, you would never write about the mob. Oh interesting,
it's fascinating. And I'm going out with monsters. One who
jumped out and is nail and hiding. But he I'm
very good friends with him and his wife. After the
fact that he would he started calling me, you got
that wrong, You got that wrong.
Speaker 2: This is what here's what really happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was there at all these meetings. Fat Herbie
Blitzteing was Tony's filatro who was spin Casino that story.
The fat Herby Blitzedeing was his right hand man, and
he was a man as well. And I was at
Herbabie Blitztein's murder scene and the only reporter there with
a fellow reported from Las Vegas and where is writing.
So that is one of my next books and a
love writing about the mob, and you learn so much
about it, especially the Las Vegas mob, which is gone now.
His murder shut down. The FBI went after he was
killed by the Buffalo and Los Angeles mafia. They call
them the Mickey Mouse mafia. That's what the I named him,
but that the Mickey Mouse mafia. The LA Mob is gone,
and that is a result of the task force. They
stopped everything they were doing, focused on La and Buffalo
because they worked together to get his rackets. Fat Herbie
Blitztein and he was working out a Las Vegas and
his murders shut down those two mob entities. Quite proud
of the book, and it's the proposals all set to go,
lots of chapters. The book's almost done. And then there
were two awful murder murders in Lahoya Tory Pines of
two teenagers one and you may have seen them one
in eighty four, I think the other three years later.
And I do have a proposal ready to go on
that too. And did I interviewed family. A lot of
them are gone. I know who did it and I
would will be revealing it in the book. They did
not name a killer and they interviewed him, but all
evidence points to this one person, and I've got that
one ready to go to if I get a I'd
love to have a two book deal, but we'll see
what happens.
Speaker 2: The Are you going to name a living suspect?
Speaker 3: No, he's quite dead.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, I was thinking.
Speaker 3: To myself he was a live but he was a lied. Yeah,
hanged himself. He was alive when I first started covering
the crime.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. You've got some incredible projects coming up.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Wow, I'll be on again and talk about
one of those.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we would love to have you back. We'd love
to hear about the mob for sure. That sounds like
a lot of fun. But Kathy, thank you for joining
us today. We really appreciate it and we will look
forward to the book coming out.
Speaker 3: My Flangers. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: That is going to do it for this episode of
Mind Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.