Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Iddy me. On September sixth, nineteen eighty two, convicted murderer
Speaker 2: Leroy James Chason made a daring break for freedom from
Speaker 2: the Massachusetts Correctional Institute Walpole, one of the most infamous
Speaker 2: escape proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just
Speaker 2: any prison break. It was a meticulously planned five year
Speaker 2: effort made possible by an unlikely accomplice, Kathleen MacDonald, Chason's
Speaker 2: former penpalell turned wife. True crime author Daniel Zimmerman Shots
Speaker 2: in the Dark brings the shocking escape to life, detailing
Speaker 2: how Chason, wounded and bleeding from self inflicted wounds, was
Speaker 2: first transferred to a hospital for treatment, then, using a
Speaker 2: forty five automatic smuggled to him by his wife, who
Speaker 2: was disguised as a nurse, took hospital guards and staff
Speaker 2: hostage before fleeing under a hail of gunfire. Dubbed the
Speaker 2: Bonnie and Clyde of Massachusetts, the couple's daring run across
Speaker 2: the country captivated the nation, and they would evade capture
Speaker 2: for years, living under assumed identities. They nearly made it
Speaker 2: until from America's Most Wanted led to their eventual capture
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine. The book you were featuring this
Speaker 2: evening is Chasin's Run, the prison break that captivated America
Speaker 2: and the love story that fueled it. With my special
Speaker 2: guest author Daniel Zimmerman. Thank you very much for this
Speaker 2: interview and welcome back to the program. Daniel Zimmerman.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad to have this opportunity to tell my story,
Speaker 3: tell the story about Jason's Run, which is my newest
Speaker 3: book published by Wild Blue Press, actually my second book,
Speaker 3: and it came out it was actually released on May
Speaker 3: the twentieth, so it's fairly recent and I'm actually just
Speaker 3: getting started in a lot of the promotion work and
Speaker 3: getting the word out there. But I have had quite
Speaker 3: a few friends and relatives who've already read the book,
Speaker 3: and I'm getting some pretty good feedback. I'm getting excellent
Speaker 3: feedback on the story on my method of telling it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely tell us, just briefly, how you came to be
Speaker 2: the author, why you wanted to be the author of
Speaker 2: this story. Chasin's run.
Speaker 3: Sure, well I have. I've had two distinct careers in
Speaker 3: my life. I'm semi retired now, although I do work
Speaker 3: four part time jobs to keep busy, and I did
Speaker 3: say four my first my first career pretty much after
Speaker 3: I got out of high school, I was in an
Speaker 3: EMT and emergency medical technician working for a private ambulance
Speaker 3: service out of the town of Norwood, Massachusetts, and that
Speaker 3: service was responsible for transporting prison inmates from two prisons
Speaker 3: in the in the area MCI Walpole. MCI stands for
Speaker 3: Massachusetts Correctional Institute, so it was MCI Walpole, which is
Speaker 3: a notorious prison and on the East Coast, and then
Speaker 3: also MCI Norfolk, which is a medium security kind of
Speaker 3: a step down from warpole for inmates. So this ambulance
Speaker 3: service that I worked for, I was one of the
Speaker 3: nts that was responsible for transporting inmates, whether they're sick
Speaker 3: or injured, to nearby hospitals. This story came into play
Speaker 3: more or less in the Laby Day weekend of nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, and I was actually scheduled to work that weekend.
Speaker 3: I was on the calendar to be working that weekend,
Speaker 3: and I decided that I had a girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 3: We eventually married, but we decided we wanted to kind
Speaker 3: of go away for the long holiday weekend, and I
Speaker 3: reached out to one of my colleague his name is
Speaker 3: Bobby's a Meadow and asked him, Bobby, could you work
Speaker 3: for me this laby Day weekend and I'll cover fore
Speaker 3: you another time, and he was agreeable. He took the shift,
Speaker 3: and when I came back to work on Tuesday morning
Speaker 3: after the holiday weekend, I walked into the office to
Speaker 3: do my thing and get my ambulance ready, and Bobby
Speaker 3: comes over to me and he puts both hands around
Speaker 3: my neck and starts to choke me, kind of, you know, chokingly.
Speaker 3: He wasn't really trying to hurt me in anyway. But
Speaker 3: I said to him, I said, Bobby, you know what gives?
Speaker 3: What's the matter what he says? He says, because I
Speaker 3: worked for you, I had a gun held on me.
Speaker 3: It's your fault. I could only I should be dead
Speaker 3: right now. And then he told me the story behind
Speaker 3: it so needless to say, I was it was supposed
Speaker 3: to be me in that ambulance with mister Chas and
Speaker 3: not Bobby, but wow, I did feel the impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get to late August nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 2: the location is Chelsea, which you say is just a
Speaker 2: bridge away from Boston, and you take us to a
Speaker 2: character named Brian Rocky Fitzgerald six foot four, twenty four
Speaker 2: years old. His family calls him to Protector, tell us
Speaker 2: what he's doing late August nineteen seventy seven one night.
Speaker 3: Well, he's actually at a send off party for his girlfriend, Jean.
Speaker 3: She was going to college in Texas the next day,
Speaker 3: and a lot of their friends had decided to have
Speaker 3: a little party for her at a home and Chelsea
Speaker 3: a mutual friend, you know, to say goodbye as they
Speaker 3: were getting ready to go the next day. And so
Speaker 3: he gets he decides he's going to go on a
Speaker 3: on a beer run. Yeah, they were running a little
Speaker 3: bit low on beer, and he agreed to take take
Speaker 3: the car and zip up to the nearby package store
Speaker 3: and buy buy some beer for the for the party.
Speaker 3: He was approached by Leroy Chasin saying that he wanted
Speaker 3: to come along, and you know, he'd helped put the
Speaker 3: bill for the beer and so forth. He had other
Speaker 3: emotives that he did not share with Fitzgerald at the time.
Speaker 3: So they get in the car and they head to
Speaker 3: the package store, and in the midst of that a
Speaker 3: conversation takes place where mister Chason he wants to take
Speaker 3: a ride to Quinsy, Massachusetts, which is about half an
Speaker 3: hour south of where they actually were. Wendsay's on the
Speaker 3: south side of Boston. Ll he's on the north side
Speaker 3: of Boston. That Fitzgerald agrees, but really doesn't want to
Speaker 3: do it. It's, first of all, it's not his car
Speaker 3: with his girlfriend's car. Second of all, he doesn't really
Speaker 3: know this guy Chasing. He had met him once before,
Speaker 3: very brief meeting, and he also heard some things about
Speaker 3: Chasing that kind of were unsettling. He had done a
Speaker 3: lot of time. He was a known criminal, a little
Speaker 3: bit of a bragget when it came to that too.
Speaker 3: He kind of bragged about his criminal escapades through his
Speaker 3: early years. You know, Fitzgerald was kind of a captive audience.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say. He's in the car and
Speaker 3: even though he's a big guy and could handle himself.
Speaker 3: He was nervous about chasing as far as if he said,
Speaker 3: note him, if he refused the ride to Quinsy, you
Speaker 3: know what, bad things could happen. So he agreed to
Speaker 3: do it. So they bought the bear at the package
Speaker 3: store and off they went, heading south on what we
Speaker 3: call the express Way, which is into State ninety three,
Speaker 3: and they took the trip from Chelsea to Quincy relatively quickly.
Speaker 3: It was in the evening. They end up at Pageant Field,
Speaker 3: which is a huge complex in Quincy which with baseball
Speaker 3: fields and other facilities for the Quincy youth. And while
Speaker 3: they're there, there's a party going on, which is almost
Speaker 3: a nightly type thing with these kids, they're all twenty somethings.
Speaker 3: The Quinsy police really don't mind them hanging out there
Speaker 3: and having a beer or two, is, you know, because
Speaker 3: they're keeping out of trouble and they're not bothering anybody.
Speaker 3: And on arrival at Pageant Field, mister Chasin approaches a
Speaker 3: gentleman by the name of Kevin Rossett. Kevin was a
Speaker 3: former drug dealer who had done some wrong to one
Speaker 3: of Lee Roy Chasin's friend in prison. As far as
Speaker 3: not sending in the full order or overcharging him and
Speaker 3: so forth. There was some money involved. And Chason actually
Speaker 3: the reason he was going to pageant Field to encounter
Speaker 3: this gentleman, mister Rossett, was because a a cellmate at
Speaker 3: MCI Conquered had asked him to do that. Basically, his
Speaker 3: name was Mark Bray and he wanted to get his
Speaker 3: money back or the drugs that were owe to him.
Speaker 3: He couldn't go to Quincy himself because he had also
Speaker 3: he had escaped from prison and he was kind of
Speaker 3: on the run and he didn't want to show his face.
Speaker 3: So he asked mister Chason, who was out free he
Speaker 3: had been paroled, would you mind running this errand for me.
Speaker 3: So off he goes, and he gets into an accounter
Speaker 3: of this verbal kind of exchange between them. It's kind
Speaker 3: of heated and Chason basically just slugs Rossett knocks him
Speaker 3: to the ground and as a result, Rossett's friends who
Speaker 3: were nearby, launched themselves at lee Roy Chason to protect
Speaker 3: their friend who was lying on the ground that assault.
Speaker 3: During that assault, Chason pull pull out a knife and
Speaker 3: he started randomly stabbing people. He stabbed two, one fatally.
Speaker 3: He soon left the passiont Field with Fitzgerald, who drove
Speaker 3: him out of there. When the police later asked him,
Speaker 3: you know, you knew, you knew he'd stab people, you
Speaker 3: knew he was assaulting people with knives, you know, more
Speaker 3: or less white, Why did you drive him out of there?
Speaker 3: And Fitzgerald's reasoning was that Jason was still kind of
Speaker 3: in that groove where he might have hurt more people,
Speaker 3: and he felt it was his responsibility to get to
Speaker 3: get him out of there, and he did. He drove,
Speaker 3: He drove the alleged killer out of Passion Field and
Speaker 3: back to Chelsea, back to the party house.
Speaker 2: You right that back at the party house. Is he
Speaker 2: his girlfriend Jean wondering what took so long? He left
Speaker 2: for hours when he was only supposed to be gone
Speaker 2: for a few minutes. And as you write, the people
Speaker 2: at the party had already heard that their friend Paul
Speaker 2: Melody was stabbed and killed. So tell us about who
Speaker 2: was at the party, including Mark Bray and sort of
Speaker 2: the event at the party wants Jason is there, and
Speaker 2: Mark Bray and Brian Fitzgerald comes back to the party
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Well. He came back to the party basically to get
Speaker 3: back to his girlfriend Jean and get rid of Chason
Speaker 3: in some way. He again, he was hesitant to drive
Speaker 3: him anywhere after the scene at Pageant Field, but he
Speaker 3: felt he had no choice. He felt a threat. Obviously,
Speaker 3: Chason had a knife. He didn't know if he disposed
Speaker 3: of it, so he thought that he could be the
Speaker 3: next victim. Even even while he's driving him on the highway.
Speaker 3: He get back to the car, mister Fitzgerald actually calls
Speaker 3: his mother. They had stopped at the mother's house briefly
Speaker 3: he wanted to wash up. He was covered with blood
Speaker 3: and Jason was with him. Not much said between the
Speaker 3: mother and Chason, but she did witness the bloody shirt
Speaker 3: and her son, Brian Fitzgerald basically said, we got to fight.
Speaker 3: We got in a fight. He excused it as a fight.
Speaker 3: The police later visited with her and determined it was
Speaker 3: far more than just a simple fight. When he got
Speaker 3: back to the party, he did call his mother and
Speaker 3: she confirmed after being visited by the police, she confirmed
Speaker 3: that yes, in fact, Paul Melody had perished and that
Speaker 3: was shared around the party. Mark Bray, who was there.
Speaker 3: Mark Bray was the trigger of this entire event because
Speaker 3: he's the one that sent Jason on this mission. Kind
Speaker 3: of I guess you could say. He ducked his head
Speaker 3: in shame and eventually left that house after everybody had
Speaker 3: learned what took place. He left that house. Chason went
Speaker 3: into the went into one of the bathrooms to you know,
Speaker 3: try to rinse off the shirt from the blood that
Speaker 3: he was covered with blood. And he tried to rinse
Speaker 3: the shirt, and then he teamed up with Mark Bray
Speaker 3: who went with him and the third gentleman, and the
Speaker 3: three of them made their way out of the party.
Speaker 3: They did not stay long long enough for a lot
Speaker 3: of accusatory stairs. There was a very tense time at
Speaker 3: the house, but Chason left and then he went to
Speaker 3: his apartment in nearby Somerville. The three of them drove
Speaker 3: to the apartment. Now at this apartment was his girlfriend, Linnell,
Speaker 3: Jason's girlfriend, Linnell Travers, and her roommate, and a three
Speaker 3: year old by the name of Derek Travers. Derek was
Speaker 3: according to Leroy and everybody else Leroy Leroy, Chase and son.
Speaker 3: So he was a living boyfriend with Linel and they
Speaker 3: had a son, and he was three at the time
Speaker 3: of this event. That's important and later on in the book,
Speaker 3: because things are revealed after later on in life to
Speaker 3: Derek the toddler. So anyways, Leroy goes to his apartment
Speaker 3: in Somerville. He's there to get a fresh shirt and
Speaker 3: his guns. He's going on the run. He's going to
Speaker 3: go on the lamb and he needs his weapons, so
Speaker 3: he retrieves guns out of a bureau draw that he
Speaker 3: had stashed. He and Mark Bray leave Somerville in the
Speaker 3: stolen car. The third man who was with them, he
Speaker 3: stayed behind to face the music. He wasn't going on
Speaker 3: the run with them. He wasn't involved in the actual
Speaker 3: murder of Paul Melody, and he knew that, and he
Speaker 3: figured he could he could dance dance out of it
Speaker 3: and just face charges for perhaps a stolen car or
Speaker 3: aiding in a betting an escape future in this case.
Speaker 3: So he stayed behind and off Chason and Bray went
Speaker 3: in the car. They eventually made their way to Rhode Island,
Speaker 3: spent one night in a motel to kind of collect
Speaker 3: their thoughts and make their plans, and then after that
Speaker 3: night they made their way back to Boston. Mark Bray
Speaker 3: had a room that he had rented at a nearby
Speaker 3: hotel kind of off the beaten path in Boston, a
Speaker 3: place called the Milner, And because he was an escapee
Speaker 3: from prison, he figured that the best thing to do
Speaker 3: was to stay at a place where he with the
Speaker 3: police likely wanted check for him, like we want to
Speaker 3: look for him. He was wrong about that. Actually, they
Speaker 3: did eventually go to the Milner to see if he
Speaker 3: if he was there, but he and Leroy had long
Speaker 3: since made their way out of there with a third party.
Speaker 3: Somebody had joined them in the midst of this escape.
Speaker 3: Her name was Kathleen MacDonald and her story is hugely interesting.
Speaker 3: She had arranged to meet up with Chason in Boston.
Speaker 3: Leroy had sent Mark Bray to retrieve her and bring
Speaker 3: her back to meet him where they were. He was
Speaker 3: holding up it. He was sitting at the in the
Speaker 3: Boston Common waiting for her. And the story behind Kathleen
Speaker 3: Chasin is that she was a married woman with six
Speaker 3: children living in the Weymouth area, which is a town
Speaker 3: adjacent to Quinsy ironically, and she met Leroy by way
Speaker 3: of a you could call it a pen palce situation.
Speaker 3: Leroy Chason was in jail. He was incocerated for on
Speaker 3: robbery at the time, and he was seeking an appeal
Speaker 3: and he needed five hundred dollars. The lawyer wanted five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, so he put a chase and put an
Speaker 3: ad in the Boston Phoenix newspaper, which is a local
Speaker 3: paper that runs kind of kind of strange ads, I guess,
Speaker 3: you could say, And he wanted five hundred people to
Speaker 3: send him one dollar so he could accumulate that money.
Speaker 3: And Kathleen had read the ad and she felt for
Speaker 3: him and sent him one dollar in a greeting card.
Speaker 3: And she actually within that card left her a return
Speaker 3: address and Lee where I wrote back to her, wrote
Speaker 3: a letter and they started a correspondence and in simple terms,
Speaker 3: they fell in love with each other. She left her husband,
Speaker 3: she left her children, and she became his prison prison girlfriend.
Speaker 3: They eventually got married in the prison and that's how
Speaker 3: that's how they get together. By way of being a
Speaker 3: simple pen pal. Mark Bray was was best of friends.
Speaker 3: They were He and Chason were pretty tight. And Mark
Speaker 3: Bray had no idea that he had this woman, this girlfriend,
Speaker 3: Kathleen Chasin, that he had been corresponding with and seeing
Speaker 3: on a regular basis because she was visiting Chason in prison.
Speaker 3: But Mark Bray, you know, he was willing to help
Speaker 3: his friend. They were both on the run together, they
Speaker 3: were doing what they had to do. So the three
Speaker 3: of them teamed up in Boston and eventually made their
Speaker 3: way north. The proposed destination brought on by Chason was Montreal, Canada.
Speaker 3: That's where he wanted to hide out. He never gave
Speaker 3: his colleague any indication as to why Mark Bray wanted
Speaker 3: to go to Florida, somewhere warm, and he had connections
Speaker 3: in Florida. But Jason was kind of a stubborn guy
Speaker 3: and he really didn't say no to him. Throughout the book,
Speaker 3: throughout the story, very few people had the nerve to
Speaker 3: say no to le Roy Chason in any respect, any
Speaker 3: respect at all. So everything he insisted upon Marc Bray
Speaker 3: accommodated him. So the three of them off they go.
Speaker 3: They end up in western Maine, near the New Hampshire border,
Speaker 3: and the destination is a antique store. Chasin had gotten
Speaker 3: wind that there was an antique store that had these
Speaker 3: very expensive clocks that if he stole them, he had
Speaker 3: a fence lined up that he would be able to
Speaker 3: sell the clocks and have some seed money to help
Speaker 3: them be on the lamb and continue their escape. Unfortunately
Speaker 3: worded trickle Down. Unfortunately for Chasing. I should say word
Speaker 3: to trickle Down that this may happen. The local law
Speaker 3: enforcement there set up a kind of a sting to
Speaker 3: wait for them at this clock store. They had actually
Speaker 3: visited it once they were seen, and then they took off,
Speaker 3: but then they came back and the law enforcement, the
Speaker 3: sheriff set up a sting and they eventually apprehended Marc
Speaker 3: Bray coming out of the store, Kathleen who was sitting
Speaker 3: in the car waiting, and were handcuffing them in front
Speaker 3: of the store when Leroy Chasing came out of the
Speaker 3: building with a hostage, and that was the owner of
Speaker 3: the store, the hostage. There was a little bit of
Speaker 3: a tense moment where Jason was holding a gun on
Speaker 3: the sheriff and they were pointing basically pointing guns at
Speaker 3: each other. But Jason got better of it and then
Speaker 3: his hostage escaped his grasp. He happened to be the
Speaker 3: owner of the store. He ran into the store and disappeared,
Speaker 3: and Chason took off back into the store, found his
Speaker 3: way to the back of the building and an open
Speaker 3: window and jumped out and he took off through some
Speaker 3: open fields to safety. It took four hours to apprehend him.
Speaker 3: They set up a police dragnet. There were state police
Speaker 3: from New Hampshire, from Maine, local officers, and one officer
Speaker 3: who happened to own a small plane. He got up
Speaker 3: in his plane and spotted Chason on the other skirts
Speaker 3: of the woods, and they zeroed in on him and
Speaker 3: arrested him, took him into custody.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now you talk about the arrest of Leroy
Speaker 2: Chasin and Kathleen MacDonald by state troopers. Is that who
Speaker 2: eventually arrested him.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a group of state troopers combined effort
Speaker 3: between New Hampshire and Maine. The store and the location,
Speaker 3: the antique store in the location was right on the
Speaker 3: border of those two states. So it was a team
Speaker 3: effort between the two states along with the local law
Speaker 3: enforcement that zeroed in mister Jason and eventually arrested and
Speaker 3: brought him into custody. He was arraigned in a court
Speaker 3: room in Maine and eventually he was picked up by
Speaker 3: the Quinsy Police. They sent a contingent of officers along
Speaker 3: state troopers from Massachusetts to be able to bring him
Speaker 3: back to Quincy to face questioning and be officially charged
Speaker 3: for the crime of murder and I'm robbery now because
Speaker 3: of the antique store. So they were brought back to Quincy.
Speaker 3: They were all questioned the sequence. In the meantime, there
Speaker 3: were a lot of interviews going on. As you see
Speaker 3: in the book, there were interviews going on between the
Speaker 3: Quincy police detectives, a lot of the witnesses that were
Speaker 3: at Pageant Field and night of the murder. They kind
Speaker 3: of went through them one by one. A lot of
Speaker 3: resistance on the part of these kids. When I read
Speaker 3: over the documents provided by the Quincy police, it was
Speaker 3: a four hundred page report book length itself, just on
Speaker 3: the questioning of these individuals, and there was a lot
Speaker 3: of resistance on the part of the witnesses because many
Speaker 3: of them had done time. They were there's a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of drug activity in the late seventies
Speaker 3: and Quinsy and basically everywhere else but Quincy was known
Speaker 3: in Eastern Massachusetts Greater Boss scenario as being a kind
Speaker 3: of a hotbed for drug activity, and so a lot
Speaker 3: of these kids had spent time in jail and there
Speaker 3: was that kind of built in resistance to any anything
Speaker 3: the police would do. That and the fact there were
Speaker 3: a couple of them that that didn't want to talk
Speaker 3: because they didn't want to be what they what they
Speaker 3: called rats and kind of spell out their own their
Speaker 3: own friends. Even though Leroy Chason wasn't a friend of
Speaker 3: any of theirs, they still felt that, you know, they
Speaker 3: just didn't want to share the story and be described
Speaker 3: as a rat in this crime. So the police had there,
Speaker 3: they were cut off with them as far as interviewing
Speaker 3: these folks. And then when when Lee Roy and Kathleen
Speaker 3: and Mark Bray were apprehended, those interviews as well. Then
Speaker 3: it go quite as they had hoped, but they did
Speaker 3: get enough evidence. The murder weapon was eventually turned up.
Speaker 3: There was a quite the search for that, and it
Speaker 3: turned up it was actually thrown by mister Chason as
Speaker 3: he's escaping the antique store. He kept the gun he
Speaker 3: had on him, but he threw the knife into a
Speaker 3: fireplace and the business owner eventually found that knife and
Speaker 3: turned it over to the police, and that became a
Speaker 3: piece of evidence when the trial came up in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight, the actual murder weapon.
Speaker 2: What about Brian Rocky Fitzgerald, Because he had driven Leebroy
Speaker 2: Chason to Pageant Field and then taken him from Pageant Field,
Speaker 2: police had a lot of questions for him, and as
Speaker 2: you say, he was known to police, he had a
Speaker 2: police record. But how did they treat him and in
Speaker 2: the end, were there any charges? How did they treat
Speaker 2: him as a witness or a suspect in this? How
Speaker 2: was he treated well.
Speaker 3: As far as the witness goes. He made a couple
Speaker 3: of mistakes during his during the questioning, he he press
Speaker 3: he lied to the police. He had told the police
Speaker 3: and tried to tell the police that he dropped mister
Speaker 3: Chasing off at a train station nearby the MBTA, which
Speaker 3: is the Massachusetts Transportation Authority. There's a train line that
Speaker 3: runs right through Quincy, and he told the police that
Speaker 3: he brought him there, dropped him off, and it was
Speaker 3: obvious that he didn't. And Chasing at the time was
Speaker 3: covered in blood. He wasn't getting on a train at
Speaker 3: least not being without being noticed. So I mean, the
Speaker 3: police basically knew he was lying, and he just he
Speaker 3: eventually told the truth. He eventually came clean with the
Speaker 3: police detective that was interviewing Lieutenant Neil McDonald, and he
Speaker 3: came clean. And the charges were according to his sister,
Speaker 3: who I spoke with when I was working on the book,
Speaker 3: there were minimal charges. It was just kind of a
Speaker 3: slap on the hand because there were so many moving
Speaker 3: parts in this case and they just did not eventually
Speaker 3: just did not go after some of the lesser participants.
Speaker 3: And even though Fitzgerald played a substantial a role because
Speaker 3: he brought brought leehre Chase, a two pageant field to
Speaker 3: commit this crime and then brought him back to a
Speaker 3: place I guess you could say of safety. It was
Speaker 3: always at the at the threat of being harmed himself,
Speaker 3: and that was his That was his defense as far
Speaker 3: as any any type of reprimand was that he felt
Speaker 3: at any moment he could be stabbed, killed, shot again.
Speaker 3: Because he was a huge guy. He had a reputation
Speaker 3: for protecting people and coming to people's aid in those situations.
Speaker 3: But I think that the police extended because they had
Speaker 3: the killer and the killer's accomplice in Marc Bray, they
Speaker 3: kind of were lenient with mister Fitzgerald and some of
Speaker 3: the other participants. He eventually the time he was in
Speaker 3: his twenties at the time of this event, his father
Speaker 3: had passed away and he became the father of the family.
Speaker 3: And I think there was some sympathies because of that
Speaker 3: situation in the Fitzgerald family. And he eventually the pressure
Speaker 3: of you know, being being a stand in father for
Speaker 3: his siblings and kind of running the household, a lot
Speaker 3: of things caught up with him and he committed suicide
Speaker 3: in his forties. Yeah, it was kind of it was
Speaker 3: kind of a tough situation. The sister said he never
Speaker 3: got over the killing of Full Melody. It really depressed
Speaker 3: him and kind of set the tone for the next
Speaker 3: couple of decades when he finally ended his life.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting in this book you have Jason's response
Speaker 2: after the murder with Mark Bray. He's looking through a
Speaker 2: newspaper and is disappointed that he's not on the front
Speaker 2: page of the Boston Globe. He's on page four, but
Speaker 2: there's conversations between he and Mark Bray to just indicate
Speaker 2: his psychopathic nature and his need for or infamy from
Speaker 2: this crime. He was very proud of what he had done.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, he's a huge egomaniac. It's pretty clear
Speaker 3: that he's he's totally in love with himself, and he
Speaker 3: does like the notoriety, even when when it's a it's
Speaker 3: a crime. If you remember from early on in the book,
Speaker 3: when he's first meeting with first introducing himself to Fitzgerald,
Speaker 3: there's some discussion. There's also further discussion on the way
Speaker 3: back to Chelsea after the killing about how he how
Speaker 3: much time he spent in prison, and that he that
Speaker 3: he killed a couple of inmates in Walpole during his
Speaker 3: stay there. He was just a pure, pure violence and braggart.
Speaker 3: He liked to talk about his crimes, you know. And
Speaker 3: I can see that, and I understand that because as
Speaker 3: an e MT with Norfolk Personal Ambulance, I spent countless
Speaker 3: hours basically in the back of the ambulance with men
Speaker 3: who had committed murders and rap and assorted other crimes.
Speaker 3: And nine out of ten times during the trip to
Speaker 3: the hospital, if they were able, they'd want to tell
Speaker 3: you their stories with detail. And you know, I recall
Speaker 3: a discussion I had with a gentleman who would rape somebody,
Speaker 3: and he wanted to describe the rape to me, and
Speaker 3: I asked him, I said, please, I'd rather not hear that.
Speaker 3: He says, well, you're going to hear it anyways, He said,
Speaker 3: you can. You've got me chained up, like, you know,
Speaker 3: chained up like with all these chains and handcuffs and
Speaker 3: ankle bracelets and everything else. He says, but you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't cover my mouth. So I'm going to tell
Speaker 3: you the story. So what I did is I struck
Speaker 3: up a conversation with the corrections officer who was riding
Speaker 3: with us, tried to blot it out as best I
Speaker 3: could to know that my subject lee where Chason often
Speaker 3: bragged about his crimes, assorted crimes. I fully understood that
Speaker 3: I knew where that was coming from because I had
Speaker 3: experienced it for many year.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting that this Brian Fitzgerald was frightened by
Speaker 2: this Chason despite him being much bigger. But he knew
Speaker 2: that this chasin was a dangerous person, but he couldn't
Speaker 2: help himself. Brian and he later after the stabbings, said
Speaker 2: why'd you stab those people? How could you stab those people?
Speaker 2: And Jason replied, you know unabashedly that it was over
Speaker 2: fifty dollars, and Fitzgeral was incredulous that he would stab
Speaker 2: somebody over fifty dollars debt.
Speaker 3: Actually, pretty much everybody involved in including the police, was
Speaker 3: stunned by that amount. That it wasn't substantially more that
Speaker 3: somebody would lose their life over fifty dollars In this point,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we'll never know actually, if Mark
Speaker 3: Bray had intended for somebody to be killed, all he
Speaker 3: wanted was his money or his drugs, one or the other,
Speaker 3: and Chas took it to another level by killing these people.
Speaker 3: His defense, though th Rabo, was that the knife wasn't
Speaker 3: his right, that it was dropped during the during the fight,
Speaker 3: during the melee in that park, and that he just
Speaker 3: picked it up and wielded it as as as a
Speaker 3: defense mechanism, that he was stabbing out people because they
Speaker 3: were all attacking him. But obviously, as the attorney, the
Speaker 3: prosecuting attorney for the Colmwealth Massachusetts easily disproved that theory
Speaker 3: and the autopsy did as well, that Jason brought the
Speaker 3: knife with him and then he did. You know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of in hindsight Fitzgerald was right. As they're driving
Speaker 3: in that car, Jason still had the knife. It was
Speaker 3: hidden on his body and at any point he could
Speaker 3: have reached you know, if if Fitzgerald had challenged him
Speaker 3: in some way, Jason still had the means to do
Speaker 3: some harm. So he was right by I guess you
Speaker 3: could say was right by accommodating Chasin at that point
Speaker 3: because it could it could have gone pretty bad for him.
Speaker 2: You illustrate his danger by when he is on the
Speaker 2: run chasing. There was an earlier altercation much before the
Speaker 2: Freiburg antique store, where they're stopped by a state trooper
Speaker 2: or a policeman, and he has his gun ready to
Speaker 2: be able to shoot this police officer if necessary, and
Speaker 2: fortunately for everyone it was not necessary.
Speaker 3: Correct They were actually sleeping in a restop because they
Speaker 3: had run low on funds and they were in arrest
Speaker 3: stop the night before the robbery of the antique store,
Speaker 3: and they were basically parking illegally in this restop in
Speaker 3: the New Hampshire trooper approached them and did a few
Speaker 3: checks just to make sure there were no warrants. They
Speaker 3: intentionally had Kathleen to the driving because she did not
Speaker 3: have a record, But had the trooper asked for IDs
Speaker 3: from either Chasin or Mark Bray, things could have gone
Speaker 3: darkly more, you know, things could have got out of hand.
Speaker 3: Basically as far as the shooting episode in that park,
Speaker 3: you know earlier on I'm sure you read it. Le
Speaker 3: Roy did have a shooting episode as a youth. He
Speaker 3: was in an apartment in Somerville on the second floor.
Speaker 3: He was high. I spent the day drinking and sniffing paint,
Speaker 3: is what he did in those days when he didn't
Speaker 3: have actual drugs. He would sniff paint. He saw outside
Speaker 3: his window a bunch of kids just kind of hanging out,
Speaker 3: having a good time, and he invited them up to
Speaker 3: the apartment for a party, and they gave him a
Speaker 3: bad time. They laughed at him and gave him, gave
Speaker 3: him a few words, and so we went and got
Speaker 3: his gun and started shooting out the window at these kids,
Speaker 3: and he actually hit a girl in the face. I
Speaker 3: wasn't a fatal wound, but it left her scarred for life.
Speaker 3: And the Somerville police came along and they arrested Chason
Speaker 3: brought him off to jail. He did a little bit
Speaker 3: of time, but he was still young and the Admittedly,
Speaker 3: the legal system in Massachusetts can be questionable some of
Speaker 3: the things that have taken place over the years, and
Speaker 3: he was eventually released even though he shot a young
Speaker 3: girl in the face. It wouldn't it have been his
Speaker 3: first shooting at the New Hampshire restop had he done that.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now you take us to the murder trial
Speaker 2: in May nineteen seventy eight. The Norfolk County Assistant da
Speaker 2: is Robert Banks. As you mentioned the defense for Chason,
Speaker 2: he says self defense. I didn't bring the weapon. I
Speaker 2: didn't bring the knife to this fight, and he decides
Speaker 2: to take the stand as well, which would not be
Speaker 2: advised by his attorney. Just tell us if there was
Speaker 2: anything note were they during that testimony?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean he stuck to the self defense angle
Speaker 3: against his attorney's best judgment. It was the Lee Roy
Speaker 3: Chasin show. I would have been surprised had he not
Speaker 3: taken the stand. He really thought that the self defense
Speaker 3: that Yet, I picked up this random knife that was
Speaker 3: dropped to the ground by one of the attackers and
Speaker 3: used it against them in my to protect myself. But
Speaker 3: just the fact that he continued to attack others in
Speaker 3: the park and pageant field, swinging that knife in a
Speaker 3: threatening way and trying to hurt others, told the prosecutor
Speaker 3: in the jury that he wasn't, in fact trying to
Speaker 3: get away. He was actually perpetrating his own attack of
Speaker 3: these people. Self defense just didn't play into his case,
Speaker 3: even though he tried that top to bottom. The tire
Speaker 3: entire tritle was on his part. On the defense part
Speaker 3: was self defense. I was only trying to protect myself.
Speaker 3: They were just beating on me relentlessly, and I used
Speaker 3: the knife in such a way to try to get away.
Speaker 3: But he didn't. He didn't speed awave, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. He didn't he didn't run for safety. He
Speaker 3: stayed and continued to be on the attack. One of
Speaker 3: the things that Fitzgerald had said as he got him
Speaker 3: in the car and got him out of there, was
Speaker 3: that these were still his friends and he did not
Speaker 3: want to see any anybody else get hurt. Had he
Speaker 3: left either on foot, which he could have done, or
Speaker 3: in the car and left behind Chason no idea how
Speaker 3: many more people could have been either hurt or killed
Speaker 3: in that situation, so he felt it was his responsibility
Speaker 3: to get him out of there, and he did. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the trial didn't go very well for Chason. Oddly enough,
Speaker 3: that court room I mentioned it in the book was
Speaker 3: the scene of the old Saco and Vinzetti trial some
Speaker 3: decades before. Basically the same courtroom where this this trial
Speaker 3: took place. And even more ironic, if you've heard of
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've heard of Karen Reid. Yes, that trial
Speaker 3: is going on as we speak. In fact, my my
Speaker 3: wife is upstairs watching it with with white eyes, same
Speaker 3: same courtroom, same same courthouse, same courtrooms where all these
Speaker 3: famous trials took place.
Speaker 2: Mm. He talked about this self defense, and one salient
Speaker 2: point that was made by the DA was that he
Speaker 2: had no scratches or bruises after this fight in self defense.
Speaker 2: So just dismissing the notion that was any type of
Speaker 2: self defense whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I mean the kids did jump on him,
Speaker 3: there was some pounching and so forth, but once the
Speaker 3: once he wielded the knife and actually drew blood, most
Speaker 3: of them just backed right off, realizing that their their
Speaker 3: lives were at stake. So the the attack on mister
Speaker 3: Chasin that triggered his murder rampage really wasn't as bad
Speaker 3: an attack as he claimed it was. He really had
Speaker 3: no defense in my opinion, and the and the district attorney,
Speaker 3: according to descriptions I received from folks who had attended,
Speaker 3: was very animated in some of his during his closing,
Speaker 3: where he would actually take the knife and drive it
Speaker 3: forward a couple of times, really emphasize the action of
Speaker 3: killing Paul Melody and how it took place. The jury
Speaker 3: jury definitely reacted in such a way that mister Chason
Speaker 3: was not going to win this this trial.
Speaker 2: You're right that the jury deliberated only for four hours
Speaker 2: or unanimous verdict.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sense that the four hours was probably probably
Speaker 3: a little more extensive than it actually needed to be.
Speaker 3: I think they probably had him in the first hour,
Speaker 3: But you know how juries are, they want to make
Speaker 3: it seem like they put legitimate time and effort into
Speaker 3: the you know, going over the notes and going over
Speaker 3: the decisions. It was a pretty cut and dry case.
Speaker 2: So he was he was convicted. He was pronounced guilty
Speaker 2: murder of Paul Melody, life without the possibility of parole,
Speaker 2: and then the concurrence sentence seven to ten year attack
Speaker 2: seven year, seven to ten years for the attack on
Speaker 2: Bob Hayward.
Speaker 3: Correct. He had actually in the course of after he
Speaker 3: had stabbed Paul Melody and he went down, he actually
Speaker 3: stabbed mister Hayward in the back, suffered some sustained some
Speaker 3: kidney wounds, but he fully recovered. They did some they
Speaker 3: did surger around him very quickly, and he saw a
Speaker 3: full recovery. He was ferried off to MCI Wallpole Prison
Speaker 3: for what was expected to be a life term, and it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't you talk about MCI Walpole and all. So Chason's
Speaker 2: experience at MCI Walpole and other Massachusetts institutes. Tell us
Speaker 2: about a little bit of his illustrious pass and experience
Speaker 2: at Walpole before we talk about his stay there.
Speaker 3: Well, Walpole was one of those type of places as
Speaker 3: an inmate, you just didn't want to go there. It
Speaker 3: was one of a very, very tough prison. I had
Speaker 3: been in and there a number of times, and the
Speaker 3: inmates who were kept there were all maximum type inmates.
Speaker 3: They were killers, they were rapists, they were armed robbers.
Speaker 3: Two miles to the northwest of Walpole was MCI Norfolk,
Speaker 3: which was a minimum prison with some of your lesser crimes.
Speaker 3: I used to call at the house of executive crimes.
Speaker 3: People who would who would bezzle from their companies and still,
Speaker 3: you know, do an unarmed bank robbery where they pretend
Speaker 3: to have a gun. Those guys would end up in minimum.
Speaker 3: But Walpole was was the was the place you didn't
Speaker 3: want to go. It was it was competed at times
Speaker 3: too who sing Sing in New York and Levenworth out
Speaker 3: in the in the Midwest. It was just one of
Speaker 3: those really tough prisons. An example would be what a
Speaker 3: block it was called ten block, and ten block at
Speaker 3: Walpole Prison was where the worst of the worst were housed.
Speaker 3: These guys would not only be potentially violent to citizens
Speaker 3: on the outside, they were dangerous to each other. And
Speaker 3: it was so secure and such a segregated type prison
Speaker 3: block that they were there outside time one hour per
Speaker 3: day was in a cage. Each of the Each of
Speaker 3: the cells was connected to an exterior wired cage and
Speaker 3: the door. The door would open from their cell to
Speaker 3: the to the outside. They would walk out into the
Speaker 3: fresh air, but they would be caged in where they
Speaker 3: couldn't have contact with any other inmate or any any
Speaker 3: human being and I say after actually when we went
Speaker 3: there to pick up in the end of this, when
Speaker 3: we went to pick up inmates who were injured or sick,
Speaker 3: we'd have to drive into the prison. We would have
Speaker 3: to enter through the vehicle trap. Then we would have
Speaker 3: to go through a series of gates, and each time
Speaker 3: the Correction's office that was riding with us would unlock
Speaker 3: a gate, we'd drive forward, he lock it behind us,
Speaker 3: and we had to do that several times. And the
Speaker 3: third time before we would reach the infirmary was right
Speaker 3: in front of ten Bloc. So the inmates, it was
Speaker 3: a certain time of day, they would be out outside
Speaker 3: in their casias. And I'll leave it to your imagination
Speaker 3: as to some of the some of the visuals that
Speaker 3: we would see in the ambulance as we're going by.
Speaker 3: We had people's shooting imaginary guns at us. Certain gestures
Speaker 3: were given to us. They were yelling cat calling to us.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say that we, as E and
Speaker 3: T's in a stressful situation, didn't retaliate in some way.
Speaker 3: And we were often asked by the corrections offices not
Speaker 3: to do that because it just provokes the inmates to
Speaker 3: further further attacks. I guess you could say. So it
Speaker 3: was a really tough place. LeRoy's Leroy Jason's time there
Speaker 3: was riddled with violence, violent acts against corrections officers, other inmates.
Speaker 3: He had actually got into a situation where he attacked
Speaker 3: several corrections officers who insisted that he undressed after a
Speaker 3: family visit so they could do a skin search. It
Speaker 3: was protocol, it's what they did when they came back
Speaker 3: in after having personal contact with wives, girlfriends, and others.
Speaker 3: They had to have a skin search to make sure
Speaker 3: that there was no contraband no drugs, nothing else being
Speaker 3: ferried into the prison. He refused, and it got into
Speaker 3: a fistfight with these offices, three of them, and they
Speaker 3: couldn't control them. It actually a fourth entered the fight.
Speaker 3: A couple of them were hurt and during the battle
Speaker 3: with mister Jason. Eventually they got him under control, but
Speaker 3: not before the officers were wounded, and he was wounded
Speaker 3: himself during the course of this fight. So you know
Speaker 3: that was his He tried to bribe offices to bring
Speaker 3: him drugs. He set fires in the prison. There was
Speaker 3: just a lot of bad tidings on the pot of
Speaker 3: chasing at Walpole, but it was the nature of the house.
Speaker 3: That kind of stuff went on all the time. One
Speaker 3: story I talk about in the book is a gentleman
Speaker 3: that I transported to the hospital. He was playing basketball.
Speaker 3: It was a warm summer's day and he was playing basketball,
Speaker 3: and I guess he was a ringer. He was doing
Speaker 3: really well, and the opposition team didn't appreciate that. So
Speaker 3: three of them scooped him up, two of them on
Speaker 3: his upper body, one on his legs, and they ran
Speaker 3: him full speed across the basketball stanchion right across his
Speaker 3: thighs and shattered both his femur bones. And that was
Speaker 3: because he was playing a good game of basketball. So
Speaker 3: those are the kind of things that went on quite
Speaker 3: a bit at mc A. Whoopole.
Speaker 2: You take us to May nineteen eighty two, and let
Speaker 2: me ask this question for you to explain the Walpole
Speaker 2: prison had an infirmary. Now you write that there was
Speaker 2: a lot of self inflicted injuries that were common. Explain
Speaker 2: why inmates might fake or have self inflicted injuries, and
Speaker 2: what made the prison infirmary not the end location for
Speaker 2: people that were injured in the prison. What would take
Speaker 2: them from the infirmary to an outside prison? Outside hospital
Speaker 2: like Norwood Hospital.
Speaker 3: I actually have that discussion with somebody this morning. We
Speaker 3: were talking about some of the history. Somebody who knew
Speaker 3: former corrections off sorry, spoke with these guys. Especially the lifers,
Speaker 3: would do just about anything to get out of prison,
Speaker 3: even for a few days up to an include hurting
Speaker 3: themselves in some pretty serious, pretty serious methods. The most
Speaker 3: often used one was swallowing some type of a shop instrument,
Speaker 3: such as they get the hands on a razor blade.
Speaker 3: What they would do is they would tape it up
Speaker 3: with the electrical tape or masking tape whatever they had
Speaker 3: their hands on, and swallow it so that the blade
Speaker 3: would not cut them internally on the way down there
Speaker 3: to the stomach. And then they would get to the
Speaker 3: hospital after swallowing these blades and X rays would reveal
Speaker 3: it was there and they would require surgery to have
Speaker 3: it removed before it did any other damage. Once the Uh,
Speaker 3: once the stomach acids, I guess you could say, uh,
Speaker 3: got rid of the tape. Now you've got a free
Speaker 3: floating razor blade. That was one method I had a
Speaker 3: patient once, transporting them for chewing and eating a light bulb.
Speaker 3: Some of them were just trying to get to the hospital.
Speaker 3: Like I said, for a few days of freedom, a
Speaker 3: few days around nurses people something outside of those prison walls.
Speaker 3: Others were more serious about their not wanting to be
Speaker 3: lifers anymore, and they would they would take their own lives.
Speaker 3: A lot of hangings that was fairly common. Less common
Speaker 3: would be an inmate that I had who actually covered
Speaker 3: himself with his bed sheets and lit them on fire,
Speaker 3: and it took a little while for the corrections offices
Speaker 3: to get to the cell and get it opened, and
Speaker 3: by then he had perished. So there was a lot
Speaker 3: of desperation in the prison from these guys, and the
Speaker 3: self inflicted wounds were very common to get a ride
Speaker 3: to the hospital. The infirmary, as you mentioned, not the
Speaker 3: most skilled medical people, as you might guess, sure kind
Speaker 3: of the set. I called him the second tier of
Speaker 3: the medical profession. And in the case of Chasin, that
Speaker 3: was exactly what led to his ability to do what
Speaker 3: he did in that nineteen eighty two It was the
Speaker 3: infirm redoct his decisions that you know, not a purpose obviously,
Speaker 3: but he did aid Leroy chasing in his eventual escape.
Speaker 2: Well, let's explain that doctor Ira Cohen said initially that
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to make it. He said to the
Speaker 2: other EMTs, he just said he ain't going to make it.
Speaker 2: But then he had another assessment when he looked a
Speaker 2: little bit closer. So tell us the kind of assessment
Speaker 2: he made based on the wounds that this person had.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about just we haven't mentioned what Leroy Chasin
Speaker 2: does in May nineteen eighty two, what correction officers see
Speaker 2: him doing, and the distress he's in. Tell us about
Speaker 2: this supposed distress that Leroy Chason is in and guards encounter.
Speaker 3: Well, actually it was September of nineteen eighty to his
Speaker 3: Labor Day weekend, and the actual day was Labor Day
Speaker 3: was a Monday. The corrections officers who were first involved,
Speaker 3: who were first on the scene, were guarding the breakfast,
Speaker 3: the morning breakfast at the mess hall, the prison mess hall.
Speaker 3: They were overseeing that. And one of the corrections officers,
Speaker 3: who was vital to this story and perfectly willing to
Speaker 3: share with me, we spent a considerable amount of time
Speaker 3: talking about it. He noticed down the end of a
Speaker 3: long carda an inmate who seemed to be in some distress,
Speaker 3: and so we went to his aid, and it turned
Speaker 3: out to be Leroy Chasin, who was bleeding pretty severely
Speaker 3: from the abdomen and claiming that he was stabbed by
Speaker 3: another inmate. This this corrections office, mister Reynolds got his
Speaker 3: partner and the two of them guided Chasen to the infirmary,
Speaker 3: bleeding quite a bit. He was also bleeding from the mouth,
Speaker 3: and even somebody with a minimum of medical knowledge would
Speaker 3: know that bleeding from the mouth after being stabbed typically
Speaker 3: indicates internal bleeding of some sort. So they brought him
Speaker 3: to the doctor. They gave them, put them on the table,
Speaker 3: put them on the stretcher, and doctor Cohen did his exam,
Speaker 3: and at first, with all the blood that was involved,
Speaker 3: it was quite quite a quite a bit of it.
Speaker 3: His first diagnosis was he's not going to make it.
Speaker 3: But then he peeled away the shirt, peeled away some
Speaker 3: of the clothing and saw that the wounds were three
Speaker 3: smaller puncture wounds, and the bleeding had since stopped, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden it wasn't quite as bad as
Speaker 3: he first thought, and he adjusted his diagnosis. Chasing was,
Speaker 3: I guess you could say, out of danger at that point,
Speaker 3: but he decided that he should get further examination at
Speaker 3: a hospital equipped with X ray machines and so forth
Speaker 3: to make sure there was no internal damage, because he
Speaker 3: just didn't know the depth of the wounds. So he
Speaker 3: decided to transport Chasing by the ambulance to the Norwood Hospital,
Speaker 3: which was the nearest hospital to Wopole Prison. The corrections
Speaker 3: officers called for the ambulance. While they're waiting, the corrections officer,
Speaker 3: Reynolds is starting to think there's something amiss, and I
Speaker 3: believe that's one of the words I use was a mess.
Speaker 3: He later kind of deducted that the blood coming from
Speaker 3: Chasin's mouth was a what they call a blood capsule,
Speaker 3: what a child might use at Halloween when he's a vampire.
Speaker 3: You kind of put it into your mouth and it
Speaker 3: makes pretend blood that dribbles down your mouth. He thought
Speaker 3: that that's something that Chasin did to enhance the injuries.
Speaker 3: He moaned and groaned a lot when he was being moved.
Speaker 3: But the key to the whole scenario. One of the
Speaker 3: protocols at all of Massachusetts prisons requires that when an
Speaker 3: inmate leaves the facility, whether he's going out to the
Speaker 3: hospital for an appointment or anything, that he is chained
Speaker 3: leg irons, a belly chain which wraps around the belly
Speaker 3: from the back, comes to the front, and then is handcuffed.
Speaker 3: The inmate's handcuffed to that belly chain, so he can't
Speaker 3: move his hands up and down. Well, side decide very much,
Speaker 3: and that is the protocol. But in this instance, when
Speaker 3: the corrections officers ask the doctor, how do you want
Speaker 3: us to chain him? The doctor says, well, no abdomen
Speaker 3: abdominal chains because that's where his wounds are and we
Speaker 3: could exacerbate the wounds and make them worse. He could
Speaker 3: stop bleeding again. We don't want that to happen. So
Speaker 3: no belly chains, just the leg irons. No handcuffs, just
Speaker 3: the leg irons. So it was a huge mistake on
Speaker 3: the part of the doctor and some people when they
Speaker 3: look back in the aftermath kind of put some of
Speaker 3: the blame on him for that decision, and the corrections officers,
Speaker 3: including Officer Reynolds, where they were totally stunned by that decision,
Speaker 3: but they know they they follow doctor's orders, I guess
Speaker 3: you could say. So. The ambulance arrives, they loaded up
Speaker 3: the two empt's load up. Mister Jason put him in
Speaker 3: the ambulance and they transport him to Norwood Hospital. Now,
Speaker 3: typically when you're transporting an inmate, there are two corrections
Speaker 3: officers that go with you. One rides in the ambulance.
Speaker 3: He is unarmed. They do not want any firearms in
Speaker 3: an ambulance with an inmate that close, in such close proximity,
Speaker 3: who could but potentially get that take that gun away
Speaker 3: and cause havoc. So the armed officer follows behind in
Speaker 3: it and what they call the chase car, it's a
Speaker 3: state car, and they follow the ambulance to the hospitals.
Speaker 3: In this case, they sent three corrections offices because of
Speaker 3: Chasin's history, because of his escape history, his ability to
Speaker 3: get out of places or keep out of places, and
Speaker 3: so they were a little concerns, so they added an
Speaker 3: officer to the mix. On arrival at Norwood Hospital, they
Speaker 3: put him in into one of the trauma rooms, which
Speaker 3: is a private room, so he's not exposed or in
Speaker 3: the vicinity of any other civilian patients. And one of
Speaker 3: the other pivotal moments it takes place. And I found
Speaker 3: it very very interesting that Officer Reynolds admitted this to me,
Speaker 3: that he had to use the restroom at that moment,
Speaker 3: as soon as they arrived at the hospital. And so
Speaker 3: he told his partner, who was going into the room
Speaker 3: with Chasin, into the trauma room with Chasin, I'll be
Speaker 3: right back. I'm just going to use the restroom, and
Speaker 3: off he went. The third officer with the gun happened
Speaker 3: to go up to this and walked on this long
Speaker 3: card to where there was a bank of phones, and
Speaker 3: he was calling the prison to let them know that
Speaker 3: they had arrived safely. There was no cell phones in
Speaker 3: those days, no other communications other than tracking down a
Speaker 3: phone that he could use. Meanwhile, while doctors and nurses
Speaker 3: and technicians were buzzing around in the room treating mister Chason,
Speaker 3: inserting an IV to his arm for blood loss, examining
Speaker 3: the wounds again, adding oxygen, putting leads on his chest
Speaker 3: to watch his heart rate, things like that, a woman
Speaker 3: walked into the room, a nurse, or so they thought
Speaker 3: was a nurse. One of the MT's, Paul Kilroy, had
Speaker 3: said to me years later when we were talking about it,
Speaker 3: that he thought he knew all the nurses in the hospital.
Speaker 3: He thought he could recognize all of them. This woman
Speaker 3: did not look familiar to him at all, and it
Speaker 3: kind of caught his curiosity. But it was a holiday,
Speaker 3: it was labor day, and hospitals, nursing homes and so forth,
Speaker 3: they tend to hire temporary staff to fill gaps by
Speaker 3: vacations and days off and so forth, so it wasn't
Speaker 3: common for them to be a kind of an extra
Speaker 3: nurse on the site. She walked in, she was holding
Speaker 3: up her arm with a white towel draped over, kind
Speaker 3: of like I describe it as if you're in a
Speaker 3: fine dining restaurant and the waiters standing there with a
Speaker 3: towel over his arm just in case there's a spill. Sure,
Speaker 3: And that's how she walked into the room. It wasn't
Speaker 3: long before she revealed that the towel was actually covering
Speaker 3: a forty five automatic. This was Leroy Chasin's wife, Kathleen,
Speaker 3: disguised as the nurse, holding everybody in that room at
Speaker 3: Bay and then handing the gun over to Leroyd, who
Speaker 3: needless to say, was not handcuffed. Took the gun, jumped
Speaker 3: off the stretcher. He's bleeding from his belly again, he's
Speaker 3: bleeding from he pulled his IV out of his arm,
Speaker 3: so she haked it right out. He's bleeding from that.
Speaker 3: Took off all the other tubes and wires and stood
Speaker 3: up and as he's pointing the gun at everybody in
Speaker 3: the room, doctor nurse, a couple of assistants, two empts,
Speaker 3: one corrections officer. His parting words were sorry, folks, but
Speaker 3: I got to go. And off they went. As they
Speaker 3: leave that room and turn the corner the corrections officer,
Speaker 3: mister Reynolds, who had to use the restroom, comes out
Speaker 3: of the restroom. He sees them. She points the gun
Speaker 3: at him momentarily, but he manages to bolt and get
Speaker 3: out of get out of that situation, and he runs
Speaker 3: for the visiting the waiting area. We're trying to find
Speaker 3: a phone. Obviously, they run out of the hospital. As
Speaker 3: soon as they leave, Reynolds yells to his partner down
Speaker 3: the hall on the phone, we need the gun. We
Speaker 3: need the gun again. There's only one gun between the
Speaker 3: three offices. So he comes. He eventually comes, running, goes
Speaker 3: out the door after the fleeing suspects, and a gunfight ensues.
Speaker 3: Jason fires. He fires. The only thing that got struck
Speaker 3: were parked cars, and some of the bullets struck the walls,
Speaker 3: concrete walls. There were holes left behind in the walls
Speaker 3: that later on became a tourist attraction. People were coming
Speaker 3: by to take photos of them. A bullet almost hit
Speaker 3: one of the security guards, who happened to all joined
Speaker 3: in the chase. The hospital security guard, who was also unarmed,
Speaker 3: nearly hit him in the head. They did some measurements
Speaker 3: later on and determined that he survived by a whisker.
Speaker 3: So Leroy, Chason and Kathleen. She's driving, he's in the
Speaker 3: passenger seat. They scream out of the hospital parking lot
Speaker 3: and just leave everybody leave the authorities behind. The Norwood Police,
Speaker 3: who had been called by Reynolds. They eventually arrived. Reynolds
Speaker 3: joins one of the police officers in a search and
Speaker 3: they drive around multiple police cruises, driving around town looking
Speaker 3: for the vehicle. It was a Chevy and they eventually
Speaker 3: found it in a parking lot of a nearby supermarket
Speaker 3: about a quarter of a mile from the hospital. But
Speaker 3: there was a second car. They had an accomplice, and
Speaker 3: the accomplice had brought them an alternate car. In that
Speaker 3: car there was money, clothing, and both cutters. Because the
Speaker 3: police found that somebody had used a pair of bowl
Speaker 3: cutters to cut the ankle bracelets off of mister Jason
Speaker 3: and relieve him of that. There were also packages from
Speaker 3: gauze bandages, gauze pads that were obviously used to stem
Speaker 3: the bleeding from his abdomen in his arm. That was
Speaker 3: obviously a Kathleen move, knowing that he might need that,
Speaker 3: and she brought some along. They were well, this was
Speaker 3: well orchestrated, well executed. The accomplice arranged. I later found
Speaker 3: out the accomplished arrange for credentials, they changed their names
Speaker 3: and from the hospital they won on an eighteen month
Speaker 3: journey across country on the run.
Speaker 2: But tisus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about call it chase, since run a
Speaker 2: series of greyhound bus trips. How do they evade capture?
Speaker 2: You talk about evading capture for seven years. So they
Speaker 2: have new identities, Kate and James Garrity. So how do
Speaker 2: they proceed, how do they evade capture and how does
Speaker 2: their lives proceed on the lamb on the run.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting, you're right about the new identities. They
Speaker 3: were accomplicit arrange for that and arrange for paperwork to
Speaker 3: match that, as far as credentials under the name of Garrity,
Speaker 3: so they had that in their favor. They did not
Speaker 3: after they abandoned their first the second grade getaway car
Speaker 3: in New Hampshire and continued on their run. It was
Speaker 3: all by buses from place to place. They chose not
Speaker 3: to stay in any city or any area longer than
Speaker 3: than necessary, and if they felt pressure, they felt heat,
Speaker 3: they would move on immediately without delay. At first they
Speaker 3: actually got an apartment. Their first apartment was in Chicago,
Speaker 3: and they found that call it paranoia, but they thought
Speaker 3: they were seen or recognized, so they eventually abandoned that
Speaker 3: apartment and moved on and took another Greyhound to the
Speaker 3: Seattle area. And then they decided that an apartment didn't
Speaker 3: make sense because if they wanted to continue to move
Speaker 3: and move quickly, say after a few days, that the
Speaker 3: apartment didn't work out. So they started to use motels
Speaker 3: and they never stayed at one longer than a few days.
Speaker 3: So imagine an eighteen month run across country staying no
Speaker 3: longer than a few days in any one place. It
Speaker 3: was labor of love, but they they actually got work,
Speaker 3: and the fact that their skill set. Their working skill
Speaker 3: set allowed them not to stay in any place very long.
Speaker 3: For instance, Chasin would take jobs in small cafes or
Speaker 3: mom and restaurants as a dishwasher temporary. You know, we're
Speaker 3: only going to be in the area for a week
Speaker 3: and I work, and most places would hire them and
Speaker 3: pay them in cash. And Kathleen had her nursing nursing
Speaker 3: assistant skills, and she took brief temporary jobs caring for
Speaker 3: the elderly in their homes. There were always ads. She
Speaker 3: would find an ad for somebody needing some home assistance,
Speaker 3: and she'd do it for a week, maybe two, and
Speaker 3: then they'd move on to the next city. The ironic
Speaker 3: part ironic part of this this trip was that there
Speaker 3: were occasions where they encountered police, some that were very
Speaker 3: interesting to the fact that I described them as teflon.
Speaker 3: It seemed like they got away with a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff that you, as a fugitive on the run, you
Speaker 3: probably shouldn't get away with. While they were in Chicago,
Speaker 3: Kathleen went into a Target department store. Their television in
Speaker 3: their in their place was on the fritz, and she
Speaker 3: stolen put in the carriage and started to wheel it out.
Speaker 3: She was captured by the store detectives, and you would
Speaker 3: figure at that point the police would be called in,
Speaker 3: they'd bring him into the station, they'd identify them, and
Speaker 3: back to Massachusetts they would go. But that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3: The store detectives find them one hundred dollars and they
Speaker 3: were on their way. Crush you one hundred dollars and
Speaker 3: don't ever come in the store again, and that'll be fine.
Speaker 3: We don't need we don't need to involve with the police.
Speaker 3: There was some physical altercations on the outside, on the
Speaker 3: outskirts of Seattle. Chason was checking them into a motel.
Speaker 3: Kathleen was standing outside and two drunk, vague vagrants accosted her,
Speaker 3: and when it was pointed out to Chasin by the
Speaker 3: motel clerk, he ran out there and and and beat
Speaker 3: both of them up, left them writhing on the ground.
Speaker 3: He was a he was a pretty tough kid. When
Speaker 3: the police showed up, they didn't they didn't arrest him.
Speaker 3: They were basically saying, well, you know, keep your nose clean.
Speaker 3: It looks like this is justified that you beat up
Speaker 3: these guys. They assaulted your girlfriend, your wife, whatever, And
Speaker 3: they let them off the hook. So there were instances
Speaker 3: of that that took place pretty much everywhere they went,
Speaker 3: and they managed to skate each time without much police involvement.
Speaker 3: They eventually landed in Denver, which was ultimately their final destination.
Speaker 3: Kathleen's children were living in just outside of Denver, and
Speaker 3: so she had an added motive to try to get
Speaker 3: to Denver and make that her permanent home because that
Speaker 3: way she could reunite with her children in such a way.
Speaker 3: And so that's why they made their home in Denver. Now,
Speaker 3: needless to say, she was on the run. She didn't
Speaker 3: spend much time with them. She didn't visit them at
Speaker 3: their home. They met at parks and places like that
Speaker 3: where they couldn't be captured because they were not only
Speaker 3: was Kathleen afraid that the police would arrest her if
Speaker 3: they were sticking out the house of her children, but
Speaker 3: they would arrest the children children's caretakers, as I guess
Speaker 3: you could say, aiding and abetting her. So they were
Speaker 3: very very careful. She did get to see the children,
Speaker 3: but infrequently and very carefully while they were in Denver.
Speaker 2: You're right that the FBI had tried to track these
Speaker 2: fugitives to not much avail to no avail, So they
Speaker 2: reached out to America's Most Wanted, which was a program
Speaker 2: that hadn't started that long before. Tell us about America's
Speaker 2: Most Wanted and John Walsh, but also that the program
Speaker 2: aired originally in nineteen eighty eight and then was re
Speaker 2: aired again.
Speaker 3: Correct John Walsh and America's Most Wanted did a feature
Speaker 3: story on Lee Roy, Chason and Kathleen in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: eight around the summertime, and it didn't turn up any leads.
Speaker 3: Do I have time for a quick side story on this?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Okay? So when Americans Most Wanted decided to do this
Speaker 3: feature on Chas and they sent a couple of producers
Speaker 3: out to Norwood, Massachusetts to visit the office of Norfolk
Speaker 3: Personal Ambulance and I happened to be working the day
Speaker 3: they came. And we're talking now six years, six years
Speaker 3: later after the actual escape, and they came in and
Speaker 3: explained what they wanted. They wanted to hire an ambulance
Speaker 3: and two EMTs to do the reenactment at both Norwood
Speaker 3: Hospital and the prison, and Norfolk Personal Ambulance management agreed
Speaker 3: and the office manager, his name was Bruce Vallade pointed.
Speaker 3: He said to me, he says, hey, Dan, so you
Speaker 3: missed the first one six years ago. He wanted to
Speaker 3: do the second one, and I said to him, you know, Bruce,
Speaker 3: I'd rather not be associated with a criminal like Leroy Chase,
Speaker 3: So why don't you give it to a couple other people.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they'll appreciate it. So they did, and come
Speaker 3: to find out, the two EMTs that got the job
Speaker 3: also got substantial royalty checks from America's Most Wanted. So
Speaker 3: I missed out a second time. Hopefully the third time
Speaker 3: will be this book. But anyways, yeah, that was my
Speaker 3: little America's Most Wanted story. So they showed up at
Speaker 3: the office. They did the reenactment, and it broadcast mid
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight and turned up zero leads to the authorities.
Speaker 3: Everything was a dead end, according to the FBI agent
Speaker 3: that I spoke with, So that the they decided to
Speaker 3: rebroadcast the show a year later in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: and this one actually turned up leads. Mister Chasin's neighbors
Speaker 3: were watching the show and they recognized him and made
Speaker 3: a call to the FBI, and the FBI, needless to say,
Speaker 3: they did a little tracking, did a little legwork to
Speaker 3: identify chasing, and they were staked out of his apartment
Speaker 3: in downtown Denver. He had said all through his later
Speaker 3: life Kathleen and others who would listen, that there was
Speaker 3: no way that he was ever going back to prison.
Speaker 3: They would never take him back, and those words obviously
Speaker 3: had a double meaning, but Kathleen was aware that he
Speaker 3: would not be taken and that was in fact the
Speaker 3: case once he realized. Once Leroy realized that the FBI
Speaker 3: had him surrounded at this apartment, he got a hold
Speaker 3: of his gun, which ironically was later identified as the
Speaker 3: gun at the hospital seven years earlier, and went outside
Speaker 3: his apartment and engaged the FBI agents. He shot first,
Speaker 3: They shot second, third, fourth, fifth, and took down mister
Speaker 3: Jason on a hot, steamy sidewalk of downtown Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3: Kathleen later turned herself in. She learned of her husband's
Speaker 3: demise on a television show. She was working at a
Speaker 3: nearby neighbor's house taking care of an elderly person. She
Speaker 3: saw it on the TV. She went to the police,
Speaker 3: told them who she was, and they took her into custody,
Speaker 3: and eventually she was transported back to Massachusetts to serve
Speaker 3: time at our women's prison, which is MCI Framingham, and
Speaker 3: she did a few years. They didn't keep her long,
Speaker 3: and then she went on to live her life. Passed
Speaker 3: away at the age of seventy five and in her
Speaker 3: house in Maine. Oddly enough, a lot of our children
Speaker 3: who had lived in Colorado during the escape phase, they
Speaker 3: gradually began to move back east. Some of them settled
Speaker 3: in Maine. Her son settled in New Hampshire, and so
Speaker 3: they were nearby for her in her later years.
Speaker 2: What I found startling was that the original broadcast of
Speaker 2: America's Most Wanted The Chasms watched that episode and didn't
Speaker 2: move Denver after very interesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, they did. I think they braced themselves for impact.
Speaker 3: It was one of those points where they were tired
Speaker 3: of running. They had a home, they had I guess
Speaker 3: you could say careers. The children went nearby. Her children
Speaker 3: were nearby, and they wanted to see them, and I
Speaker 3: think they just rolled the dice that they want to
Speaker 3: be recognized, and they were right. They were right for
Speaker 3: a year. But the rebroadcast is what triggered more interest.
Speaker 3: I think my conjecture is that nineteen eighty eight was
Speaker 3: the first year of a Markers almost wanted. It just
Speaker 3: started broadcasts and I don't think they had the viewers.
Speaker 3: I think by year one, once they've been on the
Speaker 3: air for another year, now you had more viewers, more
Speaker 3: interest in the show. It was generating a lot more
Speaker 3: view a lot more eyeballs, and eventually somebody did see it.
Speaker 3: There was a twist in the book. I'm sure you
Speaker 3: noticed after Leroy, after Lee Roy was killed by the FBI,
Speaker 3: his girlfriend back in Somerville, Massachusetts, Linnell revealed to her son,
Speaker 3: who was now in his teens, that Leroy Chasen was
Speaker 3: not really his dad and never had been. And it
Speaker 3: was a stunning moment for him to find out that
Speaker 3: the man. Even though the man was a criminal and
Speaker 3: he was on the run from everybody, it was still
Speaker 3: his father and he thought it was his father, but
Speaker 3: it was not his father. His mother Linnell had kept
Speaker 3: that secret from Leroy because Leroy was supporting them. He
Speaker 3: was paying for the apartment, he was paying for little
Speaker 3: Derek as far as clothing and so forth, and she
Speaker 3: was afraid that if he found out she had kept
Speaker 3: up this ruse, that Leroy would would come and do
Speaker 3: harm to either her or her son, or take the son.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of things going through her mind.
Speaker 3: She was unfortunately, she was heavy into drugs. She passed
Speaker 3: away at a very early age from an overdose in
Speaker 3: her early fifties. And Derek the way he found out
Speaker 3: besides his mother telling him that, the way he found
Speaker 3: out was that he used that system twenty three and
Speaker 3: meters and did a search for himself and found that
Speaker 3: his found his biological father in New York City, eventually
Speaker 3: reunited with some of his first cousins there. His biological
Speaker 3: father had since passed away. Interesting story for Derek to
Speaker 3: find out that all those years that he thought that
Speaker 3: Chasen was his dad and come to find out as
Speaker 3: a teenager that he was not in fact his dad.
Speaker 2: Very interesting too when you talk about by all accounts
Speaker 2: when police interviewed neighbors, apparently people called America's most wanted
Speaker 2: and reported him, but very much the accounts of the
Speaker 2: neighbors that knew him for many years was very much
Speaker 2: like when Whitey Bulger went on the run and was
Speaker 2: in hiding as well, that many people that knew this
Speaker 2: couple knew them as salt of the earth. Very very
Speaker 2: decent people. You write about some of those accounts of
Speaker 2: people that encountered the couple, Yes.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean Lee Roy Chason. It was actually a
Speaker 3: very very intelligent man. From what I could gather from
Speaker 3: people that I've talked to about him, he was very smart.
Speaker 3: So he was also a smart criminal, and he knew
Speaker 3: when to keep his teeth is, you know, keep it,
Speaker 3: keep it clean, be friendly with the neighbors, be sociable.
Speaker 3: You know, cut somebody's grass for them, and they're gonna
Speaker 3: they'll never think, as you're being the nice guy next
Speaker 3: door that you're an escaped ex convict who murdered a
Speaker 3: twenty year old and you're on the run from the
Speaker 3: FBI and just about everybody else. Just it doesn't cross
Speaker 3: people's mind if you're polite and you're courteous and you're friendly.
Speaker 3: And so Chason took on that that personality during this
Speaker 3: during this hideout, I guess you could say, during while
Speaker 3: he was on the lamb in Colorado and he had
Speaker 3: his name is pretty well fooled throughout that throughout the
Speaker 3: course of that.
Speaker 2: In this story, the title is Jason's Run, The Prison
Speaker 2: Break that Captivated America and the love Story that fueled it.
Speaker 2: It really is not admirable, but it is very interesting
Speaker 2: to see the bravery that Kathleen exuded when she showed
Speaker 2: up at that hospital with a gun and all of
Speaker 2: the planning for this elaborate and very sophisticated escape from
Speaker 2: from prison. It's not like they didn't know he was
Speaker 2: a dangerous guy and had some kind of potential, and
Speaker 2: like you say, they were prepared for these high risk inmates.
Speaker 2: That's what that blue code room was. So her steadfast
Speaker 2: support of her husband and her bravery that she needed
Speaker 2: to pull this crime off were evident of that. That steady,
Speaker 2: the steadfast love that she had for this convict Leroy Chasin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of private I mean, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of privacy in that family even after the fact.
Speaker 3: The fact that the story wasn't told is because Kathleen
Speaker 3: Chason didn't want to speak with anybody. She kept a
Speaker 3: very very low profile after she was released from prison.
Speaker 3: She had six children and some siblings herself, and honestly,
Speaker 3: when it came time to find somebody to interview and
Speaker 3: get information from, it literally took me a year to
Speaker 3: convince her spot her son to speak with me and
Speaker 3: he was. Even during the discussion, he was evasive, but
Speaker 3: then he learned that I was going to do my
Speaker 3: very best. When I explained to him, I would do
Speaker 3: my very best to respect his mother even though she
Speaker 3: had committed a criminal act, that she deserved deserve respect
Speaker 3: because it was all a lot of love for Leroy.
Speaker 3: That's pretty much my story to him, I said I
Speaker 3: would take great care and respecting her, and I had
Speaker 3: practice in that too, Dan, my first book, Shots in
Speaker 3: the Dark, I befriended Roco. During the course of my
Speaker 3: writing and interviews. I had to respect the victims because
Speaker 3: one was my aunt. So throughout I managed to write
Speaker 3: true crime stories but in some way respect the participants
Speaker 3: as the best way I could.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about Jason's run, the prison break that
Speaker 2: captivated America, and the love story that fueled it. For
Speaker 2: those people that might want to find out more about
Speaker 2: the story or your other book, can you tell us
Speaker 2: about a website or any social media you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously I can be reached on Facebook at you know,
Speaker 3: search Daniel Zimmerman, and then you can put the title
Speaker 3: in the best way that I've found now that I
Speaker 3: have two books instead of one. Is for interested folks
Speaker 3: to just search my name in Amazon, but use Daniels,
Speaker 3: so it's d A N I E L and then
Speaker 3: Zimmerman Z I M M E R an Daniel Zimmerman
Speaker 3: in Amazon, and the books come right up. Jason's Run
Speaker 3: comes up first, and then Shots in the Dark, my
Speaker 3: earlier book, comes up second. And they can read the
Speaker 3: reviews and look at the the quick bios and captions
Speaker 3: on from these two stories, and uh, hopefully they'll read
Speaker 3: my they'll read my books.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Daniel Zimmerman for Chasin's Run, the
Speaker 2: prison break that captivated America, and the love story the
Speaker 2: fuel it. Thank you so much for this interview, and
Speaker 2: you have a great evening, and good night,