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Speaker 3: Host, You are now listening to True Murder, The most
Speaker 3: Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that
Speaker 3: have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK
Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 3: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 4: Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 4: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 4: History and the authors that have written about them. Chelsea
Speaker 4: King was a popular high school senior, an outstanding achiever
Speaker 4: determined to make a difference. Fourteen year old Amber Dubois
Speaker 4: loved books and poured her heart into the animals she
Speaker 4: cared for. Treasured by their families and friends, both girls
Speaker 4: disappeared in San Diego County, just eight miles and one
Speaker 4: year apart. The community's desperate search led authorities to John
Speaker 4: Albert Gardner, the third, a brutal predator hiding in Playing
Speaker 4: Sight Now. Pulitzer nominated author Kitlyn Rother delivers an incisive,
Speaker 4: heartbreaking true crime thriller that touches our deepest fears. The
Speaker 4: book that we are featuring this evening is Lost Girls
Speaker 4: by my special guest journalist and author Caitlyn Rother. Welcome
Speaker 4: back to the program, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 4: this interview. Caitlyn Rother, Thank it for having me on again.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for coming back on. This is
Speaker 4: a very very interesting case and again very much a
Speaker 4: true crime, very heartbreaking, but still a fascinating story for
Speaker 4: those listening now. You start off your book and you
Speaker 4: dedicate a fair amount of your book, and I understand why,
Speaker 4: and true crime fans will as well. The subject of
Speaker 4: this book is John Gardner. Take us way back, Take
Speaker 4: us back to the very beginning. His formulas of years,
Speaker 4: his parents describe his early life. Take us back, please, Well,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: His history actually starts before he's even born. In my mind,
Speaker 5: his mother was very a big part of this story
Speaker 5: because I believe that they had such a complicated and
Speaker 5: codependent relationship that the fact that she grew up in
Speaker 5: a very dysfunctional family and became the matriarch of this
Speaker 5: whole family really kind of a foundation for him to be,
Speaker 5: you know, coming into this world and also been growing
Speaker 5: up in this very dysfunctional family which extended far past
Speaker 5: his mother but also onto his father's side as well.
Speaker 5: And basically what we have here is a whole world
Speaker 5: of molestation and rape and mental illness and addiction, geographical
Speaker 5: and financial instability. It's just abuse and it just was
Speaker 5: not a not a great family to be born into.
Speaker 5: And when John Gardner was born, you know, he had
Speaker 5: problems in the womb even before he came into this world,
Speaker 5: so you know, it was clear that, you know, looking back,
Speaker 5: there was something wrong. He was born, he was colleguy,
Speaker 5: he had all kinds of problems. He was immediately a
Speaker 5: hyperactive child and you know, went to nursery school and
Speaker 5: ended up biting a little girl and they wanted him
Speaker 5: to be drugged. His mom didn't want to drug him
Speaker 5: because he was only three, and she you know, had
Speaker 5: to end up drugging him with Riddlin because he was
Speaker 5: diagnosed with ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and it just
Speaker 5: got worse from there. So his father was also you know,
Speaker 5: physically abusive to him, as when he was ten months old,
Speaker 5: he beat him, you know, while the mom was at
Speaker 5: the store, came home, found her baby, you know, covered
Speaker 5: in bruises and she stormed out, and you know, it
Speaker 5: just was not good. Father was a drunk and he
Speaker 5: ended up using drugs, and you know, the mother ended
Speaker 5: up leaving him. But it was you know, he didn't
Speaker 5: like the John Gardner was not happy with you know,
Speaker 5: going through the divorce. He had a lot of problems.
Speaker 5: He was very troubled. He had a problem with self hate.
Speaker 5: Even at age six, he was talking about how much
Speaker 5: he hated himself. His parents were going through divorce. He
Speaker 5: tried to he was threatening to commit suicide and jump
Speaker 5: off an apartment building at age nine. So, I mean,
Speaker 5: it was clear from the very beginning that this guy
Speaker 5: was really really troubled, and his mother, really, I felt,
Speaker 5: you know, did it a lot of whatever she could.
Speaker 5: She was a psychiatric nurse, and she tried to get
Speaker 5: him medicated. She you know, took him to get hospitalized
Speaker 5: three times at ages nine and ten, and she tried
Speaker 5: to do the best she could do. But you know,
Speaker 5: there was only so much you can do when you
Speaker 5: have a kid like that. So anyway, he grew up.
Speaker 5: He developed bipolar disorder as a teenager. He tried, you know,
Speaker 5: a multitude of medications and soon he got too big.
Speaker 5: You know, to force him to take the medication, and
Speaker 5: he didn't like taking him, as many people with bipolar disorder,
Speaker 5: you know, don't. But he also had pretty serious side effects,
Speaker 5: so you know, he actually had to be hospitalized from
Speaker 5: some of these side effects. It wasn't a small thing
Speaker 5: that he didn't want to take them like many bipolar
Speaker 5: patients say, oh, I don't want it lose to high.
Speaker 5: It wasn't really that. It was really more serious, but
Speaker 5: he doesn't want to take him anymore, and it just
Speaker 5: got worse from there.
Speaker 4: Well we're shot for another hour just on that. So
Speaker 4: what were his side effects from the medication?
Speaker 5: You know, he ended up having just you know, like
Speaker 5: I think he had some liver problems and when you know,
Speaker 5: even even recently when he tried to take some medication
Speaker 5: right before he killed Chelsea, he was getting manic episodes
Speaker 5: and pacing around and he wasn't able to sleep. And
Speaker 5: you know, sometimes when you have a mixture of disorders
Speaker 5: the way that he did, you know, you take different
Speaker 5: things and you're going to have an odd reaction to
Speaker 5: them where something may work for one person if you
Speaker 5: have you know, your bipolar and your hyperactive. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm guessing that you're going to have a mix of reactions.
Speaker 5: You know that maybe someone who only has one of
Speaker 5: those problems might not have. So I think it was
Speaker 5: probably also tricky to give him the right medication. And ironically,
Speaker 5: when I went to go visit him in prison, he
Speaker 5: told me he finally was on a medication that worked
Speaker 5: for him and he finally feels, you know, okay again.
Speaker 5: So that's really sad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a bit too late, right, Yeah, So you're talking
Speaker 4: about his mother, a psychiatric nurse and really in denial,
Speaker 4: you know, probably till still to this day according to
Speaker 4: your book, But us more about pardon denial about what, well,
Speaker 4: just denial about his guilts or what he was capable of,
Speaker 4: or that he might need the medication. I mean, I
Speaker 4: explained a little bit more about how she enabled, and
Speaker 4: a little bit more about what you thought she'd want
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 5: I want to be careful about terms like denial and
Speaker 5: enabling because that would imply that that's my opinion. So
Speaker 5: I actually have really tried not to express an opinion
Speaker 5: about what I think about his mom. I know there's
Speaker 5: some people like quote in the book who feel that
Speaker 5: she was an enabler, and in denial, and I just
Speaker 5: want to be careful to just stay at the front
Speaker 5: that this is not my opinion. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: talk about what my opinion is in terms of that
Speaker 5: because this is such an inflammatory subject in this particular case,
Speaker 5: I just kind of want the book to speak for itself.
Speaker 5: But what I feel is that there, you know, she
Speaker 5: did a lot of whatever she could do, and there
Speaker 5: are many people who blamed her for this whole thing,
Speaker 5: And that's part of the reason why I wanted choice
Speaker 5: book was to really get in there and see what
Speaker 5: did she do, what could she have done? What did
Speaker 5: she know? What didn't she know? She claims she didn't
Speaker 5: think he was capable of it. So I'm not sure,
Speaker 5: to be honest, whether you can say she was in
Speaker 5: denial completely, although you know because he told her, for example,
Speaker 5: you know he didn't molest in this molest this thirteen
Speaker 5: year old girl in two thousand when he went to
Speaker 5: prison the first time, and most of the family believed him,
Speaker 5: So it wasn't just her, it was the whole family,
Speaker 5: you could say, was in denial because they believed him
Speaker 5: and they saw a whole other side to him, that
Speaker 5: he was this nurturing and protective guy, and yes, he
Speaker 5: was troubled, but they didn't think he was capable of it,
Speaker 5: and they had to find out that there was DNA
Speaker 5: on these panties that were Chelsea's before they finally were
Speaker 5: able to accept that this is who he was. And
Speaker 5: I think that that's because his mother was raped and
Speaker 5: molested and she was a victim too, and she couldn't
Speaker 5: bring herself to see her son as doing the same
Speaker 5: things that were done to her. And so yes, I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess you can call that denial. I'm just saying
Speaker 5: I don't. I just don't. I just want to be
Speaker 5: careful with the terminology.
Speaker 4: Right, No, I know what you're saying. Enabling is also
Speaker 4: like I don't want to. I'm glad you made that
Speaker 4: clarification because I don't want in any way to say
Speaker 4: that you know, cause and effect what she did or
Speaker 4: didn't do.
Speaker 5: Right. I never believe she is an enabler. There's no
Speaker 5: doubt about that, including some of the homoticide detectives I interviewed.
Speaker 4: So wow, okay, So now in two thousand, of course,
Speaker 4: you just mentioned that he is arrested and convicted for
Speaker 4: assault and sent to prison. Now, before this you know,
Speaker 4: because we've square of gloss over a certain area here
Speaker 4: of adolescence, you coin him as a convicted sex offender,
Speaker 4: and in two thousand he is convicted. But tell us
Speaker 4: if there is any according to your research, any predilection
Speaker 4: or if he is inclined towards some kind of sexual
Speaker 4: offense before this two thousand, Is there any indication what
Speaker 4: his a barant sexual desires might be before he is
Speaker 4: actually arrested in two thousand.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One of the things about bipolar disorder, which I
Speaker 5: actually learned during the research of this book, is, you know,
Speaker 5: one of the one of the manifestations is a pretty
Speaker 5: strong sexual appetite. And when he was with one of
Speaker 5: the girlfriends that I interviewed for the book, she told
Speaker 5: me that his nickname was energizer Bunny because he, you know,
Speaker 5: would just go and go and go. And I'm not
Speaker 5: trying to shut everybody out, but I mean, he really
Speaker 5: did have an appetite for that. And she said it
Speaker 5: was ironic that he was actually very inclined to try
Speaker 5: to please her, and that's she that's part of the
Speaker 5: reason why she had a hard time believing this, because
Speaker 5: she didn't see him as the kind of person who
Speaker 5: would ever rape someone, because that's not who he was
Speaker 5: to her. However, he did cheat on her, and he
Speaker 5: cheated on her. They broke up, and they got back together,
Speaker 5: and he cheated on her again. He later told his
Speaker 5: aunt that he had cheated on his girlfriend. I don't
Speaker 5: know that I believe this, but supposedly eighty times, so
Speaker 5: he definitely cheated. He seemed to have no boundaries, you know,
Speaker 5: when it came to having a girlfriend and going and
Speaker 5: messing around on the side. When he had the second girlfriend,
Speaker 5: that's when this incident happened with his thirteen year old neighbor.
Speaker 5: Now he to this day this is another thing that's ironic.
Speaker 5: He has, you know, acknowledged and admitted to in court
Speaker 5: raping and killing two teenage girls. Yet to this day,
Speaker 5: he still denies molesting this thirteen year old neighbor because
Speaker 5: I think it's somehow in his mind if he can rationalize,
Speaker 5: you know, that he was sent to prison for a
Speaker 5: wrongly you know, wrongly convicted the first time around. He
Speaker 5: wouldn't be where he is today because this ruined his
Speaker 5: whole life. So he's got this whole victim pathology and
Speaker 5: so you know, yeah, he definitely had some problems here
Speaker 5: with sexually. And he told me, he said, you know,
Speaker 5: I hit her in the head. I wanted to kill her,
Speaker 5: but I stopped myself. And so he's willing to admit
Speaker 5: that to me, But he refused to admit that he
Speaker 5: stuck his hand down her pants and molested this thirteen
Speaker 5: year old girl. I said, well, so she ran across
Speaker 5: the street with her zipper down with one shoe. What
Speaker 5: about that? He goes, well that, you know, we're just
Speaker 5: going to have to agree to disagree. So twisted, kind
Speaker 5: of twisted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so speechless hump, Yeah, So there's no So it
Speaker 4: looks like he has a normal heterosexual a sex drive
Speaker 4: and he's dealing with adults. At least that's what it
Speaker 4: looks like. And you say bipolar. He has this increased
Speaker 4: sexual appetite, or at least a very very healthy sexual appetite.
Speaker 4: So when do more criminal?
Speaker 3: When?
Speaker 4: When does he have at least the first reported incident
Speaker 4: or brush with police. Tell us what age and what
Speaker 4: that incident might be.
Speaker 5: Well, the first time he ran into police was when
Speaker 5: he was trespassing at the high school when he went
Speaker 5: to see his girlfriend. He used to like to sing
Speaker 5: with the choir as well, and so he came back
Speaker 5: and the security guard told him, you know, he can't
Speaker 5: be here. You don't go to school here anymore, and
Speaker 5: he just kept coming back. So that was first brush
Speaker 5: with the police, and then this thing with the molestation
Speaker 5: and assault of his neighbor was the second. The second
Speaker 5: thing that was in two thousand.
Speaker 4: In two thousand, now he goes to prison in Corkoram,
Speaker 4: California State California State Prison, that's where he is aundon. Yeah, he.
Speaker 5: Was in a couple different prisons the first time because
Speaker 5: he had a mental breakdown. And this is one of
Speaker 5: the things that I learned during my research. His mother
Speaker 5: gave me access to his mental health records from prison,
Speaker 5: which I could not get actually from the prison system,
Speaker 5: even with a letter signed by Gardner to release it
Speaker 5: to me. But basically, he had a breakdown in while
Speaker 5: he was in prison, basically threatening to kill the guards
Speaker 5: and the judge that put him there and everyone else
Speaker 5: who you know, because he was wrongly convicted blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: So you know, that's pretty significant that he was not
Speaker 5: designated as a sexually violent predator when he was released.
Speaker 5: He was he was designated as a low risk offender
Speaker 5: while he was in prison, he was obviously dangerous. So
Speaker 5: that's one of the main things I want people to
Speaker 5: see that is wrong with our system here in California.
Speaker 5: The way these people are evaluated when they leave. They
Speaker 5: clearly screwed that up because they're you know, if you're
Speaker 5: designated as a sexually violent predator as he was, as
Speaker 5: I think he should have been based on those threats,
Speaker 5: you know, he would have been sent someplace else for treatment.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's possible to just keep somebody there,
Speaker 5: you know, indefinitely, but it costs one hundred and eighty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars a year, so they don't just do that
Speaker 5: to anybody because's too expensive. So these people are dangerous,
Speaker 5: they're getting released and they're on the street. And you know,
Speaker 5: he wasn't medicated. So while he was not medicated, he
Speaker 5: would end having, you know, episodes like that where he
Speaker 5: would get violent, He would have no impulse control and
Speaker 5: he would get very angry and he couldn't control his anger.
Speaker 4: But what if he were not to take his medication anyway,
Speaker 4: not liking the side effects, like you say, if if
Speaker 4: he had actual physical detrimental effects.
Speaker 5: Yeah, while there was probably I don't know what else.
Speaker 5: He had a really bad anger problem and he always did.
Speaker 5: That was something that goes that went back to when
Speaker 5: he was a teenager.
Speaker 4: I think, right, yeah, you said he did.
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Speaker 4: It's pretty vile angry person right from the beginning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't know exactly when
Speaker 5: that started, but I know that he also had some
Speaker 5: paranoia issues even when he was you know, very young,
Speaker 5: you know, nine to ten. When he was initially hospitalized,
Speaker 5: they saw that as well. So I mean, he had
Speaker 5: a whole mix of symptoms that are not exactly specific
Speaker 5: to being bipolar.
Speaker 4: You talked about addiction and running in a family and
Speaker 4: for a couple of generations did what addiction did he
Speaker 4: have or have?
Speaker 5: Right? So, in addition to not being medicated for his
Speaker 5: being bipolar, he also a great, great thing to do
Speaker 5: was drinking alcohol to excess, and he was dating this
Speaker 5: woman who was a math user, so he decided to
Speaker 5: try to start you know, see what that was like
Speaker 5: and then he starts using that more and more often,
Speaker 5: and even he admitted to me why that was not
Speaker 5: a good idea. You know, that's unfet I mean, even
Speaker 5: when you're not mentally ill or really dangerous stroke, what
Speaker 5: it does to people makes people violent and act crazy.
Speaker 5: So when you're already you know, imbalanced like that and
Speaker 5: you're you're drinking, he drank what sixteen beers the night
Speaker 5: before he killed amber So and he was you know,
Speaker 5: using drugs. It was just crazy amounts of stuff. I mean,
Speaker 5: he was really did everything to excess.
Speaker 4: Now what's interesting too for some people. I mean I
Speaker 4: don't think everyone understands that there's about parole, but tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit. And he was sentenced in two thousand,
Speaker 4: but he was parole five years later, and you talk
Speaker 4: about some of the course again you have issues with
Speaker 4: or at least you're reporting on, you know, the facts
Speaker 4: surrounding this. Basically that there was There are strict parole
Speaker 4: conditions that paroles have to adhere to, and if they don't,
Speaker 4: they can violate that parole. So tell us how on
Speaker 4: earth he even got parole? Why would they thought he
Speaker 4: would be you know, he'd be a good candidate for
Speaker 4: parole and then what are some of the conditions that
Speaker 4: they would be. They would he would be applied to
Speaker 4: John Gardner once he was released.
Speaker 5: Well, he had a five year I think he had
Speaker 5: a five year term and he got out, so that's normal.
Speaker 5: But what I was saying before was, you know, you're
Speaker 5: evaluated before you're released a mental health professional and by
Speaker 5: the prison people, you know, And basically there was a disagreement.
Speaker 5: You know that the corrections people said, you know, he
Speaker 5: needed to be treated and the mental health people said
Speaker 5: he didn't. Well, clearly there was a mix up because
Speaker 5: he had that breakdown where he was threatening to kill people.
Speaker 5: And I think that was a major mistake on the
Speaker 5: state's part, and that's that's something where he should have
Speaker 5: been sent someplace else, but he wasn't. So he was
Speaker 5: designated a low risk offender. So somebody who's threatened to
Speaker 5: kill people being designated as a low risk offender to
Speaker 5: me is yet another problem. He was given a GPS
Speaker 5: bracelet to wear, but not until you know, a couple
Speaker 5: of years later, and so you know, he was violated.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry he was arrested or cited and arrested for
Speaker 5: smoking marijuana and so that to me probably you know,
Speaker 5: and people that I spoke with were wondering, well, why
Speaker 5: didn't he get violated for that? Well, he was arrested,
Speaker 5: something happened. I tried calling the parole officer to get
Speaker 5: an answer from that, but you know, nobody wants to answer.
Speaker 5: Now that two girls are dead, nobody wants to you know,
Speaker 5: be responsible for that. So it was the choice so
Speaker 5: that somebody made, probably the parole officer, to not officially
Speaker 5: quote unquote violate him. So and what I was told is, well,
Speaker 5: you know, the prisons are crowded, and this was not
Speaker 5: a violent offense. This was not a rape. This had
Speaker 5: nothing to do with being any molesting any girls. And
Speaker 5: so you know they're busy now freeing people from prison
Speaker 5: because they're overcrowded, and they're putting people back into the jails.
Speaker 5: So I'm sure it had to do with money and crowding.
Speaker 5: And that wasn't the kind of thing that's that's just
Speaker 5: not what the parole officers are doing, right, They're trying
Speaker 5: to catch the more serious ones. The other problem was
Speaker 5: that he's got this bracelet on, but nobody's tracking him
Speaker 5: in real time because they don't rack low risk offenders
Speaker 5: in real time, and so people think that they're secure
Speaker 5: with these people running around with the bracelets, but in
Speaker 5: fact we're not because nobody's nobody's watching them. Those those
Speaker 5: are not used to stop crimes. They're you know, they're
Speaker 5: used later to go, oh, I guess, I guess we
Speaker 5: missed that, you know, which is just ridiculous. And then
Speaker 5: you know, he also went onto prison grounds, which is
Speaker 5: a felony for somebody who's a convicted felon to go
Speaker 5: onto prison grounds when they're not supposed to. So there
Speaker 5: were a number of times you know that he could
Speaker 5: have been violated and sent back. And you know, and
Speaker 5: he's also using all these drugs, and you know, he claims, well,
Speaker 5: you know, I got a parole officer at one point
Speaker 5: who just ruined my life. He's I had this really good,
Speaker 5: high paying job and in LA which is two counties away,
Speaker 5: for forty nine dollars an hour because he was an electrician,
Speaker 5: and I had a girlfriend who was the mother of
Speaker 5: my you know, two small boys, and I was not
Speaker 5: only I lost my relationship, I couldn't go see her
Speaker 5: because the parle officer told me I had to quit
Speaker 5: this job because I couldn't work out of the county,
Speaker 5: which meant I couldn't go see my girlfriend, which also
Speaker 5: meant I couldn't afford to send her any money to
Speaker 5: pay for the you know, support for these boys, couldn't
Speaker 5: and lost his relationship. He had to move because he
Speaker 5: couldn't afford his apartment, he had to get a different job,
Speaker 5: which paid probably about a third of what he was making,
Speaker 5: and he ended up being homeless and living out of
Speaker 5: his truck. Now, you know, in the defense of somebody
Speaker 5: like this, I'm not excusing, and I'm just trying to
Speaker 5: explain that you take somebody who's mentally unstable and you
Speaker 5: caused them to lose financial stability, you know, any kind
Speaker 5: of home life, any kind of relationship. He's not allowed
Speaker 5: to live with his mother because his mother lives too
Speaker 5: close to his school. You know, he's basically going to
Speaker 5: disintegrate and go out and attack somebody. That's another problem
Speaker 5: that I found in my reporting with the system that
Speaker 5: we have. You know, nobody wants to have these people
Speaker 5: live in their neighborhood, which I understand, but people need
Speaker 5: to also understand that if you make life too difficult
Speaker 5: for these people, they're going to come out and attack you.
Speaker 5: So it's not smart, you know, And there's no such
Speaker 5: thing as you know, locking these people up and throwing
Speaker 5: away the key. That they don't want to pay for it,
Speaker 5: and they don't want to have them in their neighborhood.
Speaker 5: They don't want to deal with these people, and they
Speaker 5: don't want to deal with the problem. And so it's
Speaker 5: nothing's going to change unless people start paying attention to
Speaker 5: some of the things I revealed in this book. It
Speaker 5: made me angry to find all this stuff out.
Speaker 4: Now, he eventually he's violated his parole for living with
Speaker 4: his girlfriend.
Speaker 5: But his girlfriend he was What I was saying is
Speaker 5: he couldn't work out of town. He wasn't doing anything
Speaker 5: wrong or being violated. His parole officer just said, you
Speaker 5: can't do this anymore. The other parole officers said he could,
Speaker 5: and then she said, you can't do this anymore. You
Speaker 5: have to come and work in the county.
Speaker 4: Now, where is this report? Where where he was feeling
Speaker 4: out of control and likely to hurt someone? Where when
Speaker 4: did this happen?
Speaker 5: Well, he he was disintegrating because of all the stuff
Speaker 5: that I was just mentioning. So he lost you know,
Speaker 5: he'd lost his good job, he lost his home, he
Speaker 5: was homeless, he couldn't live anywhere, you know, except out
Speaker 5: of his truck, and he was going back and forth.
Speaker 5: Finally ended up staying with his grandmother, which is was
Speaker 5: in Riverside County, which is one county north of where
Speaker 5: his mother lived. So he was kind of going back
Speaker 5: and forth between his grandmother's place and his mother's place.
Speaker 5: Now he was registered as his grandmother, so that's where
Speaker 5: he was supposed to be living. And a lot of
Speaker 5: people thought, well, he was living in his mother's when
Speaker 5: he wasn't living in his mother's But he was in
Speaker 5: fact going back and forth, which is allowed under the law.
Speaker 5: But it's you know, it's like driving through a loophole.
Speaker 5: It's not wrong, but it's not exactly what you're supposed
Speaker 5: to be doing under the spirit of the law. So
Speaker 5: I forgot your question. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Well, we talked about who he reported to this feeling
Speaker 4: out of control and likely O right, right, right, Okay, So.
Speaker 5: He's going back and forth, and the reason he's going
Speaker 5: back and forth is because he's clearly disintegrating, and that's
Speaker 5: partly because he's he's using mes more often. When you
Speaker 5: use MAS you're going to start disintegrating anyway. So, on
Speaker 5: top of all the other stuff with you know, not
Speaker 5: having money and not having a place to live that stable,
Speaker 5: he was still you know, he's still using drugs. And
Speaker 5: his mother could tell that he was really out of control.
Speaker 5: He had takes pretty much totaled two cars by running
Speaker 5: into things on purpose. And then he basically said to
Speaker 5: his mom, you know I need help, and she said, yes,
Speaker 5: I think you do need help. So he started, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to find a place to take him some kind
Speaker 5: of treatment facility. And he thought he should get drug
Speaker 5: treatment first. She thought he should get mental health treatment.
Speaker 5: He said, I think I need to deal with the
Speaker 5: drugs first and then the other stuff will follow. But regardless,
Speaker 5: you know, he spent he spent time on the phone,
Speaker 5: and I couldn't really pin down exactly how many places
Speaker 5: he called, but she said she did sit there and
Speaker 5: watch him and listen to him do this at her
Speaker 5: place for at least a couple three days, trying to
Speaker 5: get placed into one of these treatment facilities, and nobody
Speaker 5: would take him because he was a sex offender, and
Speaker 5: so there are no beds in the county here where
Speaker 5: we live. In San Diego that will take a sex offender,
Speaker 5: no mental health treatment facility, and no mental health treatment facility, sorry,
Speaker 5: substance abuse or mental health, there's no place for him
Speaker 5: to go. And so they went to a public facility,
Speaker 5: a psychiatric outpatient place, and he saw a psychiatrist and said, hey,
Speaker 5: you know, I think I might be as qualified as
Speaker 5: a fifty one fifty, which is someone who is deemed
Speaker 5: to be dangerous, you know, and danger of harming himself
Speaker 5: for others. And because he was not found to be
Speaker 5: ready to go hurt somebody right now that second, they
Speaker 5: you know, the psychiatrist gave him some pills and sent
Speaker 5: him on his way, and about a week later he
Speaker 5: went and then tried to kill himself by doing a
Speaker 5: fatal a fatal binge, a near fatal binge of again
Speaker 5: math and probably cocaine and some street drugs and a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of beer and trying to mix everything. He
Speaker 5: said he was actually trying to give himself a heart
Speaker 5: attack to kill himself, and it still didn't work, and
Speaker 5: then he ended up killing Chelsea like two weeks after that.
Speaker 4: So so so, after the psychiatry and after the suicide attempt,
Speaker 4: he's still not hospitalized.
Speaker 5: Several right, almost ran into things with two cars and
Speaker 5: then did the drug binge. The's three suicide attempts, and
Speaker 5: he still wasn't able to be admitted anywhere.
Speaker 4: Wow. Yeah, he should have qualified three times, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's incredible. Yeah yeah. So okay, so that's his mental stayed.
Speaker 4: And that's that's who John Gardner is tell us about. Chelsea.
Speaker 5: Okay. Chelsea King was seventeen years old. She was blonde,
Speaker 5: blue eyed, really pretty, very ambitious and bright, young, talented,
Speaker 5: uh senior in high school, and she when she grew up,
Speaker 5: she wanted to be an activist and art. She was
Speaker 5: an environmentalist and she was on the track team. She
Speaker 5: played in the junior you know, the youth symphony. She
Speaker 5: was you know, really popular. Everyone liked her, wanted to
Speaker 5: be her, were friends with her, and she was apparently,
Speaker 5: you know, really popular and a likable person who would
Speaker 5: everybody thought was going to go be something big someday.
Speaker 5: And she went running one afternoon, it was a Thursday afternoon,
Speaker 5: and she when she didn't come home the wish at
Speaker 5: the time that she normally did. She's very reliable, very dependable,
Speaker 5: always kept a very you know certain schedule. Her parents
Speaker 5: and knew something was wrong immediately, and they tracked her
Speaker 5: phone to her car, and her father drove over there
Speaker 5: and saw it in the parking lot of this community
Speaker 5: park where it was right off these this trail network,
Speaker 5: which it's this very large area called the of course,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna forget it. This is the ranch of Bernardo
Speaker 5: Community Park, but it's attached to the San Diegito River Valley.
Speaker 5: It's really big and beautiful and there's it's right around
Speaker 5: a lake called Lake Hodges. And I went up there
Speaker 5: to kind of retrace her steps, and it was actually
Speaker 5: kind of area. It's very big open area that there
Speaker 5: are trails that approach from different sides, and there's houses
Speaker 5: that are around it. But it's actually just a huge
Speaker 5: open area with water and trails and trees and bushes.
Speaker 5: So there's some areas where you know, the houses are
Speaker 5: pretty far up and away. So basically she went out
Speaker 5: running and he grabbed her.
Speaker 4: So this was February two thousand and no, no, this
Speaker 4: is a pardon me, February right, twenty ten.
Speaker 5: Right, this is a year after Amber Duba went missing.
Speaker 4: Right, So tell us just tell us follow up on
Speaker 4: the Chelsea king, what happens next.
Speaker 5: Okay, well we're kind of skipping over Amber. Amber came first,
Speaker 5: jumping the back that they kind of come together.
Speaker 4: So sure, let's do Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 5: Amber Dubois was a fourteen year old who lived about
Speaker 5: eight miles away from this park in another city called Escondido.
Speaker 5: So so these are all really kind of close to
Speaker 5: each other. Chelsea was from a small town called Powi,
Speaker 5: but she was running in Rancho Bernardo at this park,
Speaker 5: so these are all sort of in the same general area.
Speaker 5: So Amber was walking to school one morning, This is
Speaker 5: a year before, in February of two thousand and nine.
Speaker 5: And she was a bookworm and she loved animals. She
Speaker 5: had a real affinity with wolves. And she was wearing
Speaker 5: dark clothing this one morning, and it was kind of
Speaker 5: a little bit sprinkly, and she was walking to school
Speaker 5: by herself, and for some reason, she decided to take
Speaker 5: a different route to school. According to John Gardner, where
Speaker 5: he said he grabbed her. This is all we know.
Speaker 5: She normally walked a different way. And what threw the
Speaker 5: police off is that there were two parents who were
Speaker 5: absolutely positive that they saw her right near the high school,
Speaker 5: walking with her hood up, laying one of those hoodies,
Speaker 5: and so she had had a two hundred dollars check
Speaker 5: in her pocket. She was on her way to go
Speaker 5: buy this lamb for the Future Farmers of America project
Speaker 5: that she was enrolled in, and she was really excited
Speaker 5: about getting this lamb. And then she never showed up
Speaker 5: at school. So when her again, you know, her parents said,
Speaker 5: oh gosh, you know, she should have been home whereas
Speaker 5: she They called the police right away. And the difference
Speaker 5: between these two cases is that there was no last
Speaker 5: known point for her. So Chelsea had a car that
Speaker 5: they could trace, and they could see her cell phone
Speaker 5: was in there. You know. They came and opened it
Speaker 5: and they could see that she had changed clothes and
Speaker 5: had gone running, and so that's kind of what they figured.
Speaker 5: She must have been running around somewhere on those trails,
Speaker 5: and that's when they went looking for her with Amber.
Speaker 5: You know, there were these sightings by these two parents,
Speaker 5: but they didn't know for sure, so they spent you know,
Speaker 5: they spent time looking around and searching around the high
Speaker 5: school for her, and they couldn't find her, and they
Speaker 5: had dogs they brought in and they couldn't find her,
Speaker 5: and there were some other sightings of her they thought,
Speaker 5: you know, somewhere in the general area. They used a
Speaker 5: pretty narrow perimeter of searching through the the sex offenders
Speaker 5: who lived right around the school, and as it turned out,
Speaker 5: John Gardner was just outside that perimeter. He lived in
Speaker 5: Escondido too, about two miles from the school. But they
Speaker 5: never they didn't search Flide enough, and so, you know,
Speaker 5: looking back at twenty twenty hindsight, you know, if they
Speaker 5: had just expanded their perimeter a little bit more around
Speaker 5: the school, you know, they probably would have at least
Speaker 5: interviewed him. But he completely got away with it, and he,
Speaker 5: you know, he just started drinking more and more and
Speaker 5: was using the math more after that happened. And so
Speaker 5: you know, the two girls went missing almost a year apart,
Speaker 5: so clearly, and when he did that fatal drug bench
Speaker 5: it was on the year anniversary, so clearly it was
Speaker 5: you know, he was dealing with the aftermath of killing
Speaker 5: that girl. So the difference between these two incidents, though,
Speaker 5: what he told me was in the first case, he
Speaker 5: was very angry at his girlfriend at the time because
Speaker 5: she was doing mass with these other guys and they
Speaker 5: were supposed to get together, and she didn't want to.
Speaker 5: She want to hang out with these friends. And so
Speaker 5: he just sat there up all night drinking beer, getting
Speaker 5: more and more angry, and he went out in the
Speaker 5: morning with a gun and a knife in the car
Speaker 5: and he was driving around just looking for somebody that
Speaker 5: he was going to hurt. And he wasn't sure whether
Speaker 5: he was going to kill somebody or not, but he
Speaker 5: was going to, or whether he was going to use
Speaker 5: the gun or the knife, but that he was going
Speaker 5: to use one of them. And he saw her walking
Speaker 5: to school alone down a street that was fenced in
Speaker 5: on both sides, and knew that she wasn't going to
Speaker 5: have anywhere to run, so he pulled up and told
Speaker 5: her to get in the car, and then he you know,
Speaker 5: threatened her and said, you know, get in the car,
Speaker 5: and so she did. So that was that was Amber.
Speaker 5: And then with Chelsea. He had been hanging around that
Speaker 5: park all day again, drinking and talking to women, you know,
Speaker 5: and then he saw one he wanted and he said,
Speaker 5: I want to have sex to himself, he thought, and
Speaker 5: there was just a sudden impulse, I want to have sex,
Speaker 5: and so he ran after a different woman and he
Speaker 5: couldn't catch up to her, and so he saw Chelsea
Speaker 5: and he saw her come back again because it's a loop,
Speaker 5: and he grabbed her when he when she came back around,
Speaker 5: because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,
Speaker 5: and he wanted to have sex. And it was just
Speaker 5: like that boom, which is so sad, so sad that
Speaker 5: she was just happened to be there.
Speaker 4: How did he kill them?
Speaker 5: Uh? He raped and stabbed Amber, and he raped and
Speaker 5: strangled Chelsea. And that's all I'm gonna say.
Speaker 4: Right, much enough, yes.
Speaker 5: Enough, That's what he admitted to in the pleaburg and
Speaker 5: so right. I just want to point out that I
Speaker 5: made a specific effort to be really sensitive to you know,
Speaker 5: in case the parents ever read it, and also for
Speaker 5: anybody else who is reading this book. I don't think
Speaker 5: we really needed to know how he killed these girls
Speaker 5: because they were so young and they're miners, and you know,
Speaker 5: normally when I write a book like this, they're adults,
Speaker 5: and I try to keep it as technical as I can.
Speaker 5: If I ever describe it, it's usually more about the
Speaker 5: autopsy or what have you, because you know, I always
Speaker 5: feel like, just out of respect to the victims' families
Speaker 5: that we don't really need to be gross and gruesome,
Speaker 5: and so I purposely did not go into those details.
Speaker 4: Well, there are times when the gruesome details need to
Speaker 4: be told as well. I got to say that too.
Speaker 4: So yeah, never really and sometimes you can never please
Speaker 4: victims' families no matter what. And I can understand that.
Speaker 4: I can totally understand that. So now, how did police
Speaker 4: glean that John Gardner was involved with Chelsea King? Chelsea King?
Speaker 4: What way did they discover the connection?
Speaker 5: Well, this was a pretty unusual case and how quickly
Speaker 5: they responded This case was actually just really unique here
Speaker 5: in San Diego. I've never seen any case like it,
Speaker 5: which is the reason why I decided this really needed
Speaker 5: a book links book. Excuse me. Amber's parents were really
Speaker 5: you know, they were on TV, they talked to the media,
Speaker 5: they were went on national TV. There was a story
Speaker 5: in People magazine. She was missing. She was actually on
Speaker 5: the cover of People magazine at one point, but they
Speaker 5: couldn't find her. And so when Chelsea went missing, you know,
Speaker 5: the thing that I mentioned was different about the being
Speaker 5: the car in the parking lot. They immediately called out
Speaker 5: the search team and had them going out into that park.
Speaker 5: And the interesting thing about this was they were flyers
Speaker 5: that went out everywhere. There was suddenly every you know,
Speaker 5: a page set up Chelsea's Light, Chelsea's Gone Missing. I
Speaker 5: think was probably the very early I don't remember exactly
Speaker 5: what it was called, that there was a search that
Speaker 5: went viral on Facebook and it went national and it
Speaker 5: went international and everybody was looking for Chelsea King. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've never seen anything like it. It just was astounding
Speaker 5: and it was, you know, unprecedented here in San Diego
Speaker 5: that they were searching for her. They didn't know where
Speaker 5: she was, they hadn't found anything, you know, but they
Speaker 5: just kind of figured, well, she's she's just looks like
Speaker 5: foul play, right. They just kind of figured that right away.
Speaker 5: With Amber, they thought, oh, well she's a runaway. So
Speaker 5: they didn't go all out in the same way. And
Speaker 5: so by having everybody out searching for her, there was
Speaker 5: a guy who lived in the neighborhood over on the
Speaker 5: other side of the park, which and just keep in mind,
Speaker 5: this is a huge, huge, expansive area. So there was
Speaker 5: a ridge overlooking the other way on the other side
Speaker 5: of the park, and he actually found a pair of
Speaker 5: her underwear, which you know, they didn't know was her underwear,
Speaker 5: but they found it right off the path where if
Speaker 5: you go into the neighborhood where near where his mom
Speaker 5: was lived, there was this pair of underwear. So he
Speaker 5: happened to be I think he was a retired law
Speaker 5: enforcement guy, so he had called the police. The police
Speaker 5: came and picked it up and they ran those that
Speaker 5: pair of panties through the through the testing process over
Speaker 5: the weekend and got a very fast result. Because he
Speaker 5: had been in prison for that other molestation assault, his
Speaker 5: DNA was in the database and so they got a
Speaker 5: match between his DNA. There was some semen on there
Speaker 5: and some of her blood on the on the underwear,
Speaker 5: so they were able to arrest him. She was disappeared
Speaker 5: on Thursday. They arrested him on Sunday, and they hadn't
Speaker 5: even found her body yet, but they arrested him and
Speaker 5: they found her a couple of days later, and then
Speaker 5: you know, four days after that, based on a tip.
Speaker 5: That's all they that's all the authorities would say. Authorities
Speaker 5: were led to the remains of Amber Dubaw. So I
Speaker 5: immediately was wondering, I, you know, did was that Gardner
Speaker 5: and for six weeks, nobody would say anything, and then
Speaker 5: I thought, well, I guess it wasn't him, because they
Speaker 5: would have said so it turned out it was him.
Speaker 5: And that's the whole time that they were trying to
Speaker 5: link him to the murder, because he took them to
Speaker 5: the remains on a deal that they couldn't use his
Speaker 5: you know, used that trip against him. They had to
Speaker 5: find independent evidence linking him to the murder.
Speaker 4: Right right, And rather than ask you later than I'll
Speaker 4: ask you sooner. Why why do you think John Gardner
Speaker 4: led police? Because we know he's not a nice guy.
Speaker 4: So well, well.
Speaker 5: Let me explain something about John Gardner. John Gardner really
Speaker 5: does have two sides to him, okay, and he really
Speaker 5: that's why his family couldn't believe that he was capable
Speaker 5: of this. He was he really. I don't know whether
Speaker 5: he felt remorse or not. He told me he felt
Speaker 5: regret and there is a difference, but he claimed that
Speaker 5: he did not.
Speaker 1: He did not.
Speaker 5: See the difference in the definition of the two words.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if he's playing word games with
Speaker 5: me or if he just really didn't know. It's not
Speaker 5: for me to judge, but he basically wanted to tell
Speaker 5: authorities where she was because he felt like it was
Speaker 5: going to make him look like somehow better in the
Speaker 5: eyes of the community that he helped her family get closure,
Speaker 5: But honestly, more importantly than that, he got a deal.
Speaker 5: His attorneys said, hey, can you tell us where Chelsea
Speaker 5: King is? And the police said, can you tell us
Speaker 5: where Chelsea King is? And he wouldn't, And so his
Speaker 5: lawyers said, well, okay, they found Chelsea's body. It's too
Speaker 5: late now for you to tell us where Chelsea is.
Speaker 5: But did you have anything to do with Amber And
Speaker 5: after some prodding, he finally acknowledged that he did, and
Speaker 5: he said, you know, and I can tell you where
Speaker 5: her body is, but you're not going to be able
Speaker 5: to find her. I'm going to have to take you there.
Speaker 5: So they made a deal, and you know, had this
Speaker 5: whole covert operation to sneak in out of the jail
Speaker 5: where you know, hopefully no one could see him because
Speaker 5: this was just such an enormous media case, And then
Speaker 5: he led the authorities up there. It took him a
Speaker 5: while to find where she was, where he had where
Speaker 5: he had buried her remains.
Speaker 4: Is there any possibility did he enjoyed reliving the experience
Speaker 4: to some degree and leading authorities to the body.
Speaker 5: Well, they thought, you know, they weren't sure what he
Speaker 5: was doing. They weren't sure if he was just trying
Speaker 5: to get out, you know, if he wanted some free
Speaker 5: cigarettes because you're not allowed to smoke in the jail.
Speaker 5: Did he just want to go have you know, a
Speaker 5: gaunt outside. Did he was he trying going to try
Speaker 5: to escape? I mean, they honestly didn't know what he
Speaker 5: was doing. But I think he liked the attention, you know,
Speaker 5: and I mean at the very least. Yeah, he told
Speaker 5: me he actually didn't really like thinking about it, So
Speaker 5: I'm not sure that he wanted to relive it, to
Speaker 5: be honest. I mean, I know what you're saying, because
Speaker 5: I know some killers are like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But when.
Speaker 5: We talked about it, he said he liked the raping part,
Speaker 5: he didn't like the killing part.
Speaker 4: Why did he Why did he say he did kill
Speaker 4: them if he didn't enjoy the killing, because again, some
Speaker 4: of these guys really enjoy that aspect of it, right,
Speaker 4: what he enjoyed the raping but felt they had to die.
Speaker 5: Well, with Chelsea, he told me he killed her because
Speaker 5: he didn't want her to tell. And I guess he
Speaker 5: told me that he wasn't necessarily going to kill her,
Speaker 5: but she kept talking to him, you know, during this
Speaker 5: whole thing, and I guess he said she was acting
Speaker 5: like a little psychologist and that annoyed him, and he
Speaker 5: just knew that she was going to tell and there
Speaker 5: was nothing he could do about that, so he had
Speaker 5: to kill her. So I don't think he was according
Speaker 5: to what he told me. I mean, who knows what
Speaker 5: he's telling me the truth. But what he said was
Speaker 5: he wasn't necessarily wanting to kill Chelsea. But with Amber,
Speaker 5: he was very angry and wanted to hurt somebody and
Speaker 5: wanted to hurt them bad. So he wasn't necessarily intending
Speaker 5: to kill someone, but he definitely wanted to hurt somebody.
Speaker 5: So I think with Amber, he probably he thought he
Speaker 5: was going to enjoy it, I think, is what he said.
Speaker 5: And then he said he didn't. And I don't know
Speaker 5: if he's just telling me that because he thinks that
Speaker 5: sounds better, because he does tend to tell people things
Speaker 5: that he thinks they want to hear. So he would
Speaker 5: tell the detectives. One thing he would tell Amber's mother something.
Speaker 5: He would tell probably me something, and he would probably
Speaker 5: tell the detective something else. That's kind of how he works.
Speaker 4: Now, you had a five hour interview, tell us, tell us,
Speaker 4: I mean you're talking about some of the contents of
Speaker 4: questioning him, but tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 4: whole experience itself. He'd take us back there. I thought
Speaker 4: that was a very interesting aspect of the book.
Speaker 5: Thank you well. I waited until the end of my
Speaker 5: research to do this. I mean I had been corresponding
Speaker 5: with him a little bit by letter. He knew that
Speaker 5: I had been interviewing his mother and family members and
Speaker 5: girlfriends because his mom was continuing to visit him every
Speaker 5: couple of weeks, and I'm sure she kind of filled
Speaker 5: him in on what we were talking about, and she
Speaker 5: he wanted to make sure he had his mom's approval
Speaker 5: to for, you know, me to go ahead and do
Speaker 5: this book. So I think he kind of knew what
Speaker 5: I'd been doing, and I'd been sending him letters, which
Speaker 5: are basically waivers so that we could get documents really
Speaker 5: so I could really tell this story. So I have
Speaker 5: to say, you know, he really did cooperate with this,
Speaker 5: and also, you know, I didn't pay him or his
Speaker 5: family or anything. But he really did want this story told,
Speaker 5: you know fully, because he told me he really did
Speaker 5: want to see if things could be changed. That you know,
Speaker 5: he knew that he was where he belonged and that
Speaker 5: if he were out, he would just keep doing this,
Speaker 5: and so he needed to be where he was and
Speaker 5: he knew that. And so anyway, all that aside, I
Speaker 5: was still scared to go to talk to him because
Speaker 5: in court during the sentencing, you know, the victim's parents
Speaker 5: got up there and you know, blasted him as they
Speaker 5: normally do, and blasted his mother. And there was one
Speaker 5: other victim who we haven't talked about, who was a
Speaker 5: twenty two year old college graduate student who was running
Speaker 5: and he grabbed her too and said he wanted her money,
Speaker 5: and she thought he was going to rape her. But
Speaker 5: since he didn't actually touch her tried to touch her,
Speaker 5: grab her you know, genitals or whatever, the police did
Speaker 5: not categorize it as a rape, but she definitely felt
Speaker 5: it that's what he was wanting to do. But she
Speaker 5: got she was she had the experience in martial arts,
Speaker 5: and so she was able to pivot and smack him
Speaker 5: in the nose with her elbow and get away. And
Speaker 5: so while she was speaking during the sentencing hearing, she mentioned,
Speaker 5: you know, how is your nose? And you could just
Speaker 5: see his face wrapped into this almost cartoon like bizarre,
Speaker 5: you know, grimace, and he snarled, like all of a
Speaker 5: sudden with anger. He was so angry that she had
Speaker 5: said this, because it was humiliating for him to have
Speaker 5: some girl claim that, you know, she basically got away
Speaker 5: by getting him in the nose, right, So he's we
Speaker 5: all saw that immediate anger flash. And so that's what
Speaker 5: I had in my head, and I thought, oh god,
Speaker 5: what if I say the wrong thing and he grabs
Speaker 5: me across the table and lunch just for my neck
Speaker 5: because there was no glass. This is this is a
Speaker 5: segregated unit. But it's not death row. These are the
Speaker 5: these are the mentally unstable people that they can't put
Speaker 5: in them in the mainstream population. So Charles Manson is
Speaker 5: in the same unit, and Celebstropido, the guy who took J. C. Dugard.
Speaker 5: They're all the same unit. So there's no glass there,
Speaker 5: you know. He shook my hand. We sat across the
Speaker 5: table from each other. It was like six feet away.
Speaker 5: So I didn't sleep the night before, and it was
Speaker 5: you know, but I once I got there, you know,
Speaker 5: he was actually very charming. He shook my hand, very friendly,
Speaker 5: and if I hadn't known who he was, you know,
Speaker 5: what he was capable of, I wouldn't have known just
Speaker 5: from talking to him. So we talked about you know what.
Speaker 5: Mostly what I wanted to do is focus on the
Speaker 5: psychological aspects of what he was doing and why. And
Speaker 5: I you know, he told me he didn't want to
Speaker 5: talk about how he killed these girls, and I didn't
Speaker 5: really want to hear that anyway, so I didn't ask
Speaker 5: and he did end up volunteering some stuff that I
Speaker 5: didn't ask for, and so but but largely I thought,
Speaker 5: you know, normally, the way an interview goes, you start
Speaker 5: out with easy stuff and you kind of work up
Speaker 5: to the more, you know, difficult things to talk about,
Speaker 5: and it was kind of the other way around. He
Speaker 5: was perfectly happy to talk about everything right away. So
Speaker 5: I just you know, I asked questions and just listen
Speaker 5: most of the time. And when I do an interview
Speaker 5: like that, you know, I tell my students, I teach journalism,
Speaker 5: I teach narrative nonfiction, They're like, well, do you confront
Speaker 5: these people? Do you tell them they're lying to you?
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, not really, you know, because you want
Speaker 5: them to keep talking. You don't want to you don't
Speaker 5: want to challenge them, because that doesn't really do anybody
Speaker 5: any good. They're going to stop talking, You're not going
Speaker 5: to get your information. So I just sort of, you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes I do Devil's Advocate or I'll you know, if
Speaker 5: I notice that they're saying something that is definitely not true,
Speaker 5: I'll say, oh, well, but the detective says that you
Speaker 5: said this, you know, but now you're saying this, you know,
Speaker 5: why is that? So? You know, basically we talked about
Speaker 5: why he picked Chelsea and why he picked Amber and
Speaker 5: what was going on in his mind. And I said,
Speaker 5: were these people to you or were they more like objects?
Speaker 5: And he says, no, there were people. I said, huh.
Speaker 5: And I just kind of was just asking questions, you know,
Speaker 5: and I tried not to let any kind of judgment,
Speaker 5: you know, get onto my face. And because I wanted
Speaker 5: him to just feel like he.
Speaker 4: Could just talk, you know, what did he do?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 4: I'm interested what he had to say in that prison
Speaker 4: interview about that year after he first murdered. What was
Speaker 4: going through his mind? How did he deal with that?
Speaker 4: He why did he repeat it? And then why did
Speaker 4: he wait so long to repeat it? Those of some
Speaker 4: of the questions that were on my mind, which I
Speaker 4: don't really.
Speaker 5: Don't I can answer those questions. I could see that
Speaker 5: he was clearly I don't I don't know what word
Speaker 5: to use. I don't want to say guilty, because I
Speaker 5: don't know if he felt guilty. But he was clearly
Speaker 5: troubled by it because he tried to kill himself and
Speaker 5: he you know, but at the same time, he didn't
Speaker 5: want to tell. He didn't want to turn himself in.
Speaker 5: He didn't want to tell anybody, and he wouldn't have
Speaker 5: if he hadn't been caught. But you know, he told
Speaker 5: his mother, well, I dropped those panties on purpose so
Speaker 5: I could get caught. But he didn't tell the detectives
Speaker 5: that he told the detectives if they were lying to
Speaker 5: him when they said they had the panties, because he
Speaker 5: didn't believe them. So what happened was, you know, he
Speaker 5: had picked up Chelsea's clothes and put it in a like,
Speaker 5: made a bowl out of his T shirt, and put
Speaker 5: the clothes and the shoes and he was going to
Speaker 5: dump them all down into the storm drain, and he
Speaker 5: dropped those panties on his way out. It fell out. So,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't think he I don't know that
Speaker 5: guilt is the right word for how he felt. But
Speaker 5: he clearly was a troubled person. You know, he was angry,
Speaker 5: and that's what he said. He was very angry. He
Speaker 5: was using drugs, and he didn't really have any kind
Speaker 5: of direction. He was messed up guy. So to be honest,
Speaker 5: I can't really tell you definitively what he was doing
Speaker 5: or thinking, but he was, you know, he had he
Speaker 5: had no direction. He didn't have a job, and if
Speaker 5: he did, he wasn't earning much. And I think he
Speaker 5: was unemployed at the time as a matter of fact.
Speaker 5: And like I said, he totaled two cars and tried
Speaker 5: to you know, drug himself and drink himself to death.
Speaker 5: And I think he was a pretty you know, angry
Speaker 5: and unhappy person and was trying to get help.
Speaker 4: Now, let's let's get into some of the insights that
Speaker 4: you've learned from this. I mean, we we've talked about
Speaker 4: a few obvious things that if somebody's asking for treatment
Speaker 4: and can't get into any treatment center no matter how
Speaker 4: hard they try because they're a known sex offender and
Speaker 4: because of budgetary budgetarya concerns. Tell us what in total,
Speaker 4: what are the some of the things that you have
Speaker 4: learned from this case, if there is any kind of
Speaker 4: good that can come from this, that some of those
Speaker 4: insights that you've seen that that may that may be
Speaker 4: of benefit to someone looking at this kind of individual
Speaker 4: again or this kind of case again, how it can
Speaker 4: be possibly helpful. Tell us what you did learn. What
Speaker 4: are those some of those insights that you did gain Well,
Speaker 4: I've pretty.
Speaker 5: Much shared the major ones already throughout the interview today
Speaker 5: that I can kind of go over them again. The
Speaker 5: substance abuse, mental health, that issue where they're none available
Speaker 5: to sex offenders. That's number one, number two, and I
Speaker 5: I'm hoping that some of this will be cleared up
Speaker 5: by Chelsea's Law which was passed, although it seems that
Speaker 5: the person you know, the main sponsor of that bill
Speaker 5: checked into this and it seems like maybe this still
Speaker 5: isn't fixed. But the problem with the evaluation they're apparently
Speaker 5: now it's supposed to be a third person to come
Speaker 5: in and break a tie like there was in his case.
Speaker 5: But there's one mental health person saying, you know, he
Speaker 5: should be let out and he's fine, and the other
Speaker 5: one saying, no, he isn't. There's now a third person
Speaker 5: to break the tie. I hope that works. I don't
Speaker 5: know whether it will. There's also as part of that
Speaker 5: law something called a containment model, which is a way
Speaker 5: of monitoring these people once they're out, which is is
Speaker 5: more intensive, and there are more people who you know,
Speaker 5: are available as resources. However, to me, I don't know
Speaker 5: that that's going to be properly funded. California has a
Speaker 5: lot of problems with its budget, and the Chelsea's Law
Speaker 5: also would keep some of these people in jail, in
Speaker 5: prison longer and on parole longer, which costs money. And
Speaker 5: I don't know how much money there's going to be
Speaker 5: left for funding this, you know, this monitoring and frankly,
Speaker 5: the people who would need to be hired to do
Speaker 5: the monitoring and all that costs money. And in order
Speaker 5: to make this model work, there's you know, software and
Speaker 5: various stuff that it's kind of complicated, but there's just
Speaker 5: a lot of things that cost money that I'm not
Speaker 5: sure are going to be funded properly. And even though
Speaker 5: the governor says, oh, yes, yes it will, you know,
Speaker 5: that's the budget is a mess. So there's that, And
Speaker 5: then there's also something that I've pointed out in the
Speaker 5: book that a sex Offender Management Board is a statewide
Speaker 5: group that has you know, looked at studies which shows
Speaker 5: kind of what I was talking about before that you know,
Speaker 5: if you have these people in places in situations where
Speaker 5: they're unstable and they don't have a good place to live,
Speaker 5: are not in a steady job, their lives are you know,
Speaker 5: start and emotionally they start disintegrating, they are going to reoffend.
Speaker 5: And people need to get that through their head. And
Speaker 5: what these studies have shown is that you know, all
Speaker 5: of this money that's being spent in these laws that
Speaker 5: are being passed to restrict where they live are not effective.
Speaker 5: What the law, what they should be doing, is restrict
Speaker 5: where they go, you know, during the day. So for example,
Speaker 5: you know, so what if they live near a school,
Speaker 5: if they can't go to the school, you know, then
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. But just because they live near a
Speaker 5: school doesn't mean they're going to go to the school.
Speaker 5: He went to that park and that's where he killed Chelsea.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's more effective to restrict a park
Speaker 5: from a sex offender than it is to restrict someone
Speaker 5: from living in a certain place. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So those recommendations were ignored when they put Chelsea's law together,
Speaker 5: and they've been consistently ignored these studies in putting any
Speaker 5: kinds of laws together. So I think people need to
Speaker 5: look more closely at the studies that have been done
Speaker 5: at these people, because you know, people don't want to
Speaker 5: spend money on locking them up anyway, but that's what
Speaker 5: most people want to do. They don't want to think
Speaker 5: about sexual offenders, and frankly, I didn't want to either.
Speaker 5: I thought this was an opportunity when this case broke,
Speaker 5: to really take a look at at an area that
Speaker 5: most people don't want to think about, and they don't
Speaker 5: want they don't want to think about it. It's repulsive,
Speaker 5: and frankly it is to me too. I don't understand
Speaker 5: how how a grown man can, you know, go and
Speaker 5: rape and kill a teenager or a young girl. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's I can't even begin to understand that. But that's
Speaker 5: what's What I was attempting to do is at least
Speaker 5: show you the kind of person who does do this
Speaker 5: kind of thing and what's going through their minds, so
Speaker 5: that you know there's a bunch of red flags hopefully
Speaker 5: that pop up, so that if you know, your daughter
Speaker 5: starts dating somebody like John Gardner, if you've read my book,
Speaker 5: maybe you'll look more closely and be able to protect them.
Speaker 4: What I thought found interesting too, is the I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not really a debate, and again it's not maybe
Speaker 4: an answerable question, but you know, you see a molestation,
Speaker 4: you see acceleration or an escalation part of me of crimes,
Speaker 4: and then you see rape and murder. Again, you can't prosecute,
Speaker 4: you can't imprison somebody for the likelihood of what they
Speaker 4: may do or may not do. But it seems interesting
Speaker 4: that you know, he's got drug abuse, he's got mental issues,
Speaker 4: but that graduation to murder. Still I still have an
Speaker 4: issue with I understand mental illness, at least I think
Speaker 4: I can comprehend mental illness to great degrees of a
Speaker 4: lot of the you know, schizophrenia or what was considered schizophrenia.
Speaker 4: But I still think that just like the person the
Speaker 4: bus beheader on the Greyhound bus. I think definitely that
Speaker 4: person's schizophrenic or mentally ill, whatever mental illness designation you
Speaker 4: like to give him, but he's also a killer. It
Speaker 4: happens to be schizophrenic because the vast majority of mentally
Speaker 4: ill people do not graduate to that, you know, the
Speaker 4: most heinous transgression in humanity, taking of another person's life,
Speaker 4: and then this person killed again, right, well, amazing and
Speaker 4: with sorry sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, and I'm
Speaker 5: not I am not trying to sympathize with Gardner, but
Speaker 5: that what he was saying. And I think that this
Speaker 5: has some validity. You know, as his life disintegrated, as
Speaker 5: things got harder and harder for him, so as it
Speaker 5: became harder for him to cope, he got more and
Speaker 5: more angry, and he disintegrated, he used drugs more, he
Speaker 5: became more more unstable, and then he became more violent,
Speaker 5: you see what I mean. So I think you do
Speaker 5: have to look at that, and I do think that
Speaker 5: as a society we can deal with some of those issues.
Speaker 5: And you know, some of these people can't be rehabilitated,
Speaker 5: and they're going to do this anyway, and they're just
Speaker 5: broken and you know, and that's just how it is.
Speaker 5: But I think, you know, what they were saying about
Speaker 5: him his family was that he wasn't this kind of person,
Speaker 5: and he changed once he was in prison. Now, granted,
Speaker 5: he admitted to punching that girl in the head, and
Speaker 5: so you know, maybe he was just on this he
Speaker 5: was just moving down this road anyway. I mean, who knows,
Speaker 5: We can't really say, but it does seem that, you know,
Speaker 5: there were places where he did try to stop, and
Speaker 5: he did try to get help, and he at least
Speaker 5: maybe could have been stopped from killing Chelsea. And if
Speaker 5: the system had been better equipped that you know, he
Speaker 5: could have been had his role violated and gone back
Speaker 5: in prison, which would have cost money, you know, tax
Speaker 5: fer money. But the one thing I did want to
Speaker 5: mention on some of the issues you just raised, this
Speaker 5: containment model that I was talking about, with the monitoring
Speaker 5: that there's supposedly up there is some kind of there
Speaker 5: is some kind of metric that they're supposed to be
Speaker 5: applying where they're going to be looking at some of
Speaker 5: those things, the drug use and you know, the thoughts
Speaker 5: that he's having and if he's able to talk to
Speaker 5: somebody about these things. It's possible. What I was told is,
Speaker 5: you know, we can't stop them from wanting to do
Speaker 5: these things, but if you give them the tools to
Speaker 5: deal with what to do when they have these thoughts,
Speaker 5: maybe they won't act on them. And that's but they
Speaker 5: But he needs to be talking to somebody, and as
Speaker 5: part of this monitoring, that's hopefully what's going to be happening.
Speaker 5: But what he was telling me is, well, why would
Speaker 5: I tell anybody anything? Because if I start telling him
Speaker 5: that I have done anything, They're just going to lock
Speaker 5: me up again. And I don't want to get locked
Speaker 5: up again. So the idea is that you know, you
Speaker 5: need to talk to somebody before you do something if
Speaker 5: you haven't urged, so that this professional can help you
Speaker 5: deal with those feelings hopefully and get you to stop.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's ideally what would be the best scenario.
Speaker 5: If we can get that to happen, well.
Speaker 4: We'll have good luck with that because this takes so
Speaker 4: much man so much. Yeah, that takes a lot of
Speaker 4: manpower and and and not a lot of public sympathy
Speaker 4: goes towards ast And as you suggest something like that,
Speaker 4: I know what you're saying, though he did ask at
Speaker 4: a crucial time for help and it was he was denied,
Speaker 4: And I.
Speaker 5: Mean, well, I mean, I mean it's ins ort something.
Speaker 5: I'm not trying to be sympathetic. What I'm trying to
Speaker 5: say is what I'm trying to say is if if
Speaker 5: he doesn't get help, it's not to help him, it's
Speaker 5: to protect him, Yes, from him exactly.
Speaker 4: Okay, So yeah, we got to look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 4: And and and I think definitely talking about this and
Speaker 4: writing about this, you've done a really good You've done
Speaker 4: a service to the community as well. And I think
Speaker 4: people have to realize that even though this is a
Speaker 4: dark chapter, it is is it is history, and it
Speaker 4: is current events, and they are important stories. And this
Speaker 4: really illustrates that this is an important story, and it's
Speaker 4: the societal impact that this case has on everyone, and
Speaker 4: still to this day, it will continue and reverberate and
Speaker 4: hopefully some good can come out of it incrementally. I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously it comes very slow, but also the interview with
Speaker 4: John Gardner, I think it's I think it's very important.
Speaker 4: Rather than put these people to death or lock them
Speaker 4: up and forget about them, is that we interview them
Speaker 4: and reinterview and try to glean some kind of sense.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the way they created profiling in the
Speaker 4: very first place, which can help law enforcement as a
Speaker 4: tool to predict or to arrest and to understand. So
Speaker 4: I think what we need now is that as these
Speaker 4: killers evolve, and some of these people are very forthcoming,
Speaker 4: they would like to be able to speak because that's
Speaker 4: their whole narcissistic bench where they would like to speak
Speaker 4: about it. I think we can learn a lot, and
Speaker 4: I think that should be our responsibility to try to
Speaker 4: learn something of some benefit to try to help prevent this.
Speaker 5: The problem is that they're you know, the people who
Speaker 5: am you know, the victims' families for example. They they
Speaker 5: feel that this is, you know, their story to tell,
Speaker 5: or or they just don't want him to be able
Speaker 5: to talk about it because they feel like, oh, it's
Speaker 5: giving him a platform to brag. And I and I
Speaker 5: agree with what you're saying. No, that's not the idea.
Speaker 5: The idea is for us to learn from this so
Speaker 5: that we can try to prevent it from happening again.
Speaker 5: It's just not to sympathize with him. You know, yes
Speaker 5: he did try to get help. And yes, he should
Speaker 5: have gotten help, and if he had gotten help, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe these girls wouldn't be wouldn't have been killed. You
Speaker 5: know that's the point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're not we're not trying to let him out,
Speaker 4: and we don't want them out. We want we want
Speaker 4: some kind of prevention rather than seeing this happen over
Speaker 4: and you and I know better than then maybe even
Speaker 4: the fans that are listening right now, that this happens
Speaker 4: over and over and over again, and we don't seem
Speaker 4: to be learning any lessons. So maybe it's time that
Speaker 4: we looked at it differently, and and and again with
Speaker 4: sex offenders too. It's it seems that we can look
Speaker 4: at serial killers and understand their and try to understand
Speaker 4: their personalities and humanize them, but really, sex offenders, really,
Speaker 4: we it seems collectively we don't want to know the
Speaker 4: extent we don't want to.
Speaker 5: Know, and that's exactly why I wrote this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, well you've done well, You've done a great job,
Speaker 4: and thank you very much for coming on and discussing
Speaker 4: Lost Girls, your latest by Kitlyn Rother tell Us Caitlin,
Speaker 4: you have an excellent website and a big platform so
Speaker 4: tell us how people can get in contact with you
Speaker 4: and and find out more about all the true crime
Speaker 4: books and non fiction books that you have written or
Speaker 4: co authored.
Speaker 5: Okay, my website Caitlin Rother dot com, c A I
Speaker 5: T L I N R O T H E R
Speaker 5: dot com and I'm on Facebook and Twitter. This is
Speaker 5: my eighth book. I'm now working on my ninth book
Speaker 5: on the Ninette packard Eric Napowski Murder of multimillionaire inventor
Speaker 5: Bill McLoughlin, which will be out as soon as I
Speaker 5: finish it. Hoping to get it out sooner rather than later.
Speaker 5: I have with Kensington Pinnacle. I'm just hoping that we
Speaker 5: can maybe move it out so it should be out
Speaker 5: I hope by the next year. So great, what I'm
Speaker 5: working on today, as a matter of fact.
Speaker 4: Sounds good. We'll be looking forward to hearing about it
Speaker 4: in the new year, no doubt. Okay, Yeah, thanks I speaking, Okay, Well,
Speaker 4: thank you very much, Caitlin. Do you have a great evening,
Speaker 4: and thank you once again for coming on and talking
Speaker 4: about your latest lost girls. Thank you very much, Thanks
Speaker 4: for having me. Thank you, good night, good night bye,
Speaker 4: good night.