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, Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. 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
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy five, after Manson family member Lynette Squeaky
Speaker 2: Frome's attempt to kill President Cheryl Ford, the FBI found
Speaker 2: a cache of letters in the would be assassin's Sacramento apartment.
Speaker 2: The return address belonged to future forensic psychologist Jeffrey Smalden,
Speaker 2: then a young undergraduate. A decade later, after the shocking
Speaker 2: murders of two co workers, Smaaldon's quest to understand the
Speaker 2: twisted minds and motivations of killers became personal in a
Speaker 2: way it never had been before. That beast was not me.
Speaker 2: Documents five decades of conversations with murderers like John Wayne Gacy,
Speaker 2: Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, serial sniper Thomas Lee Dillon, and
Speaker 2: Donald Harvey, then thought to be the most prolific serial
Speaker 2: killer in American history. Through letters prison visits and interviews.
Speaker 2: Smaalden gives readers a terrifying look into the darkest recesses
Speaker 2: of the human psyche. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 2: evening is That Beast Was Not Me One forensic psychologist.
Speaker 2: Five decades of conversations with killers with my special guest,
Speaker 2: forensic psychologist and author, Jeffrey L. Smaalden. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 2: and thank you very much for this interview. Jeffrey EL. Smaalden.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: And congratulations on your book. Thank you The Beast That
Speaker 2: Was Not Me. Now, in this book, you take us
Speaker 2: to December nineteen eighty three and the story of the
Speaker 2: murders of Paddy Maddox and her friend Joyce McFadden. And
Speaker 2: this is at the Riverside Hospital. Tell us about your
Speaker 2: professional position at this hospital at that time in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three, and tell us about Paddy Maddox and her
Speaker 2: friend Joyce McFadden.
Speaker 3: Well, at the time of the hospital murders in December
Speaker 3: of nineteen eighty three, I was an assistant vice president
Speaker 3: at what was then the largest private general hospital in
Speaker 3: Ohio called Riverside Methodist Hospital. I had been there for
Speaker 3: about two and a half years at that point. I
Speaker 3: had begun as an administrative resident and then stayed on
Speaker 3: and I had administrative responsibility at the hospital for a
Speaker 3: number of departments, including a fairly large combined psychiatric substance
Speaker 3: abuse unit of about one hundred and thirty eight beds,
Speaker 3: and then I also had responsibility for this very small
Speaker 3: medical research lab that was located just off the main
Speaker 3: corridor of the hospital and just down the hallway from
Speaker 3: the waiting area for the radiology department. I had had
Speaker 3: a total of six employees, a single door that served
Speaker 3: as entrance and exit. Again that door right around the
Speaker 3: corner from the hospital's main corridor, and I wasn't really
Speaker 3: involved in the day to day operations of the research
Speaker 3: lab because I was the administrator responsibility for responsible for it.
Speaker 3: But I had regular contact with the employees and would
Speaker 3: typically you know, stop in there every few days or
Speaker 3: every week is to see how things were going, and
Speaker 3: met regularly with the director. But right before I left
Speaker 3: Columbus for my parents' home in Western New York that Christmas,
Speaker 3: they had their little department Christmas party, and as administration's representative,
Speaker 3: I attended that, and everybody was there. All the six
Speaker 3: medical research lab employees were there. You know. It was
Speaker 3: a low key but convivial affair. Everyone was in upbeat spirits.
Speaker 3: We were all talking about our plans for the holidays.
Speaker 3: Nothing seemingly unusual at all. And Patty and Joyce were
Speaker 3: both there that day and seeming just like they always did.
Speaker 3: They were both very friendly people, ready smile, always ready
Speaker 3: with the greeting when I saw them in the hall.
Speaker 3: And the next thing I knew, I was up at
Speaker 3: my parents' house between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and I
Speaker 3: got a call from the director of public relations at
Speaker 3: the hospital and she said, Jeff, I've got some terrible news.
Speaker 3: And I said, what's that? And I thought I had
Speaker 3: a pretty good idea what she was going to say.
Speaker 3: That there had been some kind of tragedy involving one
Speaker 3: of the psychiatric patients. Not long before then, one of
Speaker 3: the psychiatric patients had stuck a big pen into his
Speaker 3: chest in the middle of the night, taking his own life.
Speaker 3: So that had been a recent tragedy. Another one had
Speaker 3: been a psychiatric patient had been given a temporary leave
Speaker 3: to walk around the hospital grounds with his young daughter
Speaker 3: and killed her on the hospital grounds. So I thought
Speaker 3: that this call was going to be about some other
Speaker 3: tragedy involving one of the psychiatric patients. And she said,
Speaker 3: Joyce McFadden and Patty Maddox were murdered on Friday afternoon,
Speaker 3: between four thirty and five o'clock in the afternoon. And
Speaker 3: I said what I mean, And no news could have
Speaker 3: stunned me more than that, And that's all all I
Speaker 3: could say was no way. And she explained that the
Speaker 3: director of the research lab, who had been off work
Speaker 3: that week, had stopped in to check his mail and
Speaker 3: phone messages and found Joyce laying in a pool of
Speaker 3: blood in the lab. She turned out she had been
Speaker 3: stabbed close to thirty times, her legs were bound and
Speaker 3: blood was all over and he ran screaming from the lab.
Speaker 3: Hospital security guard and a family practice physician who happened
Speaker 3: to hear him screaming, accompanied him back to the lab.
Speaker 3: Found that Joyce had no pulse, and soon after the
Speaker 3: police arrived and Patty Maddox's body was found in a
Speaker 3: walk in refrigerator that was ordinarily used to store tissue samples.
Speaker 3: And you know again, I was up at my parents
Speaker 3: in New York when I received news of this double homicide.
Speaker 3: But I was just absolutely flabbergasted by it, and I thought,
Speaker 3: I need to go back down there. I need to
Speaker 3: return to work at that place. And when I came
Speaker 3: back to Columbus the day after receiving the phone call,
Speaker 3: as I say in the book, it was like there
Speaker 3: was an invisible force field preventing my return to the hospital. Initially,
Speaker 3: I just couldn't bring myself to go there. In short
Speaker 3: order and found that everything had changed. They hadn't arrested anyone.
Speaker 3: Nobody had a clue who would have wanted to kill
Speaker 3: Paddy maddox and Joyce McFadden. I was this prickly tension
Speaker 3: in the air, and gaggles of employees in the hallway
Speaker 3: talking about it, and everyone had their favorite suspect, so
Speaker 3: to put it mildly. Going back to work, and then
Speaker 3: the next weeks and months, and as it turned out,
Speaker 3: two years without an arrest made that a very difficult
Speaker 3: place to work.
Speaker 2: You righte that you finally had enough and you began
Speaker 2: to prepare your graduation school application. Tell us about this
Speaker 2: application and your plan.
Speaker 3: Well, if I can back up just a little to
Speaker 3: sort of set the stage in terms of where I
Speaker 3: was in my life. At that point, I was a
Speaker 3: fledgling hospital administrator. I was going to be an English professor.
Speaker 3: I did a master's degree in English at Purdue, went
Speaker 3: back to my undergraduate school, taught English for a year,
Speaker 3: then on a gram went to Trinity College in Dublin
Speaker 3: to study modern Irish literature for a year. That was
Speaker 3: the path that I was on, And then I decided,
Speaker 3: I don't really think that academia would be a good
Speaker 3: niche for me. I don't think I would thrive in
Speaker 3: that environment, so I need to think of a different path.
Speaker 3: And when I came back from Ireland, and I'll tell
Speaker 3: this briefly, but I think it's an important part of
Speaker 3: the story, at least it is for me. My mother
Speaker 3: was a nurse at the local hospital and I said
Speaker 3: to her one day, mile, I have no idea where
Speaker 3: to go with my life now that I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be an English professor. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 3: And she said, well, down at the hospital where I work,
Speaker 3: there are a couple of nice looking young men. I
Speaker 3: don't really know what they do, but they're very friendly.
Speaker 3: Every time I greet them in the hall, they greet me,
Speaker 3: and I've heard them referred to as administrators. Have you
Speaker 3: ever thought of hospital administration? And I said no, And
Speaker 3: then I said what's hospital administration? And she said know either.
Speaker 3: Why don't you go out and talk to one of them?
Speaker 3: So I did, and he said, yeah, why don't you.
Speaker 3: I did my masters at George Washington. Why don't you
Speaker 3: do yours there and then come back to work for me?
Speaker 3: And I thought that almost sounds like a job offer.
Speaker 3: I had nothing else going on at the time, so
Speaker 3: I applied to one school, George Washington. I needed to
Speaker 3: basically get a full financial ride to be able to
Speaker 3: go there for unknown reasons, because I had never taken
Speaker 3: a business class in my life. I just ended up
Speaker 3: concluding they must have seen me as some sort of
Speaker 3: bizarre sleeper candidate that they were willing to cast their
Speaker 3: lot with. But I got admitted, did my masters there,
Speaker 3: and then the last part of the degree was an
Speaker 3: administrative residency. And I could have ended up anywhere in
Speaker 3: the country for that, and I ended up at this
Speaker 3: hospital in Riverside or in Columbus And turned out that
Speaker 3: you know, this is like a decade after an earlier
Speaker 3: chapter in my life that I'm sure we'll get to
Speaker 3: where I was as a very young man twenty one
Speaker 3: years old, corresponding with members of the Manson family. And
Speaker 3: so when these murders occurred in December of eighty three,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking to myself, what is going on here in
Speaker 3: my early twenties, I'm corresponding with Charles Manson, but I
Speaker 3: kind of felt like I'd left that chapter behind, And
Speaker 3: now these two women are murdered in the hospital, in
Speaker 3: a department I'm responsible for. I think maybe I'm meant
Speaker 3: to do a PhD in forensic psychology and find a
Speaker 3: vantage point where I can begin learning about the minds
Speaker 3: of the kinds of people who would kill Joyce McFadden
Speaker 3: and Patty Maddox. So I started thinking about going back
Speaker 3: to school at Ohio State. I ended up starting work
Speaker 3: toward my PhD in August of nineteen eighty five, about
Speaker 3: a year well, yeah, about a year and a half
Speaker 3: after the Riverside murders.
Speaker 2: You talked about how you reached out to people like
Speaker 2: Charles Manson and other members of his family a decade
Speaker 2: earlier than you did in your decision to study murder. Right,
Speaker 2: So tell us how on Earth you came to write,
Speaker 2: Charles Manson, How did you come up with this idea?
Speaker 2: Where did it come from?
Speaker 3: Well? I grew up the son of I always refer
Speaker 3: to him this way because I think it conjures a
Speaker 3: certain accurate image in people's mind. I grew up the
Speaker 3: son of a Hoover era g man, very traditional FBI agent,
Speaker 3: and during my growing up years there was always kind
Speaker 3: of a low hum of talk at home about crime
Speaker 3: and criminality and law, and so I always had that
Speaker 3: interest percolating in the back of my mind. And when
Speaker 3: I was a senior in college, Helter Skelder actually came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen seventy four. My senior year in college
Speaker 3: was seventy four or seventy five. But when the Manson
Speaker 3: family murders occurred in August of nineteen sixty nine, I
Speaker 3: paid them absolutely no attention. I was fifteen years old,
Speaker 3: totally up to my ears in my social life and
Speaker 3: the upcoming fall football season and so on. Never read
Speaker 3: the newspaper, never watched the evening news, so I didn't
Speaker 3: really know anything about the carnage in LA. But when
Speaker 3: Helter Skelter came out, and I had before that, I
Speaker 3: had read one other book about the Manson family when
Speaker 3: I was studying my junior year in college overseas, but
Speaker 3: I read Helder Skelder in a single sitting caffeine fueled
Speaker 3: binge that began about three o'clock one afternoon and ended
Speaker 3: about eleven o'clock the next morning. I just couldn't put
Speaker 3: it down. I was so entranced by the story. And again,
Speaker 3: I'm twenty one years old, and I think what I
Speaker 3: was most fascinated with wasn't so much Manson himself, but
Speaker 3: these people who looked up to him as sort of
Speaker 3: a godlike figure, and if you believed media portrayals of them,
Speaker 3: seemed willing to do almost anything at his behest. He
Speaker 3: would get the idea that they had almost lost the
Speaker 3: ability to think and act independently. And one day in
Speaker 3: my abnormal psychology class, my professor mentioned that he had
Speaker 3: read Helter Skelter. I don't remember the context for him
Speaker 3: mentioning that, but I thought, well, I'm going to stay
Speaker 3: after class today and talk with him about that book
Speaker 3: and about my questions about some of these people who
Speaker 3: came from backgrounds not unlike my own middle class backgrounds
Speaker 3: and ended up in thrall to this career convict with
Speaker 3: a fourth grade education. So I stayed after class and
Speaker 3: I raised that issue, and when I did, he said, well,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. Have you ever thought of writing to them?
Speaker 3: And I said no, I literally that thought had never
Speaker 3: crossed my mind. The idea of writing the members of
Speaker 3: the Manson family was the furthest thing from my mind.
Speaker 3: And he said, well, it might be interesting to hear
Speaker 3: what their voices sound like on paper and see if
Speaker 3: they match the portrayals of them in the media. So,
Speaker 3: after a period of time thinking about it, I decided
Speaker 3: to do that, and to my surprise, most of the
Speaker 3: people I wrote to wrote me back, including Manson and
Speaker 3: Squeaky thro Me and her roommate fellow Manson devotee Sandy Good,
Speaker 3: Susan Atkins, Tex Watson, and others.
Speaker 2: You had quite the experience corresponding with Charles Manson, didn't you.
Speaker 3: I did. Yeah. I didn't know what to expect from him.
Speaker 3: I had to know the sense that he was some
Speaker 3: sort of bizarre lunatic from his portrayal and Helter Skelter
Speaker 3: and other meat. But I didn't really know what letters
Speaker 3: from him would be like. And you know, I was
Speaker 3: pretty manipulative. My goal was to convince him to write
Speaker 3: me back. That was basically my bottom line objective. And
Speaker 3: in the very first letter I wrote to him, I
Speaker 3: had thought to myself when I sat down to write
Speaker 3: that letter, well, what could I write that might make
Speaker 3: Charles Manson decide to write me back. That was my
Speaker 3: cynical kind of way of thinking. And I knew from
Speaker 3: what I'd read that he was a frustrated musician, that
Speaker 3: he had been moving in the orbit of some Hollywood
Speaker 3: A and B list musicians in nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 3: sixty nine. So I written a letter expressing interest in
Speaker 3: his music, and in particular wondering how I could obtain
Speaker 3: a copy of the album of his songs that his
Speaker 3: old prison buddy Phil Kaufman, who went on to become,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of a well known roadie, was Emily
Speaker 3: Emmy Lou Harris's roadie for years, but he had been
Speaker 3: in prison with Manson and he produced this album during
Speaker 3: Manson's trial. So I asked Manson if he knew how
Speaker 3: I could obtain a copy of that album, and Manson
Speaker 3: immediately saw through my cynical posturing and just wrote back
Speaker 3: and said, you know, stop with this bullshit. You know,
Speaker 3: tell me what you're really interested in. It's not songs
Speaker 3: and poetry, because what does that all matter? Tell me
Speaker 3: what you're really interested in. And I thought, well, I've
Speaker 3: been called out here, I was a fake and a phony.
Speaker 3: I could either bail out or I could try another approach.
Speaker 3: So I wrote him again, and this time I told
Speaker 3: him a little about me who I was, that I
Speaker 3: was a senior in college, that I had read Helder
Speaker 3: Skelter and another book about his case called The Family,
Speaker 3: and that I was interested in how he had been
Speaker 3: portrayed and in the media and so on, and that
Speaker 3: I was open to the possibility that certain of the
Speaker 3: people who had written about his case didn't get everything right.
Speaker 3: That I was interested in his perspective. And he then
Speaker 3: wrote sort of a contemplative letter. I later learned this
Speaker 3: was definitely not Charles Manson's default posture. Reflective, contemplative was
Speaker 3: not his default posture. But I must have caught him
Speaker 3: on a good day, and he said, at the beginning
Speaker 3: of that letter, take everything you've ever heard about me,
Speaker 3: and think about it as backwards. The media created this
Speaker 3: monster image. That beast was not me, that's where the
Speaker 3: title of my book comes from. That beast was not me,
Speaker 3: but it's what everyone needs me to be, so they
Speaker 3: make me up to be a reflection of all their
Speaker 3: fears and lies. And I, you know, I was young
Speaker 3: and green and receptive. You know. Now I would look
Speaker 3: at that and see it as what it is. But
Speaker 3: then I thought, oh, that's at least interesting. Maybe Manson's
Speaker 3: not exactly as he's been portrayed in the media.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now we were talking about your correspondence with
Speaker 2: Charles Manson, but you also reached out to a couple
Speaker 2: of his other family member because we were very interested,
Speaker 2: especially in the idea that you thought that it absurd
Speaker 2: that these family members were one dimensional robots without a
Speaker 2: mind of their own.
Speaker 3: Correct And I couldn't figure that out. I was interested
Speaker 3: in how they would come across in letters. And I
Speaker 3: mean that part of the story is interesting. I knew
Speaker 3: how to find Charles Manson. I knew he was on
Speaker 3: the special Adjustment unit at fulsome prison that had been
Speaker 3: made clear in the final pages of Helder Skelter. But
Speaker 3: I knew that Squeaky from Me, who by most accounts
Speaker 3: was his first or second in command of the Manson
Speaker 3: family and one of his earliest followers and most zealous advocates,
Speaker 3: was not in prison. And when I had learned that
Speaker 3: she and some of his other followers were not in prison,
Speaker 3: I remember initially that whole idea creeked me out, because
Speaker 3: I just thought, how could they have been part of
Speaker 3: this group of people and not landed in prison? But
Speaker 3: they hadn't. But I didn't know where Squeaky FROMI was
Speaker 3: or how to contact her, and I used a pretty
Speaker 3: unorthodox approach that probably had a very small percentage chance
Speaker 3: of working, but it did. I had read in Helder
Speaker 3: Skelter that one of the assistant District attorneys in the
Speaker 3: LA office had befriended her and some of the other
Speaker 3: Manson girls when they were sitting vigil on the sidewalk
Speaker 3: outside the Hall of Justice while Manson was on trial.
Speaker 3: And so I wrote a letter to Squeaky FROMY and
Speaker 3: I put it in a larger envelope addressed to this
Speaker 3: assistant District DA, and I said, if you know where
Speaker 3: Squeaky FROMI is, would you complete the address on my
Speaker 3: envelope to her? And send it to her, and I
Speaker 3: really thought that would go nowhere. And he wrote me
Speaker 3: back immediately and said, yeah, I do know where she is.
Speaker 3: He didn't give me her address, but he said, I
Speaker 3: did as you requested, completed the address, and I sent
Speaker 3: her your letter, and then in less than a week
Speaker 3: she responded. So I had my first look at what
Speaker 3: a letter from one of Manson's followers would look like.
Speaker 3: And again I was curious about the degree of congruence
Speaker 3: between what a letter from one of them would look
Speaker 3: like and how they'd been portrayed in the media. And
Speaker 3: I get this envelope with floral accents on it, and
Speaker 3: inside was stationary with the same floral accents and very neat,
Speaker 3: but very loopy. I always kind of call it looks
Speaker 3: like middle school middle middle school girl loopy handwriting, which
Speaker 3: is probably unfair to characterize middle school's girl's handwriting that way,
Speaker 3: but that's what impressed me. And there were lots of
Speaker 3: drawings of flowers and smiley faces, and lots of talk
Speaker 3: of love and togetherness. And at one point during her letters,
Speaker 3: she said, Jeff Charlie didn't do it. He is it
Speaker 3: with his underlined and she said the only person who
Speaker 3: understands how to bring about world peace. And I'm reading
Speaker 3: this thinking, what you know? This woman, though she wasn't
Speaker 3: involved directly in the Tate lobbyond the murders, knew all
Speaker 3: about them. There was no question about that. And yet
Speaker 3: this rhetoric sounded very hippieish and centered in ideals peace
Speaker 3: and love. And so for me, the mystery continued beyond
Speaker 3: that letter.
Speaker 2: You also corresponded with Sandra Good. You said that she
Speaker 2: wrote you four letters over a period of six weeks.
Speaker 2: What was the conversation like with her or the correspondence
Speaker 2: I might say.
Speaker 3: She did she took over the correspondence. And I always
Speaker 3: knew that the letters I wrote were to Sandy and Squeaky,
Speaker 3: that they lived together, the very close friends. They lived
Speaker 3: in an attic apartment in Sacramento. I didn't know this
Speaker 3: at the time, but a third woman named Susan Murphy
Speaker 3: was sharing the space with them.
Speaker 2: But I always.
Speaker 3: Addressed my letters to both Sandy and Squeaky, And at
Speaker 3: first the first letter I got from Sandy, I was
Speaker 3: impressed by how intelligent she was, how articulate she was.
Speaker 3: She used bright pink stationery. She wrote, well, again, not
Speaker 3: what I expected from these people. But she continued with
Speaker 3: squeakys themes of love and peace, and Charlie understands. They
Speaker 3: kept using the term earth balance. He knows how to
Speaker 3: bring about earth balance. And they kept expressing concerns for
Speaker 3: the environment and so on, and you know, so no
Speaker 3: references to the murders at all yet. And then I
Speaker 3: get a letter from Sandy Good one day, which I
Speaker 3: always say it began in the way you always hope
Speaker 3: no letter from the Manson family will begin, right, Jeff,
Speaker 3: we're moving out of the realm of words. And I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, oh, I don't really want to move out
Speaker 3: of the realm of word. That's where I'm that's my
Speaker 3: comfort zone. And in that letter she started she referenced
Speaker 3: the Tate Lobiaca murders explicitly for the first time, and
Speaker 3: she began writing in sort of a poc elliptic terms
Speaker 3: about things that were going to go down. She recommended
Speaker 3: I stay away from La because horrible things were going
Speaker 3: to go down there, and just these kind of cryptic
Speaker 3: messages about bad things like karma as she said that
Speaker 3: was going to occur. And I remember being alarmed by
Speaker 3: this change in her tone. But not so much that
Speaker 3: I bailed out of the correspondence. So I wrote her
Speaker 3: back after that letter, and then I got the last
Speaker 3: letter that I received from her during that period. It
Speaker 3: was Mark June thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, and it was
Speaker 3: about a sixteen page handwritten letter. And in that letter,
Speaker 3: she was encouraging me to phone corporation heads who she
Speaker 3: said were complicit and polluting the environment and so on,
Speaker 3: and she would say things like, if they aren't paying attention,
Speaker 3: say things like do you know who Charles Manson is?
Speaker 3: Remember Sharon Tate? Or tell them a wave of assassins
Speaker 3: will soon sweep through their homes and splash blood from
Speaker 3: room to room. She referred to people getting their arms
Speaker 3: chopped off, encouraged me to recruit some of my friends
Speaker 3: if she said they weren't Mommy's boys, and into sort
Speaker 3: of a killer core of people who would go out
Speaker 3: in the forest and kill hunters and then leave signs
Speaker 3: on the trees saying there are hunters hunter hunting hunters.
Speaker 3: All of this meant as part of kind of a
Speaker 3: campaign of eco terrorism, and they were clearly looking to
Speaker 3: me to play an active role in this. And I
Speaker 3: remember at the time thinking Okay, now I'm in way
Speaker 3: over my head. Yes, I was having images of these
Speaker 3: women appearing on my parents' doorstone. And by the way,
Speaker 3: my dad was in the FBI during this period. I
Speaker 3: was living with them in Western New York and getting
Speaker 3: these letters from Manson Squeaky, from Sandy Good addressed to
Speaker 3: their address, and I thought, I need to get out
Speaker 3: of this because I was frightened, and so I sent
Speaker 3: a letter to Squeaky, and Sandy mailed it to a
Speaker 3: friend of mine who lived in Wisconsin and asked her
Speaker 3: to mail it from there so it would have a
Speaker 3: Wisconsin postmark. And in my letter, I'd said I'd left
Speaker 3: my address in Western New York. I was hitchhiking for
Speaker 3: the summer, didn't have a stable address. And then it
Speaker 3: was about two months later that I heard Squeaky had
Speaker 3: attempted to assassinate President Ford.
Speaker 2: You're right that now, forty five years on, Sandy and
Speaker 2: Squeaky are both free from prison. Sandy paroled in December
Speaker 2: eighty five and Squeaky released on parole in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight. You talk about your correspondence, your decision to
Speaker 2: write to Ted Bundy. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: You know approximately the year anniversary of the hospital murders
Speaker 3: was approaching. I had decided by then that I was
Speaker 3: going to leave hospital administration and that I was going
Speaker 3: to if I got admitted to Ohio State, I was
Speaker 3: going to begin to work toward my PhD there. But
Speaker 3: I thought, and still no one had been arrested for
Speaker 3: the Riverside murders, and I thought, well, if anyone knows
Speaker 3: about murder, particularly the kinds of murder where the perpetrator
Speaker 3: seems to disappear into thin air, Ted Bundy would know.
Speaker 3: And he's on death row right now, facing two death sentences,
Speaker 3: one for his rampage at the Cayamega sorority house at
Speaker 3: Florida State and the other four the kidnapping, sexual assault,
Speaker 3: and murder of a twelve year old girl, still denying,
Speaker 3: by the way, that any of these murders were his doing. Sure, well,
Speaker 3: he was all a big coincidence, all these gas credit
Speaker 3: card slips that tied him to the various locations and
Speaker 3: so on. But I knew he was on death row
Speaker 3: in Florida. So I thought, well, I'm going to write
Speaker 3: to Ted Bundy, and I'm not going to say right
Speaker 3: from the start that I have an interest in picking
Speaker 3: his brain about these crimes in Columbus, but maybe I
Speaker 3: can develop enough rapport with him that eventually he'll agree
Speaker 3: to a dialogue that would turn out to be fruitful
Speaker 3: for me in some way. And I told him I
Speaker 3: wrote him a pretty long handwritten letter. He would have
Speaker 3: known that I'd read quite a bit about his case,
Speaker 3: including the book The Only Living Witness, where he had
Speaker 3: agreed to talk about the crimes attributed to him but
Speaker 3: only in the third person, sort of how someone might
Speaker 3: have committed these crimes. So he knew from my letter.
Speaker 3: I knew about that. And I said at the end
Speaker 3: of my letter, I'm not trying to bother you, so
Speaker 3: if you don't respond to this letter, you'll never hear
Speaker 3: from me again. And he didn't respond, so I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: well that's that, and I thought that was the end
Speaker 3: of it. But then a little over a year later,
Speaker 3: just a couple months after I had begun work toward
Speaker 3: my PhD, I get a Christmas card from Ted wishing
Speaker 3: me and mine all best wishes and health in the
Speaker 3: coming year. And it was a you know, one of
Speaker 3: those cards with a sort of a bountiful picture photograph
Speaker 3: on the cover, sort of a corncopeia with things pouring
Speaker 3: out of it. And then I also got a letter
Speaker 3: from him, and I remember my frame of mind when
Speaker 3: I got this letter. Okay, this guy's on death row,
Speaker 3: and yeah, his prospects are grim at best. And he
Speaker 3: begins the letter, Dear Jeffrey, I received your letter approximately
Speaker 3: a year ago. I've kept I've kept it amongst that's
Speaker 3: the word he used amongst my papers. Back around the
Speaker 3: time you wrote, I withdrew into a kind of cocoon.
Speaker 3: He had suffered a number of legal setbacks, and I'm
Speaker 3: just now coming out and beginning to communicate with people again.
Speaker 3: As for your questions, all I can say is I
Speaker 3: found them very searching and thoughtful. And then he says,
Speaker 3: I want you to know that I've never felt better
Speaker 3: in my life, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I hope the
Speaker 3: same can be said for you. And then this is
Speaker 3: the good part. You know, this guy whose signature characteristic
Speaker 3: is the unbelievable distances he would travel in search of
Speaker 3: his victims, and in FBI parlance, he would be called
Speaker 3: a rover killed women. You know in Oregon, Houston, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Florida.
Speaker 3: He signs off his letter, take care, watch yourself, travel
Speaker 3: light piece ted Yes. And you know, later, when I
Speaker 3: studied more serial killers, I came to understand. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the classic serial killers tease. That's Bundy sitting on
Speaker 3: death row in Florida thinking I'm going to end with
Speaker 3: this clever thing. And in one way, it could be
Speaker 3: read as a recipe for how to survive if you're
Speaker 3: a predator like me. Always be aware of your surroundings,
Speaker 3: be mobile, be ready to move at a moment's notice.
Speaker 3: But it could also be read as a recipe for
Speaker 3: how to survive a predator like me by being aware
Speaker 3: and being mobile and ready to move. And I thought
Speaker 3: he probably enjoyed it tremendously, thinking that he had said
Speaker 3: something so clever.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get to one of the most fascinating interviews that
Speaker 2: you conducted in your career, and this is before you
Speaker 2: were involved in as a forensic psychologist. But tell us
Speaker 2: about the chapter you call The Clown and your interaction
Speaker 2: with John Wayne Gacy, first in letters and phone calls
Speaker 2: and then in a visit to the Minard Correctional Center
Speaker 2: December sixteenth, nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had begun work towards my PhD in the
Speaker 3: fall of eighty five, and I still had in mind,
Speaker 3: even though I hadn't gotten very far with Ted Bundy,
Speaker 3: but I still didn't mind. I have things to learn
Speaker 3: from some of these notorious serial killers. And Gaysey was
Speaker 3: the next one who came to mind. I knew he
Speaker 3: was on death row in Illinois, having been convicted of
Speaker 3: murdering thirty three boys and young men. And again, I thought,
Speaker 3: the likelihood of Gacy responding to my overture is probably
Speaker 3: fairly low, but I'm going to try it anyway. So
Speaker 3: I wrote to him, and he responded right away in
Speaker 3: a somewhat churlish way. He said, if you think you
Speaker 3: know anything at all about me from reading these books
Speaker 3: that have been published, I got news for you. You know
Speaker 3: nothing about me. So he was a little prickly right
Speaker 3: off the bat, but he said, at the end of
Speaker 3: his letter, you know, write me back and we'll see
Speaker 3: where this goes. And so I did. And this was
Speaker 3: the beginning of a correspondence that last for three years,
Speaker 3: and at some point during that year, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: we began having occasional phone conversations, and I mean, I
Speaker 3: remember during those phone conversations, Gasey came across as very
Speaker 3: kind of low key, sounded like a blue collar kind
Speaker 3: of guy, easy to talk with. But one thing that
Speaker 3: really sticks in my mind because it was noteworthy for
Speaker 3: what it taught me about Gasey, and then I later
Speaker 3: learned it had more brought had broader applications than just
Speaker 3: Gaysey's personality. He sent me something that he called it
Speaker 3: the Polish College Entrance Exam, and it was a series
Speaker 3: of little puzzles called drudles, and he acted like everyone
Speaker 3: in the world world knew what a drudal was but me,
Speaker 3: but I didn't. But what a drudl is is a
Speaker 3: little visual representation of some kind that stands for like
Speaker 3: a slogan or a saying or something. And the challenge
Speaker 3: is to find out what it stands for. And so
Speaker 3: he sent me it was a piece of paper divided
Speaker 3: into a grid with maybe twenty little squares, and in
Speaker 3: each of those squares was a drudal and I was
Speaker 3: supposed to figure out what each one of them stood for.
Speaker 3: And with a little assistance from my wife. I got
Speaker 3: almost all of them, I think, and Gasey said, next
Speaker 3: time we talk on the phone, let's go through the
Speaker 3: entrance exam, as he called it. So we did. Next
Speaker 3: time we talked on the phone, he said, you know,
Speaker 3: let's go through your answers to the entrance exam. And
Speaker 3: one of the items on there, it had a horizontal line.
Speaker 3: Above the horizontal line was the word ground, and then
Speaker 3: under the horizontal line were six footprints. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: difficult to figure out that it stood for six feet underground, right,
Speaker 3: And I came up with that pretty easily, And I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, you know, this is a guy who had
Speaker 3: twenty six bodies buried in the crawl space underneath his house.
Speaker 3: That's just an odd thing to make into a joke.
Speaker 3: So or we're going through these over the phone, I
Speaker 3: came to that one, and as soon as I said
Speaker 3: six feet underground, Gasey chortled and said, that's a cute one.
Speaker 3: And I didn't say anything because I didn't want to
Speaker 3: push him. I was sensitive to him not wanting to
Speaker 3: bail out on the correspondence. I didn't challenge him. But
Speaker 3: then about a week later, in a letter, I said,
Speaker 3: I got to be honest with you when we were
Speaker 3: going through that entrance exam and I came to that
Speaker 3: six feet under item, and you said, that's a cute one.
Speaker 3: That made me uncomfortable given the facts of your case.
Speaker 3: And he went crazy. He acted like any suggestion that
Speaker 3: there was a relationship between that and the facts of
Speaker 3: his case was preposterous, and he said, I think we
Speaker 3: need to stop corresponding right now. If you're going to
Speaker 3: challenge me and make me feel like I'm being interrogated,
Speaker 3: I think we need to stop this correspondence right now.
Speaker 3: But then at the end of the letter, he said,
Speaker 3: it's up to you whether we continue, and you know,
Speaker 3: he agreed to let's just put that behind us. But
Speaker 3: I had learned from that that he was very prickly
Speaker 3: quick to get his back up when challenged. And later
Speaker 3: on when I made two different visits to see him
Speaker 3: in Illinois, two days each visit, so four days and
Speaker 3: roughly twenty hours all together. And one of many things
Speaker 3: stick in my mind from the time that I spent
Speaker 3: with him in person, but one of them that sticks
Speaker 3: in my mind most vividly is we were talking about
Speaker 3: the victims in his case, these young boys and men
Speaker 3: who he was found guilty of killing. As far as
Speaker 3: he would go was to tell me that he knew
Speaker 3: something about five of them. The other ones, he said,
Speaker 3: lots of people had keys to that house. There were
Speaker 3: the police didn't investigate other people. Blah blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: He could have gone on days about how he was
Speaker 3: persecuted and the police had done an inadequate investigatory job
Speaker 3: and so on. But we were talking one day and
Speaker 3: I was pushing him gently about the five that he
Speaker 3: said he knew something about, and like, I asked him
Speaker 3: about one of the ones. He told me he knew
Speaker 3: something about it, and he said, yeah, you know, he
Speaker 3: worked for me. His mother wanted me to help him
Speaker 3: get off drugs, and I was trying to do that.
Speaker 3: But you know, he was a wild kid and had
Speaker 3: all kinds of problems. And I said, yeah, but didn't
Speaker 3: he end up in your call space? How did that happen?
Speaker 3: And Gasey said, well, I can't get into that. My
Speaker 3: attorney won't let me talk about that. And at about
Speaker 3: that juncture in the conversation, he says, you know what, Jeff,
Speaker 3: I've got pictures of every one of those kids who
Speaker 3: they say I kill back in my cell. And he
Speaker 3: positioned his hands as you had positioned your hands if
Speaker 3: you were fanning out a deck of playing cards, and
Speaker 3: he said, I look at the pictures of those kids,
Speaker 3: and they are no more real to me than And
Speaker 3: that day he had brought a painting out of the
Speaker 3: Dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that he
Speaker 3: was hoping I would purchase, and it was leaning into
Speaker 3: the wall and he suddenly said he hesitated, like he
Speaker 3: didn't know how to finish that sense, and then he said,
Speaker 3: they are no more real to me than the cartoon
Speaker 3: figures in that painting. And by the way, that painting
Speaker 3: showing the dwarfs next to the opening to a mine,
Speaker 3: had a shovel in the bottom left hand corner. So
Speaker 3: that was a moment with Gacy that I've never forgot.
Speaker 2: You asked him about his guilt and the murders, and
Speaker 2: he said it was all bs, even though you pointed
Speaker 2: out that he had confessed numerous times, including to his attorneys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he just kept stonewalling my questions about the crimes themselves.
Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, but you confess to these right,
Speaker 3: and he said, come on, Jeff, you're smarter than that.
Speaker 3: He said, now you're just going with all the speculation
Speaker 3: and the hypotheses and everything. All that's that served as
Speaker 3: the foundation of the state's case against me. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: my understanding is you not only confessed multiple times to
Speaker 3: the police, but you confess to your own attorney and
Speaker 3: another attorney who was president at the time the night
Speaker 3: before your arrest. And Gasey said, I was on so
Speaker 3: many drugs at that time. Who knows what I might
Speaker 3: have said to my attorneys. And then he says, of
Speaker 3: the confessions to the police, shown show me the recording.
Speaker 3: Where's the recording? And there's not one, which is I
Speaker 3: still don't really understand that, frankly, why no recording was
Speaker 3: made of his confessions. Apparently there were, there was more
Speaker 3: than one of them, but there doesn't exist a recording.
Speaker 3: And Gasey always leaned on that as kind of the
Speaker 3: cornerstone of his case, that no such confession exists. He said,
Speaker 3: all you've got is the notes of those desk planes
Speaker 3: police officers, and you know that they wanted to clean
Speaker 3: the case up, so they just wrote what they wanted
Speaker 3: to write. I didn't confess.
Speaker 2: He also tried to put it on former employees Michael
Speaker 2: Rossi and David Kram, until the point where you said, hey,
Speaker 2: that's enough, can we talk about your sexuality?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he was obsessed with Cram and Rossi. Well,
Speaker 3: I eventually shifted the discussion to his sexuality because that
Speaker 3: was something I wanted to talk with him about. And
Speaker 3: I had the sense that he could talk about Cram
Speaker 3: and Rossi all day and how they must have been involved.
Speaker 3: And I should say that I know there are people
Speaker 3: who are knowledgeable about the Gacy case who don't discount
Speaker 3: the possibility that Rossi and Cram were involved in some
Speaker 3: of these murders. They testified at its trial, they were
Speaker 3: interviewed by the police. They were never charged, But I
Speaker 3: don't think it's an absolutely preposterous idea that they knew
Speaker 3: more than they ever admitted. But anyway, yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: gay Gaycy could go on and on about them, and
Speaker 3: then at one point I said, Okay, enough of that,
Speaker 3: let's can we talk about your sexuality?
Speaker 2: And he denied being gay and described it as a
Speaker 2: sexual incorrectly, but he was basically describing that it didn't
Speaker 2: matter to him as long as he got off, So
Speaker 2: he was essentially bisexual by definition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, by definition. I think by his use of
Speaker 3: the term asexual, which I told him I didn't really
Speaker 3: understand because that usually means none like a moral you know,
Speaker 3: not not following any moral code. But I think what
Speaker 3: he meant is, I don't really care like these people
Speaker 3: who I'm involved with in some kind of transactional sexual episode.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't care, like you said, if I
Speaker 3: get off, doesn't matter to me if it's a man
Speaker 3: or a woman. So I think that's what he meant
Speaker 3: about by asexual, that I just don't care about the
Speaker 3: other person at all.
Speaker 2: You describe in this book the incredible meetings you had
Speaker 2: with him, the two visits, and Casey's behavior at this
Speaker 2: opining on various subjects and just his know it all nature,
Speaker 2: but also that he always brought to these visits his notebook,
Speaker 2: his photo album, and the file with your name on it.
Speaker 2: But he also showed you letters from two prospective authors
Speaker 2: that were interested in his case.
Speaker 3: He did. Yeah, he had a whole notebook full of things,
Speaker 3: And I asked him at one point, can we talk
Speaker 3: about some of the other people you've corresponded with and
Speaker 3: you've heard from and he said, yeah, we can talk
Speaker 3: about him. And he loved saying, you know, everybody wants
Speaker 3: to interview me. They want me on Good Morning America
Speaker 3: forty eight hours, sixty minutes. I'm not talking to any
Speaker 3: of those people. It's not up to me to correct
Speaker 3: all their mistakes. They dug their hole, now they can
Speaker 3: live in it. So he loved sort of talking about
Speaker 3: how he turned down all of these people who were
Speaker 3: interested in his story. But the two that I think
Speaker 3: you're referring to that seemed to excite him the most
Speaker 3: was he showed me a letter from Oprah that I'm
Speaker 3: sure Oprah would be horrified to have seen the light
Speaker 3: of day. Yes, now, she was a young reporter in Chicago,
Speaker 3: popular but very you know, local, She was a regional,
Speaker 3: achieved nothing close to the fame and influence that she
Speaker 3: would later receive. And she wrote Gacy a handwritten I
Speaker 3: don't know if fawning is too strong a word, but
Speaker 3: basically begging for his attention, you know, please let me
Speaker 3: be the one to interview you. And Gasey loved showing
Speaker 3: me the letter, loved reading it and the tone pointing
Speaker 3: out the tone of it, and then saying, you know,
Speaker 3: screw her. I don't need to talk to her. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to talk with Oprah Winfrey. And then the
Speaker 3: other one was from Truman Capodi, who, of course you know,
Speaker 3: author of the famous in Cold Blood and the literary
Speaker 3: celebrity by that point, but Capodi had written him a
Speaker 3: very short letter wondering if Gacy would consider allowing him
Speaker 3: to write his life story. And again Gasey, you know,
Speaker 3: so grandio, so narcissistic, just love saying I'm not going
Speaker 3: to talk with that guy. Why would I let him
Speaker 3: write my life story?
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: We were continuing talking about your visit with John Wayne Gacy.
Speaker 2: How is it that you end up exiting from your
Speaker 2: correspondence and your visiting from John Wayne Gacy? Tell us
Speaker 2: about your last encounter, your last correspondence with him.
Speaker 3: Well, I had gone to visit him a second time
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven, and then in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: I had completed my coursework at Ohio State and my
Speaker 3: wife and I were relocating to Connecticut for a year
Speaker 3: where I was doing my one year predoctoral internship at
Speaker 3: a state psychiatric hospital, and I did continue corresponding with
Speaker 3: Gasey after our move, but I had set a goal
Speaker 3: for myself of completing my dissertation during that year, which
Speaker 3: was a lot of upcoming work. And I finally just
Speaker 3: decided I had learned over time. And I don't know
Speaker 3: whether this is obvious, but corresponding with these people requires
Speaker 3: a fair amount of time and energy and emphasis on
Speaker 3: the word energy, and I just didn't have it anymore.
Speaker 3: With Gay. I was kind of weary. I'd heard his
Speaker 3: rationalizations and his expressions of aggrievement many many times by then,
Speaker 3: and I just had other things to occupy my time.
Speaker 3: I had spent the four days with him, and those
Speaker 3: had been sobering experiences for me. In a way, I
Speaker 3: was green, and I didn't fully recognize how vulnerable I
Speaker 3: was at the time, but I recognized some degree of vulnerability.
Speaker 3: I had decided I was not going to go back
Speaker 3: there again, though Gasey urged me to, And as I
Speaker 3: write in my book late later on, when I read
Speaker 3: the book of someone else who had had visits with
Speaker 3: Gasey much much closer to the time of Gasey's execution
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four, at a time when Gasey would
Speaker 3: have known that the gig was about up, that his
Speaker 3: appeals were over and he was going to be executed.
Speaker 3: Gasey behaved in a way that when I read about it,
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, I really put myself in harm's way.
Speaker 3: There were no guards anywhere around during the entire time
Speaker 3: I spent with Gasey. We were very isolated and death row,
Speaker 3: and looking back, I know.
Speaker 2: I was very vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Could have gotten myself killed in a way that I
Speaker 3: didn't understand at the time. But Gasey, at the time
Speaker 3: of my visits to him, still held out some hope,
Speaker 3: no matter how fragile, that maybe he could get some
Speaker 3: relief through the appellate process at least have his death
Speaker 3: sentence reversed. So he was on his best behavior, she
Speaker 3: was not closer to the time of his execution.
Speaker 2: You're right about what you are referring to, and that's
Speaker 2: Jason Moss. Unlike yourself, he decides to use a ploy
Speaker 2: to attract Gasey in correspondence and then ends up visiting
Speaker 2: him as well. That was the difference in the approach
Speaker 2: that you use used and he used to try to
Speaker 2: solicit Gasey and interview him well.
Speaker 3: In a very deliberate way. And Moss was working under
Speaker 3: the advisorship of a well known psychologist named Jeffrey Coddler.
Speaker 3: He was in college in Las Vegas. But Moss's idea
Speaker 3: for an honors project was that he was he would
Speaker 3: posture as the ideal victim for a number of serial killers,
Speaker 3: and his eventual book, called The Last Victim, focuses mainly
Speaker 3: on Gasey. But in writing to Gasey, he presented himself
Speaker 3: as a sexually confused member of a dysfunctional family, and
Speaker 3: Gasey took the bait right away, and before long they
Speaker 3: were trading pornographic fantasies. Gasey was encouraging him to initiate
Speaker 3: a sexual relationship with his younger brother, and when Moss
Speaker 3: went to visit Gasey, and of course I'm reading about
Speaker 3: all of this years after my encounters with Gasey, about
Speaker 3: oh five, six, seven years seven years after maybe well,
Speaker 3: actually the book came even later. The Moss's contacts with
Speaker 3: Gasey were about seven years after mine. The book came
Speaker 3: a few years after that. But so I'm reading about
Speaker 3: this long after my contacts with Gasey. But when Moss
Speaker 3: goes to visit Gasey, Gasey, you know, greets him with
Speaker 3: a not immediately, but a little ways into their first day,
Speaker 3: with a torrent of verbal and emotional abuse and threatens
Speaker 3: to rape him and says he could do it and
Speaker 3: get away with it. The guards are nowhere near there.
Speaker 3: They couldn't stop it. There's no way they'd be able
Speaker 3: to stop it before it happened. And at the end
Speaker 3: of that first day's visit, Gasey gave Moss a bracelet
Speaker 3: that he asked him to wear when he came back
Speaker 3: the next day, and he reached down into his pants
Speaker 3: and pulled a pair of bikini underwear out of his
Speaker 3: own underwear and gave it to Moss and told him
Speaker 3: he wanted him to wear it the next day. And
Speaker 3: Moss told him he wore the bikini underwear, which he
Speaker 3: did not, but he did have the bracelet on when
Speaker 3: he went back to see him the next day, and
Speaker 3: you know, they were just short of It was either
Speaker 3: going to be a fight, and Moss was trained in
Speaker 3: martial arts, so he thought he was going to have
Speaker 3: to fight Gasey. But Gasey you know, did things like
Speaker 3: when they shook hands, stroked the inside of his palm
Speaker 3: with his finger, went to kiss his neck at one
Speaker 3: point when he was standing behind Moss and again told
Speaker 3: him I'm going to lay you out and rape you
Speaker 3: in this space, and there's no one here who can
Speaker 3: stop it. And Moss was so freaked out. Eventually, a
Speaker 3: guard came at just the right time and stopped this.
Speaker 3: And I mean wasn't aware of it happening, but the
Speaker 3: guard's arrival stopped Gacy. And then Moss was supposed to
Speaker 3: return for a third day and didn't do it because
Speaker 3: he was so totally freaked out by what occurred. And
Speaker 3: I was freaked out, frankly when I read that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an incredible story. Yeah, you take us to
Speaker 2: late nineteen ninety one now and a chapter you call
Speaker 2: The Sniper, tell us about your involvement with Thomas Lee
Speaker 2: Dillon and your role and consulting at this point in
Speaker 2: your career.
Speaker 3: Well, by that time, I had obtained my PhD from
Speaker 3: Ohio State, but I was still very new in practice.
Speaker 3: I'd only been licensed for practice little over a year,
Speaker 3: as I recall, but I had given a talk to
Speaker 3: a group of a statewide group of mitigation specialists. And
Speaker 3: mitigation specialists are people who work with defense attorneys in
Speaker 3: death penalty cases. They collect records, they do family interviews.
Speaker 3: Their job is to basically assemble the information to help
Speaker 3: the defense attorneys understand the backgrounds of their clients. And
Speaker 3: I had given a talk to this group of mitigation
Speaker 3: specialists and mentioned my contacts with Gacy and Bundy and Manson,
Speaker 3: and so there was this highly publicized case. There were
Speaker 3: a series of sniper shootings in five different counties in
Speaker 3: the eastern part of Ohio, and they were fascinating because
Speaker 3: there was no indication that the shooter had had any
Speaker 3: interactions with the victims, most of them except for the
Speaker 3: first one who was shot at on the road side
Speaker 3: when he was jogging, but most of these were two
Speaker 3: three hundred feet off the road, killed with a high
Speaker 3: powered rifle. And eventually the authorities in these different counties,
Speaker 3: who you know, were a little slow to communicate with
Speaker 3: one another initially and connect these crimes, but they eventually
Speaker 3: one of the murders took place on federal property, which
Speaker 3: brought the FBI in, and then a task force was
Speaker 3: assembled and they announced that they had decided there was
Speaker 3: a serial killer at work in eastern Ohio, and the
Speaker 3: case got a tremendous amount of publicity, and then eventually
Speaker 3: they arrested a man named Thomas Lee Dillon, who was
Speaker 3: a twenty year employee of the Canton Water Department. He
Speaker 3: was married, lived in a very well kept up house
Speaker 3: in a rural suburb south of Canton. He had a
Speaker 3: ten year old son, a group of friends who he
Speaker 3: played tennis with sometimes. And once Dylan was arrested, the
Speaker 3: couple people who had attended this presentation I had given
Speaker 3: spoke with his attorneys and said, you know, this guy
Speaker 3: hasn't been in practice very long, but he's got a
Speaker 3: history of dealing with serial killers. Jeff Smalden would be
Speaker 3: a good defense expert. So they applied for funding from
Speaker 3: the court and I was appointed as the defense psychological
Speaker 3: expert and spent a fair amount of time with Dylan.
Speaker 3: I didn't do all of the things I would have
Speaker 3: liked to do as the defense expert, because the case
Speaker 3: ended when Dylan finally pled guilty to five counts of
Speaker 3: aggravated murder, which obviated the need for a trial, and
Speaker 3: so I never testified. But before that happened. You know,
Speaker 3: I did a fair amount of work on the case.
Speaker 2: He had originally come to the attention of the stifled
Speaker 2: authorities when he contacted the newspaper, and then there was
Speaker 2: some clues that he left. But he also, during his incarceration,
Speaker 2: was infatuated with a journalist and gave her some information.
Speaker 3: Correct on both counts. Dan I believe she was acting
Speaker 3: on the recommendation of some law enforcement officials, But the
Speaker 3: mother of one of his victims, the youngest of his victims,
Speaker 3: reasoned that there was a good chance that he was
Speaker 3: following local news coverage of the case, which turned out
Speaker 3: to be correct, and she wrote a series of letters
Speaker 3: to the newspaper which she intended as bait, hoping that
Speaker 3: he would you make himself known, and he did. He
Speaker 3: couldn't resist. He eventually answered her letter and heard her
Speaker 3: son's name. The victim had been Jamie Paxton, and he
Speaker 3: announced himself right away, I'm the murderer of Jamie Paxton.
Speaker 3: And then he went on to sort of pontificate, how
Speaker 3: you know, given the technical definition of a serial killer,
Speaker 3: I guess I am one. And he said I thought
Speaker 3: no more of killing Jamie Paxton than I would of
Speaker 3: shooting a bottle at the dump, you know, just a
Speaker 3: sort of deliberately cruel, provocative statement intended for the mother
Speaker 3: of this victim. And then one thing that really got
Speaker 3: the attention of the authorities. And again I see it
Speaker 3: as that serial killer's tease these guys. Dylan was very smart,
Speaker 3: IQ of about one hundred and forty five. He was
Speaker 3: a graduate of Ohio State's journalism School, which we'll get
Speaker 3: to in a second. But he, you know, he thinks
Speaker 3: he's smarter than the authorities, and he loves this cat
Speaker 3: and mouse game of hiding in plain sight. So he
Speaker 3: embeds in his letter the statement, Okay, now you know
Speaker 3: some information about what happened to your son, but you
Speaker 3: still don't know the who, what, where, when and why?
Speaker 3: You know journalism terms, right, and like who talks that way?
Speaker 3: And the authority said, what is this? You know, why
Speaker 3: did he say that? And then later, of course, when
Speaker 3: they learned he was a graduate of Ohio State's journalism school,
Speaker 3: it made sense that he would have said, but you
Speaker 3: don't know the who, where, why, when? How So I
Speaker 3: think Dylan enjoyed himself when he wrote that letter. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then eventually when he actually had just pled guilty to
Speaker 3: these five counts of aggravated murder, and he had become
Speaker 3: infatuated with this local newscaster from Steubenville, Ohio, had a
Speaker 3: picture of her up in his cell even and she
Speaker 3: had requested an interview with him, and he agreed, and
Speaker 3: so they met at the jail where he was being
Speaker 3: kept in Caldwell, Ohio. And I have a tape of
Speaker 3: that interview, and there are some fascinating things in there
Speaker 3: that stick out of my mind. But one of them
Speaker 3: in particular, and it sort of harkens back to the
Speaker 3: anecdote I told about Gasey where he says, those kids
Speaker 3: are no more real to me than and he points
Speaker 3: to the picture of the dwarfs and says, than those
Speaker 3: cartoon characters. This woman interviewing Dylan says, so when you're
Speaker 3: lying in bed at night, do you think of these
Speaker 3: people you killed? And Dylan just kind of got sort
Speaker 3: of like the question didn't quite land with him. He
Speaker 3: got sort of a confused look on his face, and
Speaker 3: then he shrugs and says, Nah, not really. I don't
Speaker 3: think of them as individuals. I just think of them
Speaker 3: as a group. And I remember thinking, what a strange
Speaker 3: thing to say, and he didn't even show any sign
Speaker 3: that he understood that most people would view that as
Speaker 3: a bizarre thing to say. I don't think of them
Speaker 3: as individuals.
Speaker 2: You're right that he was very cooperative in talking about
Speaker 2: his formative years, in his psychological development, his fantasies. But
Speaker 2: he also you noted that he thought he wanted to
Speaker 2: be known as such a unique killer because he had
Speaker 2: no motive.
Speaker 3: Seemingly exactly he would if he said once, He said
Speaker 3: at least ten times while he and I were talking,
Speaker 3: has there ever been a crime like this before? Has
Speaker 3: there ever been a murder like this before? Has there
Speaker 3: ever been anything in Ohio like this before? No relationship
Speaker 3: with the victims, you know, they're all strangers. He clearly
Speaker 3: was thinking in terms of a unique niche for himself.
Speaker 3: And at one point, because I knew that a lot
Speaker 3: of these people who commit serial murder are students of
Speaker 3: other serial murder cases, I tried to find out how
Speaker 3: much he knew about other cases and how interested he was,
Speaker 3: and I said, so, do you read much about serial murder?
Speaker 3: And his initial response was no, not really, And then
Speaker 3: before long it became clear to me that not only
Speaker 3: did he read about him. He was sort of a
Speaker 3: walking encyclopedia about them, and he said all kinds of
Speaker 3: interesting things about cases that he had read about, including
Speaker 3: we were talking about the Leopold and Loeb case, you know,
Speaker 3: the two brilliant young men near Chicago who set out
Speaker 3: to commit the perfect crime and screwed up by leaving
Speaker 3: behind a pair of eyeglasses. But Dylan, after we talked
Speaker 3: about that case for a while, he said, you know,
Speaker 3: that idea of murder as a mental exercise, that's something
Speaker 3: that I can relate to. And like you said, that
Speaker 3: idea of the killer sort of abstracted from the case,
Speaker 3: no motive, no relationship with the victims, no contact with
Speaker 3: the victims. That was attractive to Dylan, and he admitted,
Speaker 3: as much, you know, murder is a mental exercise.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, finally, let's talk about as you do.
Speaker 2: August nineteen eighty seven, a former nursing assistant, Donald Harvey,
Speaker 2: led guilty to killing thirty seven patients and admitted he
Speaker 2: killed many more, and he committed the vast majority of
Speaker 2: murders during appointment at two Cincinnati area hospitals. You right
Speaker 2: for you. The Harvey story was irresistible. Tell us why.
Speaker 3: When I was in graduate school in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 3: when Donald Harvey led guilty to these I believe thirty
Speaker 3: seven murders and told authorities that he had committed many
Speaker 3: more than that, and it was irresistible to me. He
Speaker 3: had allegedly committed most of his murders at two hospitals
Speaker 3: that were not far down I seventy one from where
Speaker 3: I lived in Columbus, and I knew at the time
Speaker 3: that he was being held at the maximum security Lucasville Prison.
Speaker 3: So I decided to reach out to him in the
Speaker 3: same way I had ted Bundy and then John Wayne Gacy,
Speaker 3: thinking that there were probably some things that I could
Speaker 3: learn from him. And he didn't respond to that letter
Speaker 3: at all, So I kind of filed it to the side,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, I was in graduate school at
Speaker 3: the time, and I thought maybe there'll be another opportunity.
Speaker 3: And so later, after I had been in practice, I
Speaker 3: believe about four years, this was after my involvement in
Speaker 3: the Thomas Lee Dillon case, I decided to have another
Speaker 3: go at Harvey. And by then I knew the importance
Speaker 3: of working through an inmate's attorney if they still had
Speaker 3: an attorney of record. So I contacted William Whalen, who
Speaker 3: was based in Cincinnati and who I knew had been
Speaker 3: his attorney at the level of his at the time
Speaker 3: of his trial. And I asked, mister Whalen, do you
Speaker 3: think Donald Harvey would be willing to talk with me?
Speaker 3: And if he would be, would you be willing to
Speaker 3: sponsor such an interview? And he said yeah, I would
Speaker 3: have no objection to it at all, as long as
Speaker 3: you allowed me to be present. And I said I
Speaker 3: would have no difficulty with that at all. And he said,
Speaker 3: let me talk with Donald and get back to you.
Speaker 3: So he did about two weeks later, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's willing to talk with you, and he gave me
Speaker 3: a few dates, so I picked one and we arranged
Speaker 3: a time to meet. Harvey was no longer at Lucasville,
Speaker 3: the maximum security prison. He was at Warren Correctional Facility,
Speaker 3: also in southern Ohio. So I met mister Whalen there
Speaker 3: and bend about three hours with Harvey. And I call
Speaker 3: that chapter of my book a contented Killer, because I
Speaker 3: mean Harvey basked in the attention. Clearly loved talking about
Speaker 3: these murders, never expressed an iota of remorse for any
Speaker 3: of them, even the most gruesome that he described with
Speaker 3: the matter of fact manner that most people would use
Speaker 3: to describe putting together the ingredients for a meal. He
Speaker 3: was very, very boyish looking, totally unthreatening seeming young man
Speaker 3: who just spoke with extraordinary candor and casualness about these
Speaker 3: many lives he had taken.
Speaker 2: You said he had an uncanny memory, and especially about
Speaker 2: the details of those murders he did.
Speaker 3: He would even talk about these occurred in healthcare facilities,
Speaker 3: and in some cases he could recall the room number
Speaker 3: of the person that he killed. He occasionally became confused
Speaker 3: about the method of killing. He would say, you know,
Speaker 3: to be honest, I can't I can't be sure if
Speaker 3: I smothered him with his pillow, or if I injected
Speaker 3: poison into one of the IV lines. He could occasionally
Speaker 3: become confused about that. But yeah, he had an uncanny
Speaker 3: memory for little details.
Speaker 2: Getting away with so many murders for so long. Even
Speaker 2: though some coworkers did suspect him, he didn't know that
Speaker 2: he felt, as he writes, and he says, he told
Speaker 2: you he felt invincible, didn't.
Speaker 3: He He did, and he loved that sense of power
Speaker 3: and control. And even though he presented with his very
Speaker 3: moderate temperament, the smile seldom left his face during the
Speaker 3: three hours I spent with him, and he talked about
Speaker 3: these murders, but he clearly reveled in being able to
Speaker 3: put something over on people with more education than he had,
Speaker 3: more authority in the hospital hierarchy, and he believed it
Speaker 3: was unfair that he would have to cover on weekends
Speaker 3: for some of these physicians who were out golfing. And
Speaker 3: he loved the idea that he could get away with this,
Speaker 3: and that, you know, as you said, even though some
Speaker 3: of the employees began to suspect him, he didn't know that.
Speaker 3: He thought he was on top of the world and
Speaker 3: nobody was smart, no one was as smart as he
Speaker 3: was and could detect him.
Speaker 2: In the end of this book, you talk about how
Speaker 2: you decided from an early age to live venturously, and
Speaker 2: you say it was no surprise that you wound up
Speaker 2: being a forensic psychologist. Tell us about your track record,
Speaker 2: the murders that you investigated and the cases that you
Speaker 2: were involved with, well, I ended up.
Speaker 3: Being involved as a consultant on close to three hundred
Speaker 3: death penalty cases. I also worked on many other kinds
Speaker 3: of cases, both criminal and civil, competency to stand trial,
Speaker 3: criminal responsibility aka sanity, sex offender risk assessment cases. I
Speaker 3: was the courts expert in well over one thousand child
Speaker 3: custody cases. And when I say that I decided at
Speaker 3: an early age to live venturously, well, what I mean
Speaker 3: by that is that I always was straining against the
Speaker 3: outer boundaries of the world my very conservative parents had
Speaker 3: in mind for me. And I don't mean that as
Speaker 3: criticism of my parents at all, but I just was,
Speaker 3: you know. I say in the book how I looked
Speaker 3: forward to episodes of outer Limits and Twilight Zone because
Speaker 3: they hinted at the possibility that those boundaries could be
Speaker 3: pushed back. And throughout my life I made a lot
Speaker 3: of choices that involved a degree of risk and speculation
Speaker 3: on my part about how things were going to play out,
Speaker 3: and dealt with a lot of uncertainty. But I tried
Speaker 3: to live venturously in the sense that I sought out
Speaker 3: uncommon experiences that I thought would be edifying to me
Speaker 3: in some way, and they would involve a level of
Speaker 3: excitement for me as well.
Speaker 2: In closing, tell us about how the murder case of
Speaker 2: Patty maddox and Joyce McFadden and your investigation further of
Speaker 2: that case really led you somehow to your calling as
Speaker 2: a forensic psychologist.
Speaker 3: Well, that case changed My life changed. It's strange how
Speaker 3: something happens, and in retrospect you can see how everything
Speaker 3: else changed as a result of that. As a result
Speaker 3: of those murders, I decided to leave the field of
Speaker 3: healthcare administration and pursue my PhD and a career in
Speaker 3: forensic psychology. The thing that I haven't mentioned about that
Speaker 3: case that sort of played into my fascination with are
Speaker 3: inability often to make correct judgments about people based on
Speaker 3: the kinds of superficial cues that govern most of our
Speaker 3: interpersonal relationships. After the murder of Joyce McFadden and Patty Maddox,
Speaker 3: I remember attending the memorial service at the hospital for
Speaker 3: the two women and shaking the hands of the two
Speaker 3: apparently bereft husbands who appeared shattered and probably still in
Speaker 3: shock from the murders, and offering my condolences. And I'm
Speaker 3: going to focus on Bill Maddox because I have more
Speaker 3: to say about him. It won't take me long. But
Speaker 3: he was known to be very conservative, a churchgoer, Baptist.
Speaker 3: He and his wife had a four month old daughter.
Speaker 3: There was no reason, at least at least no reason
Speaker 3: I knew of to suspect that he could possibly have
Speaker 3: had anything to do with the murder of his wife.
Speaker 3: But about you know, two and a half years later,
Speaker 3: when I hear about the shootout in Florida involving Bill Maddox,
Speaker 3: and I realized that the person all of us thought
Speaker 3: Bill Maddox was was a very far cry from the
Speaker 3: person he really was. You know, that really helped sort
Speaker 3: of solidify the questioning part of my journey, where I wondered,
Speaker 3: you know, who are these people and how can we
Speaker 3: pick them out from all the other people around us?
Speaker 2: Tell us about your decision to finally write this book
Speaker 2: and have it published.
Speaker 3: Well, the idea of writing a book had been percolating
Speaker 3: in my mind for quite a while, probably from maybe
Speaker 3: a decade into my career as a forensic psychologist, because
Speaker 3: I knew that I had accumulated a lot of uncommon
Speaker 3: experiences that I I hoped I would be able to
Speaker 3: relate in a way that would engage an audience of readers.
Speaker 3: Back then, I didn't have in mind just writing a
Speaker 3: book about killers, like I thought about longstanding interest in
Speaker 3: fundamentalist snake candlers, sideshow performers and the people who flocked
Speaker 3: to see them, and the interesting dynamic between performer and audience,
Speaker 3: and a lot of just unusual things, kind of pockets
Speaker 3: of American culture that had intrigued me at various times.
Speaker 3: And when I finally in earnest began to write this book,
Speaker 3: and it was around the time of the onset of
Speaker 3: the pandemic where that kind of created the scene where
Speaker 3: I was able to find the discipline and time to
Speaker 3: really work on this book. I decided I had too
Speaker 3: much material if I used that kind of wide range
Speaker 3: lens lens to look at the experiences of my life,
Speaker 3: and that's when I decided to narrow my focus and
Speaker 3: specifically deal with my five decades of conversations and interactions
Speaker 3: with killers.
Speaker 2: It certainly is an extraordinary experience interviewing the people that
Speaker 2: you do and this book as a result. I want
Speaker 2: to thank you very much for coming on and talking
Speaker 2: about your book. The Beast was not me One Forensic Psychologist,
Speaker 2: Five decades of Conversations with Killers. For those that might
Speaker 2: want to find out more information about this book, do
Speaker 2: you have a website and do you do any social media?
Speaker 3: I do have a website. It's Jeffrey J. E. F
Speaker 3: F R E Y Smolden sm A L L d
Speaker 3: O N dot com. There's a lot of background information there,
Speaker 3: a lot of information about this book. Not realactive on
Speaker 3: soccial media, though I do participate on Instagram and Facebook,
Speaker 3: so your listeners who may be interested will be able
Speaker 3: to find me there as well as at my website.
Speaker 3: My book is available on Amazon through Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 3: also directly from Black Line and Publishing which published it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jeffrey L. Smaalden. The Beast was
Speaker 2: not me. One Forensic Psychologist, Five decades of Conversations with Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 2: a great evening and good night. Thanks very much, Dan,
Speaker 2: Thank you,