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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. For years, he stocked elementary schools, neighborhoods, and
Speaker 6: playgrounds looking for young girls to abduct, rape, and murder.
Speaker 6: As though invisible, he brazenly struck in broad daylight, pulling
Speaker 6: children into his van or cars, where he crept into
Speaker 6: homes in the dead of night to carry away little
Speaker 6: girls while their family slept. He was the boogieman they
Speaker 6: warned their children about, disguised as the friendly stranger, the
Speaker 6: fiend who lurked in the shadows outside of bedroom windows.
Speaker 6: From the New York Times best selling author of Monster
Speaker 6: and No Stone Unturned, comes the incredible cold case manhunt
Speaker 6: of one of America's most horrific serial killers. The book
Speaker 6: that we are profiling this evening is Boogie Man with
Speaker 6: my special guest, journalist and author Steve Jackson. Welcome to
Speaker 6: the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 6: Steve Jackson.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you, Dan, I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 6: Well, finally we get you on. And as I mentioned
Speaker 6: a few times, this is true murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history, and the kinds of books
Speaker 6: and stories that we have this evening really live up
Speaker 6: to that, Moniker. So let's get right to this. Tell
Speaker 6: us our audience before without giving us, without giving too
Speaker 6: much of the story away at all, why you became
Speaker 6: involved with this story in particular, what compelled you about
Speaker 6: this story? Why did you want to write Bogeyman.
Speaker 7: Well, this story initially is centered around one of the
Speaker 7: detectives in it's a detective out of Garland, Texas named
Speaker 7: Gary Sweet and I had actually been working on a
Speaker 7: different story, a different case in which he was the
Speaker 7: main detective, and just started talking to him about some
Speaker 7: of his other cases. He's a very well known cold
Speaker 7: case detective done Texas, very quiet, very humble man, but
Speaker 7: his his peers know him for what he is. And anyway,
Speaker 7: he had had mentioned his work and several other people
Speaker 7: actually had mentioned, uh, you know, talk to Gary about
Speaker 7: this case that he worked on for seven years, I believe,
Speaker 7: and uh, so we started talking about it, and I
Speaker 7: I was intrigued both because of the uh the nature
Speaker 7: of the killer and how long he had gone without
Speaker 7: being made accountable for some of his crimes. But as
Speaker 7: I started looking into the story, the story became about
Speaker 7: you know, so often detectives and police officers. We only
Speaker 7: hear about the bad apples and the guys who don't
Speaker 7: do their job or do their job incorrectly, and we
Speaker 7: don't hear about some of these detectives who will put
Speaker 7: seven years of their lives and if you think about it,
Speaker 7: all that time away from their families and their focuses
Speaker 7: on these sorts of things. And Gary sweet is if
Speaker 7: you're gonna talk about police officers and detectives, He's one
Speaker 7: of those guys that you hope is out there when
Speaker 7: when you have some troubles. He's your modern version of
Speaker 7: a night and shining armor who is trying to do
Speaker 7: his best against what he sees is or saw at
Speaker 7: the time, was pure evil.
Speaker 6: Now, I really really love the way you set up
Speaker 6: this book because a lot of true crime there's a
Speaker 6: lot of foregone conclusion. There's a lot that basically the
Speaker 6: audience that might pick up the book might know this
Speaker 6: book is incredible in terms of the mystery, and you
Speaker 6: keep the reader on edge throughout this. And so let's
Speaker 6: get right to this, and I really love how you
Speaker 6: lay this out. We first get introduced to Bob Holloman
Speaker 6: and Bruce Brass Bradshaw, and again you're right the perspective
Speaker 6: it comes from these police and we really get inside
Speaker 6: these police officers' lives and also see the toll that
Speaker 6: being a really great cop, a person that takes their
Speaker 6: work home with them, it's a dangerous thing as well.
Speaker 6: But let's get to Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw and
Speaker 6: Linda Meeks and Mesquite Police Department. Let's talk about Christy
Speaker 6: Meeks and Tiffany Easter. Let's talk about the first murder
Speaker 6: that we encounter and the first police officer officers that
Speaker 6: we encounter, the detectives that are brought in in this case.
Speaker 7: Well in January nineteen eighty five, this particular date, the
Speaker 7: nineteen kind of a nice day down there for a
Speaker 7: January in Mesquite, Texas, sunny and bright and warm and
Speaker 7: people are outside, and Linda Meeks, the mother, is inside
Speaker 7: of her home cooking dinner. She's a divorced wife and
Speaker 7: her children had been off to see their father for
Speaker 7: the weekend and they were back and so she's getting
Speaker 7: dinner ready and Christy Meeks, who is I believe five
Speaker 7: years old at the time, and her brother and another
Speaker 7: young girl, Tiffany Easter, are outside playing just like any
Speaker 7: number of other kids were that day, and people are
Speaker 7: I mean, it's not one of those things where it's
Speaker 7: a kid alone in a park after dark or something
Speaker 7: like that. It's broad daylight, lots of people around. And
Speaker 7: suddenly the Tiffany Easter, her and the brother come rushing
Speaker 7: in to say that some man had approached him and
Speaker 7: offered cookies, and Christy had unfortunately gone off with this
Speaker 7: man right right in front of who knows how many people,
Speaker 7: and she disappeared. So Linda Meeks of course calls the
Speaker 7: police department and says, you know, I have this report.
Speaker 7: And so Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw were both working
Speaker 7: for the Mesquite Police Department and their crimes against children
Speaker 7: and also sexual assault crimes, and they get called into this.
Speaker 7: It's they're both at home enjoying time with their own kids.
Speaker 7: They're fairly young detectives at this time, and so they
Speaker 7: have some young families. And part of that is, of course,
Speaker 7: what what pays a great toll on these guys, is
Speaker 7: that they have children that are in that same age
Speaker 7: group at the time. This happens when Christy disappears and
Speaker 7: she literally just disappears in front of, you know, hundreds
Speaker 7: of people who happen to be out that day, and
Speaker 7: so they both respond to this call for this missing child,
Speaker 7: both thinking that has this typical the child will show
Speaker 7: up having wandered down the block or over to a
Speaker 7: neighbor's house or something like that, but it becomes apparent
Speaker 7: that something else has happened, that she's been abducted.
Speaker 6: Now, Christy's brother, Michael, he's seven years old, but he
Speaker 6: seemed to be traumatized and not really able to be
Speaker 6: questioned and get any information from him. But Tiffany Easter,
Speaker 6: who's nine years old, ends up being at least able
Speaker 6: to answer questions and seems to be able to give
Speaker 6: a description. So what description does she give and what
Speaker 6: other information to police are police able to get from her?
Speaker 7: Well, she basically says that this guy, he's kind of nondescript,
Speaker 7: and maybe that's why he fit in so well. He's
Speaker 7: so five to ten, one hundred and sixty pounds, white male,
Speaker 7: longish brown hair, but not so long that you'd say, well,
Speaker 7: he's got really long hair, or so short that you'd
Speaker 7: say something else. He's got long bands bangs across his forehead,
Speaker 7: so he's not all that descript. It's not until actually
Speaker 7: a couple of months later, when they get a police
Speaker 7: artist on this that she suddenly remembers he had a
Speaker 7: large mole on his face above his right eyebrow, which
Speaker 7: becomes an important detail in this case. But Tiffany's able
Speaker 7: to give a description of this man, and the officers
Speaker 7: canvassing the neighborhood are also able to find a couple
Speaker 7: of young Hispanic boys, and one of them remembers her
Speaker 7: getting into a car. They weren't sure on the color.
Speaker 7: It was a sedan, small sedan of some sorts, and
Speaker 7: they say greenither gray or yellow or maybe gray with
Speaker 7: a yellow racing stripe or you know. These are these
Speaker 7: are small children and they're the only witnesses surprisingly on
Speaker 7: this day.
Speaker 6: Right, So how do police then proceed with this case.
Speaker 7: Well, it becomes a man a big hunt search the neighborhood.
Speaker 7: Turns out hundreds of people actually are outlooking. Many more
Speaker 7: police officers are pulled into the case to canvas the
Speaker 7: neighborhood and looking for any other witnesses. The two officers
Speaker 7: you'd mentioned, Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw, they essentially went
Speaker 7: home long enough to pick up Warmer, and they stayed
Speaker 7: out all night, searching fields and culverts and going house
Speaker 7: to house, and and this goes on for for a
Speaker 7: number of days until essentially they it's it's she's disappeared.
Speaker 7: It's in broad daylight with all these people around. Uh,
Speaker 7: this girl got into a car with a this man
Speaker 7: and disappeared from her family and from her friends, from
Speaker 7: her community, and the community was pretty much left with
Speaker 7: no answers, a big, big hole on what could have happened.
Speaker 7: And of course, as you can imagine, you know, you
Speaker 7: have children, they're out in the yard, they're they're playing,
Speaker 7: and yet somebody can walk up, uh, take this child
Speaker 7: and disappear without a trace. The police officers Bob Holloman
Speaker 7: and Bruce Sprat, of course stayed on it. They they
Speaker 7: these are the days. This is nineteen eighty five, so
Speaker 7: this is these are the days before sex offender registries
Speaker 7: and all these sorts of things. So they're doing their
Speaker 7: best to track down all the sex offenders in the area.
Speaker 7: And they actually have some guys they think may be
Speaker 7: good for it, but none of them turn out none
Speaker 7: of them work, And they keep working the case, but
Speaker 7: it grows colder and colder.
Speaker 6: Now in April, some fishermen discover at Lake Texoma, about
Speaker 6: seventy five miles north of Mesquite.
Speaker 7: Tell us what they find, well, they at first, when
Speaker 7: they are in their boat, they spot what they believe
Speaker 7: is a large bird dead in the water, and as
Speaker 7: they come closer they find it's the body of a
Speaker 7: small child, and the child is taken to the corner's office.
Speaker 7: And at that time, the decomposition is such that they
Speaker 7: actually believed that child was a boy. But there are
Speaker 7: some identifying clothing and other markers that eventually they figure
Speaker 7: out it the body belonged to Christy Meeks.
Speaker 6: And is there any indication how she was killed? What's
Speaker 6: the state of decomposition? We know that DNA evidence was
Speaker 6: still in its infancy at that time. Tell us the
Speaker 6: state of forensic advancement at that time and what they
Speaker 6: could derive from the body.
Speaker 7: At that point, there wasn't much, as you stated, the
Speaker 7: forensic sciences or especially in DNA, were in there the
Speaker 7: early stages at that point and being able to especially
Speaker 7: a body that had obviously been in the water for
Speaker 7: well as we know now had been in the water
Speaker 7: for almost four months, did not have anything that they
Speaker 7: could at that time finding the body that would link
Speaker 7: to a killer. They knew she hadn't been shot, and
Speaker 7: she hadn't been stabbed. There were no ligature marks as
Speaker 7: far as from a rope or that sort of thing,
Speaker 7: so the belief was that she had been asphyxiated or
Speaker 7: strangled or possibly drowned.
Speaker 6: Now, the detectives just like we see on television. It's
Speaker 6: amazing some of the stuff almost fictional in their book,
Speaker 6: The attend the Funeral, Observed, the Funeral, The Great Site
Speaker 6: tell us how far these detectives go in terms of
Speaker 6: trying every possible angle to address right.
Speaker 7: And at that time, because some of the sciences were
Speaker 7: a little bit farther behind there, they're doing more of
Speaker 7: the old fashioned gum shoe stuff, which is there there
Speaker 7: are cases in which serial killers of a sort have
Speaker 7: they attend the funeral, they get sort of a kick
Speaker 7: out of that, or they want to come and commune
Speaker 7: with the dead later on. We all know that there
Speaker 7: are a lot of twisted minds out there with these
Speaker 7: these sorts of guys. So they actually the day of
Speaker 7: the of the memorial service, those those detectives Holoman and Bradshaw,
Speaker 7: as well as other officers, were out there taking license
Speaker 7: plates and running those down and trying to figure out
Speaker 7: if anybody was there that didn't belong there. They actually
Speaker 7: planted microphones near the headstone, wondering if somebody would approach
Speaker 7: at some point, maybe by themselves, and say something that
Speaker 7: would would reveal they were trying almost anything. They This
Speaker 7: is the mesquite and as we'll get into some of
Speaker 7: these other departments, they're very small departments, and they didn't
Speaker 7: have large resources to devote to these sorts of things.
Speaker 7: And this had never happened, this sort of a stranger
Speaker 7: abduction out of nowhere had not happened to misquite in
Speaker 7: the history that they'd remembered in some of these other departments.
Speaker 7: As we'll get to, our our killer was good at
Speaker 7: that he knew these sorts of things, and and so
Speaker 7: they were desperately trying almost anything that might lead them
Speaker 7: to the killer. Obviously had it had changed from an
Speaker 7: abduction and an abduction where they believed the child was
Speaker 7: probably dead to knowing the child had been murdered. And
Speaker 7: now all they're looking for is a suspect.
Speaker 6: Right now, you jump ahead to February twelfth, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 6: not you know, less than a year after the abduction
Speaker 6: of Christy, and you introduce a character, Tiffany Ibera, who's
Speaker 6: ten years old. Tell us a little bit about this story.
Speaker 7: Well, Tiffany, uh, she is at this time in an
Speaker 7: area very close these uh, these areas that we're talking
Speaker 7: about originally are all in the Dallas area. And Tiffany
Speaker 7: is walking to school. Actually she's with some friends early
Speaker 7: one morning. First, and then her clothes are soiled by
Speaker 7: a a bird in a tree or of some sort
Speaker 7: like that, and so she goes home to change your clothes,
Speaker 7: and now she's walking to school. She notices a man
Speaker 7: in a van on the other side of the street
Speaker 7: at first, who's kind of watching her walking to school.
Speaker 7: He's in this neighborhood, and he gets out of the
Speaker 7: car and begins to approach her, and although there's nothing
Speaker 7: howardly threatening about him, he's smiling and he's trying to
Speaker 7: lure this child near. She starts to run, but he
Speaker 7: catches her fairly quickly and takes her and throws her
Speaker 7: into his van. At this point, he for some reason
Speaker 7: is talking to her, and he'll later tell another inmate
Speaker 7: that she was too pretty to kill. But he hands
Speaker 7: her a what was called a bagphone at the time.
Speaker 7: I don't know if you remember m I barely do,
Speaker 7: is sort of the speakers to cell phones, and tells
Speaker 7: her to call her mom and him tell her mom
Speaker 7: that she's been abducted, and he allows her to do that,
Speaker 7: and soon as he gets that one sentence out where
Speaker 7: he grabs the phone back and then tells her if
Speaker 7: this ever happens, if I ever see you alone again
Speaker 7: next time, you won't get away, and then he tells
Speaker 7: her to leave the van. She leaves and runs home
Speaker 7: and tells her mom that this stranger had her, and
Speaker 7: her mom's a little bit not sure is Tiffany making
Speaker 7: up an excuse because she didn't want to go to
Speaker 7: school or what is this whole wild story, but they
Speaker 7: do look into it, and they do eventually call the police,
Speaker 7: and the police take a report, but there's nobody else's
Speaker 7: reported some stranger lurking in a van in the neighborhood
Speaker 7: picking up little girls, so they allow it to go
Speaker 7: with just a having taken a report from Tiffany.
Speaker 6: Right now three days later, you know, and again what
Speaker 6: a sad ironic date, but February fifteenth, right after her
Speaker 6: Valentine's date. And it's this is a heartbreaking portrayal you
Speaker 6: have in the book too, that what's found is a
Speaker 6: heart shape Valentine's box. Tell us about this February fifteenth.
Speaker 7: Well, on February fifteenth, in the same neighborhood, actually the
Speaker 7: same street, though it won't become apparent until later. To
Speaker 7: the cold case detectives, a little girl named Christy Proctor
Speaker 7: was walking home from a friend's house and she had
Speaker 7: her Valentine's Day box that had been given to her
Speaker 7: by her aunt. And my understanding it was the sort
Speaker 7: of thing that you would collect, those little Valentine's we
Speaker 7: used to get when we were kids in school, and
Speaker 7: she had this box and suddenly she disappeared, and all
Speaker 7: they actually find is the box, and once again this isn't.
Speaker 7: We're not talking very late at night or in the
Speaker 7: dark or anything else. She simply disappears. And both these girls,
Speaker 7: Tiffany and Christy, were within several blocks of the elementary
Speaker 7: school that they both attended. So Tiffany, for some reason,
Speaker 7: this this man I have termed the bogeyman, this monster
Speaker 7: let her go and but then continued to hunt in
Speaker 7: that same area and grabbed Christy Procter instead.
Speaker 6: Well, you explain and convey the attitude of the police
Speaker 6: at this point as a result of this, and also
Speaker 6: the panic. We just touched on it a little bit,
Speaker 6: but now describe that panic, that that palatable fear that
Speaker 6: these people were experiencing.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, did I miss something there at the end dance?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just I said, you really described the panic.
Speaker 6: But I would like you to explain to the audience
Speaker 6: really what was as a result of this. What kind
Speaker 6: of reaction does the community have. It's a small community,
Speaker 6: and and because people are literally disappearing these children, tell
Speaker 6: us about what the general environment was in the attitude
Speaker 6: in then in that community.
Speaker 7: Well, sure, when the when the police realize that Christy
Speaker 7: Proctor has also disappeared, and and in the same area
Speaker 7: that Tiffany had. They they suddenly realized that there's a
Speaker 7: a predator on the loose who's actively hunting children. And
Speaker 7: of course, because it is so close to Mesquite and
Speaker 7: it's only been a year or so since Christy Meeks
Speaker 7: had disappeared, that they're starting to draw some correlations between
Speaker 7: that disappearance this disappearance, and of course because of the
Speaker 7: nature of this most disappearance, most child abductions are somebody
Speaker 7: in the family, you know, there's a divorce in the
Speaker 7: family and one parent or the other takes the child,
Speaker 7: or somebody in the family thinks they're rescuing the child
Speaker 7: from the parents, or even a family friend, and a
Speaker 7: lot of these get tracked down. But I think people
Speaker 7: would be surprised that stranger abductions are actually a very
Speaker 7: small percentage of these. So when you have someone like
Speaker 7: this who is actively praying on children and doing so
Speaker 7: in a methodical way around certain areas, certain school areas,
Speaker 7: certain socioeconomic groups are tard you you. I mean, just
Speaker 7: imagine as a parent that you are your child is
Speaker 7: out there, your child's got to walk to school. You
Speaker 7: can't necessarily take your child to school every day. You
Speaker 7: can't walk them home every day, You can't see them
Speaker 7: to their friends' houses. And this is a neighborhood where
Speaker 7: some of that had had gone on, and children, like
Speaker 7: children everywhere, will we'll go to friends' houses. And now
Speaker 7: suddenly it's as if a lion had been turned loose
Speaker 7: in your your neighborhood that was preying on children. But
Speaker 7: this is a lion that no one sees. One that
Speaker 7: could be the guy walking down the street next to you,
Speaker 7: on the sidewalk across the street, the guy you saw
Speaker 7: in the store, or the stranger you don't. You know,
Speaker 7: you start looking at every car. You start wondering about
Speaker 7: that guy who's a little bit odd, who lives in
Speaker 7: the apartment above you. You you know, you start questioning everybody,
Speaker 7: You question your friends. You you wonder who this could
Speaker 7: possibly be, who could take children during the daylight hours
Speaker 7: and not be seen and or be seen only by
Speaker 7: other children. It's in some ways it's it's like one
Speaker 7: of those Stephen King books where the adults can't see
Speaker 7: the monster and only the children can.
Speaker 6: Yes, as well, you know, they go through the extraordinary
Speaker 6: efforts of even hypnotizing these children to try to see
Speaker 6: if they can glean some you know, new information right
Speaker 6: and for our audience too, if you could describe the
Speaker 6: geography that we're talking about to this interstate sixty five.
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Speaker 6: Basically has close access to three states, and this is
Speaker 6: well before Amber alert and through and police inter jurisdictional
Speaker 6: connection basically via the internet. So just tell us about
Speaker 6: the geography and and the you know, the complication that
Speaker 6: presented with it being access to all these states nearby.
Speaker 7: Well, the Dallas area is obviously, it's a it's a
Speaker 7: very flat area with a lot of interconnecting highways. They
Speaker 7: go north southeast. It's it's one of the main connections
Speaker 7: through that part of the country. And if you think
Speaker 7: about it, your child's out there, your child's playing. How
Speaker 7: long before since when your child has been abducted? Does
Speaker 7: somebody let you know? You go outside, you search, you,
Speaker 7: you call some of the neighbors where they go, You
Speaker 7: ask some of their friends. Somebody says they picked some
Speaker 7: body as a man picked up your child. And even
Speaker 7: at that point, are you thinking, well, was it just
Speaker 7: a friend who was taking them home or whatever. So
Speaker 7: even connecting with the police can take, you know, quite
Speaker 7: a bit of time. And then the police respond, they
Speaker 7: talk to you, they try to get a feel for
Speaker 7: as in the case of Tiffany Ibarra, where you know,
Speaker 7: they were trying to you know, the mom and said, well,
Speaker 7: I'm not sure if she's telling the truth, and so
Speaker 7: the police are trying to question her to figure out,
Speaker 7: you know, how much veracity can we give to this report,
Speaker 7: so they you know, an hour hour and a half passes,
Speaker 7: and with interstates, how far can you get on an
Speaker 7: interstate before the alarm even goes out off? I mean,
Speaker 7: and like you said, these are the days before amber alerts,
Speaker 7: so nobody is sending much of anything that way. And
Speaker 7: this particular monster was very smart about crossing jurisdictional lines,
Speaker 7: taking a child in one jurisdiction and doing what he
Speaker 7: was going to do in another jurisdiction and leaving a
Speaker 7: body and in another jurisdiction with all these knowing that
Speaker 7: the police department communications at that time, computers were even
Speaker 7: then a fairly new thing as far as connecting with
Speaker 7: each other, and the Internet was you know, still a
Speaker 7: dreamy that ways away.
Speaker 6: Now you do now introduce Gary Sweet, like you said,
Speaker 6: the hero of this story, and really you take us
Speaker 6: really inside his life, in his mindset and the work,
Speaker 6: incredible work, and really the faithful and he really believes
Speaker 6: and he's a practicing Christian. Him and his wife and
Speaker 6: a lot of these people here are really deep faith.
Speaker 6: Whether people think that's hope he or not, but it
Speaker 6: really seems like faith is intervened in everyone's life, the
Speaker 6: victims and the living. But with mister Sweet, so tell
Speaker 6: us about him and Garland, Texas near Dallas, and his
Speaker 6: I don't know, sort of untypical rise to a position
Speaker 6: where he would be this kind of person that he becomes.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, Gary, Gary's a very it's sort of an
Speaker 7: unusual background. He's not. There are some officers in this
Speaker 7: where their dads were detectives or they had some other
Speaker 7: connection to law enforcement and that's why they got into it.
Speaker 7: But Gary was mostly looking for a job. He'd lost
Speaker 7: his job. He had a wife shortly out of high
Speaker 7: school and the child on the way, and eventually ant
Speaker 7: on a ride along sort of with a friend and thought,
Speaker 7: well this might be a good enough job until I
Speaker 7: can get into something else. He's he's a big guy
Speaker 7: in a former kickboxer actually a very good one who
Speaker 7: had some ideas of turning pro with this. And so
Speaker 7: he gets into the police department and initially some of
Speaker 7: it's for the the adrenaline rush. He likes that nighttime
Speaker 7: patrol and and mixing it up with the bad guys
Speaker 7: and and that sort of thing. And but Gary, as
Speaker 7: you as you noted, he's he's very devout and becomes
Speaker 7: more so as he works as a police officer, first
Speaker 7: on patrol, then he works in the schools, and he
Speaker 7: has his own children, and he finally becomes a detective.
Speaker 7: And it's very early in his detective career that he
Speaker 7: first walks into the Garland Police Department what they call
Speaker 7: the murder Closet, which is down in the basement. It's
Speaker 7: where all the cold cases get stored, and he just
Speaker 7: he's kind of on his lunch hour and he decides
Speaker 7: he goes he would like to go down there, and
Speaker 7: he just starts kind of going through some of the
Speaker 7: files and a few of the boxes, and he comes
Speaker 7: across one Roxx and Reis and he remembers this case
Speaker 7: because he'd actually been on patrol when this little girl
Speaker 7: was abducted. So he starts reading about it, and as
Speaker 7: you've noted in the book, Gary believes very strongly that,
Speaker 7: you know, of all the cases he could have picked up,
Speaker 7: and of all the people who could have been there,
Speaker 7: and as you know, there are a number of other
Speaker 7: instances that you have to say, well, that's either fate
Speaker 7: or karma or God or something working because just how
Speaker 7: unusual it was. He believes very strongly that he was
Speaker 7: directed to start working on this case and to revive
Speaker 7: this case that had as another case that comes from
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty seven that Christy Meeks and Christy Proctor had
Speaker 7: already disappeared, and this is another case that they believe
Speaker 7: that this predator had also been responsible for. But that Gary,
Speaker 7: for one reason or another, he kind of takes an
Speaker 7: interest in this case. But he's very young, very new detective.
Speaker 7: He doesn't just think that he's even going to be
Speaker 7: allowed to work on a cold case. So he sort
Speaker 7: of looks at it and files it back in the
Speaker 7: box and puts it away for a little while.
Speaker 6: Now he's just looking through that box, like you say,
Speaker 6: in lunch hour. It's interesting too that he takes lunch
Speaker 6: earlier than everyone else al he's around so he can
Speaker 6: have quiet time to do stuff in searches. But anyways,
Speaker 6: looking through this box and there's a hundred suspects, but
Speaker 6: really hones in on this David Elliott Penton. He reads
Speaker 6: about this guy anyway, of course, again faithful, faithful event.
Speaker 6: But tell us what at that time what he thought?
Speaker 6: I mean, he looks through this stuff. But and concerning
Speaker 6: David Elliott Penton, what did he read at that time,
Speaker 6: and what did he know of him? And how did
Speaker 6: why did this guy's name kind of stick out a
Speaker 6: little bit?
Speaker 7: Well, this the boxes in this case, it wasn't what
Speaker 7: you might think of as a as a well done
Speaker 7: homicide case where everything was filed neatly and in little
Speaker 7: sticky notes and and all that sort of stuff. Is
Speaker 7: actually two boxes and mostly a mess. But one of
Speaker 7: the files in there had a had a list of suspects,
Speaker 7: and it just so happened. And you know, call it fate,
Speaker 7: call it a divine intervention, or whatever you want to
Speaker 7: call it. But the name Pentton sort of jumped out
Speaker 7: at him, not for any particular reason that he knew
Speaker 7: at the time, other than as he saw this name
Speaker 7: and he saw that a couple from Columbus, Ohio, the
Speaker 7: grandparents of Roxanne Reus, had seen a story about a
Speaker 7: man who had been arrested for a murder of a
Speaker 7: child up in Ohio, and so he saw this newspaper
Speaker 7: clipping and they were saying that the man arrested up
Speaker 7: in Ohio resembled the police artist's sketch of the suspect
Speaker 7: in the Roxanne Reis abduction and murder. And that just
Speaker 7: kind of stuck with him too. But like I said,
Speaker 7: at that time, and he wondered. He he said, you know,
Speaker 7: there's there was nothing in the box. Like I said,
Speaker 7: it was very haphazard. Things were thrown in there. There
Speaker 7: was nothing in there to indicate whether anybody had followed
Speaker 7: up on this lead, or talked to Penson, or talked
Speaker 7: to the people up in Ohio or anything else. But
Speaker 7: so he just wandered a little bit at that time
Speaker 7: if anybody ever had checked to see if Penson was
Speaker 7: a viable suspect. And he assumed that the other officers
Speaker 7: ahead of him had done their jobs and all this
Speaker 7: had been checked up. But once again, his lunch hour
Speaker 7: was over, so he kind of packed it all up
Speaker 7: and thought, well, they're not going to let me do
Speaker 7: this at my young stage of being a detective. So
Speaker 7: he put it away for and though every once in
Speaker 7: a while it would come up in his mind. For
Speaker 7: some reason, something kept reminding him of this case and
Speaker 7: it would float to the top of his consciousness on occasion,
Speaker 7: but he did nothing else on it for a couple
Speaker 7: of the years.
Speaker 6: Now, something you include everything that really does shape Gary
Speaker 6: Sweet's development, you know, in this and prepares him for
Speaker 6: inevitably having to do some incredible detective work. And again
Speaker 6: it looks like the hand of fate intervenes on his
Speaker 6: behalf more than once. Certainly, now part of this development
Speaker 6: is that like any detective, I don't care what you
Speaker 6: read is what you really experienced personally in police work
Speaker 6: to learn how the criminal, especially the incredible deviant a
Speaker 6: barent mind of a murderer, really works. And so you
Speaker 6: include the story of the eighty year old Smiley Johnson murder.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this and why you included it, and
Speaker 6: basically after you tell us, what do you think Gary
Speaker 6: Sweet learned from that?
Speaker 7: Well, I think that's an excellent point in that you know,
Speaker 7: detectives are the good detectives in particular. I mean, there's
Speaker 7: a certain amount of schooling they can take, and you know,
Speaker 7: they can go to Quantico for the FBI school and
Speaker 7: they can read everything, and they can talk to other detectives,
Speaker 7: and they can go to DNA schools and forensic schools.
Speaker 7: But the best detectives, in my experience, and I've written
Speaker 7: a number of these books, are are they they learned
Speaker 7: from their experiences. And in the case of Gary, and
Speaker 7: in this particular case, it seemed like some stories, some
Speaker 7: cases he worked on, were preparing him for his his
Speaker 7: what you might say is his greatest case, this case
Speaker 7: and the Smiley Johnson case was Smiley Johnson was an old,
Speaker 7: elderly woman in her eighties and and she's home one
Speaker 7: night when she's attacked and brutally stabbed. Just just a
Speaker 7: horrific scene there. She's practically gutted, She's stabbed numerous times,
Speaker 7: still manages to after the assailant leaves, drag herself out
Speaker 7: to her living room, where instead of calling the police,
Speaker 7: she calls the neighbor from across the street, and the
Speaker 7: neighbor comes running over and then they call nine to
Speaker 7: one one and she says that oh beause a smallish
Speaker 7: man came to the back door. She thought it might
Speaker 7: be her, one of her relatives, and she led him
Speaker 7: in and he attacked her. Smiley Johnson's an interesting character
Speaker 7: in that she's not exactly it wasn't your your most
Speaker 7: upstanding citizen and that sort of thing, and did Hello.
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Speaker 7: Like the police too much hand, so she doesn't give
Speaker 7: them much more than the stature of this guy and
Speaker 7: the possibility that you know, it was one of her relatives.
Speaker 7: And then she backtracked on that, and but she she
Speaker 7: died at the hospital, so she uh there it becomes
Speaker 7: a murder case, and Gary is assigned to this along
Speaker 7: with his partner. They questioned a number of people, some
Speaker 7: of the the nephews and sons and grandsons and and
Speaker 7: all these sorts of things and and talk to different
Speaker 7: people and uh uh and and at the same time,
Speaker 7: shortly after Smiley is is murdered, a young black woman
Speaker 7: was also attacked and brutally stabbed. She managed to survive
Speaker 7: and talk to the police, even though she said her
Speaker 7: assailant was an older black man, but still being so
Speaker 7: close and same neighborhood and the same sort of attack,
Speaker 7: and and some of the footprints led back towards Smiley
Speaker 7: Johnson's house. They they thought something was going on here,
Speaker 7: but they couldn't figure that out. So they about a
Speaker 7: year goes by and and Gary hears back from one
Speaker 7: of the Smiley Johnson's grandsons, I believe, who said that
Speaker 7: another grandson had confessed to him that he had killed
Speaker 7: killed her, that he was into necrophilia and listening to
Speaker 7: thrash metal bands and and that sort of thing and
Speaker 7: had done this. And so Gary eventually tracks him down,
Speaker 7: and through interrogation, the young man confesses, in fact, happily
Speaker 7: confesses and talks about all sorts of horrific things that
Speaker 7: he did. And with Gary, the learning process here is
Speaker 7: sort of understanding human nature. Is like Smiley Johnson obviously
Speaker 7: knew who attacked her, but why didn't she say who
Speaker 7: attacked her? Why didn't she point to her grandson as
Speaker 7: as who had done this? And then the young black
Speaker 7: woman wouldn't come off of her description of her attacker
Speaker 7: as a young as an older black man, even though
Speaker 7: it became a parent that the grandson had also done this,
Speaker 7: committed this crime. And so part of this is and
Speaker 7: it's learning how to talk to these guys. It's you know,
Speaker 7: this young man and I believe he was sixteen when
Speaker 7: he attacked Smiley Johnson. He's you know, he's done these horrible,
Speaker 7: horrible things to his grandmother, says that he loves her,
Speaker 7: but he wanted to know what it was like to
Speaker 7: have sex with a dead person, and these sorts of things.
Speaker 7: So imagine having to speak to this person and get
Speaker 7: as much information as you can so that you can
Speaker 7: go to court and get them convicted and sent to
Speaker 7: prison at the very least. And so he learns part
Speaker 7: of this is the process of learning how to identify
Speaker 7: with the killers and be able to talk to him
Speaker 7: on a level where they will relax and say more
Speaker 7: than they even know that they're saying. And being able
Speaker 7: to come across not as a friend necessarily, but as
Speaker 7: friendly and understanding and these sorts of things, and having
Speaker 7: to having to swallow what you really feel and think
Speaker 7: about this character, this killer in front of you, in
Speaker 7: order to do your job. So that when it comes
Speaker 7: to going to court, you can give the district attorney
Speaker 7: what they need to convict this guy and get him
Speaker 7: off the streets.
Speaker 6: What also found interesting in this is the crucial part
Speaker 6: of the questioning is that Gary is so thorough that
Speaker 6: he thinks about it long and hard, and that he
Speaker 6: really does believe that there might be a connection like
Speaker 6: you say, with the fifteen year old that is accused
Speaker 6: and has already confessed, and says he enjoys it, and
Speaker 6: similarities with the crimes with his attempted with the black woman.
Speaker 6: But he asked the black lady. He says, you said,
Speaker 6: this is a black man, but you say he didn't
Speaker 6: see his face, So how do you know, Well, he said, well,
Speaker 6: there's eighty percent black people in this neighborhood. And he said, well,
Speaker 6: how do you know he's old? Well he had those
Speaker 6: Converse all Star Chuck Taylor Runners guy Whears those. So
Speaker 6: I found it really interesting that we get those kind
Speaker 6: of details. But that's the kind of police offer, so
Speaker 6: so thorough to be able to look at something and
Speaker 6: then just keep digging.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and and it's it's it's a matter of knowing
Speaker 7: your case. And that's what Gary in particular impressed me
Speaker 7: with is that you know, he was not half asked,
Speaker 7: if I can use that term sure in anything he did.
Speaker 7: He knew his case. He knew the details as well.
Speaker 7: I'm sure talk about here in a little bit. Is
Speaker 7: that it became very important for him to know the
Speaker 7: details of so many cases and so much that had
Speaker 7: gone on, so that he could cross reference it and
Speaker 7: ask the proper questions. And that's the sort of that
Speaker 7: also comes out of a Smile Johnson case, as you
Speaker 7: note that he's he's so sure of the details that
Speaker 7: he's actually able to question the the killer when he
Speaker 7: makes a statement about having had sex with the old
Speaker 7: older woman Smiley Johnson and says, I, you know, she
Speaker 7: was checked for that and she didn't. She wasn't sexually assaulted,
Speaker 7: and so where the young man says, well, I sexually
Speaker 7: assaulted one of the wounds, which you know, is the
Speaker 7: sort of thing that's it's horrific to to listen to
Speaker 7: and to know these sorts of things go on in
Speaker 7: the world, but it's what can make the difference between
Speaker 7: putting somebody away for the rest of their life, which
Speaker 7: is not going to happen in that case, unfortunately that
Speaker 7: that young man is actually up for parole this year,
Speaker 7: but because of his age at the time of the crime.
Speaker 7: But it is the difference sometimes in being able to
Speaker 7: thwart any defense attempts that you know you have the
Speaker 7: wrong guy or something else like this. It's those small
Speaker 7: things that put away the big cases.
Speaker 6: You know, what I found interesting is living in Canada,
Speaker 6: and I apologize for always referencing that, but to me
Speaker 6: and fellow Canadians must find this shocking because of the difference.
Speaker 6: In Canada, fifteen years old, he was charged sixteen, he
Speaker 6: was sentenced fifteen years old. In Canada at this present time,
Speaker 6: he'd be released at eighteen. Period, he could give him
Speaker 6: three year sentence maximum, he'd have some supervision, he'd be
Speaker 6: walking the streets in three not thirty. A deal POLEA
Speaker 6: bargain given to this kid was thirty. So he's eligible
Speaker 6: for parole.
Speaker 7: This year, eligible for parole this year. And here's the
Speaker 7: scary part is is that somebody with this sort of thinking,
Speaker 7: the sociopath of the true psychopath, they don't get better.
Speaker 7: They especially sending them to prison doesn't make him better.
Speaker 7: If anything, he's in there thinking about how he'll do it.
Speaker 7: Better next time and not get caught or he's it's
Speaker 7: building up in him sort of behind that damn, and
Speaker 7: and let him out of prison, and the damn is
Speaker 7: gonna break. There's there is no rehabilitation for that sort
Speaker 7: of killer. You know, the guy who shoots somebody in
Speaker 7: a bar brawl. You know that you had too much
Speaker 7: to drink and that sort of thing. It's it's understandable.
Speaker 7: But the sociopath, the psychopath who enjoys killing or feels
Speaker 7: they have the right to or feels they have the
Speaker 7: need to, you know, they're not getting better. He's that
Speaker 7: that young man is going to come out of prison
Speaker 7: if they let him go as bad or worse.
Speaker 6: Well, and the thing is, there's no m manner of
Speaker 6: programming that I they conceivably could really help, Like you say,
Speaker 6: the the murderous psychopathic uh killer. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: can you imagine if if his behavior escalated, if he
Speaker 6: wasn't finished with his fantasy or well, what would be next? Well,
Speaker 6: I mean, he's he was pretty he was incredibly shocking.
Speaker 6: Talk about licking in the intestines and raping the wound. Wow.
Speaker 7: Well, and it's it's it's very obvious that he's he
Speaker 7: he's not over his fantasy. You don't. They don't get
Speaker 7: over those fantasies.
Speaker 9: Though.
Speaker 7: Our main killer in the book, David Pinton, he rel
Speaker 7: relives his fantasies every day. He likes to talk to
Speaker 7: him about other in tow other inmates, the the these
Speaker 7: to them, Uh, they were a little bit off track
Speaker 7: on that is that. But it's if you don't mind
Speaker 7: its sociopaths and psychopaths. They're just wired different. You know.
Speaker 7: The people ask me, well, you know you've talked to
Speaker 7: a number of them, you've met and sat across the
Speaker 7: table from another number of them. What's what's different? And well,
Speaker 7: what's different is to me, they're not not truly human.
Speaker 7: If what makes us human is empathy and a moral
Speaker 7: set of moral values that prevents us from acting in
Speaker 7: certain ways, is what defines us as human. These these
Speaker 7: people are not human. They're wired differently. They don't see
Speaker 7: what they do as being wrong. They may know that
Speaker 7: they have to try to cover it up or do
Speaker 7: whatever to continue to avoid detection and being caught so
Speaker 7: that they can continue doing what they're doing, but they
Speaker 7: are wired to do what they do. It's it's like
Speaker 7: asking a lion not to hunt zebras anymore when he's
Speaker 7: been doing his entire life. That's the allion's not going
Speaker 7: to agree to that. They don't start eating grass.
Speaker 6: Yeah, except it's a conscious decision with the human, not
Speaker 6: innate wiring.
Speaker 7: I would say that there's a certain amount of u
Speaker 7: the innate wiring is that they don't they they lack
Speaker 7: those things in them that tell them that this is wrong.
Speaker 7: You know, they they don't see it as wrong. They
Speaker 7: don't understand the ones I've talked to anyway, why we
Speaker 7: actually feel that killing somebody is wrong, you know. And
Speaker 7: that's that's the when you talk about innate wiring. That's
Speaker 7: that's what they're missing. Is they know that, you know,
Speaker 7: they'll they'll be punished if they get caught for this,
Speaker 7: but they don't really understand why we feel that way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's again, it's it's an ongoing mystery to the
Speaker 6: mindset and how people could possibly even fantasize, let alone
Speaker 6: in act. Now, we talked about Penton, So let's introduce
Speaker 6: this main character here, the our monstrous focus. And again
Speaker 6: fate intervenes because Gary Sweet gets a phone call again
Speaker 6: during lunch, and you also describe how Often it's just
Speaker 6: up to the luck of the draw that somebody gets
Speaker 6: a call to work on a case, or gets information,
Speaker 6: or gets these kinds of phone calls. So tell us
Speaker 6: about the phone call from Tammy Lopez formerly Tammy Reyes
Speaker 6: and what she had said to Gary.
Speaker 7: Tammy Reys is the mother of Roxanne Reyes. Roxanne disappears
Speaker 7: in nineteen eighty seven from an apartment complex in Garland, Texas, which.
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Speaker 7: So in that Dallas area, Tammy, Gary happens to be
Speaker 7: as he was. As you'd noted before. He liked to
Speaker 7: take his lunch as early, just at a habit he
Speaker 7: used to work as a school resources officer, so he
Speaker 7: got used to having his lunch at eleven before the
Speaker 7: kids did, and then at noon he'd be in the
Speaker 7: cafeteria for the kids' lunches, So he got used to that,
Speaker 7: and then when he started when he was a detective,
Speaker 7: he enjoyed it because it gave him some time in
Speaker 7: the office at noon to have it to himself, be
Speaker 7: able to use the computer, the new fangled thing called
Speaker 7: the computer and in some of these sorts of things.
Speaker 7: So he was alone in the office, and as we
Speaker 7: all know, s is a little ways down the alphabet.
Speaker 7: So when a call would come in, not for a
Speaker 7: specific detective, but for just somebody in the detective unit,
Speaker 7: the switchboard would first go to the a's and the
Speaker 7: b's and the c's and the d's and go down
Speaker 7: the alphabet until they found somebody sitting at their desks.
Speaker 7: So he was used to sort of in they had.
Speaker 7: Their desks were set along the walls, the four walls
Speaker 7: of the detective unit, and so he'd kind of see
Speaker 7: the or hear the telephone ring for one guy whose
Speaker 7: name is in front of him, and then for the
Speaker 7: be detective, and next for the next detective down the
Speaker 7: line in the alphabet and to sit there and wait
Speaker 7: till they'd finally get to an S and and the
Speaker 7: phone on his desk would ring, and he picked it up.
Speaker 7: And in this this time he happened to pick it up,
Speaker 7: and it was Tammy Lopez, formerly Tammy Reyes, and she
Speaker 7: was just asking she'd she'd heard something she said about
Speaker 7: there being something new on her daughter's case. And Gary, Uh,
Speaker 7: It took him a second because she was going by
Speaker 7: Tammy Lopez. But when she mentioned rock Sam, he immediately
Speaker 7: started putting two and two together and and suddenly had
Speaker 7: it knew who she was talking about. And because he
Speaker 7: had one had been on patrol when when Roxanne disappeared,
Speaker 7: and then two he had gone down to the murder
Speaker 7: closet and just happened to look in those files. And
Speaker 7: the fact that there had not been a whole lot
Speaker 7: of abductions and murders of small children in in this area,
Speaker 7: and most of the police officers were aware of the
Speaker 7: name of Roxanne Reis, he was able to put it together.
Speaker 7: Now he had not heard of anything new. This is
Speaker 7: a couple of years after he'd been down to the
Speaker 7: murder closet, and he had not heard of anything new
Speaker 7: on the case and told her that and said he
Speaker 7: would check with the other detectives though, and can get
Speaker 7: back to her. So he hung up, and then he
Speaker 7: talked to the other detectives and they had not heard
Speaker 7: of anything new. So he called Tammy back up and
Speaker 7: regretfully told her that there was nothing new that they
Speaker 7: had heard, and you know, he's sorry for it. And
Speaker 7: it was stuck with him on that one when Tammy
Speaker 7: just sort of that lingering sadness he could feel even
Speaker 7: over the telephone lines for this missing child and this
Speaker 7: lack of answers, and had this monster been caught? Did
Speaker 7: was he still out there? Was all these all these
Speaker 7: questions these these families have in these type of situations,
Speaker 7: and that really stuck with Gary. And it's going to
Speaker 7: be very important to the case later on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, now we you jump ahead to June two thousand
Speaker 6: and now you described, you know, Gary as that no
Speaker 6: longer is this guy a novice. This guy's a veteran
Speaker 6: and he's done dozens of murder cases, dozens, and and
Speaker 6: he's had a really high solve rate or prosecutor prosecutorial rate.
Speaker 6: So the cases he brings the secutor makes so he's successful.
Speaker 6: He's a veteran, he's experienced. And he gets a call
Speaker 6: from Fort Worth, Texas and again another faithful phone call.
Speaker 6: Tell us what this phone call entells? Who's it from?
Speaker 6: And and what's revealed?
Speaker 7: Well, once again it HiT's as you noted, it's faithful.
Speaker 7: It's one he is. It's back on the lunch hour.
Speaker 7: It's noon. The other detectives who might have got this
Speaker 7: call are all off to lunch. It's just himself once again,
Speaker 7: back down in the in the detective unit, when the
Speaker 7: phone starts doing its circuitous route around the room, and
Speaker 7: he's the only one in there, so eventually it comes
Speaker 7: to him. Uh and again this is this is part
Speaker 7: of this idea of fate or divine intervention. But it's
Speaker 7: a detective from Fort Worth, Diane Teft, who has is
Speaker 7: looking into a the case of an abducted and murdered
Speaker 7: girl in that that area, and she's been contacted by
Speaker 7: an inmate named Jeffrey Sunnycalb who's a an inmate in
Speaker 7: the prisons up in Ohio. And and he tells her
Speaker 7: that he was a cellmate of another inmate named David
Speaker 7: Penton who was in prison for the abduction and murder
Speaker 7: of a young woman named her. You young woman, a
Speaker 7: young girl ten years old, Nigra Ross up in Ohio.
Speaker 7: And the sunny Calb guy says, well, he's telling me
Speaker 7: about all sorts of murders and I've tried to contact
Speaker 7: some people and nobody seems to be interested. But he
Speaker 7: calls Diane in Fort Worth and he gives her enough
Speaker 7: about that case that she's interested in talking to him.
Speaker 7: And as he talks to her, he says, and there's
Speaker 7: these three other cases down there in Texas that you
Speaker 7: might be interested in. One is Christy Meeks, one is
Speaker 7: Christy Proctor, another is Roxanne Reyis. And he actually has
Speaker 7: names to these. And so Diane decides to call Garland
Speaker 7: and see if anybody over there would be interested in
Speaker 7: coming over and speaking. When this Jeffrey Sunny Coalb is
Speaker 7: scheduled to talk to her again the next day call
Speaker 7: from prison, so she asks if somebody'd likes to come
Speaker 7: over and and sweet kind of remembering the voice of
Speaker 7: Tammy Lopez, and also these these interesting connections to the
Speaker 7: Rays case, the murder closet, the being there for the
Speaker 7: first call, the these sorts of things, and then he
Speaker 7: also recalls the name David Pinson as having been in
Speaker 7: the file and how he had wondered if somebody had
Speaker 7: ever followed up on some of that sort of stuff
Speaker 7: and it's possible connections to the Ohio cases, and so
Speaker 7: he says, Yeah, I'd like to be over there and
Speaker 7: talk to this guy when he calls up tomorrow.
Speaker 6: Now he assembles with him. He and a couple other
Speaker 6: guys are pretty excited and go down to meet Sonny
Speaker 6: coalb And what is the conversation? What's the conversation? Like?
Speaker 6: What happens that meeting?
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, the stuff with Sunny Cow because
Speaker 7: it doesn't connect with Diane's case, and fort Worth kind
Speaker 7: of starts to fall apart a little bit. And and
Speaker 7: then there's was a an officer, a detective who had
Speaker 7: worked on one of the other cases, the Christie Procter case,
Speaker 7: and he's sort of spreading the world that word that
Speaker 7: this Sonny Calve guy can't be trusted and these sorts
Speaker 7: of things, and so just about everybody else. And there's
Speaker 7: a bunch of police officers showed up at a meeting
Speaker 7: to talk about this, and they all start falling off
Speaker 7: to the wayside, thinking well, this Sonny Calp can't be trusted.
Speaker 7: This stuff could come from you know, they gleaned something
Speaker 7: out of newspapers and of course now the internet is
Speaker 7: starting to come to life and that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: But Sweet, some tell Sweet along with a few of
Speaker 7: the details that Sonny calf was ever able to give him.
Speaker 7: Something tells Sweet to just keep after this. So it's
Speaker 7: actually Sweet who starts to talk to Sonny Calve has
Speaker 7: him calling him collect from the prison becomes an almost daily,
Speaker 7: he's daily occurrence that Sunny Cowp calls collect and they
Speaker 7: talk for ten minutes. He's only allowed to talk for
Speaker 7: ten minutes, and keeps feeding Sweet these these details that
Speaker 7: he starts learning all the cases, not just the Garland case,
Speaker 7: the Tammy Reyes case or the Roxanne Reys case, the
Speaker 7: Meek's case and the Christi Procter case, and trying to
Speaker 7: put things two and two together and and come up
Speaker 7: with what he needs to on these sorts of things.
Speaker 7: So eventually he does go to He knows he needs help,
Speaker 7: knows he needs to get into the case files from
Speaker 7: these other cases, the Meeks and the Proctor case, So
Speaker 7: he goes to Mesquite where he runs into Bruce Bradshaw,
Speaker 7: who was many years before, in nineteen eighty five, was
Speaker 7: along with Bob Holloman, had been working the Christy Meeks
Speaker 7: case from the beginning, and he knows Sweet knows that
Speaker 7: they had difficulty with that case because they could not
Speaker 7: place Penton Uh in the Dallas area and they could
Speaker 7: not connect him to a car that was seen. But
Speaker 7: Sweet has been coming up with, uh, you know, I
Speaker 7: don't want to give the whole detective story away, but
Speaker 7: has been coming up with some amazing information that he's
Speaker 7: able to start putting some of this together and convinces
Speaker 7: Bruce Bradshaw to to join him in the quest to
Speaker 7: see if this guy Pinton is indeed their bogey man.
Speaker 6: Now you mentioned Bruce Bradshaw, and and he becomes a skeptic,
Speaker 6: whereas uh, Gary stays interested in in in which his
Speaker 6: name Sonny, just because he just has this instinct. What
Speaker 6: I found interesting in the story is that just when
Speaker 6: I think, oh, yeah, we've got our guy, it's revealed
Speaker 6: by these cops also that there's something called open records,
Speaker 6: and the evidence is that Sonny cob had looked into
Speaker 6: information of information was available, and that's what he was giving.
Speaker 6: So for Gary to have faith in this person took
Speaker 6: a lot of well because he's being discouraged by other
Speaker 6: officers and what they had said. But what I found
Speaker 6: interesting about Gary is that he doesn't even take the
Speaker 6: word of his fellow officers as much as he questions
Speaker 6: Sonny Colb as to why it make a claim where
Speaker 6: the guy clams up sometimes, So we asked him, how
Speaker 6: come you clamb up sometimes? Each thing was personally by
Speaker 6: Gary Sweet cleared because Sonny Colb had a pretty reasonable
Speaker 6: explanation for all that. So again, going that extra extraordinary effort,
Speaker 6: Gary got to the truth. It was incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's to me, it's the difference between It's
Speaker 7: not to say that all these other detectives were bad
Speaker 7: or something, but it's it's the detective. It's the the
Speaker 7: difference between the the detective who who goes the extra
Speaker 7: mile is willing to keep an open mind. As you know,
Speaker 7: there's one detective in the story who who went up
Speaker 7: to talk to Sonny Calb actually earlier. They could have
Speaker 7: got this guy much earlier and maybe prevented some of
Speaker 7: these other things from happening, or or at least solve
Speaker 7: some of this for some of the other families much sooner.
Speaker 7: But he goes up there and Sunny Calb says, well,
Speaker 7: I'll talk to you, but I'm I don't want to
Speaker 7: be recorded. So this other detective puts a hidden camera
Speaker 7: into the room and it's detected by Sonny calvesul Sonny
Speaker 7: Calb stops talking. He doesn't tell him why he's he's
Speaker 7: spotted the camera without telling the detectives that he has,
Speaker 7: so uh, he stops talking. So this other officer who
Speaker 7: ends up being the one who's mostly telling these other
Speaker 7: officers that you can't trust this guy. He's he's full
Speaker 7: of it. And you know you got it from this
Speaker 7: is the nuts. Gary at least was willing to keep
Speaker 7: an open mind and say, well, why did you did
Speaker 7: you stop talking? And why did you do these things?
Speaker 7: And to each of these things, Sonny Calb had a
Speaker 7: legitimate reason and and the ability and then and Sonny
Speaker 7: calv is not a nice guy. He's in prison for
Speaker 7: he's a pedophile. So you know, to to some some
Speaker 7: detectives that would mean you, this is a disgusting person
Speaker 7: that you can't trust for anything. And I just soon
Speaker 7: not have anything to do with them. But for Gary,
Speaker 7: it was a matter of keeping an open mind and
Speaker 7: finding out was this stuff and not dismissing things. And
Speaker 7: and Gary is you know he's he said, maybe it's
Speaker 7: because I was young, or maybe it's because I was
Speaker 7: being guided to stay on this case. But when other
Speaker 7: detectives were falling by the wayside, and and he he
Speaker 7: stayed with it, and and kept pressing for these details.
Speaker 7: And once again he has a fantastic mind for keeping
Speaker 7: the details in his head and being able to cross
Speaker 7: reference them, saying, you know, some it might be some tiny,
Speaker 7: tiny little thing. What what kind of shoe was the
Speaker 7: little girl wearing in that pent And well Penton told
Speaker 7: me she was wearing a cabine patch doll shoe. Well,
Speaker 7: some of this stuff wasn't in the public record. And Gary,
Speaker 7: because he was so familiar with the public, with what
Speaker 7: had been out in public and what had been kept
Speaker 7: quiet and these sorts of things, was able to say,
Speaker 7: you know, that can only come from one person, and
Speaker 7: that had to come from the killer. And then of
Speaker 7: course he from Sonny cob As. I'm sure we'll discuss.
Speaker 7: He starts moving on to some of these other inmates.
Speaker 6: With Sonny caub what did he I found it interesting that,
Speaker 6: you know, Gary says, well, how exactly did this conversation
Speaker 6: come up? And he talks about them watching TV and
Speaker 6: watching Oprah and then I'm not sure if it was
Speaker 6: the Christy Meeks case or tell us about that? And
Speaker 6: what he what kind of what kind of character? I mean,
Speaker 6: of course we know he's a monster, but what were
Speaker 6: the kinds of things that he would boast about in prison?
Speaker 6: Not only did the Sonny Calb but other people as well.
Speaker 6: But what did Sonny Calb say in terms of what
Speaker 6: was really his character like in terms of the things
Speaker 6: he liked to talk about and boast about.
Speaker 7: Well, essentially Penson around other inmates. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 7: the conversation can be about the world series, and Penson
Speaker 7: will eventually turn it around to raping and murdering little girls.
Speaker 7: And he likes to relive on me. He fantasizes about
Speaker 7: on He likes to recall them. He likes to recall
Speaker 7: them in detail, which is probably his undoing in that,
Speaker 7: you know, he remembered names, and he remembered small details
Speaker 7: and all of this was wonderful for him to recall
Speaker 7: and regale his fellow inmates. With this thing, and they're
Speaker 7: all these guys and in this case are in the
Speaker 7: segregated unit, which is where the pedophiles are, but also
Speaker 7: happens to be where some police officer former police officers
Speaker 7: who have run a foul of the law are in
Speaker 7: there as well. But so he's he's sort of a
Speaker 7: you know, if it was general population and he's bragging
Speaker 7: about raping and murdering little girls, he's he's not going
Speaker 7: to do so well for for very long. But in
Speaker 7: this this situation, he's he's among other pedophiles, even if
Speaker 7: none of the rest of them are quite as as
Speaker 7: vicious and monstrous as he is. So he he gets
Speaker 7: off on it. He's, uh, you know, this is sexually
Speaker 7: exciting to even talk about it. And and you know,
Speaker 7: he's in prison. He is he can't do this to
Speaker 7: any more little girls while he's in prison, so there's
Speaker 7: a chance he'll get out. And he talks about, you know,
Speaker 7: if they let me out of here someday, I'm uh,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm he was going to change some of
Speaker 7: his his modus operandi and how he does things, but
Speaker 7: he was still dreaming of doing the same thing. And
Speaker 7: that's his personality. Is to brag and boast and relive
Speaker 7: all of this.
Speaker 6: Now. In terms of the other part I thought was
Speaker 6: interesting too, is that we almost see what we often
Speaker 6: see in true crime is you can't write fiction like
Speaker 6: this in terms of everyone, and then the author really
Speaker 6: uses as a device because we're all sucked along into
Speaker 6: this journey. Sometimes the DNA doesn't match, and so we
Speaker 6: really have further disbelief from many officers because and tell
Speaker 6: us whose DNA was tested and there was no match
Speaker 6: for which led them to believe that that Sunny Cob
Speaker 6: was lying and that Penton was really wasn't their man
Speaker 6: for many of these murders, including the three that he had.
Speaker 7: Mentioned, Well what what what? It was more than anything.
Speaker 7: They actually went to the home in Columbus, Ohio, where
Speaker 7: Penson had lived with his mom for a period of time.
Speaker 7: Penton actually had murdered his own son, shook him to death,
Speaker 7: even prior to Christie meeks his disappearance, which is why
Speaker 7: it generally it's believed that he's killed before Christie Meeks
Speaker 7: and and many more than he's ever been accused of.
Speaker 7: But when Sweet Sweet had been told by Sunny Cow
Speaker 7: that Penson had once told him that if you want
Speaker 7: to hide something, stick it in the uh, the installation
Speaker 7: of the attic of your house, because police officers uncording
Speaker 7: to spend that kind of time or effort to get
Speaker 7: into that. So of course sweet and Brad Saw and
Speaker 7: a couple of these other guys that are involved, Billy
Speaker 7: Meeks and boy Don Phillips, they went over to this
Speaker 7: house and there was somebody else living there now and
Speaker 7: they had a warrant. They went up into the attic
Speaker 7: and actually found a group of rags that had been tied,
Speaker 7: particularly in a bundle in the insulation in the attic.
Speaker 7: Obviously had been placed there for a reason. But this
Speaker 7: is I think by now we're talking two thousand and one,
Speaker 7: two thousand and two, so it's been seven years stuck
Speaker 7: in an attic, and the DNA had there. There was
Speaker 7: evidence of saliva and blood and I believe some semen
Speaker 7: on the these rags, but it was so had degenerated
Speaker 7: to such a degree and once again, you know today
Speaker 7: with those rags maybe be able to be connected in
Speaker 7: two thousand and fourteen. I mean, DNA every year is
Speaker 7: taking enormous leaps forward, but this is two thousand and two,
Speaker 7: so it was still fairly new, and at that point
Speaker 7: they had to say that it didn't rule out rox
Speaker 7: and Reis or Penton, but it wasn't going to be
Speaker 7: strong enough to use in court. They were not going
Speaker 7: to be able to stand up there and say one
Speaker 7: in a billion or anything else like that. It was
Speaker 7: too had been too long and too old, and the
Speaker 7: science wasn't advanced enough at that time.
Speaker 6: Now, the reason why he's in prison and so we
Speaker 6: have this captive and so they know where he is
Speaker 6: is this Nidra Ross tell us about the murder of
Speaker 6: Nidra Ross.
Speaker 7: Well, Penton as we get to know him in the
Speaker 7: book is very I've mentioned that he would take children
Speaker 7: just off the streets to complete strangers, low income areas
Speaker 7: where you know, the political forces and the social forces
Speaker 7: to do something about it are less. Unfortunately, then they
Speaker 7: might be in a wealthier area. He fact, he used
Speaker 7: to call these kids throw away kids. Then he would
Speaker 7: cross jurisdictional lines and deposit the bodies and other jurisdictions
Speaker 7: to confuse the police officers. And that's why these Texas murders,
Speaker 7: and you know, up to twenty five to fifty if
Speaker 7: you go by his boast. Other murders have gone if
Speaker 7: not completely undetected, then are unaccounted for then having difficulty
Speaker 7: putting cases together. But in the case of Nigra Ross,
Speaker 7: he happened to be working with Nydra's uncle, was over
Speaker 7: at the house partying the night before, was seen talking
Speaker 7: to the little girl the next day, and then all
Speaker 7: of a sudden she disappeared. He was a suspect fairly quickly.
Speaker 7: Is this sord He was last one seen with her.
Speaker 7: There was some blood found in his van, his white van.
Speaker 7: Once again, DNA wasn't strong enough. This was approximately nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty eight and DNA testing and blood testing at that
Speaker 7: time was still not very good. He was a suspect,
Speaker 7: but they couldn't put the case together, and it took
Speaker 7: him actually several years to put the case together, but
Speaker 7: they eventually did and convicted him of murder up in
Speaker 7: Ohio without the death penalty and also with the possibility
Speaker 7: of parole here and I believe two thoy twenty seven
Speaker 7: he's eligible, though, as we all know, that can change,
Speaker 7: and time off for good behavior and laws change and
Speaker 7: all that sort of stuff, so he's not necessarily in
Speaker 7: for life, which was why some of these other cases
Speaker 7: became important, but he'd made a mistake. Is might have
Speaker 7: been his only real big mistake that didn't take a
Speaker 7: detective as good as Gary Sweet to catch him on,
Speaker 7: even though it did take him three years to put
Speaker 7: the case together.
Speaker 6: What I found interesting we did skip over it in
Speaker 6: terms of making the audience realize is that he has
Speaker 6: the shake his own baby, but tell us about the escape,
Speaker 6: and in terms of what we now know what could
Speaker 6: have possibly prevented if.
Speaker 7: Well, we know that four little girls might have still
Speaker 7: been alive. In nineteen eighty four, Penton he was married
Speaker 7: and had a young and infant son, and apparently the
Speaker 7: baby was crying and he shook the child so hard
Speaker 7: that the child died, and he ended up being charged
Speaker 7: with manslaughter in that case. And this is nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 7: so essentially he gets out, he's charged, but he gets
Speaker 7: out on bail. And during this time is when he
Speaker 7: actually Christy Meeks first disappears. And then in May, when
Speaker 7: he's supposed to be sentenced, he he takes off on
Speaker 7: the manslaughter charge for his son. He was a judge
Speaker 7: had allowed him out on an appeals bond on the
Speaker 7: case instead of putting him away, and so he's out.
Speaker 7: So Christy Meeks disappears during this time, Christy Proctor disappears
Speaker 7: during this time. Roxanne Reyus disappears during this time, and
Speaker 7: Nigra Ross disappears, And of course all those girls were
Speaker 7: eventually found. The remains were found and they'd been murdered.
Speaker 7: So there's four little girls and there were those of us.
Speaker 7: Gary myself and some other law enforcement are working on
Speaker 7: some other cases who believe that a number of other
Speaker 7: murders occurred during this time. That granted, if he's in
Speaker 7: on manslaughter, he's not going to be, you know, a
Speaker 7: way for the rest of his life or anything else
Speaker 7: like that. But you know, perhaps, well those those little
Speaker 7: girls at least would have not been there for him
Speaker 7: to prey upon. And whether he got out of prison
Speaker 7: and attacked other little girls, that's probably He's probable so
Speaker 7: on that, but you never know, something could have happened
Speaker 7: to him in prison, or he could have confessed to
Speaker 7: one of some other crime and been convicted while still
Speaker 7: in prison. So yes, allowing him to go free on
Speaker 7: an appeals bond during this period of time directly resulted
Speaker 7: in the death of some other little girls and perhaps
Speaker 7: being able to put him away for life at that
Speaker 7: time without ever jeopardizing anybody else.
Speaker 6: But another ironic and well ironic, it's just another sad
Speaker 6: tragic feature of this is that he was married a
Speaker 6: couple of times and had kids and someone so he
Speaker 6: has a legacy that a sad legacy as well with
Speaker 6: with family members part of the carnage.
Speaker 7: I guess too, yes, you know, and I've I use
Speaker 7: it to describe Pitton in the in the book, that
Speaker 7: someone like this and and the things that he does,
Speaker 7: it's it's a huge ripple effect. He's he casts a
Speaker 7: stone into the into the pond. And and it's not
Speaker 7: just that that child that he murders, but they're families,
Speaker 7: the people who love them, and beyond them, the people
Speaker 7: that we never even think about in these the police
Speaker 7: officers who become so emotionally and psychologically involved in these cases,
Speaker 7: and and particularly men who have their own children, and
Speaker 7: they work all day trying to solve the murder of
Speaker 7: some child, and then they go home and there's their
Speaker 7: children playing and laughing and having dinner and growing up.
Speaker 7: And these little girls they get to watch their own
Speaker 7: children grow up to be to graduate high school and
Speaker 7: get through college. And begin their own lives. And yet
Speaker 7: these men continue to work on stories of little girls
Speaker 7: whose lives ended when they were five years older, six
Speaker 7: years older, seven years old. And that's an enormous toll.
Speaker 7: And and then you think about their families, where as
Speaker 7: you know, there's the story of Bob Holloman and what
Speaker 7: it did to him and his family. And even when
Speaker 7: they're there, even when they're home with their families, they're
Speaker 7: thinking about these other children. And there's I think there's
Speaker 7: some guilt that they deal with from their home, and
Speaker 7: they get to see their children and get to enjoy
Speaker 7: their children, and yet they know and maybe that day
Speaker 7: talk to some parents who is grieving and asking for
Speaker 7: questions and why haven't we caught this guy? And how
Speaker 7: could someone do this to children. I have an enormous
Speaker 7: respect for some of these detectives, and particularly for the
Speaker 7: pain and the suffering they go through, in addition to
Speaker 7: the people that it's obvious to us who are suffering.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you describe Earlie on when again we didn't mention this.
Speaker 6: But again, another striking part of your book is this
Speaker 6: event where I believe it's Bob Holloman's wife finds Bob
Speaker 6: in a closet with a gun, you know, in terms
Speaker 6: of talk about a breakdown in terms of psychologically. Was
Speaker 6: it Bob Holloman's wife that done him.
Speaker 7: Yes, Mollie, and uh, yeah, he's you know, some some
Speaker 7: officers it affects them all there. I don't know in
Speaker 7: in this particular case. Maybe there's the sort of officer
Speaker 7: who is just a job, but not not the guys
Speaker 7: I'm describing this book. But some are able to uh
Speaker 7: put it on the shelf and they leave the department
Speaker 7: and uh, you know, even though they take some of
Speaker 7: it home with them, they they are able to put
Speaker 7: it aside for a little bit and and be the
Speaker 7: family men that they want to be at home. Bob, unfortunately,
Speaker 7: uh could not let it go, couldn't put it aside.
Speaker 7: Uh and it it it wore on him and in
Speaker 7: a very tragic way. And as you that's one of
Speaker 7: the stories is that a few years into it, he
Speaker 7: Molly found him at home in the closet with a
Speaker 7: gun and sobbing and essentially just torn apart that he
Speaker 7: could not first it tore him apart in those early
Speaker 7: days that he could not save this little girl, and
Speaker 7: then that he could not catch her Killer. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And you know the thing is I found interesting too,
Speaker 6: and very vivid betrayal that you do have in the
Speaker 6: book about Gary bringing home Cannibal Corpse. I rented out
Speaker 6: of room one time. I saw the cover of Cannibal Corpse.
Speaker 6: It's an incredible horror show. You can't believe anybody's our
Speaker 6: groups putting an album oute like this, but Cannibal Corpse
Speaker 6: and Slayer. And he did the research to realize that
Speaker 6: this kid kept referencing two thirteen and that was a
Speaker 6: Slayer song. His wife, a devout Christian, said, you can't
Speaker 6: bring that stuff into the house. So what I found
Speaker 6: really interesting is that these guys are some of the
Speaker 6: loneliest cops ever because they can really only talk to
Speaker 6: a couple people, which means a couple cops. Because you
Speaker 6: can't even talk to the average cop. You can't talk
Speaker 6: to your wife, can't bring it home, can't talk to
Speaker 6: your kids. It's a lonely life. And what's interesting to me,
Speaker 6: and more even more horrific. If faith didn't intervene, and
Speaker 6: this guy didn't make extraordinary efforts and take the work
Speaker 6: home with him and jeopardize his home life, we be
Speaker 6: none the wiser and who knows, and you know.
Speaker 7: And some people have said, well, you know this Penson character,
Speaker 7: he's in prison, and you know, even if he gets out,
Speaker 7: he'll be older. You know. Of course, that ignores that
Speaker 7: we have. You know, our justice system is rife with
Speaker 7: people getting out earlier than they supposedly will, or laws
Speaker 7: changing and decisions being made to allow certain people out
Speaker 7: and those sorts of things, as well as escapes and
Speaker 7: stuff like that. But you know that that to me,
Speaker 7: that's not even that. The entire point here is that, yes,
Speaker 7: he'll he's a danger, and he will always be a danger,
Speaker 7: even if you know, another twenty years from now the
Speaker 7: courts decide that, well, maybe he's not a danger anymore
Speaker 7: and release him to do his own thing. But as
Speaker 7: these families who deserve answers, they deserve to know who
Speaker 7: took their child. They deserve to know that he is
Speaker 7: off the streets. Excuse me, they deserve to know that
Speaker 7: you know, he's being paid, he's paying for his crimes. Hmm,
Speaker 7: excuse me. Let me get a.
Speaker 6: Drink here, Yes, I agree to because I hear the
Speaker 6: similar refrain here. Well, you know, you don't expect them
Speaker 6: to be in there forever, and there's programs and anger management,
Speaker 6: and you know psychopathic killers that that have glee and
Speaker 6: wallow in there and revel in their crimes and write letters,
Speaker 6: contact the media, brag and boast, want to relive their crimes.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry. There has to be a place, a special
Speaker 6: place for these type of persons to live and reside forever.
Speaker 6: And that is for the public, but especially for the
Speaker 6: victims families. They shouldn't have to worry about a parole hearing,
Speaker 6: whether it's a slim possibility or not. They shouldn't have
Speaker 6: to worry that this person could be, like you say,
Speaker 6: a more medium security and he might escape. And even
Speaker 6: sympathy for these monsters, it's just I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 6: have any We shouldn't have any, and we should just
Speaker 6: have a special place where we lock them away forever.
Speaker 7: Well and I and I can agree with that. That's
Speaker 7: I've met enough of them to know that they don't
Speaker 7: get better. And I guess the point I was trying
Speaker 7: to make beyond that is is that it's not enough
Speaker 7: to say, well, okay, he's he's in prison for however long,
Speaker 7: Even if we had one of those special places where
Speaker 7: they go forever, and and that sort of thing is
Speaker 7: there are David Pinton. As you know, there are other
Speaker 7: cases in the in the book that we've discussed. There
Speaker 7: are cases being investigated right now that may be added
Speaker 7: to the book or to a future update of the book.
Speaker 7: But these are the children whose remains have been found.
Speaker 7: And these are the children who detectives like Gary Sweet
Speaker 7: and Bruce Bradshaw and up in Indiana, Jeff Heck and
Speaker 7: some others have have been able to put together enough
Speaker 7: to say this is the killer of an abductor of
Speaker 7: your child. But there are families out there who don't know.
Speaker 7: There are families I've talked to, families who twenty years
Speaker 7: later still set up place at the dinner table for
Speaker 7: that child who disappeared, who, as we know, in the
Speaker 7: one case in the book, and can leave that one
Speaker 7: for the readers, but you know, a woman came along
Speaker 7: many years later who claimed to be their daughter. And
Speaker 7: there are these families who don't have answers to what happened,
Speaker 7: and they deserve those answers. So to say that, well,
Speaker 7: he's away and he's in prison and he may or
Speaker 7: may not get out, is not enough. Not when we
Speaker 7: win with some work and some detective work and some resources,
Speaker 7: we can give some answers to some of these families
Speaker 7: who are waiting and keep that place at the dinner
Speaker 7: table or the light on in the back, hoping that
Speaker 7: the child comes home someday.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's certainly not closure, but it's the little sentence
Speaker 6: of I guess, dignity or hope, something that the families
Speaker 6: cling to that they need that conviction, They need answers
Speaker 6: because they have nothing but unanswerable questions and heartache and loss.
Speaker 6: And so I applaud the despite the tight budgets, Despite
Speaker 6: even when I see some of these killers in prison,
Speaker 6: convicted for life without the possibility of parole, there are
Speaker 6: still officers and jurisdictions that want justice for those other families,
Speaker 6: regardless of the outcome going to make any real difference,
Speaker 6: he's doing life anyway, that it's still closure for those
Speaker 6: families and what they really do deserve and what the
Speaker 6: public what we pay for, We pay for dearly for this.
Speaker 6: So I applaud that effort to make sure as many
Speaker 6: people get the answers to where their loved ones went
Speaker 6: and who and why, to some answers to their questions.
Speaker 7: I agree completely. They it's not closure, but it is answers.
Speaker 7: And you know, if any one of us who is
Speaker 7: a parent, if you thought about it for a few
Speaker 7: minutes and something like this happened to you, you would
Speaker 7: want those answers too, because because imagine what these these
Speaker 7: parents go through with. Are you a bad child? You
Speaker 7: let your child out of your sight for a few minutes?
Speaker 7: You know they end up blazing. These things destroy marriages,
Speaker 7: they destroy families. People talk behind your back, even your
Speaker 7: own families. You know what sort of a failure or
Speaker 7: failure were you as a parent when what we don't
Speaker 7: understand is, you know, somebody like Penson is a predator.
Speaker 7: He's he's stalking, he's waiting, he's using his mind to
Speaker 7: find those times when I don't care what kind of
Speaker 7: a parent you are, he's waiting to strike. And yeah,
Speaker 7: these these people have to live with for the rest
Speaker 7: of their lives. You know, what did I do wrong?
Speaker 7: How bad was as a parent? And then you know
Speaker 7: the possibility of of some of us, including Gary and
Speaker 7: and myself and some other officers, are hoping that at
Speaker 7: some point some prosecutor will hold the death penalty over
Speaker 7: David Pinson, who is would desperately do anything to save
Speaker 7: his life if possible, and maybe confess to some of
Speaker 7: these other crimes and even give parents or police officers
Speaker 7: an idea of where he left these children, because, as
Speaker 7: I said, these children had their their remains were found,
Speaker 7: at least their parents had had their remains to bury.
Speaker 7: They have remains to mourn over. And you know, some
Speaker 7: people don't believe in all that or care about that
Speaker 7: part of it, But to some people, that's that's what
Speaker 7: they have left. It's a cold tombstone, but it's the
Speaker 7: even colder tombstone if there's nothing buried underneath it. So
Speaker 7: the possibility of knowing that your child isn't left in
Speaker 7: the woods somewhere, or you know, these there's there's a
Speaker 7: lot that can be done and should be done if
Speaker 7: we if we care for what happened to these other people,
Speaker 7: these other family.
Speaker 6: Well, part of this is getting these kinds of stories out.
Speaker 6: And I applaud you for, you know, a fantastic book.
Speaker 6: Bogeyman is I'll scare the hell out of you, rip
Speaker 6: your heart out. But for all those true crime readers
Speaker 6: out there and fans of true murder, I know that
Speaker 6: this is the kind of story they really are affected by. Now,
Speaker 6: speaking of books and being affected by books, you have
Speaker 6: an announcement to make you are a best selling true
Speaker 6: crime author with some of the kind of titles that
Speaker 6: again would be worthy of coming on this program because
Speaker 6: it's the most shocking killers in true crime history. How
Speaker 6: many books true crime books do you have to date
Speaker 6: and tell us about this new exciting development that should
Speaker 6: interest our audience to a great degree.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, thanks, I appreciate you mentioning that we some
Speaker 7: of us, when I say us, other true crime authors
Speaker 7: were We're getting to the point where we've decided to
Speaker 7: form a publishing company of that is run as a
Speaker 7: consortium of authors. It's called Wild Blue Press the wild
Speaker 7: Blue press dot com where we will be publishing our
Speaker 7: own books and they'll be available on Kindle and the
Speaker 7: other e readers as well as by print. Right now,
Speaker 7: we are a for weeks still from launching the site.
Speaker 7: It's under construction. But if anybody is interested in either
Speaker 7: Bogeyman or any of these others, they can write to
Speaker 7: us at info at wildbluepress dot com and get on
Speaker 7: our list and we'll let them know as soon as
Speaker 7: the site is up and Bogeyman will be available in
Speaker 7: early June. But we're pretty excited about it, just because
Speaker 7: it's getting harder and harder to convince publishers that true
Speaker 7: crime readers are a very loyal in a very dedicated
Speaker 7: group of readers. I also write in biographies and histories
Speaker 7: and even do some fictional crime thrillers, but I think
Speaker 7: that one of the most dedicated groups of readers out
Speaker 7: there are the true crime readers. And there's certainly, to me,
Speaker 7: in many ways the most fascinating group of readers, because
Speaker 7: they're all into the psychology of these and uh and
Speaker 7: into the storytelling. And but traditional publishers these days don't
Speaker 7: recognize that. And unless it's a celebrity crime or or
Speaker 7: some uh, some crime that Jodyarias type that has all
Speaker 7: sorts of little twists like that as opposed to just
Speaker 7: a a good solid detective story or I keep telling
Speaker 7: people that In Cold Blood would never be published these
Speaker 7: days under the traditional crime publishers demands. So we've were
Speaker 7: a number of us and I'm I'm a couple of weeks.
Speaker 7: I'd be happy to come back on in a couple
Speaker 7: of weeks and let you know. But of us are
Speaker 7: are forming this company the names are are very quite
Speaker 7: recognizable and some of them been on your shows, and
Speaker 7: we'll be well, I I have to wait for two
Speaker 7: more weeks to be able to do that, and uh
Speaker 7: and I promise you'll be the first to know dan
Speaker 7: and and I'll let you know. But it's it's a
Speaker 7: matter of getting our ducks in order and uh and
Speaker 7: making sure that all these things. But the the idea
Speaker 7: is that we believe true crime readers are a large
Speaker 7: group and a strong group, and that if we offer
Speaker 7: them good quality uh true crime books, then we will
Speaker 7: uh you know this, this publishing company will will do
Speaker 7: well and and satisfy both the readers and and allow
Speaker 7: those of us who believe true crime books are important,
Speaker 7: they're important to the culture into understanding uh what makes
Speaker 7: uh uh these people tick you know out there. So
Speaker 7: while Blue Press uh will be will be putting these
Speaker 7: books out. And I'd just like to also, you know,
Speaker 7: you've been very kind to let me come on your show.
Speaker 7: But if it wasn't for people like you and Burl
Speaker 7: Bear and and Aaron Habile and and some of the
Speaker 7: other blog talk radio guys, we'd be we'd be you know,
Speaker 7: just trying to get the word out would be very
Speaker 7: tough for true crime authors right now, so I know
Speaker 7: on behalf of all of us. So we'd like to
Speaker 7: thank you guys for I mean, you put a lot
Speaker 7: of time and a lot of effort into something that
Speaker 7: you know a lot of people in joy. And I
Speaker 7: don't know if entertainment is right the right word for
Speaker 7: true crime, but it's sure, it's uh, you know, it's
Speaker 7: it's important and I think you're doing a very important
Speaker 7: job that some other people have failed to do. So
Speaker 7: I wanted to thank you, thank you myself for that.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I knew in my own mind that
Speaker 6: there was an audience and people could call it a
Speaker 6: niche audience, but this show is really big in Australia,
Speaker 6: it's big in America. And I get fan mail that's
Speaker 6: I can't believe how rabid the fans are of the
Speaker 6: program and how nice extolling all the compliments, and I say, hey,
Speaker 6: I'm having a great time interviewing the best authors in
Speaker 6: the world about some of the most incredible crimes that
Speaker 6: have ever occurred. And it's history. I see, true crime
Speaker 6: is just true history, just with maybe the crime focus.
Speaker 6: But you don't just get a concentration on the crime anyway.
Speaker 6: So not only do I think it's important, but I
Speaker 6: agree with you that it seems that the traditional publisher
Speaker 6: since the shakeup in two thousand and eight, have lost
Speaker 6: their minds in terms of this dedicated true crime audience
Speaker 6: that was looking for more than a wife kills a
Speaker 6: husband and a husband kills the wife. I mean, there's
Speaker 6: nothing wrong with some of those stories, but it's not
Speaker 6: like the audience is getting more gun shy, and it's
Speaker 6: not like the audience is getting and dumbing down the audience.
Speaker 6: I find this to be a very very bright, informed,
Speaker 6: passionate audience. So I applaud you for having a publishing
Speaker 6: company that deals with the authors themselves, putting out books
Speaker 6: by the authors themselves. And you don't need a big
Speaker 6: chain of people taking all the profit either, And maybe
Speaker 6: some of that profit might just go to the deserving authors,
Speaker 6: and the authors and an author run publishing company will
Speaker 6: know what books really should be presented out to the audience,
Speaker 6: and the audience will respond accordingly, I think. So I
Speaker 6: don't even think I have to wish any kind of
Speaker 6: good luck. The word will get out and the authors
Speaker 6: will bring the fans in and you'll have a successful
Speaker 6: publishing company. And it's about time the authors took hold
Speaker 6: of their own promotion and distribution and everything else, because
Speaker 6: really you and Amazon are partners and now well everyone
Speaker 6: in the world can have a copy one way or
Speaker 6: another of these kinds of books, and these stories are
Speaker 6: captivating to people throughout the world. So again, thank you
Speaker 6: very much for coming on the program talking about them,
Speaker 6: and we're excited to have you back on and talk
Speaker 6: about the new initiative and the new publishing company and
Speaker 6: reveal some of those authors and some of the books
Speaker 6: that are coming down the pike. So I want to
Speaker 6: thank you Steve Jackson.
Speaker 7: Much appreciated, and we really appreciate the readers. Like you said,
Speaker 7: it's they're voracious readers. I don't think I know another
Speaker 7: genre where people buy six or ten or twelve books
Speaker 7: at a time and read them, and I wonder where
Speaker 7: they have all the time. But more power to them,
Speaker 7: and both you and I and the other authors, where
Speaker 7: are we if we don't have these readers, So you
Speaker 7: know that's much appreciated too. But anyway or to appreciate.
Speaker 6: It, thank you very much, Steve, So have a great
Speaker 6: night and hope to talk to you real soon.
Speaker 7: We will thank you good good night, k