Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappan
Speaker 2: Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The
Speaker 2: case went cold, no suspect, no answers, no closure, but
Speaker 2: never gave up trying to find her father's killer. Fifty
Speaker 2: years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and
Speaker 2: identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never
Speaker 2: released to the public. Hall was shot twice. A Second
Speaker 2: Shot by doctor Michael Wiseberg is a gripping true crime
Speaker 2: story of justice delayed but not denied, and a deeply
Speaker 2: personal tale of second chances for both a grieving family
Speaker 2: and the author himself. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 2: evening is a Second Shot, The Pursuit of justice in
Speaker 2: Maryland's oldest cold case murder. With my special guest author
Speaker 2: Michael F. Wisberg. Welcome to the program, and thank you
Speaker 2: very much for this interview. Michael F.
Speaker 3: Weisberg, Thank you very much, Dan for inviting me.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and congratulations on your book A
Speaker 2: Second Shot.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Now, I understand you are a doctor, a gastro enterologist,
Speaker 2: and you have a patient named Anna Hall who was
Speaker 2: referred to by a colleague. Tell us about how you
Speaker 2: became involved in the author of this book.
Speaker 4: Anna Hall was the only patient ever sent to me
Speaker 4: by her doctor. It just happened that she came to
Speaker 4: see me as an elderly woman, and when she came,
Speaker 4: she came with her daughter, Carolyn Filo. Carolyn decided that
Speaker 4: she liked the way I took care of her mother,
Speaker 4: so she asked me to be her doctor as well.
Speaker 4: I took care of her for over thirty years until
Speaker 4: one day in twoenty and twenty two, she came to
Speaker 4: me and told me that her father, who had been
Speaker 4: murdered in nineteen seventy one, over fifty years before, and
Speaker 4: the case had gone cold for fifty years. That the detectives,
Speaker 4: three female detectives, had come together and had been able
Speaker 4: to figure out by re looking at the case, the
Speaker 4: clue that everyone else had missed, they'd been able to
Speaker 4: solve the case, obtain a confession, and now she wanted
Speaker 4: a book to be written.
Speaker 3: About the case.
Speaker 4: And because she'd enjoyed my two novels that I had
Speaker 4: written previously, The Hospitalist, and in the end, she wanted
Speaker 4: me to write the book.
Speaker 2: You didn't immediately agree to write this book. What things
Speaker 2: did you have to consider before agreeing to write this book?
Speaker 4: I was not a journalist, and it sounded like it
Speaker 4: was the kind of book that would be a journalist.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed doing fiction for my imagination, this would be
Speaker 4: a true story. It would require a lot of research
Speaker 4: and a lot of interviews, and I know if I
Speaker 4: had these skills to be able to do that. But
Speaker 4: finally she convinced me that the story was already there
Speaker 4: for me. The murderer had confessed, he had waived extradition,
Speaker 4: Everyone would be willing to talk to me, including the
Speaker 4: detectives and prosecutors. The case was there and just needed
Speaker 4: to be written. So that's what convinced me that I
Speaker 4: could go ahead and do it. It was just a matter
Speaker 4: of taking the story and put it into a way
Speaker 4: that would be appealing to readers.
Speaker 2: Now you're right about the first meeting May one, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. You flew from Dallas to Washington, DC, which
Speaker 2: is about you saying put a thirty minute train ride
Speaker 2: from Rockville, where this murder happened originally, and you went
Speaker 2: to the Pilos and their family and went to meet them.
Speaker 2: Caroline and Bob tell us about this meeting and what
Speaker 2: happened at that meeting.
Speaker 4: Carol and Bob picked me up at the metro station
Speaker 4: in Gaithersburg, and they took me to the courthouse where
Speaker 4: we were going to meet with the sheriff. Sheriff you
Speaker 4: who met with us and talked to us the about
Speaker 4: his understanding of the case, what had happened to Carolyn's father,
Speaker 4: Captain J. T. Smith, James T. Smith, who was a
Speaker 4: deputy sheriff. And then I was going to meet with
Speaker 4: the prosecutors and talk to the detectives. The prosecutor came
Speaker 4: in be prosecutor. Prosecutor who was prosecuting the case, Donald Fenton,
Speaker 4: came into the meeting room, and I introduced myself and
Speaker 4: talked to her and told her I was recording things,
Speaker 4: and she informed me that I could not record anything,
Speaker 4: that the case was now going to be contested, that
Speaker 4: the suspect had withdrawn his guilty plead, and that a
Speaker 4: private law firm from Washington, d c. Which with my
Speaker 4: research I found was one of the top law firms
Speaker 4: in the world, Covington and Berling, was going to take
Speaker 4: his case. And so since it was now going to
Speaker 4: be prosecuted, that no one could give me any information,
Speaker 4: and that I would just have to follow along and
Speaker 4: write the book as things went along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things have changed from their original prognosis of this
Speaker 2: case exactly. Now, let's get to October twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one and the night of the murder.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, James T.
Speaker 4: Hall was a gentleman who worked on bus transmissions for
Speaker 4: a company called Metro Transit. But he also had a
Speaker 4: job as a deputy sheriff. And he got that job
Speaker 4: by working security at a amusement park in that area.
Speaker 4: And they also had them working security at the Manor
Speaker 4: Country Club. There was a beautiful country club where they'd
Speaker 4: had in the area quite a few break ins and
Speaker 4: different things going on, and so they wanted to have
Speaker 4: deputy sheriffs patrolling that area to keep an eye on
Speaker 4: things that also had reports and people trying to break
Speaker 4: into the coke machines at the country club, people doing vandalism.
Speaker 4: He wasn't sup to work that night, he was off,
Speaker 4: but he was called thirty minutes before the shift started
Speaker 4: by the sheriff who was supposed to work, Sheriff Jim Young,
Speaker 4: who asked him to work and said he had a
Speaker 4: family mat matter to ten to two, So he left.
Speaker 3: James Hall left his family at the house.
Speaker 4: It was a rainy, dark night, got his raincoat, got
Speaker 4: his flashlight, gun pipe which he loved to smoke, got
Speaker 4: in his car and drove to the Manor Country Club
Speaker 4: where seven o'clock to one o'clock shift where he would
Speaker 4: be in charge of patrolling around the parking lot at
Speaker 4: the country club.
Speaker 2: And keeping an eye on things and what happens during
Speaker 2: the course of the night.
Speaker 4: During the night about four and a half, about three
Speaker 4: and a half hours into his shift, at ten point thirty,
Speaker 4: he apparently got out of his car and saw something
Speaker 4: in the area of the parking lot next to the
Speaker 4: golf course. He started walking over there and probably saw
Speaker 4: things that were there were household items that were sacked
Speaker 4: up in that area, and they included a jack, lantern
Speaker 4: and a step stool, as well as other things, and
Speaker 4: apparently he saw someone and said what are you doing?
Speaker 3: A shot rang out and hit his flash flight, which
Speaker 3: he turned on to be able to see things on
Speaker 3: this rainy, dark night, and knocked it ten feet out
Speaker 3: of his arms. Behind him.
Speaker 4: He turned, probably to get away, and as he turned
Speaker 4: to get away, a shot was fired, the second shot
Speaker 4: which hit him in the back of the head, in
Speaker 4: the lower part on the left side of his back
Speaker 4: of his head, and went all the way through his
Speaker 4: head scullen brain to where it lodged behind his right eyebrow.
Speaker 4: He fell to the ground and was found there on
Speaker 4: the ground, still breathing barely, by a couple who are
Speaker 4: coming back from a date, and then by five boys
Speaker 4: who were trying to vandalize the coke machines that night
Speaker 4: and who had left because they'd heard sirens which turned
Speaker 4: out to be fire trucks, but then came back and
Speaker 4: found him his body lying there. They went into the
Speaker 4: country club and had the operator call for the police
Speaker 4: and ambulance to come get him, and they saved with
Speaker 4: the body until they.
Speaker 2: Came now you're right about the family. A call to
Speaker 2: the family about JT's shooting and requesting a rush to
Speaker 2: the hospital.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: The children, the grandchildren were staying with the grandmother, Anna Hall,
Speaker 4: and the Rob Bob and Carolyn Filo had gone out
Speaker 4: on a date and were at their own house. The
Speaker 4: call went to Bob Filo, who was a canine officer
Speaker 4: and then a police officer, and he and Carolyn called
Speaker 4: Anna Hall and then went and picked her up and
Speaker 4: they went to the hospital where JT was in the
Speaker 4: emergency room. A surgeon, a neurosurgeon, came in dressed in
Speaker 4: a tuxedo, examined JT.
Speaker 3: Examined, looked at the.
Speaker 4: X rays that had been done, and pulled Bob to
Speaker 4: the side and said he's not going to make it.
Speaker 4: There's no brain function. He at that time was on
Speaker 4: a ventilator because he couldn't breathe and to protect his airway,
Speaker 4: and he eventually ended up saying three days in the
Speaker 4: hospital before it was there was still no brain function,
Speaker 4: no hope for any recovery, so he was taken off
Speaker 4: the ventilator and within a half an hour he died.
Speaker 2: You say there's a funeral October twenty ninth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: But also let's talk about Robert Filo Junior, JT's son
Speaker 2: in law now at Rockville. He's offering a reward for
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars, but the newspapers refused to publicize it.
Speaker 2: Explain who Robert is at that time, where he's working
Speaker 2: at that time, and tell us about this reward dispute.
Speaker 4: It was actually working at the same police station from
Speaker 4: Montgomery County that the detective who was assigned to the case,
Speaker 4: ow Sweat was working, so they fairly quickly moved Robert
Speaker 4: out to another station so he could not be around it.
Speaker 4: He could not ask questions about the case. What he
Speaker 4: did do was he and the family in the funeral
Speaker 4: notice in the obituary said that rather than anybody sending flowers,
Speaker 4: they wanted people to contribute to a fund to try
Speaker 4: to find the killer of James T. Hall. The country
Speaker 4: club man or country club also said they would match
Speaker 4: with the amount that was raised. A thousand dollars were raised,
Speaker 4: was raised, and they contributed a thousand dollars in the
Speaker 4: country club, so he had a two thousand dollars reward.
Speaker 4: They asked the police chief at that time to publicize that,
Speaker 4: but for some reason it was not done. They would
Speaker 4: not do an article about it at all, and Bob
Speaker 4: became very disillusioned. As he said in an interview about
Speaker 4: seven years later when he was practicing law, and he
Speaker 4: said they had two dogs that had been murdered around
Speaker 4: the same time. They offered a fifty dollars reward for
Speaker 4: whoever found who had killed these two dogs. That was
Speaker 4: put into the newspaper and publicized. But this reward for JT.
Speaker 4: Hall's murder, finding the murder suspect or finding who had
Speaker 4: done it was never publicized.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to how JT was found and in
Speaker 2: what condition, And also we have to mention the reason
Speaker 2: for the patrol for the sheriff Department to be hired
Speaker 2: at this Manor County country Club was that there was
Speaker 2: people breaking into the soda machines and other various theft
Speaker 2: and robbery or burglaries in the area. Tell us about
Speaker 2: the Soda machine gang and actually who found JT and
Speaker 2: reported to police.
Speaker 4: Well, the driver of the car of the soda machine
Speaker 4: gang was a man named a young man named Norman
Speaker 4: Shoemaker and his father was actually also a policeman with
Speaker 4: Montgomery County, but he was known as being someone who
Speaker 4: was constantly in trouble with the law. There were other
Speaker 4: boys in the car with and one of them was
Speaker 4: named Robert Cannaveri, and they had just broken into some
Speaker 4: laundry machines at a different location when they decided to
Speaker 4: come over and break into the coke machines that night.
Speaker 4: So they're breaking into the coke machines when they heard sirens.
Speaker 4: They were unsuccessful in breaking in, but they got into
Speaker 4: the car drove away, but then we're able to pass
Speaker 4: by the sirens, which were coming from fire trucks, so
Speaker 4: they came back. When they drove back, they found something
Speaker 4: that they thought was just a bunch of garbage in
Speaker 4: the middle of the parking lot, and they could have
Speaker 4: almost run over it, but they got out of the
Speaker 4: car and they realized that it was the deputy sheriff,
Speaker 4: dressed in his yellow raincoat.
Speaker 3: His hat was off, his head was bleeding.
Speaker 4: There was blood everywhere, but there was so much rain
Speaker 4: it was washing.
Speaker 3: The blood away.
Speaker 4: He was lying with his head at about a forty
Speaker 4: five degree angle and barely breathing. The boy, Robert Cannaveri,
Speaker 4: stayed with him and held his head to try to
Speaker 4: help him breathe, while the other four boys who were
Speaker 4: part of this was called the Coke Machine Gang, who
Speaker 4: were breaking into the Coke Machine that night, all went
Speaker 4: into the country club to tell them to a call
Speaker 4: for police and an ambulance. It's happened that they had
Speaker 4: been beaten there by a couple who had come across
Speaker 4: the body a few seconds before and who were out
Speaker 4: on a date, and they had also gone in and
Speaker 4: asked the operator to call. He was barely breathing, there
Speaker 4: was blood everywhere. The rain was washing everything away, and
Speaker 4: they stayed with him until the boys and the couple
Speaker 4: stayed with him until the ambulance arrived to take him away.
Speaker 2: So how did police proceed with this case? Before we
Speaker 2: talk about it going cool?
Speaker 4: That night, there was Sheriff Boone who was sorry's gonna
Speaker 4: be off. Detective Boone who was in charge of this
Speaker 4: crime scene, and he tried to rope things off and
Speaker 4: keep things as safe as possible. They were able to
Speaker 4: find that night a gun, which as it turned out,
Speaker 4: belonged to James T.
Speaker 3: Hall, and when they.
Speaker 4: Moved his body they found it underneath him. It was
Speaker 4: outside of his jackets. We'd probably reached for it after
Speaker 4: the first gun shot. The also were able to find
Speaker 4: the flashlight, which had been knocked out of his hand
Speaker 4: by a gunshot, about ten to twenty feet away from
Speaker 4: the body. And they also found his pipe which he
Speaker 4: probably instead of pulling out the gun, pulled out his
Speaker 4: pipe which he loved to smoke, and that was in
Speaker 4: a water drainage that was about defeat away from the body.
Speaker 4: The rain had washed all the way down far away
Speaker 4: from the body. Detectives that night were they're called ow Sweat,
Speaker 4: who was the lead detective on the case. He was
Speaker 4: a gentleman who was considered their top homicide detective. He
Speaker 4: had done about forty cases in his career, and when
Speaker 4: I talked to him, he told me that he had closed,
Speaker 4: which in their parlance means he had solved thirty nine
Speaker 4: of them.
Speaker 3: But the one he never closed and he wanted to
Speaker 3: close the most was Bob Filo, who was working in
Speaker 3: the same district office as him, his father in law, JT. Hall.
Speaker 4: So what he did was he interviewed, he said seventy
Speaker 4: five to one hundred people. They did looked at the
Speaker 4: crime scene, they looked for any kind of physical evidence,
Speaker 4: but there was absolutely no physical evidence they could find.
Speaker 3: There were no fingerprints.
Speaker 4: Anything the possible could have been a fingerprint probably was
Speaker 4: washed away. They interviewed everyone there, include the Coke machine boys.
Speaker 4: They went and interviewed neighbors, and they could not find
Speaker 4: anything that would lead them to a suspect in the
Speaker 4: murder case. Ow Sweat said that he went over it,
Speaker 4: worked it, and he centered in on Norman Shoemaker as being.
Speaker 3: The likely culprit.
Speaker 4: Why well, first of all, Shoemaker's father, who was a policeman,
Speaker 4: told him not to talk to the police. So unlike
Speaker 4: the other boys who were willing to give the comments
Speaker 4: and remarks about what they saw what they did, Norman
Speaker 4: Shoemaker was very reticent and really wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Cooperate with the police.
Speaker 4: Also, he had a history, as I said, of run
Speaker 4: ins with the law, and each time when he's had
Speaker 4: these runnings with the law, his father had stepped in
Speaker 4: for him, which to keep him from having anything happen
Speaker 4: to him. And I think that left a very bad
Speaker 4: taste in the mouth of the other police officers. So
Speaker 4: in what we could in both medicine and in police work,
Speaker 4: they have what's called tunnel vision. You get one thing
Speaker 4: once something happens, there's one characteristic one lab test, went
Speaker 4: X ray and medicine, or one thing that happens one
Speaker 4: suspect in a murder case like this, and you center
Speaker 4: in on that to the exclusion of everything else. And
Speaker 4: it seems as like what over ws Sweat did. And
Speaker 4: because of that, thinking that this was a man who
Speaker 4: did it, and not being able to find anything to
Speaker 4: really prove it, the case was pursued by him for
Speaker 4: a couple of years and then by other people and
Speaker 4: it went cold. When a case goes cold, that means
Speaker 4: the original investigative team has either left, there's no one
Speaker 4: that's still working the case, or has been tried for
Speaker 4: at least three years. They've been looking for a suspect
Speaker 4: and none has been found. And that's what happened with
Speaker 4: this case.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now you talk about this case going cold,
Speaker 2: But Caroline follow doesn't let this go. She waits a
Speaker 2: couple years for the police to run their course in
Speaker 2: terms of the investigation, but after that she is routinely
Speaker 2: calling them and asking them for any updates. She wants
Speaker 2: this thing to be solved, doesn't she.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: She had an incredibly close relationship with her father.
Speaker 3: She loved him, and she idolized him.
Speaker 4: And she realized at the age of twenty eight that
Speaker 4: she was now without this man who'd been such a central.
Speaker 3: Part of her life and how important he'd been for her.
Speaker 4: And so she said that even as she aged, She
Speaker 4: said that if as she aged, she realized she was
Speaker 4: still alive, so that the person that had done this
Speaker 4: to her father very.
Speaker 3: Easily could still be alive.
Speaker 4: Also, she was also inspired by her husband, who become
Speaker 4: a very successful attorney. He decied the police work was
Speaker 4: no longer for him, probably at least in some great
Speaker 4: part due to his disappointment in the failure of the
Speaker 4: police to tholve this case. He'd become an attorney, and
Speaker 4: she marveled at how on these different cases he would
Speaker 4: find some angle for something to do in order to
Speaker 4: win the case. And she thought, his brilliance and winning
Speaker 4: these cases, why couldn't someone use brilliance to look at
Speaker 4: this whole case of her father and figure out what
Speaker 4: had happened and put the pieces together. So she would
Speaker 4: call on a regular basis. Her mother, Anahal, who lived
Speaker 4: until two thousand and five and who actually remarried later
Speaker 4: on and then her second husband died she'd lived in
Speaker 4: two thousand and five, was very bitter and very upset
Speaker 4: that they never found the murderer of her husband. But
Speaker 4: she wasn't as active as Carolyn, who took the lead
Speaker 4: for the family.
Speaker 2: You talk about early in this book about a book
Speaker 2: you happened to read which was centered in the same
Speaker 2: area in Montgomery County. It was from an author named
Speaker 2: Mark Bowden and was titled The Last Stone. What did
Speaker 2: you garner from reading that book in terms of comparisons
Speaker 2: to the case that you were writing about.
Speaker 4: First of all, I had read that book. I've read
Speaker 4: it now twice straight through as well as going back.
Speaker 4: And it had occurred in the same area Montgomery County
Speaker 4: and Maryland, and both occurred in the nineteen seventies. The
Speaker 4: murder of James T. Hall occurred in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4: The case that you're referring to, which is in Bowden's book,
Speaker 4: was the abduction of the Lion's sisters, who were ages
Speaker 4: ten and twelve in broad daylight from the Wheaton Plaza
Speaker 4: Mall in nineteen seventy five. These two young girls were abducted,
Speaker 4: They were raped, murdered, their bodies were burned, and they
Speaker 4: were never found. They never found any traces of them.
Speaker 4: They were thought to have been buried somewhere in Virginia.
Speaker 4: Both cases had similarities that were very striking, first of all,
Speaker 4: and we'll talk about the suspect and how they found
Speaker 4: them in the JT.
Speaker 3: Hall's case.
Speaker 4: But first of all, it turns out that both the
Speaker 4: suspects in these cases were teenage boys who were living
Speaker 4: on the streets, not in houses, but had been thrown
Speaker 4: out of houses and were living on the streets. Both
Speaker 4: of them had made statements to the police. In the
Speaker 4: case of the Lion's Sisters, the man's name was Welch,
Speaker 4: and he had gone to the police a week after
Speaker 4: the murders and said to them that he had information
Speaker 4: that he had seen who had abducted the girls from
Speaker 4: the mall.
Speaker 3: The police listened to his what he had.
Speaker 4: To say and decided that although he had some of
Speaker 4: the facts right and things like that, that other things
Speaker 4: were not true. They also gave him a light detective test,
Speaker 4: which he flunked, and so they felt that everything he
Speaker 4: said was not factual and was just being used to
Speaker 4: try to get through ward money. As I'll we'll talk
Speaker 4: about later in this case, does Mike I dig detail
Speaker 4: on the second shot the accused had gone to the
Speaker 4: police eighteen months after the murder had occurred while he
Speaker 4: was a prisoner in jail for other charges, and had
Speaker 4: told the police various details about the case in order
Speaker 4: to try to gain leniency from his burglary charges and
Speaker 4: also from his escaping from jail charges. The cold case
Speaker 4: teams in both cases had some of the same members.
Speaker 4: Chris Hamrock was the detective who put together the cold
Speaker 4: case teams and played an important role, especially in the
Speaker 4: first case with the Lion sisters. And then Katie Leggett
Speaker 4: was a cold case detective who was very important in
Speaker 4: both of these cases.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's fast forward to what happens to initiate
Speaker 2: this cold case investigation of this fifty on the fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 2: How does it come together that this case is reopened,
Speaker 2: And as you mentioned, Chris Homrock and Katie Legate are
Speaker 2: involved as they were involved in this other cold case
Speaker 2: successful prosecution.
Speaker 4: It was decided on the fiftieth anniversary that they better
Speaker 4: try something now because if not everybody was getting so old,
Speaker 4: if there were any witnesses, if there was anything to
Speaker 4: be found, they needed to do it now. Plus, as
Speaker 4: you said before, Carolyn Filo had been calling on a
Speaker 4: regular basis please reopen the case. So Chris Homrock decided
Speaker 4: to reopen the case on the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting,
Speaker 4: which was in twenty twenty one, and Katie Leggett by
Speaker 4: that time had been a cold case officer for ten years.
Speaker 3: Unlike what in the nineteen seventies, where you really didn't.
Speaker 4: Have the subdivision of police and did the homicide, robbery,
Speaker 4: different divisions, cold case, everybody kind of worked the cases together.
Speaker 4: One of the tremendous improvements in police worked is that
Speaker 4: we now have these specialists. And she was a specialist
Speaker 4: in cold cases and had done an incredible job.
Speaker 3: She had an incredible background.
Speaker 4: She'd worked initially cases of indecency and sexual harassment and
Speaker 4: sexual abuse of children. So she came from that background
Speaker 4: initially and then worked as a detective, and she learned
Speaker 4: she also was a lie detective administrator, and then she
Speaker 4: became a cold case detective. It just so happened that
Speaker 4: right at that time, a detective named Lisa Killen, who
Speaker 4: was a playing close officer, decided that she wanted to
Speaker 4: see what cold case work was like and asked to
Speaker 4: be transferred to the cold case unit. They immediately accepted her,
Speaker 4: and they said to her that your job is going
Speaker 4: to be to reopen this case and start looking at
Speaker 4: it and see if you find anything that hasn't been found.
Speaker 4: The third person who's put on the case was another
Speaker 4: woman named Sarah White, who was a homicide detective, and
Speaker 4: she The three of them made up the cold case team,
Speaker 4: with Lisa Killen being the one who was instructed to
Speaker 4: initially go through all the evidence everything that had been
Speaker 4: done for the case, which was put in a cardboard
Speaker 4: box on her desk.
Speaker 2: In that cardboard box was all the evidence that had
Speaker 2: been gathered by police, but also Lisa did some reinterviewing
Speaker 2: the Soda Machine Gang, these guys now in their sixties.
Speaker 2: But in that box Lisa found a real to reel
Speaker 2: tape labeled as an interview with Richard Hobart. Now, who
Speaker 2: is Richard Hobart and what does Lisa Killen do As
Speaker 2: a result of finding this reel to reel interview.
Speaker 4: Richard Hobart's name and the license plate from his parents'
Speaker 4: vehicle were found in a notepad that James T. Hall
Speaker 4: had and that he kept with him at all time,
Speaker 4: and so there was concern whether or not he might
Speaker 4: have been involved. As it happened, he had passed away.
Speaker 4: He had died within about ten years of the case,
Speaker 4: and it was they had talked to him. He actually
Speaker 4: on his own gone in to talk to the police
Speaker 4: and was not considered a suspect. He was able to
Speaker 4: have an alibi, so he was not considered a suspect
Speaker 4: in the case. But Lisa felt that she needed to
Speaker 4: listen to what he had to say, and she needed
Speaker 4: to find a way to get the tape in a
Speaker 4: way that she could listen to it because real Thrill
Speaker 4: there was not the technology in twenty twenty one to
Speaker 4: be able to listen to it. She went to several sources,
Speaker 4: including the police departments, someone who was had a store
Speaker 4: that did different types of things with audio, but finally
Speaker 4: was able to get the FBI to convert the tape
Speaker 4: to digitalize it into a form that she could listen to.
Speaker 2: What did she discover listening to that tape that struck
Speaker 2: her in her mind as a break in this case.
Speaker 4: The tape had nothing to do with Richard Hobart. It
Speaker 4: was completely mislabeled. What it was was a several hour
Speaker 4: interview with a young man named Larry Becker. Larry Becker
Speaker 4: had been in jail. He had been convicted for the
Speaker 4: burglary of a townhouse, and while in jail and on
Speaker 4: a work release program, he had escaped. So not only
Speaker 4: was he serving his jail term for being involved in
Speaker 4: a burglary, but also.
Speaker 3: Had years added on for the escape. So it turned
Speaker 3: out he had a.
Speaker 4: Sentence for about eight years. In the tape, he had
Speaker 4: decided to ask for leniency by providing the Greek police
Speaker 4: officers with information about the murder of Deputy Sheriff Hall.
Speaker 4: The tape goes through the interrogation and in this interrogation,
Speaker 4: Smith says two very important things that were police holdbacks.
Speaker 4: In other words, when the police have a murder or
Speaker 4: something happens, a lot of times they will hold back
Speaker 4: evidence so that when they confront someone they consider a suspect,
Speaker 4: if that person relates that evidence to them that suggests
Speaker 4: that they were at the crime scene of the crime
Speaker 4: or that they may have been the perpetrator.
Speaker 3: Right. The two main things that he said.
Speaker 4: Was one, he said there were two shots that night,
Speaker 4: and he said that several times.
Speaker 3: He said that he was an eyewitness.
Speaker 4: He'd come to the Manor country Club after being with
Speaker 4: a friend named Rizzo, and he'd come to the Manor
Speaker 4: Country Club and he saw these boys trying to break
Speaker 4: into the coke machines and then he saw someone come
Speaker 4: up and say, hey, what are you doing, And he
Speaker 4: said that there had been two shots fired. And the
Speaker 4: second thing he said that had not been released was
Speaker 4: that the deputy sheriff was holding a flashlight, and that
Speaker 4: had not been released, and he had a flashlight.
Speaker 3: And so Lisa listening to those two pieces.
Speaker 4: Of evidence that he said, and also the fact that
Speaker 4: he put himself at the scene of the murder, they'd
Speaker 4: had no eyewitnesses before, and that was her way into
Speaker 4: the portal as to what was happening, what had happened
Speaker 4: fifty years before when the murder took place.
Speaker 2: There was problems initially though he had mentioned four boys
Speaker 2: that he said by name out of the eight and
Speaker 2: mentioned their names, and it checked out they had alibis.
Speaker 4: Exactly there were so many things that he said that
Speaker 4: were wrong. For example, as you just said, he named
Speaker 4: Greg Schwar as the shooter. Greg Swar was alibied, was
Speaker 4: not there. There's no way he could have been the shooter.
Speaker 4: And the every other boy he said was there, none
Speaker 4: of them were there. They were not part of the
Speaker 4: Coke Machine gang. The person that he said that he
Speaker 4: was with as he walked to the Manor Country Club
Speaker 4: was actually in the Navy at that time in California,
Speaker 4: so there's no way that he had been there either.
Speaker 4: He said it was a knight that was very calm,
Speaker 4: that the weather was beautiful, we could see things, and
Speaker 4: we know that it was a terrible stormy, rainy night,
Speaker 4: and that everyone was soaking wet. He said that the
Speaker 4: person that was shot was wearing a uniform like a
Speaker 4: police officer, but no nothing like a raincoat or anything
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: And when JT.
Speaker 4: Hall's body was found, he was found to be wearing
Speaker 4: a yellow raincoat which was easily identifiable.
Speaker 2: What does Lisa Killen find out about the conclusions police
Speaker 2: made after that interview with Larry Becker.
Speaker 4: Lisa found out that the three officers who interviewed him
Speaker 4: and who had had nothing to do with the investigation
Speaker 4: up to that point, knew nothing about the police hold
Speaker 4: back of the evidence that they concluded that he did
Speaker 4: not have eyes on the scene, he was not there,
Speaker 4: he was lying just to gain leniency.
Speaker 3: They rejected his plea and they sent him back to jail.
Speaker 2: So Lisa Killen looks at this information at least like
Speaker 2: you had said, where she believes that he puts himself well,
Speaker 2: he does put himself at the scene of the crime,
Speaker 2: so she believes he's either involved or witnessed who was involved,
Speaker 2: who was the shooter. So she decides, along with Katie Leggett,
Speaker 2: to go interview or to at least try to find
Speaker 2: Larry Becker.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 4: So she does a deep dive to try to find
Speaker 4: him and can't find him. There's no Larry Becker around,
Speaker 4: but she knew that he had a brother named Leslie Becker,
Speaker 4: so she looks to find Leslie and she finds his obituary,
Speaker 4: and in the obituary it says that he is survived
Speaker 4: by a brother, Larry Smith, who's living in Little.
Speaker 3: Falls, New York.
Speaker 4: And when you go back, she went back and found
Speaker 4: out that Larry Smith had been adopted by the Becker
Speaker 4: family along with Leslie and two other siblings when he
Speaker 4: was seven years old, and so his name had been
Speaker 4: changed to Becker. But now in twenty twenty one, he
Speaker 4: was living in Little Falls, New York under his original
Speaker 4: name Larry Smith.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: another part of this seemingly brilliant strategy is Lisa Kielan says,
Speaker 2: why don't I look up John Rizzo? And so she
Speaker 2: contacts long John Rizzo. But what does she ask John
Speaker 2: Rizzo in regards to helping police.
Speaker 4: They wanted to make sure that Larry Smith was indeed
Speaker 4: Larry Becker, and they also wanted to see what he
Speaker 4: would do if pressure was put on him by someone
Speaker 4: who he had said was at the scene or he
Speaker 4: had been with him when he walked to the scene.
Speaker 4: So they made what are called controlled calls. They had
Speaker 4: Rizzo to two control calls. And in the first call,
Speaker 4: first of all, I should say control calls when the
Speaker 4: police monitor the call, so they're listening to everything that's
Speaker 4: being said and done. In the first call, when Rizzo
Speaker 4: called him, Larry Smith denied being Larry Becker. He said
Speaker 4: he didn't know Rizzo, he didn't know anything about it,
Speaker 4: he'd never lived down there, and that.
Speaker 3: The guy must have gotten it made a mistake.
Speaker 4: Rizzo turned up the heat even in that first call,
Speaker 4: saying that the police are coming after him because of
Speaker 4: the evidence that Larry Becker Smith had given them in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy three when he'd had that interview, and he'd
Speaker 4: said that Rizzo had been there also, and Rizzo needed
Speaker 4: an out. He needed Larry to give him an alibi
Speaker 4: and needed him to tell him what to say to them.
Speaker 4: As mentioned, he just refused to talk to Rizzo that
Speaker 4: first call. But interestingly enough, after that a call was
Speaker 4: made by Larry Becker to someone named the Raven. His
Speaker 4: name was Bobby ray Edwards, nicknamed the Raven, and he
Speaker 4: basically left the restage on the Raven's machine, which Raven
Speaker 4: later turned over to the police, saying, this is Larry
Speaker 4: Becker was calling and I'd want to.
Speaker 3: Speak looking for the Raven.
Speaker 4: Raven was someone that he had hung around with a
Speaker 4: lot when he was younger and possibly had done different
Speaker 4: burglaries and things like that with, but he had called
Speaker 4: him afterwards. Before the second control call was made by Rizzo,
Speaker 4: two days later, and in this call, Larry Smith admitted
Speaker 4: to being Larry Becker, and he talked a lot about
Speaker 4: the one burglary that he'd gotten arrested for that townhouse burglary,
Speaker 4: and he seemed to think that Rizzo was talking about that,
Speaker 4: and he kept saying, no, there was no policemen, there
Speaker 4: were no gunshot, nothing like that.
Speaker 3: And Rizzo kept egging him on what should I do?
Speaker 3: What should I do?
Speaker 4: They're coming after me, and I'm going to tell them
Speaker 4: all about you. And finally he said to him, he said, listen.
Speaker 4: He said, I'm not going to tell you what to do.
Speaker 4: You're not scaring me. I'm gonna you know, if the
Speaker 4: police come after me, that's fine, but I have nothing
Speaker 4: to hide. And they hung up the phone and that
Speaker 4: was it between the two of them. But they were
Speaker 4: convinced after that phone call that indeed this was the
Speaker 4: man that they were looking for, that this was Larry Becker.
Speaker 2: So they decided to go visit Larry Becker and they
Speaker 2: bang on the door. He answers the door and lets
Speaker 2: him in. They go along Katie Levitt Leggett and Lisa
Speaker 2: Killen and also two state troopers. So they all are
Speaker 2: invited into his home. What does he agree to? Does
Speaker 2: he agree to an interview? Does he talk to police?
Speaker 4: He lived in a senior citizen's home that was a
Speaker 4: high rise and they had security so that they had
Speaker 4: to be let in. And before they went up to
Speaker 4: see him, they looked around for a room that was
Speaker 4: quiet enough that they can record an interview with him.
Speaker 4: They couldn't find anything, so they went up to his door,
Speaker 4: knocked on the door or let in, introduced themselves, and
Speaker 4: he kind of said he knew they had becoming just
Speaker 4: because of the calls that he had gotten from Rizzo, right.
Speaker 4: And once they got in there, they explained that they
Speaker 4: wanted to just talk to him and get information, and
Speaker 4: they couldn't find the room would be quiet enough to
Speaker 4: use the recording the devices that they had. Would he
Speaker 4: mind going back to the police barracks in Herkimer County,
Speaker 4: New York. He agreed to do so, and he went back.
Speaker 4: There were two male police officers from Herkimer County. He
Speaker 4: drove back with them, and Lisa and Katie followed in
Speaker 4: their car.
Speaker 2: So tell us what happens at police headquarters and how
Speaker 2: did the interview goes? At first, very much like the
Speaker 2: phone calls with Rizzo. There's a little bit of a
Speaker 2: warming up process in the questioning, isn't it Yes.
Speaker 4: First of all, the room that they use for interrogation
Speaker 4: there is there's no windows, one door, and they put
Speaker 4: their seats very close to him, and he was in
Speaker 4: the corner. It's very important to mention that many times,
Speaker 4: both on the way there or when they were in
Speaker 4: the apartment, and then later on they told him he
Speaker 4: was not under arrest and he was free to go
Speaker 4: at any time he wanted to, so that they did
Speaker 4: not have him in custody at that time. That becomes
Speaker 4: an important point. Later on they sit down and start
Speaker 4: talking to him, and as you said, initially the interview
Speaker 4: is just somewhat fact finding and talking back and forth,
Speaker 4: and he seems interested in talking about the burglary at
Speaker 4: the townhouse, and he thinks that that's what.
Speaker 3: They're asking about.
Speaker 4: Don't forget this is a man now who's fifty one
Speaker 4: years later, and he had been through a lot. He
Speaker 4: had had a lot of health problems going on, part
Speaker 4: to disease, heart failure, just a lot of other things
Speaker 4: going on, and he was now being interviewed and he
Speaker 4: was talking, answering their questions by what he thought they
Speaker 4: wanted to know about the townhouse burglaries. They finally were
Speaker 4: able to steer him towards what happened at the country
Speaker 4: club that night, although he could never remember during the
Speaker 4: entire interview having made a statement to the police in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy three, eighteen months after the murder. But when
Speaker 4: they got to the interview part they initially started it
Speaker 4: was more friendly and things like that, and then they
Speaker 4: let him take They took a break and they let
Speaker 4: him go. He wanted to smoke. He was a heavy
Speaker 4: smoker at one time. It was a three pack per
Speaker 4: day smoker. So he wanted to go outside and smoke.
Speaker 4: He couldn't smoke on the police grounds. It was against
Speaker 4: the law to do that. So he went across the
Speaker 4: street and he was if he'd want or to he
Speaker 4: was free to go. But he went across the street smoked,
Speaker 4: and then later on came back for the next part
Speaker 4: of the interview.
Speaker 3: So they.
Speaker 2: Apply some pressure in the last part of this interview,
Speaker 2: if you can tell us the gist of how that
Speaker 2: putting that pressure on him went and his reaction.
Speaker 4: He The interview lasted three hours and forty five minutes
Speaker 4: in this room, and when they came back, the interview
Speaker 4: took a turn because they basically with Katie Leggett, who
Speaker 4: was a tremendous cold case detective and tremendous interrogator. She
Speaker 4: basically used certain types of principles of interrogation. It's in
Speaker 4: her own unique style, but she used minimalization, which is
Speaker 4: where you take something and make it not seem.
Speaker 3: As serious as it was.
Speaker 4: For example, she eventually said that he was the sheriff
Speaker 4: had been killed, but instead of being killed, she said, well,
Speaker 4: maybe it was by accident. She also said told him
Speaker 4: what it great guy he'd become, and what a great
Speaker 4: person he was. She didn't want to mess up his life,
Speaker 4: so I think she put himself on his side. But
Speaker 4: she also used minimalization to make what he said make
Speaker 4: even the murder itself not seem so bad.
Speaker 3: And I think this was something a technique that she says.
Speaker 4: That she had learned when she did these child sex
Speaker 4: abuse cases and things like that. No one wants to
Speaker 4: admit to being a pedophile and having sex with the child,
Speaker 4: so he have to be able to put it in
Speaker 4: a different way. I have to make it not seem
Speaker 4: as bad, and I think that's what she did. She
Speaker 4: made it seem like this was a good man. He
Speaker 4: was a good man. The sheriff had accidentally been shot
Speaker 4: while maybe a burglary. While the burglary had occurred, a
Speaker 4: house on the other side of the golf course, which
Speaker 4: was owned by Roger and Diane Schmidt, that same night
Speaker 4: had been burglarized, and those things that were found on the.
Speaker 3: Golf course were items from their house.
Speaker 4: So she talked to him and said that, yeah, that
Speaker 4: this burglary had occurred.
Speaker 3: He had put himself with the scene of the crime.
Speaker 4: Eventually she was able to talk to him, and he
Speaker 4: was able to He said that yes, he had been
Speaker 4: involved in the burglary. And then finally, as things turned
Speaker 4: more and more, as his screws kind of tightened more
Speaker 4: and more, he said that he although he was part
Speaker 4: of the burglary, he hadn't shot the sheriff, That deputy sheriff,
Speaker 4: That the deputy sheriff Hall had been shot by someone
Speaker 4: who was with him that night, Raven, and Raven was
Speaker 4: committing the burglary with him.
Speaker 3: This was a total change from.
Speaker 4: What was going on the first, say, three hours in
Speaker 4: the interview, when he really didn't seem to know anything
Speaker 4: about the country clubs said multiple times, I never committed
Speaker 4: a burglary at the country club.
Speaker 3: My parents lived there. That's where he had lived before
Speaker 3: he was thrown out on the streets.
Speaker 4: So why would I do any kind of you know,
Speaker 4: damage there where I could easily be found. Well, when
Speaker 4: he did decide, he did, you know, admit that he
Speaker 4: was part of the team the burglarized, and then he
Speaker 4: admitted that Raven was the one who had done it.
Speaker 3: Well, Raven, as.
Speaker 4: It turns out, was six feet tall and Larry Becker
Speaker 4: was five foot three. And so they asked Larry in
Speaker 4: this interrogation, do you know what trajectory means?
Speaker 3: Trajectory means? He knew what it meant. It meant the
Speaker 3: path that something had followed. And they said, well, the bullets.
Speaker 4: Started off, hit him the sheriff in the lower part
Speaker 4: of the head on the left hand side, and traveled
Speaker 4: upward at an angle where it lodged behind his right eyebrow.
Speaker 4: Someone of Raven's size couldn't have had that kind of trajectory.
Speaker 4: It had to come from someone short like you. As
Speaker 4: I said, he was five foot three and so as
Speaker 4: they kept talking back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 3: They made it. He said, yeah, you know this.
Speaker 4: They convinced him that an accident had happened, and he
Speaker 4: eventually finally admitted and confessed to accidentally shooting the deputy
Speaker 4: sheriff two shots and that he had been the one
Speaker 4: who had done it. It's been an accident.
Speaker 2: One of the things that became somewhat a point of
Speaker 2: contention was he then asked, am I going to jail?
Speaker 2: And they said no, you're You're going home today. And
Speaker 2: the police said, we don't lie to people. And they
Speaker 2: asked him where the gun was, and he said, I
Speaker 2: threw it away. I think because it wasn't I didn't
Speaker 2: have it when I went to Maggie's place. But he said,
Speaker 2: I don't remember where I threw it exactly.
Speaker 3: No gun was ever recovered.
Speaker 4: He had identified in the interview and nineteen seventy three
Speaker 4: that it was a thirty eight caliber gun that was fired.
Speaker 4: The bullets that were recovered both from the brain of
Speaker 4: w Sheriff Hall, as well as there was a bullet
Speaker 4: that had gone through the flashlight and lodged in the
Speaker 4: flash flight were BOUTH thirty two caliber bullets. Which, as
Speaker 4: it turns out, can be fired from a thirty eight
Speaker 4: caliber gun, although the reverse is impossibly can't fire thirty
Speaker 4: eight caliber bullets for thirty two caliber gun.
Speaker 3: So that was possible that.
Speaker 4: He had correctly identified the weapon that had been used.
Speaker 3: And then they even had him.
Speaker 4: He said it that during the interview, the interrogation at
Speaker 4: the end, that he had had a gun that had
Speaker 4: been given to him earlier in the evening, and he
Speaker 4: named the person who had given it to him, and
Speaker 4: he was wearing it. He had it in his waistband,
Speaker 4: and then he pulled it out and used it to
Speaker 4: shoot the deputy sheriff.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. So let's get to the first day of
Speaker 2: the trial and the defense and the prosecution.
Speaker 4: The first day of the trial came, and of course
Speaker 4: they had so much evidence piled up that I didn't
Speaker 4: get a look. I couldn't see over to where Larry
Speaker 4: Becker Smith was sitting. I was in the gallery listening
Speaker 4: to everything. But the opening statements were made and the
Speaker 4: defense said, this is someone who has the most important
Speaker 4: evidence of all. He has confessed to being the murderer
Speaker 4: not once, not twice, but three times, because it turns
Speaker 4: out that within a day of confessing to the police, Larry,
Speaker 4: on phone calls which were recorded from the jail, had
Speaker 4: called his daughter and told her that he had something
Speaker 4: he had to get off his chest, and he'd lived
Speaker 4: with it for fifty years and he'd never told anyone,
Speaker 4: not even her mother, who was still his wife, he'd
Speaker 4: never divorced her, but that he had killed someone and
Speaker 4: now he's going to go to jail Ford and he
Speaker 4: pretty much said the same thing to his son, and
Speaker 4: he called him also. So the prosecution said, we don't
Speaker 4: have any physical evidence, no DNA evidence, and there were
Speaker 4: no eyewitnesses. But what we do have is someone who
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy three put himself at the scene of
Speaker 4: the murder and then now has confessed three times, which
Speaker 4: is the strongest evidence.
Speaker 3: It's all circumstantial evidence, was strongest evidence.
Speaker 4: And the defense got up and in their opening statement
Speaker 4: concentrated on the facts that all these wrong things that
Speaker 4: Larry said initially in seventy three that were completely wrong,
Speaker 4: which had led the people that were listening to him,
Speaker 4: the police, to say he wasn't there, he didn't know
Speaker 4: what he was talking about. And also they harped on
Speaker 4: the idea that everything that he had said in his
Speaker 4: confession had been fed to him by the detectives who
Speaker 4: were interrogating him, and that none of it was from
Speaker 4: his own mind, that had all just been given to him,
Speaker 4: and he'd finally broken and was convinced that did do
Speaker 4: this even though he hadn't done it.
Speaker 2: The prosecution, the state's attorney is John McCarthy. The prosecuting
Speaker 2: attorney is Donnie Donna Fenton. But there are four defense
Speaker 2: attorneys in that courtroom, including Kevin B. Collins. Tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about Covington and Burling, the Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: Law firm that takes this case, and why.
Speaker 4: When Larry Becker Smith got to back to Maryland he
Speaker 4: changed his mind. He decided he hadn't done this, and
Speaker 4: he wanted he withdrew his confession. He said he wanted
Speaker 4: to with draw his confession as guilty, plea and pleae
Speaker 4: non guilty once he decided to play not guilty. The
Speaker 4: public defender who was assigned to his case, that this
Speaker 4: is the case involved now close fifty two years of
Speaker 4: information evidence. It's too much for a public defender's off
Speaker 4: at the handle law firm Covington and.
Speaker 3: Berling, which is a large law firm base. This was
Speaker 3: based in Washington, c but they're all over the world.
Speaker 4: They have twelve hundred lawyers from the top thirty of
Speaker 4: largest law firms in the world and considered one of
Speaker 4: the top law firms. They're also considered the top pro
Speaker 4: bono law firm in the country. They've won the award
Speaker 4: as being the top pro bono law firm ten times,
Speaker 4: so they're considered someone that a firm that will be
Speaker 4: very willing to help out in a case like this
Speaker 4: because for them, it gives their young attorneys the chance
Speaker 4: to examine, cross examine, and come up with strategy in cases.
Speaker 3: Some of these people attorneys had ever been in.
Speaker 4: A courtroom before, and the four who were assigned by
Speaker 4: three other attorneys who were assigned to help Kevin Collins,
Speaker 4: none of them had ever tried a case before. But
Speaker 4: they decided, after making sure that there was no conflicts
Speaker 4: of interest, yes, indeed they would take this case. It's
Speaker 4: thirty minutes a metro ride from Washington to Rockville, Maryland,
Speaker 4: and that they would take the case and represent Larry.
Speaker 4: Before the case went to trial, they tried to have
Speaker 4: it thrown out by saying that his Miranda rights were violated,
Speaker 4: that he was in custody, and that they should have
Speaker 4: said to him, you were had the right to remain
Speaker 4: silent to anything you say and will be used against
Speaker 4: you in a court of law. You have the right
Speaker 4: to attorney. That was never said before the interrogation took place.
Speaker 4: So they attempted to have it thrown out. This was
Speaker 4: a hearing that lasted three days, and finally the judge mcaulay,
Speaker 4: who was the judge in the case, in favor of
Speaker 4: the prosecution and said that he was never really under
Speaker 4: in custody. He could have left any time he wanted
Speaker 4: to and he was free to go. They were just
Speaker 4: interviewing him and therefore his Miranda rights had not been violated,
Speaker 4: and that they could he would stand trial. And so
Speaker 4: the trial was set to start January eighth, and that's
Speaker 4: when I first got my look at the defense team
Speaker 4: as well as the prosecutors.
Speaker 2: Right, you write a very dramatic scene. We go back
Speaker 2: a bit where Caroline Folo receives the call when she's
Speaker 2: socializing about the arrest of Larry Larry Smith. But now
Speaker 2: this case is taken to trial and that enthusiasm or
Speaker 2: confidences has been damaged somewhat, but she still has very
Speaker 2: much confidence in the prosecution. And Donna Fenton doesn't.
Speaker 4: She she really does. She has tremendous confidence in her.
Speaker 4: She loves Lisa Killing, the lead detective. She calls her
Speaker 4: her second daughter. Kerry Krutcher is her other daughter, who
Speaker 4: her real daughter. I got to know very welder in
Speaker 4: this case, who was incredible to talk to him hear
Speaker 4: her insights. But she was very comfortable with the team,
Speaker 4: and they had had over a year before the case
Speaker 4: went to trial of build up of thinking that this
Speaker 4: was going to be the resolution for their family. And
Speaker 4: here she was now eighty years old, and she wanted
Speaker 4: this to be resolved and have a knowledge of who
Speaker 4: had done this to her father. And so she and
Speaker 4: Bob Filo were there attending everything from the miranda hearings
Speaker 4: to the first day of the trial to the entire trial.
Speaker 4: And I flew up and I was there also.
Speaker 2: Tell us what the charges were that were laid the
Speaker 2: various counts in this trial.
Speaker 4: In this trial, the accounts were a first degree murder,
Speaker 4: which is premeditated murder, and that's something that was on
Speaker 4: the books in nineteen seventy one in Maryland when the
Speaker 4: murder had occurred, So they felt it was important that
Speaker 4: that that was a murder charge that was allowed to
Speaker 4: that time. But they also had another charge, which was
Speaker 4: felony murder, and that's murder that's submitted while in the
Speaker 4: conducting or doing a felony such as burglary. Right, that
Speaker 4: was first degree felony murder. And then the final charge
Speaker 4: was second degree felony murder. So there were three charges
Speaker 4: at that time, all related to the murder of JT.
Speaker 3: Hall.
Speaker 2: Now let's get to this trial and some of the
Speaker 2: main the main characters. Lisa Killen takes the stand, Katie
Speaker 2: Leggett takes the stand. Tell us about the central figures
Speaker 2: that take the stand and what they impart to the
Speaker 2: jurors in their testimony.
Speaker 4: I think that both of them were excellent witnesses and
Speaker 4: they what they broke it down to was that here
Speaker 4: was a man who had within eighteen months of this occurring,
Speaker 4: this murder occurring, had identified himself as being a witness
Speaker 4: to the murder. He just come across the Manor country
Speaker 4: Club when it happened. And although he'd gotten a lot
Speaker 4: of the facts wrong. They said it well, the way
Speaker 4: it was phrased by the prosecution was that he was lying,
Speaker 4: on the one hand, keep himself from being a suspect
Speaker 4: and the murder, but telling enough at that time to
Speaker 4: try to get himself leniency. And I think that with
Speaker 4: Lisa killing they used her to go back through the
Speaker 4: entire process of what it was like, all the places
Speaker 4: they went across the country, interviewing different suspects, people that
Speaker 4: could have been involved, and then finally how she had
Speaker 4: found the real, real tape and had it changed into
Speaker 4: a form digitalized that she could use. And I thought
Speaker 4: you did a very good job of taking you through.
Speaker 4: She took you through these control calls that had been
Speaker 4: made by Rizzo, and then she took us through the interrogation, interrogation,
Speaker 4: and then actually Lisa Killen was on the stand and
Speaker 4: when the tape was played from the interrogation where Becker confessed.
Speaker 4: Now I should say that it was I kind of
Speaker 4: felt that the flow of the trial this was a
Speaker 4: little bit more for the prosecution, but it was because
Speaker 4: they had to present witnesses when they could get them.
Speaker 4: So Lisa Killen's testimony was interrupted several times by other witnesses.
Speaker 4: For example, they had the son and daughter of Becker testify,
Speaker 4: and they were going to be up there for a
Speaker 4: certain day, so they kind of were put in when
Speaker 4: they could be when they were willing to testify, and
Speaker 4: they were not cooperative witnesses. They did not say this.
Speaker 4: The recording showed that in what his daughter had said
Speaker 4: to one of the police officers after her talking to
Speaker 4: her father, they did not say in the court itself
Speaker 4: that he had confessed to the murders, but only said
Speaker 4: that he had talked about robbery. And the prosecution even
Speaker 4: went back to these written statements and recorded statements, said
Speaker 4: do you remember this and all?
Speaker 3: And they said no.
Speaker 4: The other people that had to be brought into interrupt
Speaker 4: Lisa were the police officers from Herkimer County, New York.
Speaker 4: Hald flown down and could only be used for a day,
Speaker 4: and so Lisa's testimony was kind of piecemealed through. But
Speaker 4: eventually they had her do the entire interrogation tape and
Speaker 4: that was done over a couple of days in front
Speaker 4: of the jury.
Speaker 2: One question I had was how did Lisa or Kate Leggett,
Speaker 2: but maybe Lisa, how did she explain all of the
Speaker 2: inconsistencies that David Smith had originally when he came forward
Speaker 2: to try to get the deal to reduce his prison
Speaker 2: escape sentence. Is there any anyone asked why he would
Speaker 2: lie so blatantly but at the same time be trying
Speaker 2: to gain favor with police to try to reduce his sentence.
Speaker 2: How would he rationalize lying so much that the police
Speaker 2: didn't believe his statements? Anyway?
Speaker 4: I don't think that that was ever well explained. I
Speaker 4: think that it was they made it out that almost
Speaker 4: he was, on the one hand, very savvy and very
Speaker 4: smart and able to make up this whole story and
Speaker 4: all these other things that weren't true, but also includes
Speaker 4: enough details you know, that were true to show that
Speaker 4: he was there. But when you looked at him, he
Speaker 4: was a man who at that time had an IQ
Speaker 4: of eighty seven.
Speaker 3: He was not a very smart man.
Speaker 4: He had a IQ testing done when he was twelve,
Speaker 4: he had been sent away to a place for wayward boys,
Speaker 4: and he'd been tested in his IQ was eighty seven,
Speaker 4: and then at the time when they did the interrogation
Speaker 4: and arrested him, his IQ had dropped. Later on with
Speaker 4: psychological testing that he showed his IQ was eighty three.
Speaker 4: So it was a little bit hard to understand how
Speaker 4: someone that wasn't didn't seem to be that smart, could
Speaker 4: both give you details that were so accurate to details
Speaker 4: and then have everything else mixed up and all so
Speaker 4: that they said it was because of his trying to
Speaker 4: get leniency but not wanting to be part of you know,
Speaker 4: arrested or part of the suspect.
Speaker 3: It was a little bit hard looking back on it
Speaker 3: to believe.
Speaker 2: Now, this person, Bobby ray Edwards, this person that is
Speaker 2: accused of the murderer or accused of being with the murderer,
Speaker 2: testifies that trial. Tell us how effective or not effective
Speaker 2: his testimony was in the trial.
Speaker 4: He was actually brought in as a witness for the
Speaker 4: prosecution as you know, someone that he had that they
Speaker 4: were talking about.
Speaker 3: But I think that.
Speaker 4: He basically gave a to the defense because he was
Speaker 4: the only one of the boys who had maintained contact.
Speaker 3: With Larry Becker Smith both before when he went.
Speaker 4: To jail, while during he was in jail, and then
Speaker 4: afterwards when Larry had moved to New York, and he
Speaker 4: said that he had not been involved in any burglary
Speaker 4: or murder that occurred at the Manor Country Club, and
Speaker 4: that he knew of nothing to suggest that Larry Becker
Speaker 4: had been involved either, and he was.
Speaker 3: Really as close as friend.
Speaker 4: So in my opinion, his testimony was waged more for
Speaker 4: the defense.
Speaker 2: Just reading this trial as an observer and other people
Speaker 2: as well, Caroline Filo most importantly and Bob as well.
Speaker 2: What was their mood at the conclusion of this trial
Speaker 2: before the jury went to deliberations, What did they think
Speaker 2: the outcome of this trial would be.
Speaker 4: They thought he would be a convicted of fel any
Speaker 4: murder first degree. They did not feel that it was
Speaker 4: a premeditated murder. They felt that he and whoever he
Speaker 4: said was with him, Raven another man named Mark Jensen,
Speaker 4: had burglarized the home, were carrying objects across the golf
Speaker 4: course to take with them, some of which would be
Speaker 4: good for someone who is living on the streets like
Speaker 4: Larry was, including sheets and things for beds, things like that.
Speaker 3: So they did not They felt.
Speaker 4: That the trial had gone very well and they felt
Speaker 4: that he was going to be convicted. They felt that
Speaker 4: the defense had done a good job and they were
Speaker 4: doing all this pro bono free. All the work and all,
Speaker 4: but they felt that the jury would come back with
Speaker 4: a guilty verdict.
Speaker 2: Now, for the jurors, they were instructed. And I've read
Speaker 2: many judges instructions to juries, and I marvel at the
Speaker 2: length that the statements are made by the judge. And
Speaker 2: then I find it confusing myself. If just the instructions
Speaker 2: on you could make the decision, It's not anything I say. However,
Speaker 2: there seems to be a lot of instructions that seem
Speaker 2: somewhat confusing, but tell us about the the unanimous nature
Speaker 2: of their decision being integral to these to this case
Speaker 2: and to this verdict.
Speaker 4: The jury from this trial kay Was after three days
Speaker 4: came back to the judge and said that they were deadlocked,
Speaker 4: and they talked about it, and it turned out that
Speaker 4: they also had felt they had voted unanimously that he
Speaker 4: was not guilty of premeditated murder or the first way murder.
Speaker 4: But they were deadlocked with regards to the charges of peony,
Speaker 4: first refoundy murder, her and secondary phony murder. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 4: they were deadlocked we found out later ten two or
Speaker 4: eleven one in favor of him being guilty, but they
Speaker 4: could not convince the one or two people that he
Speaker 4: was guilty. The defense wanted the judge to say that
Speaker 4: because of the innocence, that they should announce a verdict
Speaker 4: as being innocent on the one count they couldn't reach
Speaker 4: a verdict on the other accounts, But the judge said no,
Speaker 4: she was labeling it all a mistrial. She had been
Speaker 4: planning on retiring, but she felt that she should be
Speaker 4: the one because this has been such an incredible case
Speaker 4: with so many twists and turns, that she should be
Speaker 4: the one to be.
Speaker 3: In charge of this next trial.
Speaker 4: So she brought both of the defense and the prosecution
Speaker 4: to her chambers. After they decided they labeled the trial
Speaker 4: a mistrial and a hung jury to set a date
Speaker 4: to have a retrial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting. I'm glad you made that point
Speaker 2: that the jurors could not separate these counts in terms
Speaker 2: of guilt in their decision. They had to be all
Speaker 2: put together. The judge sided, I think it's very important.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: So now right away there's another trial, and of course
Speaker 2: the prosecution gets set. But there is a distinct disadvantage
Speaker 2: for them in this retrial and an advantage for the
Speaker 2: prosecutor for the defense in another trial, tell us what
Speaker 2: that advantage and disadvantage would be.
Speaker 4: One of the charges in the second trial that the
Speaker 4: was in June of twenty twenty four, so approximately six
Speaker 4: months at the first trial concluded, was that they made
Speaker 4: Raven Bobby Ray Edwards an unindicted co conspirator. So what
Speaker 4: that did was that made it so that Raven, they
Speaker 4: said that they were investigating further to see the felt
Speaker 4: that he could be part of the team that burglarized
Speaker 4: the Schmid home and killed the deputy sheriff. Because of that,
Speaker 4: Ravens hired an attorney who advised him to invoke his
Speaker 4: Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify at the second trial.
Speaker 4: And the defense, of course would want him to testify
Speaker 4: because if he was an underdoted co conspirator and he
Speaker 4: had said that if he had been involved in it,
Speaker 4: he said that their client Larry Smith, had had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with it at the previous trial, they would
Speaker 4: want to put him on the stand again to say that.
Speaker 4: But because he was put as an unindicted co conspirator,
Speaker 4: it took him away as a witness for defense. He
Speaker 4: basically took the Fifth Amendment on every charge, and so
Speaker 4: he was. He did not testify at the second trial.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: what else did the defense learn from the first trial
Speaker 2: and change in their strategy. We'll say in terms of
Speaker 2: their focus in this second trial.
Speaker 4: The defense learned about false confessions, which I found an
Speaker 4: incredibly interesting topic who read about and learn about. What
Speaker 4: we don't realize is that jurors and judges will use
Speaker 4: confessions as evidence above almost anything else. But there are circumstances,
Speaker 4: and there's now a science based on it that there
Speaker 4: are things reasons why people make false confessions that they
Speaker 4: didn't really do something, but they end up saying that
Speaker 4: they did. As a matter of fact, there's a statistic
Speaker 4: that twenty four percent of cases that are overturned by
Speaker 4: DNA evidence that is irrefutable. In twenty four percent of
Speaker 4: those cases, part of the reason why the defendant hadden
Speaker 4: Fould guilty was by a confession. So the evidence showed
Speaker 4: that they didn't do it, but because of certain factors,
Speaker 4: they had confessed to doing it.
Speaker 3: And as the defense.
Speaker 4: Learned more and more, they learned that someone like Larry
Speaker 4: who was someone who had a low IQ, wasn't best smart,
Speaker 4: who had medical issues, who wanted to do it, was
Speaker 4: somewhat of a compulsive liar, someone that wanted to please people,
Speaker 4: who wanted you if you kept asking him, asking him,
Speaker 4: he wanted to get a story that would please you.
Speaker 3: Maybe a lie, but it would please you. As they
Speaker 3: dug more and more.
Speaker 4: Into this, they decided that they wanted to introduce these
Speaker 4: two false confession experts to testify at the second trial,
Speaker 4: and they even had a briefing done for the defense
Speaker 4: where the briefing was done by someone who was also
Speaker 4: an attorney and who was an expert in false confessions,
Speaker 4: and they in that briefing said that they should definitely
Speaker 4: allow in the second trial these two experts to testify
Speaker 4: and show that this confession had been given to that
Speaker 4: the words what the What Kevin told me later on,
Speaker 4: Kevin Collins, the lead attorney, was that rather than saying
Speaker 4: concentrating on what Larry said and things like that, what
Speaker 4: they concentrated on after talking with these false confession experts
Speaker 4: was where did the information come during the confession during
Speaker 4: the interrogation that Larry said When they fighted it back
Speaker 4: and listened to it, they felt that most of the
Speaker 4: things are everything that he said tying him to the
Speaker 4: murder had been fed to him by the interrogating detectives.
Speaker 2: Wow, there was one answer that the prosecution tried to
Speaker 2: say was quite profound after all of this, Why confess
Speaker 2: to murder to your own children?
Speaker 4: Yes, that's exactly right, And that's something that's when I
Speaker 4: talked to one of the jurors from the first trial.
Speaker 4: They said, I said, what made you you know it
Speaker 4: was ten too guilty?
Speaker 3: What made you think he was guilty? And she said
Speaker 3: three confessions, she.
Speaker 4: Said, the first confession, but then when you within the
Speaker 4: next day he confessed to your two children, then that's
Speaker 4: why I felt he was guilty. So something they felt
Speaker 4: that even though he'd said that to his children, it
Speaker 4: had been put into his mind and he was now
Speaker 4: saying a false set of fact. He was relaying a
Speaker 4: false set of facts, and that's everything that all three
Speaker 4: of his confessions were false.
Speaker 2: So this trial goes different than the first trial. The
Speaker 2: defense learns has a completely different strategy and employs a
Speaker 2: couple expert witnesses to explain the phenomena of false confessions
Speaker 2: and how it applies to this case.
Speaker 3: No, the would not.
Speaker 4: The judge decided that she would not allow these false
Speaker 4: confession experts to testify I see, and she also before
Speaker 4: the case went to second trial, the defense had also
Speaker 4: asked that they removed the tag of unindicted co conspirator
Speaker 4: of Raven Bobby ray Edwards in order that he could
Speaker 4: be a witness, and the judge also sided with the
Speaker 4: prosecution on that. So even though they did not have
Speaker 4: these experts on false confessions, they basically based their case
Speaker 4: on that and showed how this was a man that
Speaker 4: was easily persuadable. It had been so many years, different memories.
Speaker 4: Although he was only arrested for one burglary, he at
Speaker 4: one time said he and his colleagues committed daytime burglaries,
Speaker 4: so he probably was involved in other ones, and that
Speaker 4: he had just gotten all the facts confused, and that
Speaker 4: when this new set of information had been presented to him,
Speaker 4: he eventually bought into it.
Speaker 2: The base basically though, the defense had a term for
Speaker 2: his mental state, but essentially you right, that was dementia.
Speaker 2: So was the jury convinced that he was suffering from dementia?
Speaker 4: No, they had a psychologist evaluate him for the defense
Speaker 4: and he felt, as you said, that he was suffering
Speaker 4: from dementia and also from depression, and the prosecution brought
Speaker 4: on a psychiatrist, an MD instead of a PhD. And
Speaker 4: what she said was that she did not feel the
Speaker 4: or any signs of dementia, that his IQ had dropped
Speaker 4: four points, which was very reasonable considering the year fifty
Speaker 4: two years had passed, and that he showed no signs
Speaker 4: of depression more than someone that was in jail would show.
Speaker 3: So I think that the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Was able to in a good way refute and just
Speaker 4: talking to the jurors to refute that argument, and that
Speaker 4: I don't think that the jury felt that this was
Speaker 4: a man who was cemented or depressed. I think this
Speaker 4: was they felt, you know, the consideration was whether or
Speaker 4: not they would come to the conclusion that he had
Speaker 4: poor memory, that he could be fed information and then
Speaker 4: to please the interrogators to get him off his back,
Speaker 4: to stop the situation that he eventually confessed to do
Speaker 4: with the murder.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the jurors and the reaction and
Speaker 2: the verdict, and after we'll talk about Carolyn follow and
Speaker 2: her family's reaction.
Speaker 4: The a jurors went out to deliberate on a Wednesday,
Speaker 4: and they deliberated all that Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday.
Speaker 4: The judge was getting about five o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 4: Judge was going to send them home for the weekend,
Speaker 4: and they said, please just give us a little bit
Speaker 4: more time.
Speaker 3: We think we're close to a verdict. So they gave him.
Speaker 4: More time, and then the jury came back into the
Speaker 4: room and the verdict was not guilty on all charges.
Speaker 3: Now it was not only first to be felonily.
Speaker 5: Murder, first degree murder, second degree murder, a conspiracy to
Speaker 5: commit murder with a conspiracy with raven to commit murder,
Speaker 5: and also burglary.
Speaker 3: Charged on all these charges, he was found and not guilty.
Speaker 2: You what was your reaction, but more importantly, what was
Speaker 2: Caroline Folo's reaction and the family's reaction.
Speaker 4: First of all, I'm going to say that the family
Speaker 4: was extremely upset and immediately went back to their hotel
Speaker 4: and left the city. They felt that justice was not
Speaker 4: served and were very upset about what had happened in
Speaker 4: the trial. I had found out a couple of pieces
Speaker 4: of additional information during the trial. This second trial. They
Speaker 4: were not brought out in the first trial at all.
Speaker 4: No one could tell me why it wasn't brought out.
Speaker 4: But going into the first trial and hearing all the
Speaker 4: others and things like that, I kind of thought it
Speaker 4: was a wash. I thought there was a good chance
Speaker 4: it could be a hung jury. Although this three confession idea,
Speaker 4: especially after talking to Katie Leggett, who was an expert
Speaker 4: at this and who had said she'd never heard an
Speaker 4: innocent person confess.
Speaker 3: I was leaning towards fact that he could be guilty.
Speaker 3: But during the second.
Speaker 4: Trial it came out that in that nineteen seventy three investigation,
Speaker 4: they had recorded several hours of it with those three
Speaker 4: police officers. But later on the next day they had
Speaker 4: taken him, taken Larry Beckersmith to the country club parking lot,
Speaker 4: and lo and behold who was there to walk at
Speaker 4: the area with him and listen to the entire story.
Speaker 4: But ow Sweat, Yeah, w Sweat, who had done forty
Speaker 4: murder cases and solved thirty nine of them. Ow Sweat,
Speaker 4: who was considered their top detective. Ow Sweat went through
Speaker 4: everything with him. He at all everything he had to say,
Speaker 4: including these pieces of evidence that the detectives Lisa Kill
Speaker 4: and Katie Leggott later seized on.
Speaker 3: But he also heard about the fact that it was
Speaker 3: a clear night.
Speaker 4: What the sheriff had been wearing where he showed him
Speaker 4: the o W Sweat where the body had been found
Speaker 4: was completely different from where the body actually had been found.
Speaker 4: Ow Sweat listened to everything that Larry had to say,
Speaker 4: and he concluded that he didn't have eyes on this.
Speaker 4: So when I heard that, up till that point, like
Speaker 4: I said, I was kind of iffy one way or
Speaker 4: the other. But when I heard, and of course I
Speaker 4: wanted a closure for the Philo family.
Speaker 3: For Carolyn Folow, I'd known.
Speaker 4: Her for over thirty years right and over this last
Speaker 4: year she said that she'd become like my mother, although
Speaker 4: she'd have to be very young to have had me
Speaker 4: to be my mother.
Speaker 3: But I had tremendous empathy for them, and I wanted
Speaker 3: them to have closure.
Speaker 4: But when I thought back through it, and I said, oh,
Speaker 4: this is the man. He wanted to close this more
Speaker 4: than anyone. He had a perfect record. You know, it'd
Speaker 4: be like having a one thousand batting average and then
Speaker 4: this is your one time you didn't make it. And
Speaker 4: he said, this man does not have did not have
Speaker 4: eyes eyeballs on the crime. He was not there, and
Speaker 4: that to me was the way the piece of evidence
Speaker 4: that threw it towards Yeah, I agree with the jury.
Speaker 3: I think he wasn't guilty.
Speaker 4: I don't know why, and no one could tell me,
Speaker 4: to my satisfaction, including Kevin Collins why I interviewed.
Speaker 3: No one could tell me why that hadn't come.
Speaker 4: Out at the first trial, but it did come out
Speaker 4: to the second trial. Interestingly enough, Bob Filo had a
Speaker 4: different take on it. He was angry at ow Sweat
Speaker 4: because he said, well, if he had heard him with
Speaker 4: that time, and it's just eighteen months after the murder,
Speaker 4: why didn't he jump in on the two pieces of
Speaker 4: evidence that he did say right that there'd been two
Speaker 4: shots and that there had been a flashlight and say
Speaker 4: that he was and have him go to trial. Then,
Speaker 4: like I said, I came to a different conclusion, and
Speaker 4: I think that the jury did also. I'm not saying
Speaker 4: that was the main thing that swayed them when you talked,
Speaker 4: when they talked to the jury, when we talked to
Speaker 4: the jury, they said the main thing that swayed them
Speaker 4: was the way the defense had gone back and shown
Speaker 4: how the detectives had said certain certain things in their interrogation,
Speaker 4: and that Larry Becker Smith had not mentioned those previously,
Speaker 4: but later on he took those as part of what
Speaker 4: he had to say.
Speaker 2: And putting that all together, you say that Kevin Collins
Speaker 2: really opened your eyes as well as with what he
Speaker 2: had to say, but also especially ow sweat and what
Speaker 2: he had said. So putting this all together, you conclude
Speaker 2: that it's likely he was innocent.
Speaker 4: Exactly although I felt after I said that, and after
Speaker 4: I wrote the book, I sent a copy to the
Speaker 4: Filos and they didn't that. They weren't happy with it,
Speaker 4: and you know, they felt it was that this was
Speaker 4: man that had done it, and this was the enclosure
Speaker 4: for them that fifty years of working to get the
Speaker 4: murderer caught who Carolyn's and murdered Carolyn's father, Bob, father
Speaker 4: in law, they were incredibly close. That's you know, how
Speaker 4: could I have come to such a conclusion, And so
Speaker 4: I had, you know, looked at everything myself, and I
Speaker 4: wasn't going to change my mind. But at the end
Speaker 4: of the book, I let Bob Filo write his thoughts
Speaker 4: about the case, and that's how the book you know,
Speaker 4: at the very end of the bok So it shows
Speaker 4: my opinion what I think. Also, I have Bob Filow
Speaker 4: writing what he thought.
Speaker 2: Well, it's understandable. I think once they have the first
Speaker 2: trial mistrial, then they have the second trial and it
Speaker 2: completely exonerates Larry Smith. You can't be happy after that,
Speaker 2: no matter what you wrote.
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
Speaker 4: But it was such an important thing to them, to
Speaker 4: the Filos, that he be found guilty because they felt
Speaker 4: that he was. They had been fed that, they'd been
Speaker 4: feeling this for a couple of years. They've been involved
Speaker 4: from the first time. Carolyn got the phone call saying
Speaker 4: while she was playing Bunko, saying that we found the murderer.
Speaker 3: He's confessed and where he's waived extradition, he's.
Speaker 4: Coming back to Maryland to stand trial, and everything's all
Speaker 4: set up. They were convinced that this was the closure,
Speaker 4: this was what had happened. That's as I said, I
Speaker 4: was talking to them, and until I really saw what
Speaker 4: happened in the second case and relooked at things and
Speaker 4: relooked at what are false confessions they actually do happen,
Speaker 4: you know, So after looking at things and re looking
Speaker 4: at it, and then finding out only in the.
Speaker 3: Second trial that ow Sweat had had the chance.
Speaker 4: Interestingly enough, when ow Sweat in nineteen seventy three had
Speaker 4: interviewed him and talked to him, only his interview was
Speaker 4: not recorded and they did not have any tape of that.
Speaker 4: Only the first day was recorded with the three police officers.
Speaker 4: So you wonder if the second day had been recorded
Speaker 4: if this would have gone to trial.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Yes, very very interesting. I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 2: Michael F. Weisberg for coming on and talking about your
Speaker 2: extraordinary A second shot the pursuit of justice in Maryland's
Speaker 2: oldest cold case murder. For those that would like to
Speaker 2: check out more about this story, do have a website
Speaker 2: or do any social media?
Speaker 4: Absolutely my website, my literary website is Michael F. As
Speaker 4: in Franklin Weisberg dot com. And the book is available
Speaker 4: on Amazon and at all bookstores. So if anyone wants
Speaker 4: to see anything about my previous two books, any other writing,
Speaker 4: short stories and things like that I've done, they can
Speaker 4: go to my website and it also has a link
Speaker 4: that'll take them to buy the book as well.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic second shot. The pursuit of justice in Maryland's
Speaker 2: oldest cold case murder. Michael F. Weisberg, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for this interview, and you have a great evening
Speaker 2: and good night, right Dan, thank you, thank you,