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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 7: host journalist and author Dan Zupansky, Good Evening.
Speaker 6: During World War Two, Lithuanian collaborator Sylvestris greek Shell had
Speaker 6: been plucked from a Nazi death camp and sent on
Speaker 6: colvert missions by his Allied handlers. Now, during the Cold War,
Speaker 6: he'd been redeployed as Steve Griggs, a nondescript American husband
Speaker 6: and father of four, serving stateside as a cook in
Speaker 6: the U. S. Army, though still doing back black bag
Speaker 6: jobs on the side. This dangerous, volatile man was consumed
Speaker 6: by an insatiable appetite for sadistic violence and psychological torture,
Speaker 6: and now his obsessions involved his own children. Our story
Speaker 6: begins just as Griggs and his lovely wife Diane placed
Speaker 6: Diane and Stephen in a secret multi generational program from experimentation,
Speaker 6: study and training with psychedelic enhancement. With each episode the
Speaker 6: brave boy and his clever sister survive, we come to
Speaker 6: appreciate how they've managed to prevail, and, like Hansel and Gretel,
Speaker 6: emerge from this matrix of horror, triumphant and transformed. Sondra
Speaker 6: London has published Confessions of serial Killers and research some
Speaker 6: of the most depraved criminal minds of our time. After
Speaker 6: twenty four years of studying the real life monsters in
Speaker 6: cages where Murder Road comes to a dead end, Sondra
Speaker 6: declares that nothing in the true crime genre compares to
Speaker 6: this vivid and intimate account of surviving mortal terror at
Speaker 6: the hands of the undetectable serial killer Silvetrist. The book
Speaker 6: they were featuring this evening is Good Little Soldiers, a
Speaker 6: Memoir of true Horror, with my special guest, journalist and author,
Speaker 6: Sondra London. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 6: much for agreeing to this interview. Sondra London, Well, hello.
Speaker 5: Dan, how are you? I always admired your podcast and
Speaker 5: I'm proud to participate.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much. It's been a couple of years
Speaker 6: since we spoke and it's my pleasure to have you
Speaker 6: on the program with this incredible book, Good Little Soldiers.
Speaker 6: We don't want to get off base because we only
Speaker 6: have an hour to explain this very, very complicated and
Speaker 6: incredible case. Suffice to say, let's just say how you
Speaker 6: came to be in a position to write Good Little Soldiers.
Speaker 6: Tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll try to cut to the chase, and we'll
Speaker 5: already start with me having been exposed to a serial
Speaker 5: killer myself at a young age and written a couple
Speaker 5: of books on that, and we'll pick up where I
Speaker 5: was under contract with the filmmaker to research mind control
Speaker 5: and went to a symposium and that's where I met
Speaker 5: Stephen Griggs, and Steven sent me a box of research
Speaker 5: that he had done on his case. And this is
Speaker 5: how I learned about the whole case Stephen. I dealt
Speaker 5: with Stephen for three years before he felt that he'd
Speaker 5: me enough to allow me to be introduced to his
Speaker 5: sister Diane. And then it was Diane's voice and Diane's
Speaker 5: experience in Diane's character that really drew me. I didn't
Speaker 5: work on the book right away, but that story just
Speaker 5: haunted me and I kept coming back to it, and
Speaker 5: all in all, it took thirteen years from the time
Speaker 5: I met Steven until I was able to really complete
Speaker 5: this project.
Speaker 6: What's interesting about this book and so unique is that,
Speaker 6: as you say, you're the author of books that are
Speaker 6: incredible for rays into the minds of serial killers, and
Speaker 6: that has been established, that research and all that work
Speaker 6: that you have done. What is it about this case
Speaker 6: in particular that's much different than, as you explain, say,
Speaker 6: a true crime story. What is the difference between this
Speaker 6: memoir and a traditional true crime story.
Speaker 5: Okay, First of all, a big, big difference is the
Speaker 5: point of view, because I had concentrated on bringing out
Speaker 5: the point of view of the killer before, and in
Speaker 5: this case it's the voice of the victim, an intimate witness,
Speaker 5: the killer's daughter, and so it's that particular experience is
Speaker 5: quite different. The other important aspect of the difference is
Speaker 5: the very idea of true crime. And since we're here
Speaker 5: on a true murder show, I better go into that.
Speaker 5: My understanding of true crime has come to be that
Speaker 5: this is a marketing term, and that a true crime
Speaker 5: book relies upon headlines to do the publicity for it,
Speaker 5: and it relies upon going through the court process to
Speaker 5: vet and validate information the book is going to include. So,
Speaker 5: in other words, ripped from the headline is the key
Speaker 5: to true crime. And since our perpetrator here was never indicted,
Speaker 5: never convicted, and went his entire life as what I
Speaker 5: call the undetectable serial killer, then we didn't have the
Speaker 5: advantage of those court records. We didn't have the publicity
Speaker 5: that's generated by you know, a nationwide man hunting the nicknames,
Speaker 5: you know, like the nightstalk or all of this is
Speaker 5: a marketing category that true crime sits under. But I
Speaker 5: did not want this voice to be lost, even though
Speaker 5: it could not meet that firewall, and so I declared
Speaker 5: it its own genre of true horror, because that goes
Speaker 5: to the horror of knowing an experience, feeling an experience,
Speaker 5: having an experience, and then when you go to try
Speaker 5: to tell about it, you're met with this belief. And
Speaker 5: that is a big part of the narrative of the book,
Speaker 5: is these kids telling and telling and telling, and in
Speaker 5: detail exactly how the consequence is unreal from telling these
Speaker 5: unwonted tales.
Speaker 6: Now you start again, We're gonna do the voice of Diane,
Speaker 6: and she knows herself as Annie, so we can call
Speaker 6: her Diana, we can call her Annie. But did you
Speaker 6: talk about just right from the beginning taking us right
Speaker 6: inside to the going to the fort. So tell us
Speaker 6: how old Diane or Annie is at that time, and
Speaker 6: then describe this experience as you do in the very
Speaker 6: beginning of her going to this for an examination at
Speaker 6: the fort, and tell us what the fort is, and
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit more both this.
Speaker 5: Diane and her brother Steve and her children of a
Speaker 5: soldier and they live on base, and so they live
Speaker 5: in housing on the grounds of Fort Devons And Diane
Speaker 5: was six and her brother was nine at the time
Speaker 5: when our book starts, and her dad and her mom
Speaker 5: take them down to the office at the fort to
Speaker 5: actually go through a gate and go on to the
Speaker 5: fort itself, and then they go to a clinic and
Speaker 5: they actually sign Diane and her brother into a experimental
Speaker 5: secret program for what they called the best in the bride,
Speaker 5: and they were chosen to be in this program. During
Speaker 5: that scene, the father tries to promote the fact that
Speaker 5: he has these other kids and maybe they'd like them too,
Speaker 5: and then no, they said they were not qualified, just
Speaker 5: Stephen and Diane were. And so that goings on where
Speaker 5: they were taken down to the clinic for a period.
Speaker 5: There it was every day, and the clinic was a
Speaker 5: clinic above ground, but then they had a spiral hall
Speaker 5: that gradually would go down to below and at that
Speaker 5: point they called it the lab, and that's where a
Speaker 5: lot of this special training was going on. Now we've
Speaker 5: heard I didn't I didn't want this book to come
Speaker 5: out until people knew what mind Control and mk Ultra
Speaker 5: was because I have so much to tell and I
Speaker 5: can't just go on and on. I have to fit
Speaker 5: it into one book. So I wanted people to know.
Speaker 5: But now it's become diluted because people say mk ultra
Speaker 5: about everything, including Beyonce and jay Z, you know, and
Speaker 5: that's gone far afield from the real thing. But you know,
Speaker 5: the program was only funded in nineteen sixty one, and
Speaker 5: Diane and Stephen were already in the lab at that point.
Speaker 5: But that mk Ultra was not the first program number one,
Speaker 5: and not the first government funded hypnosis and LSD treatment
Speaker 5: of children. This is already going on for three years
Speaker 5: on the record at the date that Diane and Stephen
Speaker 5: entered into that program.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about what would be the potential advantage.
Speaker 6: I mean, it seems altruistic that the parents would want
Speaker 6: to have do whatever patriotic thing they could do.
Speaker 7: He is busy.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, there was money, but the money it actually
Speaker 5: actually everyone clearly stated that that money was going into
Speaker 5: a fund for the children when they got older. But
Speaker 5: the father is such a psychopathy, willfully misconstrued that, and
Speaker 5: he had all he thought was money, and by that
Speaker 5: he meant money for him now and eventually that his
Speaker 5: terrible character was the big reason why the kids were
Speaker 5: bumped out of the program. Is he went down there
Speaker 5: and tried to shake them down wanting the money, and
Speaker 5: he stole equipment from the lab. When he was allowed
Speaker 5: to bring them deliver them to the lab in the
Speaker 5: morning and walk in with them. He stole equipment and
Speaker 5: got caught at it. So you know, I mean, don't
Speaker 5: get the idea that some kind of big genius mind
Speaker 5: control murderer, some kind of intelligent person, you know, someone
Speaker 5: with ethics. This is just a real jerk in every way.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about right away at a very very
Speaker 6: very young age. And maybe he could tell us how
Speaker 6: old Steve is in comparison to Diane ars Old. There
Speaker 6: are two pardon me.
Speaker 5: Sorry, three years older.
Speaker 6: And there's two other daughters as well, right, and so
Speaker 6: you talk about that right away. Diane and Steven are
Speaker 6: witnessed to dad's incredible psychopathic behavior, but soon that turns
Speaker 6: into more of again he uses the children as a
Speaker 6: ruse to do the things that he wants to do.
Speaker 6: What are the children, right from the very beginning of
Speaker 6: this book, what do they witness in terms of behavior.
Speaker 5: From their say, sadistic murders? And they were not like
Speaker 5: you know the book, and they did run into the
Speaker 5: so called serial killer experts at the FBI would try
Speaker 5: to browbeat them with their theories. You know, the book
Speaker 5: is that serial killers have a compulsion and then they
Speaker 5: reenact their fantasy over and over and they leave a
Speaker 5: city natural. All that is a bunch of TV fiction
Speaker 5: makes a good you know, fiction plot. But this guy
Speaker 5: right here, regardless of other serial killers, this guy right
Speaker 5: here was all over the map. He did every kind
Speaker 5: of murder and I really didn't. I only included some
Speaker 5: in this book that kind of maintained a kind of
Speaker 5: a continuity of a story that get there were a
Speaker 5: lot more so. You had the sadistic murders of a
Speaker 5: long drawn out courtship and torture of young girls. You
Speaker 5: had the rape and murder of a little black boy,
Speaker 5: uh in a very sadistic scenario in which he involved
Speaker 5: Diane and Steve. And then you had these almost reckless,
Speaker 5: careless type murders. You know, there were five dead bodies
Speaker 5: of soldiers. We don't know how they died, but you'd
Speaker 5: get the children out of bed and make them go
Speaker 5: with him while he took those bodies out of where
Speaker 5: he had them and transported them somewhere else and committed
Speaker 5: a necrophilic rape upon one of those dead soldiers' bodies.
Speaker 5: So you really, I mean, hmm. You'd like to think
Speaker 5: that there was a pattern or something, but the scope
Speaker 5: of these guys activities was much further than I could
Speaker 5: include in any one.
Speaker 6: Book you talk about it. At the same time, the
Speaker 6: fort where they were where the testing was done on
Speaker 6: Stephen and because they didn't want.
Speaker 5: To it was a lot of training. Now there was testing,
Speaker 5: but they were undergoing military grade training.
Speaker 6: And to what end? What was the purpose of this training?
Speaker 6: Why were they selected and what was the purpose of
Speaker 6: their training?
Speaker 5: Well, we can only reverse engineer that, and we know
Speaker 5: that overall the goal of the mk Ultra funding was
Speaker 5: to create super soldiers, to militarize the mind so that
Speaker 5: somehow or another, people could more effectively be compelled to
Speaker 5: kill on command. And really that was part of the
Speaker 5: dramatic development in the book where that became the crucial
Speaker 5: question revolving around Diane's participation. But I can tell you
Speaker 5: I have interviewed, oh my goodness, over a dozen other
Speaker 5: people that were involved in these programs documented. I have
Speaker 5: the transcripts, and this scene was re enacted well every time, really,
Speaker 5: because it always comes down to them. In other words,
Speaker 5: the idea is will you kill? And the hypnotic procedure
Speaker 5: is to break the personality to set up a scenario
Speaker 5: where the hypnotized altar believes that their conditions are being met.
Speaker 5: In other words, if you get them to agree that
Speaker 5: they would kill to protect their mother, they could be
Speaker 5: hypnotically persuaded that this person they're being pointed at is
Speaker 5: trying to kill their mother. So that's a simple explanation
Speaker 5: of what everything always came down to. But along the
Speaker 5: way you got to realize along the way a lot
Speaker 5: of these this was not just pure clean medical or anything.
Speaker 5: It was crazy people down in there. And they did
Speaker 5: a lot of really sick and crazy things at really
Speaker 5: no point. And I'll point to Louis Jolian West, who
Speaker 5: was of the premier mind controlled experimental doctors and prestent
Speaker 5: of the United States American Psychiatric Association. He handled Jack Luby,
Speaker 5: he handled Patty Hurst and so forth. And what did
Speaker 5: he do. He dosed an elephant with enough LSD to
Speaker 5: kill him. Within five minutes, the elephant was in seizures,
Speaker 5: and within an hour the elephant was dead. Now what
Speaker 5: was the point of that. I suppose you could say, well,
Speaker 5: we need to know how much LSD it takes to
Speaker 5: kill an elephant, right, But that's how you had the
Speaker 5: ideal under which the terms were granted to do this
Speaker 5: research in this training. But then you had just anybody
Speaker 5: in there that had real perverted in stadistic leanings. Now
Speaker 5: that said, I need to get right in here and
Speaker 5: say that this is not the nature of dying in
Speaker 5: and Steven experienced. They were not treated sadistically, they were
Speaker 5: given acid, they were put under stress. But the horror
Speaker 5: stories that I've heard, like the Sleeping Room and many
Speaker 5: of the other stories, and I do list of books
Speaker 5: at the end of my book that people.
Speaker 6: Can refer to.
Speaker 5: You know, it was quite a lot of horrors, but
Speaker 5: in the case of these two dying in to this
Speaker 5: day very grateful for what she became from going through that.
Speaker 6: Now, just for those that again this there are skeptics
Speaker 6: of this, but it was very interesting the collaboration or
Speaker 6: the the the consistency between Steven's account and Diane's account.
Speaker 6: When you first started this, was there any have those
Speaker 6: stories mesh so.
Speaker 5: That you okay, he was that they aren't really that consistent.
Speaker 5: And Stephen was three years older than Diane, so he
Speaker 5: was over in Germany and he saw a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff in Germany that he's able to describe. But what
Speaker 5: Diane saw unexperienced in Germany remains kind of dream like
Speaker 5: when she describes it. And also the two of them
Speaker 5: were not were rarely together in the in the lab
Speaker 5: that most of the work that was done was kind
Speaker 5: of on a one on one thing with the kids
Speaker 5: being worked in with worked on with equipment, and she
Speaker 5: only saw Stephen in passing at the lab and when
Speaker 5: they were large experiences like a group hypnosis. And also Stephen,
Speaker 5: Stephen had has a different way of seeing things. He's
Speaker 5: very he never dissociated in his life. Uh, he's very
Speaker 5: like an engineer, like a boy. He's an all boy.
Speaker 5: He's like an engineer and very practical, reorganized. He had
Speaker 5: a mission even as a little boy to get to
Speaker 5: stop his father, and he compiled evidence, and he compiled
Speaker 5: dossier's and Diane was reluctantly dragged into all this. And
Speaker 5: Diane is very imaginative, is dissociative. So even though they
Speaker 5: could both be in the same scene, they would experience
Speaker 5: it differently. When their father tried to kill Diane, she
Speaker 5: manifested a spiritual being that comforted to her. Of course
Speaker 5: Stephen did not.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about some of the events that Diane and
Speaker 6: Steven witnessed and then later were reported to various authorities
Speaker 6: and we're disbelieved. Let's talk about one particular case. Well,
Speaker 6: let's talk about some of the first cases where they
Speaker 6: notice a stench in the home and then they're as
Speaker 6: curious and inquisitive children that didn't trust their father already
Speaker 6: at that point, What did they see and experience and
Speaker 6: then what is the mother's reaction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the mother is a real curious character. And there's
Speaker 5: always got to be one in the mix that performs
Speaker 5: those functions that the mother is very important in the
Speaker 5: whole overall dynamic. So Dad's away for the time being,
Speaker 5: He's just not there, and so the rest of them
Speaker 5: are there and they, you know, they just think, oh,
Speaker 5: it's under the house, must be a cat. And so
Speaker 5: Mom and Diane and the others stand outside. The said
Speaker 5: get under there, Steve, and you go go get it.
Speaker 5: And so Stephen crawls under the air. He's the only boy,
Speaker 5: you know, and so they gags. He comes out. Oh no,
Speaker 5: He said, did you get it? And he said no,
Speaker 5: he said it's not a cat. And he said, hello,
Speaker 5: what do you mean? He said, it's a woman. He said,
Speaker 5: how do you know? He said, I touched her leg
Speaker 5: and it was shaved.
Speaker 6: So the mother is incredulous, but.
Speaker 5: Well, they said they had to get that thing out
Speaker 5: of there.
Speaker 6: So eventually Dad.
Speaker 5: Came home and then he had to get it out.
Speaker 5: And everybody was put into this. In other words, Mom
Speaker 5: always had an alternative version. You just had a dream,
Speaker 5: you read it in a book to encourage anything, to
Speaker 5: deflect the idea that this is something that actually happened
Speaker 5: to you. Then the other part of that dynamic was
Speaker 5: that he had her blackmails. And for example, he had
Speaker 5: insurance policies on all those children, and anytime she would
Speaker 5: talk about, oh they're how broke they were, she would
Speaker 5: leave her. Any it caused any trouble at all, he
Speaker 5: would literally pull them out and brandish them in her
Speaker 5: face and say, well, I guess it's time to cash
Speaker 5: in one of these policies.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The oh she she And she was so broadly and
Speaker 5: assuming that subservient role to the dominant male, that she
Speaker 5: had no confidence in her ability to survive as an
Speaker 5: independent person. She was convinced that that how would I live?
Speaker 5: And all she knew how to do was be his woman,
Speaker 5: and the children would bag her to weave and everything.
Speaker 5: And the great deal of the books had interactions between
Speaker 5: the children and what they would say, what she would say,
Speaker 5: will work out the details of that exactly portray that
Speaker 5: personality for you, And you would see the woman can
Speaker 5: and again covering up for the father and brushing all
Speaker 5: the children and getting desperate saying just shut up, just
Speaker 5: shut up until it goes up, until she died and
Speaker 5: he remained living there with her.
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Speaker 6: You talk about some of the psychologic terror that he
Speaker 6: inflicted on his family, the Russian roulette game where with
Speaker 6: one bullet in a chamber and you shoot Diane and
Speaker 6: she dies, everyone else lives. So he did that sort
Speaker 6: of insane pick picked the lesser of two, I guess
Speaker 6: evils for you. Yeah, to kill this part, kill your fall.
Speaker 5: The book of this book is psychological because it's not
Speaker 5: just the crimes that were committed or that had come
Speaker 5: before the bar, it's the whole picture. And I mentioned
Speaker 5: before how he had killed these that he had taken
Speaker 5: the children to disinenter these five soldiers, and when he
Speaker 5: packed them into the transport, he was kept commenting there,
Speaker 5: look at him grammed and they're just like sardines. Then
Speaker 5: when he got home, Uh, he pulled out, you know,
Speaker 5: a can of sardines and he would eat it and
Speaker 5: looking at Diane and he'd say sardines. He'd just like sardines.
Speaker 5: And uh, to use that keep the children continually intimidated.
Speaker 5: He had goals. He had a goal to use those
Speaker 5: children to deflect suspicion. And it seemed to get a
Speaker 5: victim to come along. And that is something that Lucas
Speaker 5: and Toole did. They used the children, Becky and Frank
Speaker 5: that way to get people to trust them so give
Speaker 5: them access, and he did that. He also wanted to
Speaker 5: terrorize them. And for thirdly, he kept trying to turn
Speaker 5: them into his apprentices, specifically Steven. But Steven is a
Speaker 5: pugnacious character. I don't care. He must have been that
Speaker 5: way when he was exactly worn because it just didn't
Speaker 5: ever work. And he'd tried with his father and he
Speaker 5: would just resist him and insult him and so forth.
Speaker 5: But his father continued to try to teach them how
Speaker 5: to get away with murder, how to dispose of a corpse,
Speaker 5: and the children were horrified at the very IDEA.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you also talk about not only was the mother
Speaker 6: incredulous to what the children said about their father when
Speaker 6: the father used them as tools to be able to rape, sodomize,
Speaker 6: and murder, but also that the mother was employed. You
Speaker 6: talk about this incident, maybe you can discuss it where
Speaker 6: they put up a ruse where they had their car stopped.
Speaker 6: They put up the hood and a wealthy man stopped
Speaker 6: and the mother was a participant. Tell us about that
Speaker 6: she was used.
Speaker 5: To lure someone to stopping. And then again there was
Speaker 5: just completely no point in that murder. And I included
Speaker 5: that because it was well described and complete, it wasn't fragmentary,
Speaker 5: but it just did start to illustrate that and the
Speaker 5: other purpose. It's also always to intimidate the mother and children,
Speaker 5: to say, if I can do this to them, I
Speaker 5: can do it to you. And that's what he did
Speaker 5: with Diane's precious toy. If I may, I'd quickly like
Speaker 5: to interject. They often asked me to generalize from all
Speaker 5: of my research and things I've learned, and any contribution
Speaker 5: I've noticed that was new, And I wanted to say
Speaker 5: that in many cases, those who turn out to be
Speaker 5: serial killers have had someone to deliberately victimize their beloved
Speaker 5: pet or toy at them and specifically do it as
Speaker 5: a way to terrorize them and to impress upon them
Speaker 5: what can be done to them. I can't tell you
Speaker 5: how many cases I've been on where we're totally interviewing
Speaker 5: someone and they just go on and on about their crimes,
Speaker 5: the terrible things they've done, but when it comes to
Speaker 5: what was done with them, they break down. They can't
Speaker 5: even talk about it. And these are very profound experiences.
Speaker 5: And that's what Dad did. He had her teddy bear,
Speaker 5: and because they told on him down at the school,
Speaker 5: and the school brought in the priest and they told
Speaker 5: the priest. The priest went to the army and told
Speaker 5: the army, and the army came to him and he said,
Speaker 5: I'm going to kill you for what you've done. I'm
Speaker 5: going to burn out your eyes for what you've seen.
Speaker 5: I'm going to burn out your tongue for what you've said,
Speaker 5: and he started with the teddy bear. You see, that's
Speaker 5: important if I'm doing a case study, that all this
Speaker 5: be put on the record. This kind of victimization of
Speaker 5: a toy or a pet is something that has jumped
Speaker 5: right out at me in case after case after case,
Speaker 5: and sure enough, when she saw her pet beeting victimized,
Speaker 5: he was putting it in the fire. He's burning her
Speaker 5: pat and she and Steven went into action. He grabbed
Speaker 5: Diane's head and ripped her hair back and went after
Speaker 5: her with a red hot poker from the fire to
Speaker 5: jab her in the eye. Steven kicked him and threw
Speaker 5: him off balance, and it only burned her in the neck,
Speaker 5: and she carries this hideous scar to this day of
Speaker 5: the burn to her neck. When they took her, mother
Speaker 5: finally took her into the doctor's so oh, she spilled
Speaker 5: some hot coffee on herself and then doctor didn't believe.
Speaker 5: They said, well an iron fell on her, okay, and
Speaker 5: anything to protect the father. As soon as she came
Speaker 5: that Diane was left unconscious. He was hit on the
Speaker 5: head with a shovel and knocked unconscious and covered over
Speaker 5: with leaves. When she became aware over twelve hours later,
Speaker 5: she said that the woods taken care of me, and
Speaker 5: she was still alive. And she came home half dad
Speaker 5: and bloody, And what did mother scream? Your Dad's going
Speaker 5: to be so mad at you for staying out all night.
Speaker 5: Like that and scaring him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, here you odd. You also talk about some of
Speaker 6: the people that look like it's promising that the children
Speaker 6: can go to them, tell them the truth and they
Speaker 6: might be helped. And that's why they went to these
Speaker 6: people and tried to speak to them. And there's a
Speaker 6: couple characters who maybe could talk about Aunt Magda and
Speaker 6: also then Grandma. And then when finally they get to
Speaker 6: tell somebody at school about.
Speaker 5: This, well at school is the what I just told
Speaker 5: you when they told the when I say the nuns
Speaker 5: that was at school, the nuns that they told told
Speaker 5: the priest, he told the army, and the army told Dad,
Speaker 5: and Dad tried to kill Diane and she got away
Speaker 5: with just that burned to her neck. Now, let's go
Speaker 5: back in Magda. That was a fascinating and charming interlude. Really,
Speaker 5: and Magna evidently is an older sister of Sylvester. She
Speaker 5: knew him in the old country, she knew his ways,
Speaker 5: she didn't trust him at all. Evidently, from time to
Speaker 5: time he had come slinking around the good part of
Speaker 5: the family, trying to get some advantage. But it came
Speaker 5: a time there where we dressed Diane up and of course,
Speaker 5: Steven flicked his hair back and took the children to
Speaker 5: go visit Aunt Magda. They wanted money. He you know,
Speaker 5: he had squandered what he had. So Magda turned out
Speaker 5: to be just a wonderful character, and she did take
Speaker 5: Diana aside, and she inspired her so much and gave
Speaker 5: her so much hope of that there was a life
Speaker 5: in that she was somebody. She noticed that Diane had
Speaker 5: the two different colored eyes, and she said, that's in
Speaker 5: our family, and it runs with the second sight and
Speaker 5: the ability to sensitivities that you have, and you must
Speaker 5: protect that. She must not let anyone know what you love.
Speaker 5: And she gave her all kind of really good instructions
Speaker 5: and some good clothes. For once in her life she
Speaker 5: was able to put on some good clothes thanks to
Speaker 5: Aunt Magday. They went away and went back to their
Speaker 5: usual pattern, and the money that had been given to
Speaker 5: the mother for safeholding, he the father, couraged the mother
Speaker 5: into giving it up to him, not being able to
Speaker 5: spend it on his children.
Speaker 6: You also talk about another hopeful character. It seems a
Speaker 6: very likable person, this uncle Frank, which is really there
Speaker 6: actual half brother, not their uncle, but regardless, tell us
Speaker 6: about the Uncle Frank confrontation and what comes of that.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, but what
Speaker 5: it reminds me of is when she drew the picture.
Speaker 5: Is that what you're talking about, Well.
Speaker 6: Just what she had said Uncle Frank and then what
Speaker 6: he had done in response.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that that developed out of her drawing
Speaker 5: the picture. And she was supposed to draw a picture,
Speaker 5: and she drew this man with an erect penis and
Speaker 5: brandishing a hatchet, and that was supposed to be there
Speaker 5: like Christmas greeting and everything, and the Steven tried to
Speaker 5: tell her, no, no, no, that's not right, you know,
Speaker 5: and you can't do that, and they sent it to
Speaker 5: them and it came out through those sources somewhat of
Speaker 5: what they were going through, but of course it was
Speaker 5: not well received. Right, So, at any rate, any of
Speaker 5: these other peripheral people that appeared to offer hope were
Speaker 5: never able to materialize anything that actually solved the problem.
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Speaker 6: talked about you have an your book incredible instance of
Speaker 6: murder rape that are that are perpetrated by silvestros and
Speaker 6: undetected by people, it seems throughout this entire murderous event,
Speaker 6: but there are people that are suspicious. But as I
Speaker 6: mentioned just before we went for break, there was a
Speaker 6: particularly incredible story that's important about a black boy that's
Speaker 6: befriended by Diane and then the father takes it upon
Speaker 6: himself to kill this young boy. Tell us about this
Speaker 6: incredible story.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's so hardrending this story of Jimmy. Let me
Speaker 5: say first of all that there was a documentary made
Speaker 5: by John Edgington that include Diane and Steven and and
Speaker 5: in the making of this documentary, John Edgington put Diane
Speaker 5: through the most incredible h torture uh that I thought
Speaker 5: it was quite unethical, and they forced her to have
Speaker 5: an averg action of this whole incident while the cameras
Speaker 5: are rolling, and then unbeknownst to your viewers, the film
Speaker 5: ran out and Edgington said, hold it right there, can
Speaker 5: you do that again? And that was the conditions under
Speaker 5: which that was brought to the screen. I posted that
Speaker 5: video on YouTube, but John Edgington fell short of giving
Speaker 5: any credibility to what went on here and actually contributed
Speaker 5: to my designing this book a true horror, because he
Speaker 5: felt that he used that term that you're going to
Speaker 5: have to find a publisher that will handle true horror.
Speaker 5: And so with that said, I will tell you what happened.
Speaker 5: And the story unfolds as our villain, Sylvia Stress, works
Speaker 5: as a cook on base and his boss is a big,
Speaker 5: jolly black man, and so Sylvestris comes and he brings
Speaker 5: the two kids with him to work. Then he goes
Speaker 5: off on some detail and they're there with the man
Speaker 5: and they have the most wonderful time, and he shows
Speaker 5: them how to cut up carrots and talks to them
Speaker 5: and encourages them, and they just have the most wonderful,
Speaker 5: heart warming scene. Then Dad comes back from his errand
Speaker 5: she's dying cutting and starts getting mad and saying, oh,
Speaker 5: she can't do that, and interfering, and they get into
Speaker 5: a bit of a discussion there between the boss and Sylvestris,
Speaker 5: in which the boss somewhat chides him for the way
Speaker 5: he's treeting his children and kind of tries to in
Speaker 5: a very gentle and in civil way, tries to encourage
Speaker 5: him in the ways of how you can bring a
Speaker 5: child along without browbeating them. And so forth. Well, then
Speaker 5: he has his little son there, little Jimmy, and Jimmy's
Speaker 5: Diane's agent. He's a bubbly, little, happy little guy. And
Speaker 5: so Jimmy and Diane become close friends. And then they
Speaker 5: have an older brother that's Steven's agent. They start hanging
Speaker 5: out those two and they're getting along great, just great,
Speaker 5: and Diane's just delighted to have met this charming little
Speaker 5: boy that she enjoys so much. Jimmy. Well, by the
Speaker 5: time you've come to this part in the book, you
Speaker 5: know what that means to Sylvest's It strikes at his
Speaker 5: sick soul, and he developed such a hatred for his boss,
Speaker 5: the man that had showed him up, and determines how
Speaker 5: to cause the most pain for everyone. So he tells them,
Speaker 5: let's have a picnic. Invite your little friend. He will
Speaker 5: pack him out on a picnic and tell him it's
Speaker 5: a si, a secret and a surprise. Uh ho they do,
Speaker 5: and uh they picked the little boy out, and then
Speaker 5: Dad gets the kids drunk, and and then he starts
Speaker 5: driving around crazy and then he tells little uh, little
Speaker 5: uh Jimmy, yuh, don't you you wanna drive? He sits
Speaker 5: him up in his lap, and the little boy drives.
Speaker 5: He's so exciting everything. Then Dad says, now you've got
Speaker 5: to pay for it, and the little boy says, what
Speaker 5: do you mean, bayam I have anything? Just a kid?
Speaker 5: He says, oh, you know what I mean, and then
Speaker 5: he proceeds to viciously rape the child dying and Stephen
Speaker 5: in the backseat. Dad and little Jimmy in the front
Speaker 5: where he's raping it rapes him viciously. Then the kid
Speaker 5: pukes and Dad throws him out of the car and
Speaker 5: tells Diana Stephen to clean him up. And it's think
Speaker 5: it's uh the little boy, he's just crying, you know
Speaker 5: why he's doing this to me? And then it gets
Speaker 5: worse and he takes them out to a remote location
Speaker 5: where there's a pump house. Now I go up in Florida,
Speaker 5: we didn't have pump houses, but evidently it's a thing. Right.
Speaker 5: So it's like a little concrete building and I guess
Speaker 5: there's a pump in it, but it's called a pump house.
Speaker 5: So he takes a little Jimmy out there and incarcerates
Speaker 5: him in the pump house and leaves him and the
Speaker 5: children go try and sneak in there, comforting whatever. Dad
Speaker 5: comes back. He takes him out to the actual well
Speaker 5: and he puts again like with the the uh with
Speaker 5: the guns, with the Russian roulette, and he makes Steven
Speaker 5: have to push, uh, push the little boy down and
Speaker 5: fight with him and take a knife to him and fight.
Speaker 5: And Steven, no, I don't want to. They said, well,
Speaker 5: are you going to do it to Diane? He's gonna
Speaker 5: put Diane down in the well then, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: And so always using the fatal encounter for the most
Speaker 5: maximum torment and torture is what takes him beyond the
Speaker 5: beyond the pail from your run of the milk killer, uh,
Speaker 5: torturing and going on with this, putting the little boy
Speaker 5: down the uh, the well, closing it over, taking Diane
Speaker 5: and and Steven lim bringing them back, pulling the little
Speaker 5: boy's body out of the air and putting it in
Speaker 5: the trunk, putting Diane in the trunk with the little
Speaker 5: boy corpse, taking them out and undergoing a more degradation
Speaker 5: of the corpse, showing demonstrating teaching Diane is Stephen how
Speaker 5: to bury him, Oh he won't fit, and kicking his
Speaker 5: skull in viciously and making Diane Diane's in dissociation. No,
Speaker 5: that's not Jimmy, that's not to me, So yes, it is.
Speaker 5: He grabs her hand and forces her to rub his
Speaker 5: little burr hair so she can feel it, and makes
Speaker 5: her participate in the degradation of the corps. Well, this
Speaker 5: is a the point is made there of how he
Speaker 5: uses the children. The whole horrible story goes on afterwards,
Speaker 5: him taking Diana Stephen and going back and visiting the
Speaker 5: boy's father and putting him through torture and torment, psychological
Speaker 5: torment about his missing son. Then the father lost his
Speaker 5: job from the you know, unable to continue, and Dad
Speaker 5: got a promotion, so he had another bar added. So
Speaker 5: then he would tell Diane that that she deserved that
Speaker 5: bar because she helped him earn it. And that's what
Speaker 5: we're using the you know, the uh the sardine can
Speaker 5: to trigger. Afterwards, he had would keep those little trigger
Speaker 5: mechanisms and then bring them out to further terrorize the children.
Speaker 6: After this and after all world had.
Speaker 5: To be put through this for that movie. You know,
Speaker 5: the whole Jimmy thing is just horrible, But that's why
Speaker 5: I chose it for the cover of the book. I
Speaker 5: I experimented with about five or six different artworks, and
Speaker 5: then when the Diane saw that one with Jimmy, she said, Bingo,
Speaker 5: that's it. That's the heart of the book right there.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 6: And with this too, you say, is the heart of
Speaker 6: the book. Is also this triggers this Uncle Frank comes
Speaker 6: over and says what's wrong? And then so Diane can't
Speaker 6: help herself, and Stephen is also wanting to talk, so
Speaker 6: it comes out to Frank. What does Frank do? And
Speaker 6: then it also slips out at Grandma's house, So more
Speaker 6: and more they're these somebody now all the way through.
Speaker 5: To where they're grown up, and they have an encounter
Speaker 5: with the FBI, which it describes is very telling, very telling,
Speaker 5: and that was one of my favorite parts of the book,
Speaker 5: where they're trying to tell them, oh, serial killers don't
Speaker 5: have families. And Diane eventually she jumps right over the
Speaker 5: desk and grabs a fi ah by his tie. If
Speaker 5: you tell me what a serial glory this will walk
Speaker 5: you up in a trunk with a victim, you know,
Speaker 5: And Stephen pulls her off, and now now Diane, you know,
Speaker 5: by then, Diane's a big woman. She's over sixty toll.
Speaker 5: Whenever anything gets kind of harry with her, she says, look,
Speaker 5: don't even try it with me. I'm too big, I'm
Speaker 5: too smart, and I am absolutely fearless. And she's a
Speaker 5: terrific person having come through these incredible ordeals.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about another very important event in here with
Speaker 6: a military officer named McCaffrey. And this is the guy
Speaker 6: that doesn't like dad. And again we see what happens
Speaker 6: when there is even a sense that he has been humiliated.
Speaker 6: So tell us a little bit about this instown.
Speaker 5: Roles again at the consequence of these kids trying to
Speaker 5: talk and tell and so then this time Dad takes
Speaker 5: them out to this firing range on bass and then
Speaker 5: he says, oh, we're gonna play baseball. You know, they
Speaker 5: don't have baseball if they don't have bats. What he
Speaker 5: has is a gun and he's firing, and the children
Speaker 5: are dodging the gun flyer. This is out on the
Speaker 5: army's range, you know, and there's you know, a guard
Speaker 5: tower and everything, so shall we say, did not go unnoticed.
Speaker 6: So after the little interlude where.
Speaker 5: Different things happen and the kids, he gets the kids back,
Speaker 5: they run away, He gets them back, gets them in
Speaker 5: the car, and then here comes a motorcycle which is
Speaker 5: an officer military officer officer McCaffrey. Stephen notices on his
Speaker 5: name label, and he said, what are you doing? You
Speaker 5: know what you're doing here, and everything is that they're
Speaker 5: my kids and so forth, and at any rate, at
Speaker 5: one point he's summon higher brath. A car comes with
Speaker 5: brass in it. There's a conversation that goes on. The
Speaker 5: brass goes away. He's not able to to arrest him
Speaker 5: or anything. He'say, okay, but you know, I'm aware of
Speaker 5: what you're doing and we're watching you now. And so
Speaker 5: that then he goes on home. Then he tells all
Speaker 5: of us to Mom, and he's like, Mom, you have
Speaker 5: to conspire, and you have to go back and you
Speaker 5: have to get that book that he wrote up and
Speaker 5: that he wrote this incident up, and you have to
Speaker 5: go get that book from that soldier and destroy that
Speaker 5: incident report. Is his idea of how to deal with
Speaker 5: this now. So Mom takes Stephen and Diane. They go
Speaker 5: down the air. She tries to seduce McCaffrey. McCaffrey's having
Speaker 5: none of that. And as far as taking the book out.
Speaker 5: It's hopeless, it's ridiculous, it's a fool's errand. And this
Speaker 5: chapter ends with her crying on the phone. I couldn't
Speaker 5: do it. I couldn't do it, you know. But it's
Speaker 5: not over because it picks up somewhat later with Stephen
Speaker 5: and I Diane watching out the window during a thunderstorm
Speaker 5: and the dad dragging a corpse out up the hill
Speaker 5: out to the shed. Well, it's a long story, but
Speaker 5: that soldier shoe fell off, and Stephen sees that sh shoe.
Speaker 5: Then he used it later to negotiate with his father
Speaker 5: and threaten him that he has the shoe. He made
Speaker 5: an evidence box with the shoe, with the ID and
Speaker 5: with a card from a CID officer who told him
Speaker 5: he was looking into his father. He made an evidence
Speaker 5: box and put the box and put all that together
Speaker 5: and buried it. It's a long, long, long, drawn out
Speaker 5: series of consequences that unraveled as the fact of Steven
Speaker 5: knowing about this and resisting it, and so that said
Speaker 5: long sequence in the book referred to as the shoe.
Speaker 5: But it unravels because Sergeant McCaffrey caught him in the
Speaker 5: act of trying to kill both kids.
Speaker 6: As a result, when you talk about the that Stephen
Speaker 6: knows and says to the mother, how can and it's
Speaker 6: increasingly he's confronting the mother, Ye how could you? How
Speaker 6: could you let this person do what he does to us?
Speaker 6: But also he's done to you and what he's and
Speaker 6: he's killing people, and so the the the idea that
Speaker 6: he's saying is that how could you possibly let this
Speaker 6: man do this?
Speaker 5: And it's just a portrait, an accurate portrait of one
Speaker 5: of the component parts of a very dire social construct.
Speaker 5: There's always got to be someone like that involved for
Speaker 5: something to go this far, someone who is complicit and
Speaker 5: who derives some some material benefit from the cooperation. Well,
Speaker 5: not to change the subject, but Danny Rowling case, it
Speaker 5: was well documented that the mother was abused even when
Speaker 5: Danny Rowling was in utero, and the father knocked that
Speaker 5: stomach and knocked her down the stairs and continued and
Speaker 5: throughout that boy's life, it was constantly asking her, please,
Speaker 5: let's leave, let's leave, but she would not, or she
Speaker 5: would leave, you know, or make a gesture and come
Speaker 5: right back. And so I'm saying that to say that
Speaker 5: this is a component part of that dynamic it could
Speaker 5: have been. You know, if that person would have been
Speaker 5: able to handle it differently, it couldn't develop that far.
Speaker 6: You talk about that the military, when you talk about McCaffrey,
Speaker 6: there seemed to be you're write that there was some
Speaker 6: investigation they were watching Stephen Griggs.
Speaker 5: Now here's where we go off into can't prove area.
Speaker 5: And this is why so many people stay away from
Speaker 5: this kind of story, because you can't prove anything, but
Speaker 5: also to simply offer some observations that might go towards
Speaker 5: explaining why this cannot be closed. When you have a
Speaker 5: small community that has nothing, and they have a big
Speaker 5: military base there, they have every reason in the world
Speaker 5: to bow to their precedent. And when they have soldiers
Speaker 5: that are involved in cases, they bow to the CID.
Speaker 5: They refer it to the military. Now if in fact
Speaker 5: the military is having a secret program that's going on there,
Speaker 5: and you know, of course that brings them a lot
Speaker 5: of money, and they do have operatives who are being
Speaker 5: sent out, a man with dual citizenship who came over
Speaker 5: from Lithuania, who's been caught time and again acting stupid
Speaker 5: and crazy. And take people like this that you are using,
Speaker 5: you are you know, we can't put in our book
Speaker 5: what the government was doing with him. These were recreational
Speaker 5: murders that were witnessed by the children, but they were
Speaker 5: using him. And if that's the case, then whenever anything
Speaker 5: came up with his name, it would be referred to
Speaker 5: the appropriate authorities who would handle it their own way.
Speaker 5: And in fact, that program was evidently dismantled very shortly
Speaker 5: after the children were dismissed from it, and that both
Speaker 5: Diane and Steven witnessed the scene they described as a
Speaker 5: stand down where armed personnel came in and told the
Speaker 5: people at the lab to get out and they took
Speaker 5: over in the According to Diane and Stephen, the program
Speaker 5: was shortly after our dismantled there on the base. And
Speaker 5: then when their father got out, he wanted to get
Speaker 5: some benefits, you know, negotiat negotiate his benefits on leaving
Speaker 5: the military, and he tried to contact the commander and
Speaker 5: they said, no, he's no longer hear what command or
Speaker 5: what program. There was no program. You were not in
Speaker 5: a program, and that was how that was settled. So
Speaker 5: this leaves all the room in the world for not
Speaker 5: only honest skeptics, but for paid operatives who are on
Speaker 5: orders to exploit these lines of reasoning and discredit anyone
Speaker 5: who comes forward.
Speaker 6: Certainly, you talk about later in the book that mum
Speaker 6: is finally institutionalized with a mental breakdown, and then there
Speaker 6: is an incredible event where Diane finally fully confronts her
Speaker 6: father about murders and rapes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a little bit of conflation now on the family history.
Speaker 5: One of the sisters was institutionalized. The mother did go insane,
Speaker 5: she was non compost mentis, but did die at home
Speaker 5: in her bed. It was a sister who was put
Speaker 5: in an institution. So anyway, yeah, a mother died and
Speaker 5: dad was there, and I forget what was your question.
Speaker 6: Well, we talk about the confrontation with his father.
Speaker 5: So Diane had a daughter, a little girl, and she's
Speaker 5: amazed to admit that she actually took her child and
Speaker 5: came back into the home as an adult, even though
Speaker 5: she'd been through all this. And she explains to this
Speaker 5: as part of the effect of suppressing all those memories
Speaker 5: that they were in order to get on with life
Speaker 5: and to just keep putting one step ahead of another.
Speaker 5: It's not possible to dwell upon these dire experiences, and
Speaker 5: so the mind is helpful in feeling that over as
Speaker 5: much as possible. But the memories did come back because
Speaker 5: Mom died or I guess you was dying. Everybody knew
Speaker 5: that the family was getting together. Well, what are we
Speaker 5: going to do now? Because we've got a little brother here,
Speaker 5: and then Stephen and Diane and a sister. All three
Speaker 5: remember Dad molesting that little boy, the new brother. They
Speaker 5: all remembered it. And so that was a moment where
Speaker 5: the secrets had to go and where everybody had to
Speaker 5: become galvanized, because now Mom was not going to be
Speaker 5: in the home and the father would be left there
Speaker 5: with the little boy. And at that point the memory
Speaker 5: started coming back. So I mentioned this in detail in
Speaker 5: my analysis at the end of the book because so
Speaker 5: many skeptics point to the allegations of cases where false
Speaker 5: memories have been suborned by dishonest therapists, and I wanted
Speaker 5: to ensure the reader that nothing of that nature took
Speaker 5: place here.
Speaker 6: Right, You talk about that Diane stopped speaking to Stephen
Speaker 6: when she was eleven and didn't speak.
Speaker 5: They had to speak now and throughout their whole life,
Speaker 5: these two will avoid one another because when they look
Speaker 5: into each other's eyes. It brings it all back. And
Speaker 5: I'll just tell you that for both of them, and
Speaker 5: they they lived not too far from each other, they
Speaker 5: don't see each other, they don't talk, they don't want
Speaker 5: to think about this. Diane went through this ordeal in
Speaker 5: order to resolve it, to put aim into it, to
Speaker 5: bring it out. You know, so long as you hide things,
Speaker 5: you don't know exactly what they are. You can't tell
Speaker 5: the edges of them, the scope, the dimensions, the properties,
Speaker 5: the abilities if you're hiding it. And the only way
Speaker 5: that we say you come to terms, well terms, coming
Speaker 5: to terms is like writing words and capturing it, putting
Speaker 5: it all down, putting it all outwithstanding questions about it,
Speaker 5: going through it. And then Diane's done. She is done.
Speaker 5: She said, I'm done, no interviews, no appearances. I don't
Speaker 5: want to talk about it anymore. And that's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 5: You know, I respect so much. You know, you don't
Speaker 5: really like she calls it going down and to the hole,
Speaker 5: and she says, I don't have to go down into
Speaker 5: the hole anymore. I know what it is. It's the whole.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have a dramatic scene in there with the
Speaker 6: FBI how to tell us a little bit about this
Speaker 6: dramatic interview with the FBI and their conclusions and how
Speaker 6: they dismissed all of this.
Speaker 5: Well, again, it was Stephens, the generator of the action,
Speaker 5: trying to get this man reported and stopped. And he
Speaker 5: had his whole val least full of material. And so
Speaker 5: when they finally admitted Diane and him in there, they
Speaker 5: were very smirky and very dismissive and say, you know,
Speaker 5: every time someone comes in with one of these big boxes,
Speaker 5: I just roll my eyes because I know that they've
Speaker 5: been to everyone else and no one else has listened
Speaker 5: to them either. And then they you know, they tried
Speaker 5: to tell the simplest thing they tried to tell him
Speaker 5: is that serial killers aren't family men, you know. At
Speaker 5: any rate, they tried to dismiss their veracity. And this
Speaker 5: film that John Edgington did have the same net effect,
Speaker 5: although if you carefully watch it, he doesn't disproved anything,
Speaker 5: and he hooks Diane and Steven up to electrodes and
Speaker 5: no one can say that they're lying, no one can
Speaker 5: say that they're crazy. But then they bring on an
Speaker 5: expert from somewhere else who doesn't even know them who
Speaker 5: starts talking about in cases like this, And so they
Speaker 5: managed to cast dispersions on the sanity of the person
Speaker 5: because this is the easiest way to get funding for
Speaker 5: a documentary. And John Edgington had told me himself, as
Speaker 5: far as all that MK Ultra stuff goes, I wouldn't
Speaker 5: touch that with a ten foot poll. It just won't
Speaker 5: go there because it makes life too difficult. But you see,
Speaker 5: those kinds of editorial decisions to not go there is
Speaker 5: what keeps this stuff going. People who make the decision, well,
Speaker 5: I can't talk about that even though they know it.
Speaker 5: That is a dynamic that is counted upon in the
Speaker 5: planning of these adventures that people don't want to talk
Speaker 5: about things that are disgusting, and people don't want to
Speaker 5: hear about things that are incredible, and people don't want
Speaker 5: to go down a rabbit hole of something that's very complicated.
Speaker 5: And so these are what I call shields that protect
Speaker 5: a high level crime from investigation because people automatically turn
Speaker 5: away on their own choice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what was in conclusion and what was it like
Speaker 6: speaking with Stephen and speaking with Diane considering once you
Speaker 6: knew their ordeal, what was it like? What was their
Speaker 6: car heart.
Speaker 5: Just heartrending. That's all I can say is, you know,
Speaker 5: it would just tear my heart out, really, and that's
Speaker 5: why I felt I had to do the story. It
Speaker 5: has so much heart, and tried not to do the
Speaker 5: story for many years and just so heartrending. I have
Speaker 5: to say this about Steven. Stephen has a tendency to confabrulate,
Speaker 5: and by that I mean a process by which a
Speaker 5: person knows about point A and about point C, and
Speaker 5: they were a little vague on how they got from
Speaker 5: A to C, and then they come up with an explanation.
Speaker 5: And so their example would be you were at home,
Speaker 5: then you work what route did you take? And your
Speaker 5: answer would be, well, I went down main Street. And
Speaker 5: you'd say that because you always go down main street.
Speaker 5: While you were going down main street, you were listening
Speaker 5: to the radio, you were thinking about your girlfriend, you
Speaker 5: were everywhere else, but you will just say I went
Speaker 5: down main street. Now Stephen does that, and Diane has
Speaker 5: faulted him for doing that. There was a merry go
Speaker 5: round horse she wanted, and he found a merry go
Speaker 5: round horse and he said that was it. That was
Speaker 5: the one, and it wasn't the one, Okay, that's an example.
Speaker 5: It's a it was a different one. It was a
Speaker 5: merry go round horse from another year and another place,
Speaker 5: and and sure enough it was familiar, sure enough, it
Speaker 5: was part of the life. But it is not the
Speaker 5: one that he said it was. And that's a very
Speaker 5: simple example of confabulation. But he doesn't dissociate, right, Steven
Speaker 5: will confabulate, but he won't dissociate. And Diane doesn't confabulate.
Speaker 5: She'll just say I don't know, but she does dissociate.
Speaker 6: You talk about how silvestrous Stephen Griggs was found by
Speaker 6: David tell Us just when he died in the circumstances.
Speaker 5: He died of malnutrition, died at home of malnutrition. Well,
Speaker 5: we can construe that as him being in control of
Speaker 5: his life to the very end. And by God, if
Speaker 5: he didn't want to eat, he wouldn't eat, I guess,
Speaker 5: Or if he wanted to eat junk, he'd eat junk,
Speaker 5: so there would be no one there to care for him,
Speaker 5: and he died.
Speaker 6: Who found him?
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I don't know, or if I did know,
Speaker 5: I forgot m.
Speaker 6: I thought David had felled him his brother, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, I mean the young son, the youngest son. Well,
Speaker 5: I guess he did because he was living with him.
Speaker 3: M hmm.
Speaker 5: It wasn't Dian or Stephen. I know that it probably
Speaker 5: was the brother because he was living there, m hmm.
Speaker 5: And the one sister, the one that was not hospitalized.
Speaker 5: She went was interviewed in the John Edgington film and
Speaker 5: she gave very persuasive testimony consistent with the father being
Speaker 5: exactly what Dinah. Stephen had reported that he took Diana
Speaker 5: Stephen off away from the others and to her as
Speaker 5: a kid. She always thought that meant they were special
Speaker 5: USh And then another time and she told one of
Speaker 5: her friends he was a Russian and he liked to
Speaker 5: beat her to death. She heard her mother screaming, you're
Speaker 5: gonna kill her, You're gonna kill her, and she did
Speaker 5: believe that he was going to kill her, and he
Speaker 5: did believe that he could and would kill her. And
Speaker 5: so you know, I also had testimony from two individuals
Speaker 5: who knew Stephen in the program, and no one has
Speaker 5: come forward that remembers Uh encountering Diane, but two people
Speaker 5: remember Steven and one woman who had not read the
Speaker 5: book described as scene almost just like the one with Diane.
Speaker 5: The business about who will you kill? And in the
Speaker 5: book UH, what happens with Diane is it Stephen jumps
Speaker 5: in and defends the child against the soldiers UH and
Speaker 5: interferes with them. And this woman came forward to say
Speaker 5: that he did that for her and she called it.
Speaker 5: She say that he saved her life when she was
Speaker 5: being traumatized at the hands of the MK ultra UH operatives,
Speaker 5: that Steven came forward and saved her life. Another girl
Speaker 5: remembered seeing him up there in Canada at the Bronsman
Speaker 5: estate up there where ew and mccameron was doing his
Speaker 5: work up at McGill University. She saw Steven there and
Speaker 5: Steven told her you had your little puppy with you.
Speaker 5: Your hair was blowing, you know. So I mean you
Speaker 5: can't just completely say well, you can't prove it, so
Speaker 5: it can't be true. Another thing I'd like to comment
Speaker 5: on is usually when people disbelieve something that can't be proven,
Speaker 5: they say they just want attention. And I want you
Speaker 5: to know that the kind of attention that you get
Speaker 5: from this kind of a story is horrible. It could
Speaker 5: include depth, and it is not welcoming by anyone. No
Speaker 5: one welcomes this kind of story. No one gives you
Speaker 5: any kind of sympathy or kindness and much less, you know,
Speaker 5: money and fame. No, you don't get that from this
Speaker 5: kind of story. So enough with the attention thing. You
Speaker 5: don't want that kind of attention.
Speaker 6: No, what's evident in this story too, and again again,
Speaker 6: the sort of upbeat part of this book is that
Speaker 6: Diane and Stephen, despite their treatment in the program and
Speaker 6: by the atrocious behavior of their father and all of this,
Speaker 6: all the people authorities they went to without them being
Speaker 6: believed these two people are especially brave individuals. Stephen very I.
Speaker 5: Tell Stephen all the time, he's my hero. Diane had
Speaker 5: commented that I was asked said something about what she
Speaker 5: learned or what they taught in the program, and she said,
Speaker 5: you know, it wasn't like they taught it. She's like
Speaker 5: it was in us, and they brought it out in us.
Speaker 5: And she said that for once in my life, someone
Speaker 5: believed that I could be somebody, someone believed that I
Speaker 5: could do things. And Diane had manifested some shall we say,
Speaker 5: unusual abilities, and upon those occasions Stephen would I don't
Speaker 5: think they were in the book. Even Stephen would always
Speaker 5: tell her, don't let them know you can do that.
Speaker 5: But Diane was always bursting with pride. She just wanted
Speaker 5: to do more. She just wanted to achieve and for
Speaker 5: her potential to come out. Stephen was always cautioning her, you,
Speaker 5: why do you always want to get everything right? Why
Speaker 5: do you always want to be the strongest and the best?
Speaker 5: He says, they just want to get you for that.
Speaker 5: You've got to stop. You can't let them see what
Speaker 5: you can do. And of course Stephen was right, But
Speaker 5: that's the different kids and their personalities and the way.
Speaker 5: I think that the program probably saved Diane and transformed
Speaker 5: her into the powerful woman she is today. She's an
Speaker 5: ordained minister and she surfs, so she had married a surfer.
Speaker 5: She goes surfing every day. She's in her fifties and
Speaker 5: supremely fit to ride to horses, and she has somebody
Speaker 5: to love.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit of a right spot
Speaker 6: in this very, very very dark story. I want to
Speaker 6: thank you very much for coming on and talking about
Speaker 6: Good Little Soldiers, a memoir of true horror. Sondra London,
Speaker 6: Can you tell us about you mentioned the video? Can
Speaker 6: you tell us where people might find more information about
Speaker 6: this fascinating story and more about your other work about
Speaker 6: serial killers.
Speaker 5: All right, I'd like you to go to Good Little
Speaker 5: Soldiers dot com because I have posted the links there
Speaker 5: to first of all, some excerpts from the book, and
Speaker 5: you get the text, and you also get Diane reading
Speaker 5: from the beginning of the book, and then you have
Speaker 5: my afterward where I talk directly to the audience about
Speaker 5: these issues. And you also have the links to the
Speaker 5: video John Edgington video Our Father the serial Killer, as
Speaker 5: well as a video I posted of an interview I
Speaker 5: gave on Coast to Coast about this book, along with
Speaker 5: some visuals that I put with it. So all that
Speaker 5: you can access easily one link, which would be Good
Speaker 5: Little Soldiers dot com.
Speaker 6: That sounds great. Now you asked thoughts.
Speaker 5: About my other books, if I could squeeze any quickie here.
Speaker 6: Sure.
Speaker 5: I had one book called Knocking on Joe Voices from
Speaker 5: Death Brother and that came and went over in England.
Speaker 5: Then I had three books published by Farrell House and
Speaker 5: Faraoh House is one man operation and the publisher is
Speaker 5: Adam Parker. He recently passed away, and so I'm looking
Speaker 5: forward to seeing if I can bring out new editions
Speaker 5: of those books with more information about Danny Rowling, about
Speaker 5: Gerard John Schaeffer, and my encyclopedic volume True Vampires. So
Speaker 5: all three were Farrell House books, and I hope to
Speaker 5: bring out new and improved editions of those.
Speaker 6: That's fascinating and incredible news. We'd look forward to getting
Speaker 6: you back on and talking about those three incredible classic
Speaker 6: books and what you are going to update those books
Speaker 6: with and add that will be very very interesting. I
Speaker 6: want to thank you very much, Sondra London, Good Little Soldiers,
Speaker 6: a Memoir or True Horror. It has been fascinating. Thank
Speaker 6: you very much.
Speaker 5: You have a great thank you for the opportunity, Dan,
Speaker 5: I will be very proud to join your roster.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Sandra. Do you have a great
Speaker 6: evening alrighte Bye bye