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Speaker 6: Are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers
Speaker 6: in True crime History and the authors that have written
Speaker 6: about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week
Speaker 6: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. In
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty and Toledo, Ohio, on one of the holiest
Speaker 7: days of the church calendar, the body of a nun
Speaker 7: was discovered in the sacristy of a hospital chapel. Seventy
Speaker 7: one year old sister Margaret Anne had been strangled and stabbed,
Speaker 7: her corpse arranged in a shameful and stomach churning pose,
Speaker 7: but the police's most likely suspect was inexplicably released and
Speaker 7: the investigation was quietly buried. Despite damning evidence, Father Gerald
Speaker 7: Robinson went free twenty three years later. The priest's name
Speaker 7: resurfaced in connection with a bizarre case of Satanic ritual abuse.
Speaker 7: It prompted investigators to exhume the remains of the slain
Speaker 7: nun in search of the proof left behind that would
Speaker 7: indelibly mark Father Robinson as Sister Margaret Anne's killer. The
Speaker 7: Sign of the Devil, When Satan Wore Across He is
Speaker 7: a shocking true story of official cover ups, madness, murder
Speaker 7: and lies, and an of an unholy human monster who
Speaker 7: disguised himself in holy garb. The book were featuring this
Speaker 7: evening is When Satan Wore Across by journalist and author
Speaker 7: Fred Rosen. Welcome back to the program, Fred Rosen, and
Speaker 7: thank you to reading's this interview.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much, Dan for having me on
Speaker 5: once again. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you. Now this is for our audience too.
Speaker 7: I've I've put a little blurb on.
Speaker 8: Facebook about this case.
Speaker 7: This story almost sounds unbelievable and he almost can picture
Speaker 7: a movie with this kind of almost a screenplay for
Speaker 7: a movie. I mean, it's just fantastic. Now, just tell
Speaker 7: us this was a little bit later. This crime happened
Speaker 7: in the eighties, but you became involved in two thousand
Speaker 7: and six, tell us, describe why did you decide to
Speaker 7: write about this particular case and what was it about
Speaker 7: this case that interested you so much.
Speaker 5: Well, the reason I actually decided to write about the
Speaker 5: case was because I had interviewed called an Arrow and
Speaker 5: Carl was one of the survivors of the Son of
Speaker 5: Sam and I'd interviewed him for another book and we
Speaker 5: kept in touch and he told me about this case.
Speaker 5: It was being featured at that time. It was Core
Speaker 5: TV today it's True TV. And he told me about it,
Speaker 5: and quite frankly, I didn't believe it because the idea
Speaker 5: of a priest killing a nun, I mean, it sounded
Speaker 5: like science fiction or something. And so what I did
Speaker 5: was I, you know, I did my research, and I
Speaker 5: had written a book called The Historical Atlas of American Crime,
Speaker 5: which chronicle crime in America from fifteen eighty seven to
Speaker 5: the present. And I soon realized that this was a
Speaker 5: first an American criminal history, that there was no instance
Speaker 5: in American criminal history where a priest was accused, let
Speaker 5: alone convicted, of killing a nun. And that got me
Speaker 5: interested in it, and shortly after that I got very
Speaker 5: friendly with Dave Davidson, who was the first police officer
Speaker 5: on the scene. Right, Sister Margaret Ann was killed and
Speaker 5: basically sacrificed his career and in some way sacrificed part
Speaker 5: of his life in order to get.
Speaker 8: The truth out.
Speaker 5: And that's what got me interested in the whole thing.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 7: Now, take us back to April nineteen eighty and the
Speaker 7: crime itself. Maybe before we talk about the actual crime,
Speaker 7: maybe you can talk about the victim of the characters
Speaker 7: in this and primarily Margaret and Paul and Gerald Robinson,
Speaker 7: Father Gerald Robinson. Take us back to the parish. Tell
Speaker 7: us where this is, and we don't even know what
Speaker 7: city we're here. We're talking about Ohio. But tell us
Speaker 7: a little bit more set the stage for where this occurred,
Speaker 7: and described the congregation that these people were involved with,
Speaker 7: and tell us a little bit about Margaret and Paul
Speaker 7: and father Gerald Robinson.
Speaker 5: Well, what happened going back to nineteen this goes back,
Speaker 5: of course to nineteen eighty. It was a cold case
Speaker 5: that was solved in the millennium. What happened was it's Toledo, Ohio,
Speaker 5: and Toledo, Ohio is a well I can't say it
Speaker 5: was the Catholic Church is very influential and very important
Speaker 5: to the community in that area. And Sister Margaream Paul
Speaker 5: was working at a local hospital with Father Jerry Robinson
Speaker 5: or Father Gerald Robinson, and these two individuals had had
Speaker 5: words about differences really about the way that the services
Speaker 5: should be conducted on a regular basis in the parish.
Speaker 5: They in particular they worked in in a local hospital,
Speaker 5: and there were words between these two. We know about that.
Speaker 5: And what happened was the there were words between the
Speaker 5: two and shortly after that Margaret and Paul, who had
Speaker 5: been a nun for many many years. She was born
Speaker 5: in the in the early part of the twentieth century.
Speaker 5: She was a dedicated nun and she believed in have
Speaker 5: an orthodoxy within the religion and which is fine. And
Speaker 5: Robinson apparently did not, and he decided to cut short
Speaker 5: the service on during the it would be the Easter
Speaker 5: weekend actually, and he and and so eventually what occurs
Speaker 5: is that in the sacristy, which is right behind the altar,
Speaker 5: she was found dead. And she was found dead in
Speaker 5: a very strange position, with her legs apart. And at
Speaker 5: the time the police did not pick up on the
Speaker 5: pattern of the stab wounds which on her chest which
Speaker 5: caused her death. And what occurred was that Dave Davidson,
Speaker 5: the first police officer in the scene, did his job
Speaker 5: and questioned the individuals who had come into the sacristy,
Speaker 5: the nuns, the doctors, etc. Upon the discovery of the body,
Speaker 5: and many of them said, take a look at the priest,
Speaker 5: and they meant Gerald Robinson, who was the priest who
Speaker 5: was in charge of the hospital chapel. And from that
Speaker 5: point onward it gets very very convoluted because Robinson will
Speaker 5: eventually be arrested for meeting this crime. And then eventually
Speaker 5: as the case becomes a cold case for a variety
Speaker 5: of reasons that we can discuss, and it was quite
Speaker 5: perplexing to the police at the time because nobody could
Speaker 5: put together the fact that a priest could do this.
Speaker 5: And upon my investigation, I discovered that the church in
Speaker 5: Toledo was complicit with the police department and covering up
Speaker 5: priestly abuses, specifically pedophilia for the previous so about twenty
Speaker 5: five thirty years and that led to what would later occur,
Speaker 5: which is the arrest of the priest and of course
Speaker 5: his eventual release isn't that it?
Speaker 7: J Okay, Now, before we get that, let's go back.
Speaker 7: Let's go back to the crime scene as well. Well,
Speaker 7: because a lot of stuff happens. In terms of potential witnesses.
Speaker 7: There is nobody that actually sees Gerald Robinson, but there
Speaker 7: is somebody leaving the scene running away. Tell us also,
Speaker 7: it's very interesting. Is this either a father or he's
Speaker 7: another priest? Anyway, his name is Sayatak Techi Swya tech.
Speaker 7: Maybe you can pronounce that property for me. What did
Speaker 7: he ask Jerald Robinson shortly after the Margaret and Paul
Speaker 7: was discovered murdered, strangled, stabbed and defiled.
Speaker 5: Well, there's two things. There's two things to talk about,
Speaker 5: which is, yes, there was an individual who was seen
Speaker 5: walking away from the sacristy shortly after the crime, and
Speaker 5: that individual would not be identified untill the millennium as
Speaker 5: Gerald Robinson. But at the time when Dave Davidson was
Speaker 5: questioning the witnesses who had come upon the body and
Speaker 5: swaya Techi was there. The first thing he says is
Speaker 5: he goes over to Robinson. He says, why'd you do this?
Speaker 5: And he immediately suspected Robinson and it would have under
Speaker 5: ordinary circumstances, it would have made Robinson the prime suspect.
Speaker 5: But because of an arrangement that had occurred informally between
Speaker 5: the police department and the bishop of the diocese. This
Speaker 5: wasn't even an arch diocese because it wasn't big enough.
Speaker 5: It gets, for lack of a better term, extremely political.
Speaker 5: And so Swya Techi actually would say that Robinson, he
Speaker 5: accused Robinson of this crime. And at that point it
Speaker 5: all sort of goes into a black hole basically because
Speaker 5: people were protect individuals who work for the church who
Speaker 5: had been accused of crimes, and it was an arrangement
Speaker 5: between the police department and the diocese. And so what
Speaker 5: occurs is that while Dave Davidson and the other detectives
Speaker 5: on the case will do their job at the time,
Speaker 5: certain things happen such that Robinson, even though he is
Speaker 5: brought in for questioning, is released. And I can describe
Speaker 5: exactly what happens.
Speaker 7: Is we go further tell us about the questioning because
Speaker 7: they they ask obviously Davidson and his partners they ask him.
Speaker 7: They think he's a likely suspect, so they ask him
Speaker 7: questions accordingly. And what is his response to the news
Speaker 7: that this woman, is that this Margaret and Paul a
Speaker 7: Nunn that has worked together with him.
Speaker 5: What is his response he claimed, He claims that he
Speaker 5: was in a shower, He was upstairs because the people
Speaker 5: who would work for the church, the nuns in the hospital.
Speaker 5: This was a hospital run by the Catholic Church. And
Speaker 5: Robinson would claim that he was in his apartment at
Speaker 5: the time, which is in the hospital, that he doesn't
Speaker 5: find out about it until somebody gives him a call
Speaker 5: and tells him what's going on, at which point he
Speaker 5: rushes downstairs. And it was the job of the police
Speaker 5: to investigate his claim and decide whether it was a
Speaker 5: valid claim or not, whether he was a viable suspect.
Speaker 5: And they do find out that about the fact that
Speaker 5: he and sister Margaret and Paul had disagreed on the
Speaker 5: course of the regular service, and they also found out
Speaker 5: they had some other disagreements. And at that point you
Speaker 5: would I think that Robinson would become the prime suspect
Speaker 5: and that the police would be centering in on him,
Speaker 5: which is what they did. And then what occurs is
Speaker 5: that Robinson would eventually be brought in for questioning shortly
Speaker 5: after the crime takes place. And he goes into an
Speaker 5: interview room and he's there with detectives and they're talking
Speaker 5: to him. They give him his rights, and at that
Speaker 5: point he seems like he's ready to open up, and
Speaker 5: then suddenly the door to the interview room opens up
Speaker 5: and in walks the chief of police, and the chief
Speaker 5: of police tells Robinson, you're going home. Basically well, and
Speaker 5: the chief of police was a Roman Catholic, and the
Speaker 5: detectives were very very beside themselves for lack of of
Speaker 5: any other way of describing it. They'd never seen anything
Speaker 5: like this. I personally never heard of anything like this
Speaker 5: where monsignor could walk into an interrogation with the chief
Speaker 5: of police and walk the prime suspect out. And at
Speaker 5: that point Robinson literally disappears into the parish. Until the millennium,
Speaker 5: they move him around a lot. And now we see
Speaker 5: that that is a fairly common situation when a priest
Speaker 5: is accused of a crime, primarily, of course, pedophilia, and
Speaker 5: he's moved around a lot until later on it becomes
Speaker 5: a cold case and then somebody claims. A woman comes
Speaker 5: forward to claim that she was ritualistically abused by a
Speaker 5: number of individuals, including Gerald Robinson. When we say ritualistically,
Speaker 5: we mean satanically. And at that point the police in
Speaker 5: two thousand and five, they really launch a full scale investigation,
Speaker 5: including exooming Margaret am Paul's body, and they take a
Speaker 5: much closer look at the pattern of the wounds on
Speaker 5: her chest, the stab wounds which had caused her death,
Speaker 5: and they come to the conclusion and it's pretty obvious
Speaker 5: when you look at the photos and I've got those
Speaker 5: in the book, that she was stabbed in the shape
Speaker 5: of an inverted cross, which is a Satanic symbol. And
Speaker 5: the police then call in an actual exorcist who from
Speaker 5: the Archdiocese of Chicago as an expert, and they discuss
Speaker 5: the situation with him, and he gives them a lot
Speaker 5: of information about ritualistic abuse, and simultaneously a woman it
Speaker 5: comes forward to claim an other woman that Robinson was
Speaker 5: involved in a Satanic cult and that she was also
Speaker 5: ritualistically abused, and so it becomes very, very scary. I
Speaker 5: don't know any other way of putting it, that a
Speaker 5: priest of the Catholic Church could in some way be
Speaker 5: involved in a Satanic ritual. And at that point they
Speaker 5: continue their investigation until eventually Gerald Robinson is charged. By
Speaker 5: that time, we're about sixteen years it's sixteen years later
Speaker 5: from the time the crime first took place, and of
Speaker 5: course it gets a lot of headlines in the United States.
Speaker 5: I don't know how it was in other venues in
Speaker 5: other countries, and it goes forward from there.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us who the primary I guessors are in
Speaker 7: keeping this. We talked about Davison, Dave Davison, the detective,
Speaker 7: the guy that really stuck with the story. But there
Speaker 7: are other people that come to the surface, an organization
Speaker 7: called SNAP. So tell us about tell us about this
Speaker 7: because again, this other important character, this woman that's important
Speaker 7: to this in having this Gerald Robinson finally at some point,
Speaker 7: even though in many years later, be taken to task
Speaker 7: and in front of the judiciary. So tell us who
Speaker 7: this woman is and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 7: her and how she was involved.
Speaker 5: She is an advocate for individuals. This individual, Claudia was
Speaker 5: someone who had been abused by a priest. And Claudia
Speaker 5: was part of this group that had gotten together and
Speaker 5: it's a national group two do something about priestly abuse,
Speaker 5: which of course had become front page headlines and still is.
Speaker 5: And she felt that the police were in cahoots with
Speaker 5: the Catholic Church in not charging Gerald Robinson with this murder,
Speaker 5: and so she essentially petitioned, protested that they should get
Speaker 5: off their keysters and go after him. And she's one
Speaker 5: of the individuals who helps to get him at least
Speaker 5: brought in to be questioned one more time. And at
Speaker 5: the same time, because of what Claudia does, and again
Speaker 5: because of Davidson, who was again the first comprom the scene,
Speaker 5: the police then go back and take a look at
Speaker 5: what evidence they had originally, and lo and behold, they
Speaker 5: find that when they had searched Robinson's quarters back in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty, they find that he has a very well
Speaker 5: funded publication from the Catholic Church about ritualistic abuse and Satanism,
Speaker 5: and at that time they didn't release any of that information.
Speaker 5: And so it's a combination really of a number of
Speaker 5: individuals who come forward to pressure the authorities. Now Claudia
Speaker 5: is somebody who's very outfront and would be able to
Speaker 5: get a lot of headlines. On the other hand, Davidson
Speaker 5: was literally drummed out of the police department because he
Speaker 5: kept pressing to investigate Robinson and charge him, and that's
Speaker 5: not what his superiors wanted at the time, wanted to do.
Speaker 5: And so result Robinson, I'm sorry, Davidson, eventually, because of
Speaker 5: his continued petitioning to look into this thing, not only
Speaker 5: does he get black bull from the department, but he's
Speaker 5: looked at as being a wild card by the state prosecutor,
Speaker 5: somebody who's not reliable in terms of what he's saying.
Speaker 5: And so what you have is essentially an old fashioned
Speaker 5: cover up, and there's nothing unusual about that, Dan, I mean,
Speaker 5: the only thing that would be unusual here is that
Speaker 5: in all of the instances that we have read about
Speaker 5: and know about in terms of priestly abused, it involves pedophilia.
Speaker 5: In this case, that's not what's happening. In this case,
Speaker 5: we're talking about murder and ritualistic abuse. Now, the woman
Speaker 5: who comes forward who I interviewed, who claims that Robinson
Speaker 5: had sexually abused her when she was a teenager. She
Speaker 5: then files a civil suit, which eventually gets dismissed. But
Speaker 5: she was very very specific about what had occurred and
Speaker 5: in terms of the actual abuse, and she also implicated
Speaker 5: other members of the Catholic Church in Toledo, Ohio, and
Speaker 5: the reason that I believe that this could go on
Speaker 5: for so long, this kind of a cold case, when
Speaker 5: you have this kind of strong evidence against a man
Speaker 5: who appears to be the bad guy, is because this
Speaker 5: particular section of Toledo I'm sorry of Ohio is very
Speaker 5: very Catholic. It had been settled that way, and in
Speaker 5: fact Robinson is a priest who is fluent in Polish,
Speaker 5: so that a Polish Catholics in the parish, and Robinson's
Speaker 5: role within the parish was to conduct services in Polish,
Speaker 5: so he was actually an integral part of the structure
Speaker 5: of the parish and he served, as I said, a
Speaker 5: very important role here. And in addition to Robinson, to
Speaker 5: the individuals I've already named, the other people that we
Speaker 5: see that become involved are the actual individuals who are
Speaker 5: heading the parish, including the bishop who has since died,
Speaker 5: the monsignor who since died, and these individuals, according to
Speaker 5: the evidence, participated in a cover up. And it goes
Speaker 5: even more than that, because it was during my investigation
Speaker 5: that I discovered that there had been a papal edict
Speaker 5: that said that every parish was supposed to keep secret files.
Speaker 5: Every parish in the world and these secret files could
Speaker 5: be just about anything, and that would include personnel records,
Speaker 5: situations like the one we're describing where someone is accused
Speaker 5: of a crime and then transferred from one church to
Speaker 5: another within the parish. And so it's a combination of
Speaker 5: individuals who come together.
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Speaker 5: He terms and conditions eighteen plus Davidson Claudia the person
Speaker 5: who accuses Robinson of priestly abuse, or rather accuses him
Speaker 5: of ritualistic abuse. And it was the kind of perfect
Speaker 5: storm in a sense that the authorities at that point
Speaker 5: could not ignore, and so they have to go further
Speaker 5: with their investigation, which eventually will lead to Robinson being
Speaker 5: charged with murder.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: What I found interesting too, Fred, is is that you
Speaker 7: put a lot of references in there are very good
Speaker 7: in explaining some things, and of course you talk about
Speaker 7: some movies and and some of those things that just
Speaker 7: given a historical.
Speaker 8: Background to give it content.
Speaker 7: Right, right, Let's let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 7: Anton Levy's Satanic Bible and the idea that this human
Speaker 7: body can as an altar, and also about the altar
Speaker 7: cloth itself tell us a little and the weapon that
Speaker 7: they at least supposed that they thought that was the
Speaker 7: murder weapon itself used to stab Margaret Ann, So tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about Anton Levey and this, and
Speaker 7: who were the people that were buying into this satanic
Speaker 7: ritual thing. Was Davison, was he convinced and who did
Speaker 7: some of this research other than or did you do
Speaker 7: the research about the Satanic Bible and the whole feasibility
Speaker 7: of the crime scene itself being ritualistic?
Speaker 5: Well? I did well in the present, I did the research.
Speaker 5: But simultaneous viously at the police department was doing that
Speaker 5: as well. And I should explain that again when I
Speaker 5: say the president, I'm talking about we're going We're still
Speaker 5: going back seven years. But but Levey had written the
Speaker 5: Satanic Bible, and part of this involves symbols, and the
Speaker 5: symbol of the inverted cross being a symbol of the devil.
Speaker 5: And what occurs here is that when she is found
Speaker 5: there is an altar cloth over her, and the the
Speaker 5: whoever does this crime had put the altar cloth over
Speaker 5: her and stabbed her in the pattern of the inverted cross. Now,
Speaker 5: the important point here is to understand that none of
Speaker 5: the police at the time picked up on this. This
Speaker 5: doesn't get picked up on until the until relatively the present.
Speaker 5: And so I went back and I started researching Satanic
Speaker 5: rituals Catholic rituals to understand what was going on. And
Speaker 5: the police posit that the murder weapon is a letter
Speaker 5: opener which Robinson had on his desk, And if you
Speaker 5: take a look at the pictures in the book, you
Speaker 5: will see that the pattern of the murder of the
Speaker 5: stand wounds on Margaret and Paul's chest, which again caused
Speaker 5: her death, were in the shape of an inverted cruss.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's no way around that. And nobody, not Davidson,
Speaker 5: not Claudia, nobody, except perhaps for the person who comes
Speaker 5: forward to claim that Robinson had done some ritualistic abuse
Speaker 5: in her previous lik nobody really understands it. And therefore
Speaker 5: there's nothing to really believe Dan because at that point
Speaker 5: they don't have the evidence. But in the present what
Speaker 5: occurs is that when they disinter the body and they
Speaker 5: examine it, they're able to determine the pattern of the wounds.
Speaker 5: At that point, the police in Toledo do the right
Speaker 5: thing and they go to the exorcist in the Chicago Archdioces.
Speaker 5: Chicago has an exorcist on staff who I interviewed and
Speaker 5: which was a great interview, because the first thing I
Speaker 5: said to him, I said, I said to him, I said, gee,
Speaker 5: what do you do? How do you get this job?
Speaker 5: And he explained to me that he got the job
Speaker 5: because he had actually done his doctoral thesis on exorcism.
Speaker 5: And he also explained to me that he does most
Speaker 5: of his work on the phone, because nine out of
Speaker 5: ten cases, if not more, involved schizophrenia when someone thinks
Speaker 5: they're possessed by the devil. Of course, this brings up,
Speaker 5: you know, memories of the famous film The Exorcist and
Speaker 5: what So what happens is they work very closely with
Speaker 5: the with the with the monsignor from Chicago who's the exorcist,
Speaker 5: and they begin to realize the police that this was
Speaker 5: some sort of satanic ritual. Now, the real question, and
Speaker 5: my feeling all along, was that Robinson had done this
Speaker 5: and done it this specific way to divert attention from
Speaker 5: himself and not necessarily because he was some sort of
Speaker 5: committed Satanist or something. There's no evidence, there's no hard
Speaker 5: evidence to show that Robinson himself was a Satanist, except
Speaker 5: for this woman who came forward who claimed that he
Speaker 5: had committed the satanic ritual on her previously, but the
Speaker 5: police did the right thing at this point and they
Speaker 5: went with the evidence. And as I came and I
Speaker 5: came into it after Father Robinson was convicted. And by
Speaker 5: the way, Father Robinson still wears the collar. He is
Speaker 5: still a priest even in jail. And as I got
Speaker 5: into it, that's when I realized that if you don't
Speaker 5: have corroborating evidence that Robinson was a Satanist, you therefore
Speaker 5: have the possibility that he did this deliberately in order
Speaker 5: to divert attention from himself. And so the police are
Speaker 5: putting all of this stuff together, including when they do
Speaker 5: the second autopsy of Margaret and Paul. They're able to
Speaker 5: take this letter opener and match up the wounds themselves,
Speaker 5: because he stabbed her so hard it went to the bone,
Speaker 5: and they were able to match up that. They took
Speaker 5: the tip of the letter opener and they were able
Speaker 5: to put it into the bone that had been damaged
Speaker 5: when he committed this crime, and it was an exact match.
Speaker 5: At the same time, they took the letter opener and
Speaker 5: they discovered what they think was blood underneath part of it,
Speaker 5: the handle, but they weren't able to make a positive
Speaker 5: ID so therefore that the fact that the letter opener
Speaker 5: is the murder weapon was something that was positive on
Speaker 5: the basis of circumstantial evidence, and the jury believed that
Speaker 5: in addition to the weight of the other evidence. Oh
Speaker 5: and this one more thing, I feel like Colombo, one
Speaker 5: more thing, which is that in the present, as they
Speaker 5: conduct their investigation, what they find and this is the
Speaker 5: thing that cinsed it, certainly for me and certainly I
Speaker 5: believe for the conviction of father Robinson, was that back
Speaker 5: in eighty somebody was seen leaving the leaving the leaving
Speaker 5: the chapel shortly after the murder was committed, but there
Speaker 5: was no identification of that individual except in the present.
Speaker 5: They tracked down a fellow who was an intern at
Speaker 5: the time or resident, I don't recall, and this doctor
Speaker 5: positively id Gerald Robinson and said he was the dude
Speaker 5: that I saw skulking around and leaving the chapel as
Speaker 5: I was going into it to treat her. Now she
Speaker 5: was already dead, but they didn't know that, of course,
Speaker 5: you know, he didn't know that. Of course at the time.
Speaker 5: You know, he's going in the chapel because he gets
Speaker 5: call it. You know, there's somebody down and needs help,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And this individual, this this doctor sees Robinson
Speaker 5: and id's him in the present as coming from that direction,
Speaker 5: which completely contradicts what Robinson had said. Robinson claiming that
Speaker 5: he was always in his apartment at the time, and
Speaker 5: the only time that he's back in the sacristy is
Speaker 5: when he's notified what occurs. That's when he comes down,
Speaker 5: and that's when Swaye Techi accuses him of being the
Speaker 5: bad guy. And I might add that Dave Davidson, even
Speaker 5: though he's not a detective, he's a good beat cop.
Speaker 5: And so Davidson continues to interview witnesses in the hospital
Speaker 5: despite the fact he's not supposed to do this. He's
Speaker 5: supposed to leave it to the detectives. And all of
Speaker 5: the individuals he talks to implicate Robinson and say Robinson
Speaker 5: had had problems with system, Margaret and Paul, so there
Speaker 5: was never any other suspect in this case except for
Speaker 5: the Gerald Robinson.
Speaker 7: You know what's interesting too, and we haven't spoken about it,
Speaker 7: but you put it at the very beginning of your
Speaker 7: book and you describe it.
Speaker 5: Quite quite well.
Speaker 7: And then graphically, who presided over the funeral mass for
Speaker 7: Margaret and Paul.
Speaker 5: Ironically, Gerald Robinson the killer, incredible, the killer and in
Speaker 5: the act during that during that mass, it's the full mass.
Speaker 5: Of course, one of the things that I had to
Speaker 5: do when I was reading, when I was research. I
Speaker 5: took a full month when I was working on the
Speaker 5: book because I'm I'm Jewish and I'm from Brooklyn, so
Speaker 5: I didn't I wasn't aware. I didn't even know what
Speaker 5: the sacristy was. So I had a learning curve. So
Speaker 5: I really, so, I really. A good friend of mine
Speaker 5: at the time worked for the Idiots Guys, and he
Speaker 5: sent me The Idiot's Guide to Catholicism. Oh yeah, And
Speaker 5: I devoured this. It was a very good book. And
Speaker 5: and I and I read up on Catholicism, and of
Speaker 5: course I read up on Protestantism to you know, to
Speaker 5: understand the differences, to under you know, all that stuff. Sure,
Speaker 5: and and it was, it was it was quite a
Speaker 5: quite a learning experience, really, because the fact that he
Speaker 5: kills her in the sacristy on Holy Saturday with the
Speaker 5: host present, I mean, I can't give anything more and
Speaker 5: in the way he does it, I can't think of
Speaker 5: anything more sacrilegious. Yeah than that, but you in some
Speaker 5: ways you have to take out your emotions and look
Speaker 5: at this as a murder case. Once you look at
Speaker 5: it as a murder case, it begins to come together.
Speaker 5: But when you let your emotions carry you away, especially
Speaker 5: when you're religious. And of course, there's nothing I'm saying here.
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Speaker 5: To Catholics, it's nothing, it's not like that at all.
Speaker 5: I mean, the the average individual in the parish didn't
Speaker 5: know anything about this, but the upper reschelant did. They knew,
Speaker 5: they knew a lot about it, and they kept secret
Speaker 5: records on this, and some of those the police were
Speaker 5: able to eventually confiscate in the present through a subpoena.
Speaker 5: Go I answer the question, yeah, yes. About about her
Speaker 5: funeral was that Jerry Robinson presides over it, and suddenly
Speaker 5: in the middle of the funeral, the doors blow open.
Speaker 5: A big wind blows open the doors and will ly
Speaker 5: and it was from what I've read, it was quite dramatic.
Speaker 5: It was like, you know, God was present saying something whatever.
Speaker 5: And I and I do believe that by the way,
Speaker 5: I think that that, you know, the Lord does work
Speaker 5: in strange ways. But again, the end of the because
Speaker 5: of the fact that and I'm going to use a term,
Speaker 5: the Catholic Church was mobbed up with the Toledo Police
Speaker 5: Department at that time. We know that this was something
Speaker 5: that was later exposed by the Toledo Blade, which is
Speaker 5: still a fine newspaper in the city, even though it's
Speaker 5: been beleaguered and besieged by cutbacks, just like every newspaper.
Speaker 5: And but again, all of these clues, and they're really clues,
Speaker 5: are left unanswered and undiscovered because of the fact that
Speaker 5: the monsignor walks Robinson right out of the the interrogation
Speaker 5: and and literally into the millennium. In fact, by the
Speaker 5: time Robinson is charged, he's not even in charge of
Speaker 5: any parish. He doesn't have any I'm sorry, of any church.
Speaker 5: He doesn't have any real official duties. He's just he's
Speaker 5: not even listed on the official roster of church employees
Speaker 5: within the parish. He's just getting whatever, you know, whatever
Speaker 5: his his salary is, or you know, to just hang
Speaker 5: around basically, and so and that that continues until two
Speaker 5: thousand and six or two thousand five. I guess when
Speaker 5: they finally charge him.
Speaker 7: Now, how does the what is the church's response? You
Speaker 7: talked about him still wearing his habit was a church,
Speaker 7: okay with that? And we talked about him speaking Polish
Speaker 7: and and and being endeared to the Polish speaking community.
Speaker 7: So tell us that trial just what camp, who was
Speaker 7: in what camp? And and and did he have reporters
Speaker 7: and and who were those supporters?
Speaker 5: Predominantly Father Robinson's supporters with the Polish Catholics within the
Speaker 5: parish who didn't want to believe that one of their
Speaker 5: own could have committed this crime. And of course he
Speaker 5: was supported by the parent, by the archbishop, by the
Speaker 5: Bishop uh and and the mind senior in the parish.
Speaker 5: Uh uh and and they supported him, and those were
Speaker 5: his supporters, and that is is very strong in this
Speaker 5: particular section of the United States because Polish Catholics had
Speaker 5: settled that area going back into the eighteen fifties, and
Speaker 5: so they carried a lot of political clout. And so
Speaker 5: during the trial, these are the individuals who refuse to
Speaker 5: believe that Robinson could have committed this crime, and to
Speaker 5: this day still believed that Robinson didn't commit the crime.
Speaker 5: And I might add that Robinson claims he didn't commit
Speaker 5: the crime.
Speaker 7: Now the idea that he's going to be defended, Now,
Speaker 7: who pays for this? Because basically does the church pay
Speaker 7: for his lawyers, his attorneys? How does it happen that
Speaker 7: he gets the particular attorney that he does have. And
Speaker 7: you talked about the Polish community. Is that the people
Speaker 7: that raise the money for his bail?
Speaker 5: Yes, But at the same time, as I recall, one
Speaker 5: of his attorneys decides to simply volunteer his services because
Speaker 5: and and and quite rightly, because the guy needed a
Speaker 5: good attorney. And uh, you know, I when when it
Speaker 5: comes to attorneys in these kinds of situations, I don't
Speaker 5: think it's really particularly relevant. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 5: I honestly, if if I remember, I didn't even look
Speaker 5: into whether the lawyers them said the defend Floyers were
Speaker 5: capitalists because I didn't particularly think it was relevant. Because
Speaker 5: under our system of justice, every individual, just as it
Speaker 5: is in Canada and England and Australia and every place else,
Speaker 5: the people listening to us, you have the right to
Speaker 5: an attorney to defend you to the best of his
Speaker 5: or her ability. And so a couple of attorneys had
Speaker 5: come forward to offer their services to help him out
Speaker 5: because he was he was an underdog, and so the
Speaker 5: community raises some money. I think the parish put in
Speaker 5: some money. Uh, it really wasn't It wasn't an issue.
Speaker 5: Let's put it that way, Dan. It wasn't an issue.
Speaker 5: And when you think about it, it can't be an
Speaker 5: issue because once you have a cover up, the cover
Speaker 5: up has to continue, because if the cover up doesn't continue,
Speaker 5: then people have to start taking responsibility. And once they
Speaker 5: start taking responsibility, I mean supposing there was supposing, for
Speaker 5: the sake of discussion, Robinson had had opened up to
Speaker 5: somebody and said, let's say Robinson opened up to the
Speaker 5: month senior and said, I've done it. Well. If you
Speaker 5: then turn around and try to free this individual, you
Speaker 5: would be you could be indicted for being an accessory
Speaker 5: to murder. So once you have the cover up going,
Speaker 5: it has to continue all the way through because otherwise
Speaker 5: people can get charged. So again what occurs during the
Speaker 5: trial is the church is supportive of him, many of
Speaker 5: the I couldn't tell you the exact numbers, but but
Speaker 5: there was certainly an appreciable portion of the Toledo Catholic
Speaker 5: community and particularly the Polish Catholic community that supported him
Speaker 5: because people don't, you know, and quite rightly, they don't
Speaker 5: want to believe a priest kills a nun. Excuse me,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean it's you know, when I grew up,
Speaker 5: I was taught that regardless of who the person was,
Speaker 5: they were a person of the cloth. You give them
Speaker 5: that respect. I was always taught, you know, to sit
Speaker 5: and here I am a Jewish boy in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 5: so you know, I always you know, so you grow
Speaker 5: up believing that these individuals are above conventional law. Not
Speaker 5: above God's law, certainly, but above conventional law. And and
Speaker 5: they're paragons just like doctors for instance, you know the
Speaker 5: you know it's it's only in the last maybe ten
Speaker 5: or twenty years. I once wrote a book called Doctors
Speaker 5: from Hell. It was my first true crime book. You
Speaker 5: don't want to believe that people that are so respected,
Speaker 5: people that have such standing within the community, could knowingly
Speaker 5: commit murder. That's like you know, a a It's a
Speaker 5: disconnect because once you believe that, then it calls into
Speaker 5: question your other beliefs because you want to believe that
Speaker 5: these people are paragons of virtue. You want to believe
Speaker 5: that they follow Jesus' path. You want to believe this
Speaker 5: stuff because if it turns out the other way around,
Speaker 5: what it means is you got conned by somebody, and
Speaker 5: nobody nobody wants to know that they will conned by anybody,
Speaker 5: let alone by a priest, and let alone that he
Speaker 5: conned his way into murder.
Speaker 7: Now at trial, you say that he was. We've already
Speaker 7: spoken about it. That he was eventually convicted of the
Speaker 7: murder by a jury.
Speaker 5: Yes, and he was.
Speaker 7: And then he was sentenced, yes, and it was like
Speaker 7: the sentence. And he's a fairly old man too, so
Speaker 7: in effect, he basically would seem like he would spend
Speaker 7: the rest of his life in prison. Now let's get
Speaker 7: to these other charges. And it's interesting kind of you're you're,
Speaker 7: you're a little bit cynical. And in the end of
Speaker 7: the book when we're talking, when you're talking about those
Speaker 7: charges and where they came from, tell us explain to
Speaker 7: the audience why there was a civil case rather than
Speaker 7: a criminal case. And people who are familiar with J.
Speaker 7: Simpson's case, but tell us what happened in terms of
Speaker 7: why the civil case. But also do you believe the
Speaker 7: prosecutor would have went ahead with criminal charges with the
Speaker 7: Satanic ritual thing if there wasn't these conditions that had
Speaker 7: forced it to civil court Because there is a difference.
Speaker 7: People I think will know that there's a difference between
Speaker 7: the burden of proof in terms of civil cases and
Speaker 7: criminal case based on the O. J. Simpson case, So
Speaker 7: explain exactly what happened in this particular case.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and using Simpson is a good is a
Speaker 5: good example in the Simpson case because I'm I know
Speaker 5: Fred Goldman and in the Simpson case, and you have
Speaker 5: a crime murder which is eventually tried, and of course
Speaker 5: Simpson is found not guilty, but you have again, an
Speaker 5: actual crime that's occurring, and it isn't. It isn't a
Speaker 5: situation where it becomes a cold case. So in that case,
Speaker 5: what occurs is that Fred Goldman goes in, the Goldman
Speaker 5: family goes after Simpson for a civil verdict, and in
Speaker 5: civil court, as you point out, you don't have to
Speaker 5: the burden of proof is less act you don't necessarily
Speaker 5: even have a jury of twelve. It would be a
Speaker 5: jury of seven. For example, in the Robinson case, what
Speaker 5: you have is and it is Robinson being convicted of
Speaker 5: killing Margaret and Paul, and they downplay there is evidence,
Speaker 5: of course, but they downplay the satanic stuff because once
Speaker 5: they go into that, you got to go it's a
Speaker 5: lot of stuff for a jury to take in sure,
Speaker 5: So they were primarily concerned with simply proving Robinson done
Speaker 5: it as opposed to how Robinson done it for the
Speaker 5: same time, and what occurs is that an individual who
Speaker 5: sees this has a recollection, a repressed memory of having
Speaker 5: been a young person who had been.
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Speaker 5: Details involved with somebody who took her to a it
Speaker 5: was a basement someplace. In fact, the Toledo Police Department
Speaker 5: would eventually search the entire area trying to find of
Speaker 5: satanic abuse in some of these underground locations, and they
Speaker 5: couldn't come up with anything. And so at that point,
Speaker 5: the individual involved simply comes forward and says, I'm going
Speaker 5: to sue Gerald Robinson in civil court for doing this
Speaker 5: to me. And she also claimed that there were other
Speaker 5: people who were present at the time, but the one
Speaker 5: ID she has is of Robinson. Now, again, the problem
Speaker 5: is corroboration, and if this was a criminal case, it
Speaker 5: would have been thrown out immediately because there was no corroboration.
Speaker 5: Was essentially her word against his right, and eventually the
Speaker 5: case does get thrown out. The case does get thrown
Speaker 5: out because there is no corroboration, and some people looked
Speaker 5: at her as a gold digger who's just trying to
Speaker 5: make money off this whole thing. And the again, the
Speaker 5: problem is when you don't have corroboration, where do you
Speaker 5: go with it? You know, what do you where do
Speaker 5: you go with it? I mean, and and and And
Speaker 5: the answer here is that the the judge threw it
Speaker 5: out before he could even go to trial. Now, I
Speaker 5: might add something else, which is I saw I saw
Speaker 5: something in Toledo when I went to investigate the case.
Speaker 5: There was another priest. I'm sorry, he wasn't a priest.
Speaker 5: He was a layman who had been a teacher within
Speaker 5: the parish. And they had already found this guy guilty
Speaker 5: of pedophilia. And he had a court date. And I
Speaker 5: was in the courtroom and it was just me and
Speaker 5: another reporter and and and this particular individual and the lawyers,
Speaker 5: and suddenly the judge goes, let's do this in chambers,
Speaker 5: and I and and you're not supposed to have a
Speaker 5: hearing in chambers. That's that's a violation of the United
Speaker 5: States Constitution. We have public trials. And I saw this
Speaker 5: dude go into into chambers with the judge and they
Speaker 5: made some sort of a deal to let this dude go,
Speaker 5: and the guy snuck out the back way. And I
Speaker 5: would ask as this, and I mean, Dan, it was
Speaker 5: like I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. I
Speaker 5: couldn't believe I was in the United States of America.
Speaker 5: And I asked people about it. I asked the reporters
Speaker 5: and they said, oh, this is Toledo, And I go,
Speaker 5: what kind of answer is that? What do you mean
Speaker 5: it's Toledo. You know, we're in the United States of America.
Speaker 5: That's why I always say that. You know, people will
Speaker 5: always talk about things that happen in the Southern States,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, and the South get this
Speaker 5: bad reputation or repressing this, that and the other thing. Well,
Speaker 5: open your eyes. This stuff goes on all over the place.
Speaker 5: And in this particular case, you had a criminal proceeding
Speaker 5: that goes into chambers, which it shouldn't have shouldn't have had,
Speaker 5: shouldn't have happened. And I have to believe that the
Speaker 5: only reason that occurred is because the church was involved.
Speaker 5: And this is the present. This is the present, and
Speaker 5: I just you know, I just looked at this, and
Speaker 5: you know, one of the problems is that when you're
Speaker 5: a journalist, as you know, you know, my job is
Speaker 5: not you know, Anderson Cooper can get on CNN all
Speaker 5: as much as he wants and advocate, but that's not
Speaker 5: what a journalist does. What a journalist does investigate for
Speaker 5: the best obtainable version of the truth and present that
Speaker 5: to your reader or your viewer. And the the the
Speaker 5: reporters in Toledo were literally stymied by the court system
Speaker 5: in this particular case, let alone of course the parish,
Speaker 5: which didn't want to say anything about it, and of
Speaker 5: course the parish had little enoughing to say regarding Robinson's case.
Speaker 5: Now again, that's pretty you know, it goes back to
Speaker 5: what we discussed before, which is what are they supposed
Speaker 5: to say? We covered it up? You know, what are
Speaker 5: they supposed to say? I think that if the individuals
Speaker 5: who did cover it up within the church there were
Speaker 5: not within the church, they would have been charged. They
Speaker 5: would have been charged with covering up a murder for
Speaker 5: God's sakes, which is probably a pretty good metaphor. And
Speaker 5: it it was a very peculiar situation. And I might
Speaker 5: add one other thing, which is I've investigated murder cases
Speaker 5: throughout the United States. I've one in one instance in
Speaker 5: a book called Lobster Boy. I actually solved the case
Speaker 5: which led to the conviction of the killer who threatened me.
Speaker 5: I was never worried for my own safety as I
Speaker 5: was in Toledo. And I'm not paranoid. I'm really not paranoid.
Speaker 5: I can't be. I'm a New York met fan and
Speaker 5: and I really was concerned that people were paying too
Speaker 5: much attention to what I was doing. And I was
Speaker 5: extremely careful about where I went. Now, granted, Toledo, much
Speaker 5: of Toledo is a high crime area, but that doesn't
Speaker 5: that doesn't phaze me because you know, that's again what
Speaker 5: reporters do. We go wherever we have to go to
Speaker 5: report on the story. But in Toledo, I had the
Speaker 5: feeling that people were watching me. And I couldn't be
Speaker 5: clear on who it might have been, whether it was
Speaker 5: it was the police or you know, individuals from the
Speaker 5: parish or whatever. But I I was very, very very
Speaker 5: careful about where I went and what I did because
Speaker 5: I didn't I of course did you know, I'm there
Speaker 5: by myself. I'm the long ranger, you know, and tanto Is,
Speaker 5: you know, is off getting help. So I have to
Speaker 5: be very very careful. I felt about what I was
Speaker 5: doing and the individuals I was talking to, and I
Speaker 5: and even Davidson. I confronted the prosecutor, the prosecutor who
Speaker 5: got the conviction, got Robinson's conviction, and this guy. I
Speaker 5: said to him, I said, why don't you call Dave
Speaker 5: Davidson as a witness. He was the first cop in
Speaker 5: the scene. He did, he did all of the basic
Speaker 5: investive investigative work. He said, well, he's not a reliable witness.
Speaker 5: I said, he's not a reliable witness. He said no.
Speaker 5: And I had my notebook and I from out of
Speaker 5: my notebook, I unfolded a piece of paper and I said,
Speaker 5: there's Davidson at the top of your list. How come
Speaker 5: you got them at the top of your witness list?
Speaker 5: And of course the guy couldn't answer. So even at
Speaker 5: the time that they're prosecuting, they're trying to cover up
Speaker 5: the fact that they didn't do their job initially, and
Speaker 5: they and in whichever way you come out on it,
Speaker 5: whether you think Robinson's guilty or not. There's no only
Speaker 5: in the world you can say that the police did
Speaker 5: their job initially because well they were signing, you know,
Speaker 5: they were stopped, and nobody came forward for fifteen years
Speaker 5: to get justice for this individual who was was by
Speaker 5: all accounts, a very loving, good person, devoted to Christ
Speaker 5: and certainly didn't deserve, you know, what occurred to her.
Speaker 5: And I might add that the all of the nuns
Speaker 5: in the hospital, they were all nurses. They were all
Speaker 5: trained in one of in one of in one of
Speaker 5: the orders as nurses. So this was you know, so
Speaker 5: these people had other duties obviously, in addition to being
Speaker 5: to their to their to their to their duties to
Speaker 5: the to the church, and so it was quite it
Speaker 5: was quite an eye opener, you know, it was quite
Speaker 5: an eye opener. And as you point out in the book,
Speaker 5: I'm an adjunct Associate professor of film at the New
Speaker 5: York Institute of Technology. So when film is relevant in something,
Speaker 5: as I felt it was here, I pointed out and
Speaker 5: the fact is that many of us have our conception
Speaker 5: of what a priest is formed by what we see
Speaker 5: in the media, and for many, many, many years, the
Speaker 5: ideal of the priest was Bing Crosby in a film
Speaker 5: by Leo McCarry call Going My Way, and people thought this,
Speaker 5: including me, this is what a priest is. You know.
Speaker 5: Granted I don't expect them to be singing the high
Speaker 5: notes like being, but you know, you don't expect that
Speaker 5: a priest to expect I mean, it doesn't even enter
Speaker 5: your consciousness that something like this could happen.
Speaker 7: Well, let me ask you this question, because I don't
Speaker 7: think I got it from the book itself, and I
Speaker 7: think that the audience that's listening to would ask this
Speaker 7: question in your research, in your estimation based on Davison,
Speaker 7: based on the witnesses that did come forward to talk
Speaker 7: about Satanic rituals, and maybe you can describe some of
Speaker 7: the allegations that this woman made. But more importantly, without
Speaker 7: the Satanic allegational ritualistic allegations against and it included Gerald Robinson,
Speaker 7: he would not have been indicted for murder. They would
Speaker 7: have been not the case would have not come back.
Speaker 7: So I ask combined with the idea that the holiest
Speaker 7: day of the year in the sacristy itself and the filement,
Speaker 7: the upside down cross, the altar cloth, the mark on
Speaker 7: the forehead. The filing humiliation is do you believe that
Speaker 7: there was a Satanic group operating in Toledo in the
Speaker 7: priesthood abusing people.
Speaker 5: Well, let me just say one thing that you you
Speaker 5: you you, you point out also the fact that she
Speaker 5: had been there was a smudge of blood in the
Speaker 5: middle of her forehead, and again that is a perversion
Speaker 5: of Catholic ritual. And do I believe that there was
Speaker 5: Satanic abuse within the parish. I'm going to go with no. No,
Speaker 5: I don't believe that quite frankly. And the reason I
Speaker 5: don't want it well primarily because the police did do
Speaker 5: their job in trying to find when this when this
Speaker 5: other individual came forward in the present and claimed that
Speaker 5: she had been the kind of abuse she's talking about
Speaker 5: is the kind of thing where they would draw, they
Speaker 5: would rape her, they would they would draw satanic symbols
Speaker 5: on her body. The problem is no corroborating evidence. And
Speaker 5: usually in these kinds of situations, just like in situations
Speaker 5: where you have pedophilia, it's more than one individual. One
Speaker 5: individual comes forward, says says something, and then other individuals
Speaker 5: who have either been repressing the memories or too ashamed
Speaker 5: to come forward, do come forward? That doesn't really occur here,
Speaker 5: and so I go on the I go on more
Speaker 5: on the basis of the evidence. I also feel that Robinson,
Speaker 5: Robinson did not appear to me anyway to be that
Speaker 5: heavily to be to be involved within a And there
Speaker 5: is again in the years afterwards, and the police investigate him,
Speaker 5: and I did as well about what occurred afterwards, because
Speaker 5: now we're talking about fifteen years dan there is no
Speaker 5: evidence of Robinson or any other individual involved with the
Speaker 5: parish committing satanic abuse. So my feeling is that based
Speaker 5: upon the evidence, Robinson had read about it and tried
Speaker 5: to throw the attention off himself in the way that
Speaker 5: he kills her. And again remember it's a very specific,
Speaker 5: ritualistic way of killing somebody. Now look, I'm the first
Speaker 5: one to say, I could be wrong, you know, And
Speaker 5: to me, it's more relevant that the evidence points to
Speaker 5: him once she got you know, and now I might add,
Speaker 5: I might add, now again it's circumstantial. We don't have
Speaker 5: any you know. Robinson has always claimed he didn't do
Speaker 5: it to this day, and when Paula is On interviewed
Speaker 5: him for a show I was part of on the
Speaker 5: case with Paula is on. Robinson again insisted he had
Speaker 5: nothing to do with this, But he's not convincing to
Speaker 5: me because the weight of the evidence is that he
Speaker 5: definitely was the bad guy. That's the weight of the evidence.
Speaker 5: And so I feel that what you have to do
Speaker 5: if you're a prosecutor, is you go with the weight
Speaker 5: of that evidence. And as far and again, that's why
Speaker 5: they downplayed the satanic stuff at trial, because they didn't
Speaker 5: have except for the way that the crime occurs, there
Speaker 5: is no other corroborating evidence, and so you know, they
Speaker 5: they and I think it was probably a pretty a
Speaker 5: pretty smart move on their part. Now I might add
Speaker 5: one other thing, which is that I can tell you
Speaker 5: that there was an individual who, uh and I haven't
Speaker 5: spoken about this publicly, who was involved in the case,
Speaker 5: who actually said to me, I have evidence that nobody
Speaker 5: else has and if you give me half of what
Speaker 5: you're going to make on this book, like I'm making
Speaker 5: a lot of money, I'll give you the evidence. And
Speaker 5: and I was like, uh, sorry, I you know, I
Speaker 5: don't do that sort of thing, you know. So, is
Speaker 5: it possible that Robinson was a Satanist? Absolutely? But do
Speaker 5: we have any evidence, not a nothing. We don't have
Speaker 5: any of you.
Speaker 7: If you would have paid, if you would have paid
Speaker 7: this individual, they would given you what they thought you
Speaker 7: wanted in terms of information. Is that what you believed
Speaker 7: by paying them?
Speaker 5: Well, that's what that's what he thought. I And I'm
Speaker 5: being very cagy in this because I don't want to
Speaker 5: you know, I'm subject obviously to libel and to slander laws,
Speaker 5: so I can't really reveal who this individual was. But
Speaker 5: I think that do I think that there was anything additional.
Speaker 5: Quite frankly no, I think the individual involved was just
Speaker 5: trying to, you know, get get a fast payday. I
Speaker 5: will also say that this is the first time that's
Speaker 5: ever occurred to occurred where somebody came to me and said,
Speaker 5: I have evidence, blah blah blah, if you pay me.
Speaker 5: I've had people say pay me for an interview, but
Speaker 5: I've never had anybody say, well, I've got evidence that
Speaker 5: wasn't shown there and blah blah blah. You know, and
Speaker 5: this particular individual was I thought pretty he was a
Speaker 5: pretty good source in terms of where he stood within
Speaker 5: the hierarchy. But at the same time, journalists don't don't
Speaker 5: pay for information because obviously it's painted once you do that,
Speaker 5: So I mean that's sort of a sidelight to it,
Speaker 5: you know, more than anything else. What's interesting to me
Speaker 5: again is that is that father Robinson is still a priest.
Speaker 5: I had been under the impression that he had been
Speaker 5: to Frock, but I was subsequently told otherwise by Paul
Speaker 5: Azon's producer, who was present when they interviewed Robinson in
Speaker 5: prison in Ohio.
Speaker 7: Well, he's probably gone to probably gone to confession.
Speaker 5: So it's all good now. I would think that if
Speaker 5: he went to confession. Well, see, that was one of
Speaker 5: the things that he first claimed when Robinson was first
Speaker 5: arrested back in eighty he claimed that an individual will
Speaker 5: had committed this crime and come to him and confess
Speaker 5: to it, and sort of like this old movie with
Speaker 5: the I think it was Montgomery Cliff and yeah, it
Speaker 5: might have been Hitchcock.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he said it with Ditchcock in in in a
Speaker 7: movie called Eyewitness. Yeah, and I think you said it
Speaker 7: was like almost the dialogue from the movie is what
Speaker 7: Eryl Robinson?
Speaker 5: It's it, yes, exactly, yes, and and and but again
Speaker 5: Robinson was you know here he is in in the
Speaker 5: in the interview room. I guess in those days we
Speaker 5: call it the interrogation room. And he's claiming that somebody
Speaker 5: else did this and told him this and whatever. But
Speaker 5: he couldn't produce any any He couldn't produce any specifics
Speaker 5: of this. And as the as the as the detectives
Speaker 5: continued to question him, he started opening up a little
Speaker 5: bit more. And that's the point where the monsignor and
Speaker 5: the chief of police come in and walk them out
Speaker 5: into the millennium.
Speaker 7: Did he didn't he undergo a light detector test and passle.
Speaker 4: He may?
Speaker 5: You know, I'd have to go back and read it.
Speaker 5: But you see, the thing is, I don't place any
Speaker 5: credence and lie detector tests. And I'll tell you what, Uh. First,
Speaker 5: first and foremost, light detectors are only useful as an
Speaker 5: investigative tool.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: It can only sort of lead the cops in a
Speaker 5: certain direction. Uh. And they're not admissible in a court
Speaker 5: of law. And the reason is one of the things
Speaker 5: that detect. Light detectors basically test things like skin temperature,
Speaker 5: blood pressure, pulse, things of that nature. Well, if you
Speaker 5: have high blood pressure, chances and you're being questioned by
Speaker 5: the police, chances are you going to fail it. That
Speaker 5: doesn't mean you're a bad guy. I've seen. Look, I've
Speaker 5: written about bad guys. I wrote about a serial killer
Speaker 5: in a book called Body Dump where he was questioned
Speaker 5: by the police and he passed the lie detector test,
Speaker 5: and then you know, a year later they arrest him
Speaker 5: for killing eight prostitutes and he confesses and they have
Speaker 5: all the corroborating if nets. So the to me again,
Speaker 5: the light detectors, they're not very good. So I don't
Speaker 5: realize here one way or the other whether Jerry Robinson
Speaker 5: passes it or not. Because people have to remember that
Speaker 5: if a person is a psychle path or sociopath as
Speaker 5: it's now called, the individual doesn't feel guilt. If you
Speaker 5: don't feel guilt, then you're not going to register on
Speaker 5: the machine. So any you know, there are many individuals
Speaker 5: that we pass every day in the street, whether we're
Speaker 5: in Winnipeg, Sydney, London, New York, wherever it might be,
Speaker 5: or or you know or or Toledo, who are psychopaths.
Speaker 5: I mean, I always say the same thing, which is
Speaker 5: you ever wonder why your boss is such a creep?
Speaker 5: Why he gives you all those problems and and and
Speaker 5: doesn't feel anything about it. He's a psychopath, but that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean he's going out and killing somebody. You know,
Speaker 5: for every for every psychopath that goes out and kills,
Speaker 5: I'll show you a million that don't. But Robinson was different.
Speaker 5: Robinson was somebody who a jury felt committed this crime
Speaker 5: as as I do.
Speaker 7: Right, Well, we're people have been listening to when Satan
Speaker 7: wore across. Last time I spoke to you, we were
Speaker 7: talking about a particular case your book Portrayals of Death,
Speaker 7: and I hear a killer named Gary Hilton. Tell us,
Speaker 7: give us the update on that case, because there's some
Speaker 7: interesting stuff that's happened just not so long ago. Tell
Speaker 7: us the update on that case.
Speaker 5: Sure. The book it's Trails of Death and available at
Speaker 5: Amazon or Barnes and Noble. And in this particular, in
Speaker 5: this case, it is a serial killer named Gerald Robinson
Speaker 5: named I got to get my killer straight carry Hilton.
Speaker 5: And I got to know Hilton quite well through many
Speaker 5: of the people who knew him as a child. And
Speaker 5: he was eventually convicted of killing of killing and beheading
Speaker 5: a woman in Florida, also took off her hands to
Speaker 5: prohibit identification. He also beheaded a woman in and killed
Speaker 5: her in and this was all done post mortem in Georgia.
Speaker 5: But and so those are the two crimes he was
Speaker 5: convicted of. But there were two other murders of the
Speaker 5: of the Bryants, Irene and John, in North Carolina, which
Speaker 5: were committed in the murder. The murders were committed in
Speaker 5: the fall of two thousand and seven, and that case,
Speaker 5: those those cases did not come to trial until this
Speaker 5: past March, and they were actually scheduled for trial. And
Speaker 5: what occurred was that the federal government decided they were
Speaker 5: going to prosecute for death, which is sort of a
Speaker 5: difficult thing to do when he already has death in Florida,
Speaker 5: right and he has life in Georgia. And I remember
Speaker 5: and I couldn't. I remember thinking like, you know, like
Speaker 5: why are they wasting my money on this? You know,
Speaker 5: why don't they just make a deal. And that's exactly
Speaker 5: what happened. So in March, the federal government made a deal.
Speaker 5: And the reason it was the federal government is because
Speaker 5: Hilton preferred killing people in National Forest. The subtitle of
Speaker 5: the book is the National Forest Serial Killer. And so
Speaker 5: they made a deal with Hilton that he would confess
Speaker 5: to these two murders in return for getting life in prison,
Speaker 5: which they gave him. And in fact, nobody even knows
Speaker 5: at this point which prison system he's in, because now
Speaker 5: you've got the FEDS involved, you got Georgia, and you
Speaker 5: got Florida, and he's he's under of course, he's under
Speaker 5: a death sentence in Florida, and he will be he
Speaker 5: will eventually go to the electric chair there. He's sixty six,
Speaker 5: sixty six I think, and so it usually takes about
Speaker 5: ten or eleven years to wind its way through the system,
Speaker 5: and eventually I believe he will be executed because he's
Speaker 5: in very good health. He was he was a runner,
Speaker 5: and but the federal government made a decision in this case,
Speaker 5: and I think it was the right one to make
Speaker 5: a deal and not go for death.
Speaker 7: Right, Well, death is hard to get and with the
Speaker 7: appeal process, I mean, it's just gonna it just torments
Speaker 7: the victims and the victims families for this old victims
Speaker 7: families for another how many years because it takes that
Speaker 7: many years to wind through they give him. He's entitled
Speaker 7: those appeals, but it's much easier to take that deal
Speaker 7: and deal with them, right.
Speaker 5: Well, not only that, the federal government doesn't execute There
Speaker 5: are very few individuals been executed in the last twenty
Speaker 5: five years by the FEDS and even before that, and
Speaker 5: those we're talking In order for the Feds to execute you,
Speaker 5: it's got to be particularly highness, like Timothy mcveay, right,
Speaker 5: that sort of thing. Otherwise they just don't do it.
Speaker 5: I mean, so it's a waste of public money. Yeah,
Speaker 5: to go forward, it would only be a political situation,
Speaker 5: you know, somebody trying us prosecuted, trying to score points.
Speaker 5: And so I think they made the right decision in
Speaker 5: that case to make the deal with Hilton.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because we.
Speaker 7: Are talking about there are differences, like in Canada, we
Speaker 7: have no actual life sentence, there is no such device,
Speaker 7: and they don't have consecutive sentencing. So multiple murders still
Speaker 7: Robert Pickton has forty nine murders, he still has a
Speaker 7: parole date. So it's just much different, I think. Yeah, really, yes.
Speaker 5: The pig farmer, well, he'll have.
Speaker 7: A parole hearing in you know, twenty years.
Speaker 8: Or whatever it is.
Speaker 7: The killer I was involved with will have a parole
Speaker 7: hearing as well. But picked in forty nine, well, well,
Speaker 7: pardon me, thirty three only thirty three convictions, but there
Speaker 7: is no consecutive sentencing device Ana, so he will have
Speaker 7: that parole hearing on the one murder.
Speaker 5: Well, and since you brought it up, as far as
Speaker 5: I can recall, I believe that we the United States,
Speaker 5: is the only country in the northern hemisphere that still
Speaker 5: has the death penalty on the books, and we have
Speaker 5: it now. In it was thirty eight states, and I
Speaker 5: think it's down to thirty seven because Connecticut recently outlawed it.
Speaker 5: And Illinois that's well, yes, yes, well Illinois, yes absolutely,
Speaker 5: because of Governor George Ryan.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 5: It's yes, absolutely. And one thing, you know that people
Speaker 5: people always put their emotions first, as I do, and
Speaker 5: that and and you know when you when you have
Speaker 5: a situation where you have a particularly highness killer, you know,
Speaker 5: the emotions say let's just execute the guy. But the
Speaker 5: fact of the matter is, for many of these individuals,
Speaker 5: it's worse for them to just wear house them for
Speaker 5: the rest of their lives in it sell rather than
Speaker 5: ending their suffering by executing them. Plus, it costs a
Speaker 5: heck of a lot more money to execute because of
Speaker 5: the appeals process, than it does to wear. Now, so
Speaker 5: you know, again it comes down to what do you want,
Speaker 5: you know, what kind of system do you want? How
Speaker 5: much money are you willing to spend on revenge? That's
Speaker 5: what it really comes down to, how much money? And
Speaker 5: if you know, people say to me, well, if it
Speaker 5: was your child, how would you feel? And my answer
Speaker 5: is always the same that it would never go to trial.
Speaker 5: I'd kill the individual first and take the responsibility, you know,
Speaker 5: which is what Michael Dukaka should have said in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty eight when they asked him that question. But that's
Speaker 5: another story. Yeah, yeah, no, it's just interesting that not
Speaker 5: all states have that necessarily that device. And I get
Speaker 5: news stories where overcrowding budget concerns are letting criminals out,
Speaker 5: and criminals and killers and heinous and criminals have been
Speaker 5: let out of prison early in certain states. So it
Speaker 5: seems ridiculous to be in a rush to put them
Speaker 5: in prison and then somehow or rather not to afford
Speaker 5: to be able to keep them there. And I think
Speaker 5: the states are realizing the appeal process just bankrupts the
Speaker 5: state itself. You know, it's to no avail. Really, I
Speaker 5: think you're right, especially now with with you know, everybody suffering.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, despite the fact that the economic
Speaker 5: recovery is underwagh and it's slow, it's slow, and you know,
Speaker 5: we don't even have you know, I just had a
Speaker 5: discussion tonight with somebody about health insurance, which is not
Speaker 5: something that you guys would ever have because you get
Speaker 5: national health insurance. I know individuals who were you know,
Speaker 5: having to drop it because they can't afford it, and
Speaker 5: so you have to take to me. It's all the same,
Speaker 5: you know, it all comes out of the same dollar,
Speaker 5: you know, and you got to figure out what are
Speaker 5: your priorities are? You know, what are your priorities. I'd
Speaker 5: rather see the ten million dollars that they would spend
Speaker 5: to execute somebody put into health insurance for individuals personally.
Speaker 5: That's my personal you know what.
Speaker 7: I covered the case.
Speaker 8: There was a book, Oh jeez, Sheila.
Speaker 7: Johnson Anyway and Blood Highway and the victims of this
Speaker 7: psychopathic killer here basically they paid for their own medical
Speaker 7: bills and it was substantial, substantial and also there was
Speaker 7: long long term health effects or detriment to these people.
Speaker 7: Now I said, oh, no, wonder they are so they're
Speaker 7: adamant about these people spending the rest of their life
Speaker 7: in prison or worse because they add insult to injury
Speaker 7: by being a victim and being revictimized by having to
Speaker 7: pay for their own health costs attributed to the cycle.
Speaker 7: So they were talking about in this particular case, the
Speaker 7: county sort of some people went under their way to
Speaker 7: get these victims as much compensation as possible. But I
Speaker 7: can really see why Americans want to hang them high
Speaker 7: when the victim is already has this all the other
Speaker 7: things that have happened to them. But the absolute insult
Speaker 7: injury that drove home for me was that they got
Speaker 7: to pay for their own health care. It's long standing,
Speaker 7: so it's incredible, absolutely absolutely incredible difference. I want to
Speaker 7: just we're going to have to wrap up, but I
Speaker 7: also wanted to mention why I found incredible is that
Speaker 7: you're also the author of There but for the Grace
Speaker 7: of God, and tell us of what news you have
Speaker 7: regarding this book, and just tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about the book and what is happening in regards to
Speaker 7: the film adaptation of that.
Speaker 8: Sure, the book for the.
Speaker 5: Grace of God was a book that I did right
Speaker 5: after this one, where I travel I posed a question
Speaker 5: and the question was to individuals who would survived the
Speaker 5: worst serial killers of the twentieth century. And I asked
Speaker 5: them if God had anything to do with their survival.
Speaker 5: And I traveled throughout the United States interviewing them. And
Speaker 5: what happened was the answers were surprising, well maybe in
Speaker 5: some ways surprising, but that nearly all of them felt
Speaker 5: that God had a hand in their survival. And what happened.
Speaker 5: What happened was the book has been bought by actually
Speaker 5: by Judy Copage and Mark Powell, and they're producing it
Speaker 5: as a movie. And the script has already been written
Speaker 5: and they're in the process of getting a director together
Speaker 5: and getting the financing and all that stuff. And in
Speaker 5: the film, Mark, who's a former police officer in Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: he basically takes my trip interviewing these individuals. And he's
Speaker 5: doing this because he's got some stuff in his background
Speaker 5: that he wants to put to rest, and in order
Speaker 5: to do that, he needs he needs to he needs
Speaker 5: to talk to these individuals. And the working title on
Speaker 5: it is Surviving Evil That Could Change Again, you know.
Speaker 5: And I'm I'm sort of an associate producer, which means
Speaker 5: I get to carry the coffee and stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and you know know, and.
Speaker 7: But well you'll be did some consulting though, too, right,
Speaker 7: won't you you be consulting on this story?
Speaker 5: Well, the truth of the matter is yeah, but when
Speaker 5: when when despite the fact that I have I have
Speaker 5: an academic movie background and I've worked in the business,
Speaker 5: when you're the author of the book, basically you're out
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5: You know, they'll you know, they they they'll ask me
Speaker 5: questions and stuff like that. But in terms of actually
Speaker 5: being on the set every day or something that's that's
Speaker 5: probably not going to happen because they don't want to
Speaker 5: pay for it. You know, they got their script, they
Speaker 5: got their star and and and stuff like that, so
Speaker 5: you know that then they're putting it together and hopefully
Speaker 5: they're going to make it pretty soon.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I mean if they're if they're reputable people,
Speaker 7: they'll put together something that you'll be of course, it
Speaker 7: won't be note for note for the book it's based on,
Speaker 7: so we know what Hollywood does. But still, congratulations, that's
Speaker 7: you're looking forward to it. It'd be very It's an
Speaker 7: interesting story. So the I'm looking forward to the film adaptation,
Speaker 7: So I might take a couple.
Speaker 8: Of years, but gratulations on that.
Speaker 5: In this particular case, I think it might. Actually, if
Speaker 5: it happens, it's going to happen a lot quicker. And
Speaker 5: as you know, most times when a book is optioned
Speaker 5: to make a film, it doesn't it doesn't happen. But
Speaker 5: in this particular case, they they they've already done the
Speaker 5: script and I actually got to read it and they
Speaker 5: ask my opinion, and it was the strangest thing in
Speaker 5: the world, because I'm reading there's scenes in the book
Speaker 5: where where one of the characters read the scenes in
Speaker 5: the movie where one of the characters is reading out
Speaker 5: of my book, and I'm going, this is weird, man,
Speaker 5: you know, this is very very strange. And they're they're
Speaker 5: putting it together and they're planning on shooting if they
Speaker 5: can get it all together in Louisiana because there's certain
Speaker 5: tax breaks there and probably the book takes place and
Speaker 5: such down there, and so hopefully you know, as my
Speaker 5: mom says, your mouth to God's.
Speaker 7: Ears, yes, yeah, right not. And what is your latest
Speaker 7: project that you're going to be working on in the
Speaker 7: future and when do you have any kind of idea
Speaker 7: when that might be released?
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm working on a I'm working on a novel,
Speaker 5: and I'm working on a novel. It's going to be
Speaker 5: my first. It's the working title is The Assassin's Bullet
Speaker 5: Alexander Graham Bells raced to say President Garfield. And it's
Speaker 5: a fictional account of an actual event when President Garfield
Speaker 5: was shot. He didn't die, he wasn't assassinated. And I
Speaker 5: had done a lot of research and discovered who the
Speaker 5: real killer was, and I decided that I was going
Speaker 5: to do a book about it. And eventually a publisher,
Speaker 5: Turner Publishing, decided that they liked the idea, and we
Speaker 5: decided to turn it into a novel and it'll be
Speaker 5: out sometime next year. And in that book, I'm going
Speaker 5: to name the real killer. Even though it's fiction, I
Speaker 5: will be naming the real killer of President Garfield.
Speaker 7: Oh interesting, Well again, congratulations. We'll have to have you
Speaker 7: back on talking about that because it has so much
Speaker 7: tie to true crime and history.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I do.
Speaker 5: You know, it's different. It's just eighteen eighty one, you know.
Speaker 5: You know, killers and killers whenever you find them, makes
Speaker 5: no difference what century.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 7: Absolutely has been going on for centuries, as you say.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, going back to the Bible. You know,
Speaker 5: if we go back to canaan Abel, I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: if it was today, you know, Kine would be would
Speaker 5: be indicted for at least second degree murder. And I
Speaker 5: don't think there's anything blasphemous to say about that. I
Speaker 5: think that's just the way it is. And you know,
Speaker 5: one of the things that I found in American history certainly,
Speaker 5: is that things tend to be repeated. Times tend to
Speaker 5: be repeated, and I try to deal with what the
Speaker 5: motivations are, because that, to me is really it's not
Speaker 5: so much who done it, as it is why done it?
Speaker 5: Because unless we can unless we know why, we can't
Speaker 5: stop it, you know, and if we know why, then
Speaker 5: we can do something about it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, That's what I put in my book. I said,
Speaker 7: this is not a who done it? It's why had
Speaker 7: he done it?
Speaker 8: You know? So that's what people repond him most of
Speaker 8: the time.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll talk about that, Frank, because I would love
Speaker 7: to usually read it and let me know what you think,
Speaker 7: because I think we have some similarities in it.
Speaker 8: When you talk about Lobster Boy.
Speaker 7: Which is a famous true crime book, it really is
Speaker 7: a famous true crime book, and it is unusual for
Speaker 7: a journalist to be involved in the prosecution of any
Speaker 7: subject for a book or any criminal, So that is
Speaker 7: very unusual. And as I think that's what we have
Speaker 7: in common, I think you might find that interesting too well.
Speaker 5: And I'll also say that I just got the rights
Speaker 5: back to the book, and I'm looking for a publisher.
Speaker 5: If anybody's list.
Speaker 8: Me open, I won't turn you on to my publisher anyway.
Speaker 5: So that's just by the way. That book was also
Speaker 5: option for a film by a fellow named Sam Worthington,
Speaker 5: who was an avatar right and and Sam has a
Speaker 5: production company and if if, if, if they do make
Speaker 5: it's uh. Sam gets the choice because he's the boss
Speaker 5: of what roles to play. And since there's only one
Speaker 5: role in the book that he could play, can't be
Speaker 5: a lobster boy. The only guy he could be is me.
Speaker 5: So I make a lot of jokes about it, you know,
Speaker 5: I make I make a lot of jokes about it
Speaker 5: about how this Australian played the Jewish boy from Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: It should be.
Speaker 7: He's gonna have to do a lot of voice lessons
Speaker 7: for that one. I'll tell you pull that off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Sam's a good guy, you know, you know, you
Speaker 5: never know what can happen in this business. But very
Speaker 5: kind of you to say those those things. And it
Speaker 5: is an unusual situation for a journalists to get as
Speaker 5: involved as I did. And I like to say that
Speaker 5: that was more to the beginning of my true crime career.
Speaker 5: And I didn't know any better. I just I just
Speaker 5: thought that the idea is to serve the truth. And
Speaker 5: I still.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know that's that's exactly where I was at too,
Speaker 7: just naivity, like the people will care about the truth.
Speaker 5: Oh no, you know you don't.
Speaker 8: I don't know who will. I think the reader cares
Speaker 8: about the truth. That's about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the reader cares about the truth. And you know,
Speaker 5: you this is why you get so much you know,
Speaker 5: not as much today as we did years ago, but
Speaker 5: you get so much tremendous reporting when when reporters do
Speaker 5: get involved in some way and they don't put themselves
Speaker 5: above the law. And I I just got involved in
Speaker 5: that case because I was very close to the to
Speaker 5: the family, and the family lied to me and I
Speaker 5: was able to come up with the evidence that led
Speaker 5: to the conviction of the killer and as I said,
Speaker 5: I got threats and stuff like that, but you know,
Speaker 5: after a while, you just sort of throw it off.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not that I'm brave or anything like that,
Speaker 5: but you just say to yourself, look, if somebody, you know,
Speaker 5: somebody shows up, I've got an axe by the door,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean, I you know, I'm not Abraham
Speaker 5: Lincoln vampire hunter, but you know I still got the acts. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 7: And the thing is too, the you know, the thing
Speaker 7: is is that the truth is important, and so you
Speaker 7: do what you have to do to do that. At
Speaker 7: least we're not We're not reporters risking our life in
Speaker 7: a war zone. I mean, that's that's something I wouldn't
Speaker 7: sign up for. So I think if we get our
Speaker 7: feathers ruffled or threatened door, people denounce us occasionally because
Speaker 7: true crime authors kind of get that or you're an
Speaker 7: exploit of this or that. Yeah, well I think I
Speaker 7: think I think you probably we have gotten your vindication
Speaker 7: and your you know, your support from your readers, because basically,
Speaker 7: that's really what we're doing this for is for the readers,
Speaker 7: for the audience, the people that appreciate this kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: the people that are very very interested in these cases.
Speaker 7: And some people even that read true crime. I've met
Speaker 7: them and they say, oh, people think I'm weird, but
Speaker 7: I go, I don't think you're weird at all. I
Speaker 7: think it's history. I think it's current events, and I
Speaker 7: think it's true. Crime is a lot of things, but
Speaker 7: it really is one of the best forms of nonfiction
Speaker 7: because really you're not trying to it's not fluff, it's
Speaker 7: not entertainment. You're trying to elicit a serious response because
Speaker 7: lots of times these cases are very important.
Speaker 8: People need to know them.
Speaker 7: And also some of these cases are landmark cases, an
Speaker 7: effect of the law and our communities forever and ever.
Speaker 5: So very much, very well said. And just take a
Speaker 5: look at what's happening in Florida right now with the
Speaker 5: prosecut of George Zimmerman and the Trayvon Martin case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I mean look at that.
Speaker 5: I mean that's a true, you know, true crime case.
Speaker 5: I mean the fact of the matter is is that
Speaker 5: is that crime is something that we've had forever. We're
Speaker 5: going to continue to have it. And it sells newspapers
Speaker 5: and it sells TV shows.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, and it's it's it's important to the communities.
Speaker 7: I mean, in this the city that I'm in, we
Speaker 7: are the reigning murder capital year after year after year,
Speaker 7: and some people don't want to Yeah, some people don't
Speaker 7: want to know about it. We certainly don't have the
Speaker 7: murder rates that American cities have. We maybe have a
Speaker 7: fifth or a tenth of some of the major cities.
Speaker 7: But it's not like it's decreasing, and it's and and
Speaker 7: some of the crimes, as you know, some people might say, well,
Speaker 7: there's not that much. There isn't any more murder. Well,
Speaker 7: there are some bizarre murders when you know, the very
Speaker 7: first program I did, a woman is carving out a
Speaker 7: baby out of a womb, you know, and then you realize, well,
Speaker 7: there's been five or six of those case is in
Speaker 7: the last few years, and you're going, really well, you know,
Speaker 7: so there's a lot of information.
Speaker 5: So I've got to say that Dan, that that you know,
Speaker 5: the the the fact of the matter is is that
Speaker 5: I mean, I saw bowling for column mine. You know,
Speaker 5: it's it's we're much more violent culture because it's much
Speaker 5: more embedded here, and and and and the availability of
Speaker 5: handguns is something that you know, our legislatures have been
Speaker 5: working on forever, you know, So it's it's it's obviously
Speaker 5: a different culture, but what it all comes down to
Speaker 5: is murder's murder, you know, and you've got to do
Speaker 5: something about it, and you've got to get the bad
Speaker 5: guy and prosecute him, and then we get to write
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, the thing is what I'm campaigning for in this
Speaker 7: country is that somehow or other we believe, whether it's
Speaker 7: a mental with a mental court situation where the person
Speaker 7: is not criminally responsible, or whether they're a heinous killer,
Speaker 7: we still let these people out on the streets for
Speaker 7: various reasons. But no one really almost no one spends
Speaker 7: the rest of their life in prison regardless. And we
Speaker 7: do have this idea that's been since the seventies that we,
Speaker 7: rather than punish people, that we can rehabilitate them. Now,
Speaker 7: I do believe in rehabilitation for certain types of crimes,
Speaker 7: like you cannot rehabilitate rapist, stophiles and killers and violent people.
Speaker 7: You just cannot.
Speaker 8: So it's a.
Speaker 7: Failed experiment in this country that somehow or other we
Speaker 7: can kind of understand them, excuse them, fix them somehow.
Speaker 7: It's people in America I believe in other countries. No,
Speaker 7: that's not true. It's impossible and it's a waste of
Speaker 7: time and resources. So rehabilitation is fine for the kid
Speaker 7: that throws the rock through your window, but for certain
Speaker 7: crimes there's just no way. And you see the dramatic
Speaker 7: you see these serial killers.
Speaker 8: It's as soon.
Speaker 7: As you know, we just haven't, luckily had those kinds
Speaker 7: of been inundated with these kinds of cases all over
Speaker 7: the country because we're a smaller country, being about a
Speaker 7: tenth of the size. That being said, I hope to
Speaker 7: god we can learn our lesson before we get to
Speaker 7: that point. That's all boy, that's well said. That's extremely
Speaker 7: well said, and I agree with everything that you're saying.
Speaker 8: Well sucks, Fred.
Speaker 5: We should hang out sometimes, absolutely absolutely. Let's have a
Speaker 5: Canadian beer it's more alcohol, yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, well, Fred, I want to thank you very much.
Speaker 7: This has been an incredible interview and a lot of fun.
Speaker 7: Had a great time doing it. And I want to
Speaker 7: tell the audience we've been listening to Fred Rosen and
Speaker 7: he has a if you can tell you have your
Speaker 7: own blog as well, so just quickly tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Sure, it's Fredrosen dot com. I and I keep my
Speaker 5: readers up to date on cases that I'm working on,
Speaker 5: both former cases and active cases. And people can go
Speaker 5: there and I have you can click on the information
Speaker 5: on these cases or and also if they want to
Speaker 5: buy a book, they can they can click on the
Speaker 5: uh the image, I mean, if somebody wants to buy it,
Speaker 5: and uh and hopefully they do, uh because because I
Speaker 5: got to put my kid through school and uh uh
Speaker 5: so yeah, it's fred Rosen dot com. And of course
Speaker 5: if somebody wants to contact me through Facebook, I'm on Facebook.
Speaker 5: I'm you know, I've got a pretty public presence and
Speaker 5: I love to hear from people because, as you well know,
Speaker 5: this is who we do this for. And without people,
Speaker 5: who are the people who are listening. Uh, I'm not
Speaker 5: in business. You're not in business. You know, we rely
Speaker 5: on you and we and I also rely on the
Speaker 5: readers to tell me what they think, not just about
Speaker 5: the book, but as we've had this discussion about crime,
Speaker 5: about these social problems, what they you know, this is
Speaker 5: this is what this is how you learn, you know,
Speaker 5: you keep yourself open to people, and the more people communicate,
Speaker 5: the more we get someplace.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely well spoken well Thank you. Fred, have yourself
Speaker 7: a good evening when people have been listening to the
Speaker 7: program when Saint Moore across Fred Rosen, thank you very much. Fred,
Speaker 7: you have yourself a good evening you as.
Speaker 5: Well, very much. Once again, thank you, good night soon,
Speaker 5: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 7: Take care,