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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good evening for readers of
Speaker 6: true crime sagas like tinsel Town and Little Demon. In
Speaker 6: the City of Light comes a chilling account of a
Speaker 6: murder that captivated the United States in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 6: Twelve year old Marian Parker was kidnapped from her Los
Speaker 6: Angeles school by an unknown assailant on December fifteenth, nineteen
Speaker 6: twenty seven. Her body appeared days later, delivered to her
Speaker 6: father by the killer, who fled with the ransom money.
Speaker 6: When William Hickman was hunted down in charge with the killing,
Speaker 6: he admitted to all of it in terrifying detail. But
Speaker 6: that was only the start. Hickman's insanity plea was the
Speaker 6: first of its kind in the history of California, and
Speaker 6: the nature of the crime led to a media frenzy
Speaker 6: unlike any the country had ever seen. His lawyers argued
Speaker 6: that their client lived in a fantasy world, inspired by
Speaker 6: movies and unable to tell right from wrong. The movie
Speaker 6: industry scrambled to protect its exploding popularity and profits from
Speaker 6: runous publicity. Outside the court room, the country craved every
Speaker 6: awful detail, and the media happily fed that hunger as
Speaker 6: scandals threatened the proceedings. From the start, the death of
Speaker 6: a young girl grew into a referendum on the state
Speaker 6: of America at the birth of mass media culture. David Wilson,
Speaker 6: a private investigator for over thirty years, captures the maelstrom
Speaker 6: of Marion Parker's death in vivid detail, from the crime
Speaker 6: itself to the manhunt that followed, from the unprecedented trial
Speaker 6: to its aftermath. Wilson draws readers into the birth of
Speaker 6: the celebrity criminal.
Speaker 7: The book that we're featuring this evening is Not Just Evil.
Speaker 7: With my special guest journalist and author David Wilson. Welcome
Speaker 7: to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing
Speaker 7: to this interview.
Speaker 8: David Wilson, Well, thank you for inviting me. I really
Speaker 8: enjoyed the opportunity to talk about the books and talk
Speaker 8: about a little bit too about the implications of the case. Okay,
Speaker 8: leave up to the reader, but for me, there's some
Speaker 8: personal opinions about the significance of the case and why
Speaker 8: it's important to kind of take a look at it
Speaker 8: in retrospect and see how it's influenced everything from that
Speaker 8: point on.
Speaker 7: It tell our audience how you came to be the
Speaker 7: writer of this book. Tell us what made you be
Speaker 7: in a position to want to do this book and
Speaker 7: that this was important to you.
Speaker 8: Yes, that's a good question. The case was originally brought
Speaker 8: to my attention by my brother, who was a film
Speaker 8: major at USC. He actually went to school but at
Speaker 8: the same time as Ron Howard, and he fancied himself
Speaker 8: as a bit of a film historian, and he ran
Speaker 8: into this story back then, and we got to talking
Speaker 8: about it, and he gathered some of the documents have
Speaker 8: supported and I had written some other books, and he
Speaker 8: asked me if i'd be interested that. To be honest
Speaker 8: with you, I jumped at because it was really a
Speaker 8: compelling story done. You'd done a fair share of the
Speaker 8: research and convinced me that it was an important milestone
Speaker 8: in the history of justice system in America.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it certainly is. Now let's get to the time,
Speaker 7: because you do provide this incredible, again vivid picture and
Speaker 7: portrayal of what the time was like and again in
Speaker 7: nineteen twenty seven. We think many things are different, but
Speaker 7: so many things are very very similar. Oddly enough, So
Speaker 7: let's talk about where Perry Parker and Geraldine Parker and
Speaker 7: Marion Parker lived sort of an affluent little community here
Speaker 7: in around Los Angeles. So tell us about this little
Speaker 7: community they lived in, what it was really like, and
Speaker 7: what it was considered, and just a little bit about
Speaker 7: the Parker family and what mister Parker did he worked it.
Speaker 8: So go ahead, No, I was just gonna say, interesting enough,
Speaker 8: I grew up fairly close to that same area, and
Speaker 8: in the late twenties, I think Los Angeles was still
Speaker 8: a bit more rural than we imagine. There were still
Speaker 8: farms and ranches in the city which are now long gone, obviously,
Speaker 8: and there was kind of the seats of what I
Speaker 8: would call a community catering towards a workforce. So they
Speaker 8: were starting the concept of track homes and bedroom communities
Speaker 8: with the particular neighborhood. But this half was probably an upscale,
Speaker 8: upper middle class neighborhood that it was probably unique at
Speaker 8: the time because it was built at the time of
Speaker 8: the story, where most of the I think most of
Speaker 8: the upper middle class neighborhoods throughout the rest of the
Speaker 8: country we're older and you know, tended to be more
Speaker 8: brownstone and more stable. This was a miller community built
Speaker 8: for specifically a targeted audience. So then you know, it
Speaker 8: was kind of sold on the idea that it was
Speaker 8: safe and that it was people of similar background, and
Speaker 8: it was. It was kind of the American agreement at
Speaker 8: the time in some ways.
Speaker 7: Now Perry Parker, mister Parker worked at the First National Bank.
Speaker 8: He did excuse me, go ahead, go ahead. No, I
Speaker 8: was just to say you were the banker was also
Speaker 8: well known too, because the part of the interest in
Speaker 8: the story is that a lot of the players and
Speaker 8: characters and figures who had a role in the case
Speaker 8: actually knew him personally. So he was a well known banker,
Speaker 8: He was respected, took his job seriously. There was no
Speaker 8: hint of any bad behavior on his partner in terms
Speaker 8: of the way he conducted himself as a banker, and
Speaker 8: he was just he seemed to be well liked. I mean,
Speaker 8: everybody who counted him during the investigation in Trialhoo had
Speaker 8: known him before, had nothing but positive things to say
Speaker 8: about it.
Speaker 7: Yes, we'll talk about those again. Bizarre almost strange connections
Speaker 7: with an ext door neighbors being that, you know, so
Speaker 7: we'll talk about that at that time. So now let's
Speaker 7: let's go to December fifteenth. They're in this community, they're affluent,
Speaker 7: they're in the safest part of this community. It is
Speaker 7: a safe time relatively, because of the crime that we're
Speaker 7: going to describe was unprecedented at that time. It shocked
Speaker 7: the entire nation, if not a lot of the world.
Speaker 7: So December fifteenth, nineteen twenty seven, and mister Parker gets
Speaker 7: a call from Naomi Britain, which is the school secretary,
Speaker 7: and she calls to ask to see if the family
Speaker 7: would want to have Marian's twin sister, the twelve year
Speaker 7: old Marion that we mentioned in the beginning. Her twin
Speaker 7: sister to come home as well, and then tell us
Speaker 7: what mister Parker deduces from speaking to Naomi Britain in
Speaker 7: short order.
Speaker 8: And that's just well. To give it a little context,
Speaker 8: the school was calling because someone had come back come
Speaker 8: by the school to pick up Marrying Parker, to take
Speaker 8: her to the hospital because supposedly her father was in
Speaker 8: an automobile accident. And it was your father who picked
Speaker 8: up the phone, and he obviously was not at the hospital.
Speaker 8: He had not been in an accident, and he had
Speaker 8: not authorized anybody to go to the school to pick
Speaker 8: him up his daughter, and so he was immediately concerned.
Speaker 8: Stress realized something was wrong, and the school realized that
Speaker 8: they had made a significant monder. I'd have to say
Speaker 8: nowadays the chances of a stranger taking him a kid
Speaker 8: out of school was probably non existence, and at the
Speaker 8: time it was a little more part it was the
Speaker 8: part it was more likely around that time, but even
Speaker 8: and they had the rules and restrictions on who could
Speaker 8: take a student out of the school, and for some
Speaker 8: of those rules were not really followed closely. Out of
Speaker 8: the principal who should have authorized the release was not available,
Speaker 8: and the secretary kind of made a decision based on
Speaker 8: her belief and the credibility of the story, and so
Speaker 8: she went with William Hickman, who had come and claimed
Speaker 8: to be George Foss I think that was a ales
Speaker 8: few years at the time, and said that he was
Speaker 8: going to take marry It to the hospital that pcaus
Speaker 8: her father had requested. And I think perhaps it's not
Speaker 8: clear if he knew she had a twin sister or not,
Speaker 8: but he certainly only asked for the one doomic.
Speaker 7: To be fair to the secretary. Because then this is
Speaker 7: part of it, because it came quite controversial shortly after
Speaker 7: or immediately after, is that this guy had the fantastic ruse.
Speaker 7: He was well dressed, right, he had this dailius, But
Speaker 7: he also had uh. He had offered to say, oh,
Speaker 7: I work with He knew enough where mister Parker works,
Speaker 7: so he said, I work at the First National Bank
Speaker 7: with mister Parker, if you would like to call them
Speaker 7: and verify my identity. So he was good enough to
Speaker 7: bluff and nobody took him up on that. So, to
Speaker 7: be fair, that's an unusual rule that might even work today.
Speaker 8: That's a good yeah, that's a good point. And he
Speaker 8: knew some of he tells us. In fact, he had
Speaker 8: worked for Parker uh several years earlier and knew the
Speaker 8: routine him for his work, new personal details about the
Speaker 8: man's life, so it was not like he was making
Speaker 8: up a story. He had some information to work with,
Speaker 8: which made him even more convincing.
Speaker 7: I think, now, let's get to this phone call that
Speaker 7: he gets about, and he deduces what happens with his
Speaker 7: daughter in that she's been kidnapped by this man, and
Speaker 7: so they're scrambling to find out. He contacts police. Obviously,
Speaker 7: tell us what happens next and what he does, and
Speaker 7: what is the police reaction. It's interesting to say that
Speaker 7: they immediately, of course, think he may be a suspect.
Speaker 7: So tell us how police proceed with this kidnapping as
Speaker 7: far as they know.
Speaker 8: Well, the kidnapper obviously told Parker not to contact the police.
Speaker 8: That's kind of a common thing and kidnapping cases, it
Speaker 8: rarely happens that way, but that's certainly a common request.
Speaker 8: And the police had the drop off spot under surveillance
Speaker 8: and for the first meeting and apparently saw them notice them,
Speaker 8: felt something was.
Speaker 7: Wrong and.
Speaker 8: Didn't follow up with the exchange, which made the father
Speaker 8: really upset, and he got more and more upset about that.
Speaker 8: The police became more and more suspicious of him, and
Speaker 8: the whole thing got off the kind of shaky start
Speaker 8: would say.
Speaker 7: Now there's ways I he's communicating. There's the phone call,
Speaker 7: they put a tap on the phone, but he's also
Speaker 7: using telegraphs, and then he's also then sending packages. So right,
Speaker 7: the second one he talks about using this common theme
Speaker 7: he uses use good judgment, interferious, dangerous, and this progresses
Speaker 7: as time goes on, because there's this more than the
Speaker 7: two communications. Now now he tells them, don't get how
Speaker 7: the police involves. So what does mister Parker do, What
Speaker 7: does he ask the police to do? And what did
Speaker 7: the police do in response to his request?
Speaker 8: Well, he insisted on this on the second drop off,
Speaker 8: that you go alone, and that he'd be allowed to
Speaker 8: make the exchange without them watching him, so that he
Speaker 8: didn't run the risk of a second failure at the exchange,
Speaker 8: and the police agreed to his terms at that point.
Speaker 7: Now the terms are fifteen hundred dollars US seventy five
Speaker 7: twenty dollars gold certificates. That's just one of the stipulations, right, right, yes,
Speaker 7: and let go ahead. And he always talks about this
Speaker 7: death close to death, mister Parker, and trust and so
Speaker 7: he says, and it's always if you interfere, so.
Speaker 8: Right, you know. From a psychological point of view, I
Speaker 8: think he was laying the foundation to deflect his own
Speaker 8: guilt and blame. And to him it becomes clear as
Speaker 8: the chase unfolds, which is clear in many cases. I
Speaker 8: did a lot of work doing criminal defense work, and
Speaker 8: criminals to commit, especially serious currents, have a tendency to scapego, others, blame, others,
Speaker 8: do everything except to take responsibility for their own involvements.
Speaker 8: So it seems to me in his behavior he was
Speaker 8: kind of, at least unconsciously laying that foundation.
Speaker 7: Now with the the first communication, he realizes that the
Speaker 7: police have been notified. So he's angry, he says. So
Speaker 7: he indicates that in the correspondence. But what he gets
Speaker 7: in the correspondence as well is a note from Marion
Speaker 7: Parker just to add to mister Parker's torment. So does
Speaker 7: she essentially say in that little note.
Speaker 8: Listen, remind me of the details. She was asking for
Speaker 8: her father to cooperate, you know. And the odd part
Speaker 8: of it is is and maybe Irope I'm not jumping
Speaker 8: to the editor. But in the course of her being kidnapped,
Speaker 8: she and she and the kidnapper went to the movies,
Speaker 8: you know, So she was either very frightened or not
Speaker 8: frightened at all. It's not really clear from the evidence
Speaker 8: is available why she was, so let's say compliant with
Speaker 8: his request. But she definitely wrote her father and definitely
Speaker 8: asked him to cooperate.
Speaker 7: And there's another note as well where she where she
Speaker 7: obviously is privy to the conversation where the kidnapper is
Speaker 7: upset and says to her father I saw you or
Speaker 7: or you know, dad, you got to cooperate or I'll
Speaker 7: be he'll kill me. So it seems pretty authentic in
Speaker 7: terms of the feature.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I believe she wrote. No, it's absolutely and in
Speaker 8: his account later he claims to have killed her in
Speaker 8: a fit of anger and that it was not his intention.
Speaker 8: So yes, obviously, before she was killed, she was anxious
Speaker 8: to be released and certainly was making the fleet, certainly
Speaker 8: was adding to the stress her father was seating him mean,
Speaker 8: he was taught between the police and the need to
Speaker 8: accommodate the kidnapp her and and he was a wealthy man,
Speaker 8: so the money wasn't prohibitive or excessive. It was easily
Speaker 8: available to him. So I'm sure he wanted to just
Speaker 8: follow the instructions. Getting open. We're going to move on. Now.
Speaker 7: You have this heartbreaking scene in here, and all of
Speaker 7: this in the very beginning. Is mind blowing is that
Speaker 7: the police, Lucas and Raymond, actually believe again the prime
Speaker 7: suspect is mister Parker. Somehow, I don't know how they
Speaker 7: justify that, rationalize that. But at the same time, at
Speaker 7: the end, he says, please, I can't you know this
Speaker 7: man's going to kill my daughter. I want to just
Speaker 7: pay the ransom, and they think, I don't think that's
Speaker 7: a good idea. And yet they still think Parker is
Speaker 7: still main suspect. So what does he do? We alluded
Speaker 7: to it in the introduction, but we have to go
Speaker 7: into detail because this is one of the most unique
Speaker 7: crimes murders scenarios that I've ever read, and I mean
Speaker 7: I've read a lot, and this is nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 7: So to explain the shock of the nation, we have
Speaker 7: to talk about what the father is. He's he's warned
Speaker 7: by this kidnapper but he is determined, doesn't care about
Speaker 7: the money. What happens, what is what is his instructions?
Speaker 7: And what does he do take us through that?
Speaker 8: Well, he tells me, obviously, to come along. They meet
Speaker 8: on a street there the house and and uh, the
Speaker 8: father has parked, and then the Hickman comes towards him
Speaker 8: and comes parallel to him, and he asked about his
Speaker 8: daughter's condition. From from the from the father's perspective, it
Speaker 8: looks like his daughter is in the passenger seat with
Speaker 8: the car. And so they make the exchange of the money.
Speaker 8: And then uh, hickman pulls down the street and tells
Speaker 8: the father to wait before he comes and picks up
Speaker 8: his daughter. Is that the part you were talking about? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 8: and uh, and so in that short interim, Hickman takes
Speaker 8: his daughter out of the car. His daughter is dead
Speaker 8: at that point. His daughter has been badly mutilated in
Speaker 8: the sense that her limbs and legs have been removed,
Speaker 8: her eyelids have been sown, and she's got a hat
Speaker 8: down over her forehead so she's hard to see. And
Speaker 8: she was essentially propped up with a heavy overcoat and
Speaker 8: made to look like she was still alive. So when
Speaker 8: her father comes and discovers the condition she's in. I mean,
Speaker 8: he's obviously devastated and goes back and tells the police
Speaker 8: that his daughter is dead. And I have to say,
Speaker 8: the police at that point we're not real sympathetic, and
Speaker 8: they also it kind of increased their suspicion of him
Speaker 8: at that.
Speaker 7: Incredible Now you write another again, amazing aspect of this
Speaker 7: again it's it's nineteen twenty seven. Be surprised. The next
Speaker 7: day on the front pages are photographs of the crime sceness.
Speaker 7: And we just talked about disarticulated arms at the elbows,
Speaker 7: legs at the knees, a twelve year old with her
Speaker 7: eyes sewn open so that he could fool her when
Speaker 7: they rode by in the car that she might still
Speaker 7: be alive. This ghoul, I know. These are the stories
Speaker 7: the next day. These are the photos on the front
Speaker 7: pages of the newspapers in California. And further along, what
Speaker 7: did the police do now and what's their direction?
Speaker 8: Well? Yeah, listen, in those days, it was common for
Speaker 8: police photographers actually to be freelanced. They didn't have the
Speaker 8: kind of CSI in its that we see on TV nowadays.
Speaker 8: And you know, the current photographers sometimes doubled as journalists photographers,
Speaker 8: but clearly somebody from within the investigation gave the photographer
Speaker 8: access to the pictures. It's very likely that there was
Speaker 8: a bribe involved. And no, it was kind of the
Speaker 8: beginning of the outrage around being sensitive certainly to crimes
Speaker 8: against minors, being sensitive to the kinds of photographs that
Speaker 8: were released, and you know, it kind of clearly raised
Speaker 8: the issue of what information could, would and should be
Speaker 8: released to the public. And in fact that issue became
Speaker 8: more pronounced as the same pictures were actually used in
Speaker 8: the newsreels. That became a significant issue nationally action.
Speaker 7: When you talk about newsreels, to let the audience know
Speaker 7: that what these were. Where there was two feature films
Speaker 7: and then there was a cartoon, and then there was newsreels,
Speaker 7: which was the news of the day. As gory as
Speaker 7: it was, this was unprecedented graphic detail. And this became
Speaker 7: controversial as well. Not everybody thought that was fit for
Speaker 7: the theaters and the family, did they Well, yeah.
Speaker 8: It actually was more significantly than some of the theater
Speaker 8: owners refused to show them, I mean flat outs that
Speaker 8: were not going to show this. The studios got a
Speaker 8: little nervous about the fact that the sendo owners should
Speaker 8: have that kind of power to decide what they would
Speaker 8: and wouldn't show, and the issue over whether it was
Speaker 8: appropriate well all the way to Congress and really kind
Speaker 8: of generated what then was an effort at censorship and
Speaker 8: what's called the Hayes Commission, which was a group to
Speaker 8: determine what could and couldn't be showing them theaters and
Speaker 8: to also make a kind of extensive list of what
Speaker 8: subjects were and weren't appropriate for films.
Speaker 7: You took about Louis B. Mayor, famous film pioneer, and
Speaker 7: at the time too, it was just it was still
Speaker 7: no sound for films, so the silent films, and you
Speaker 7: also talk about just the time that it was. At
Speaker 7: this time was the heroics of Charles Limberg flying from
Speaker 7: from New York to Paris, the first telephone call from
Speaker 7: New York to London. So you talk about the times,
Speaker 7: and you also talk about how Mayor really was looking
Speaker 7: at You cite Canada, so tell us really what he
Speaker 7: looked at and what he saw this case as representing.
Speaker 7: To talk about his he was a staunch anti anti
Speaker 7: censorship person, so tell us what he saw in the
Speaker 7: in the Canadian rulings and what potentially he could see
Speaker 7: from the backlash from these new newsreels and this case.
Speaker 8: Right, yes, listen, there's a number of issues that converged
Speaker 8: for him in particularly in Hollywood in general. There was
Speaker 8: a fire in a movie theater in Canada. There were
Speaker 8: I can't remember the exact number, but it was I
Speaker 8: think it was a couple of hundred kids learned at
Speaker 8: that and there was serious concern and Canada and serious
Speaker 8: pressure to make going to the movies illegal for children.
Speaker 8: You know that represents then and now a big percentage
Speaker 8: of the movie going.
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Speaker 8: Sure Bubbly and also, you know, it was also the
Speaker 8: time that talking movies hadn't been out yet, but Hollywood
Speaker 8: was moving in that direction, and Meyers saw that as
Speaker 8: a potential big push in the market and a significant shift.
Speaker 8: And his real concern about the case didn't happen until
Speaker 8: after Hicking was arrested and who claimed he was insane
Speaker 8: by virtue of being addicted to movies. That just sent
Speaker 8: Hollywood in a tizzy. You know, they just that that
Speaker 8: was the last thing they wanted, because the debate over
Speaker 8: whether children should be allowed to see movies was in
Speaker 8: full sling, and also the issue of censorship, which was
Speaker 8: really triggered by his case and whether or not they
Speaker 8: should show the griwsome pictures that were a part of
Speaker 8: the newsreel. I mean, for his case to have triggered
Speaker 8: that debate and for him to have claimed to have
Speaker 8: been insane by virtue of an addiction to movies was
Speaker 8: just too close to home, so to speak. So the
Speaker 8: need to really demonize the suspect in the case was
Speaker 8: a priority for Hollywood. Now, you know, it's easy to
Speaker 8: demonize him, was he was obviously a person who had
Speaker 8: serious mental if you did awful things, but the question
Speaker 8: that raises for me, and it's some goes on. Is
Speaker 8: it the job of the media to second guess the
Speaker 8: outcome of a trial and really try and pose their
Speaker 8: perception of the case on the public. I think we've
Speaker 8: seen this almost unrelentlessly since then, and my personal opinion
Speaker 8: is that's not always been a good thing.
Speaker 7: Now let's get back to the crime scene. We have
Speaker 7: the media response, we've jumped a little bit ahead, but
Speaker 7: police still don't have their suspect, mister Hickman whatsoever. So
Speaker 7: how do they possibly find out nineteen twenty seven? Right
Speaker 7: police work? What happens?
Speaker 8: Well, it's interesting. There's you know, we're all familiar with
Speaker 8: the term dragnet from the TV series, but dragnet was
Speaker 8: actually a police tactic that was invented by the LA
Speaker 8: Police Department, Specifically Chief Davis came up with the idea.
Speaker 8: But a dragnet was is if you had a crime
Speaker 8: committee in a particular part of the city, you literally
Speaker 8: sent every available police officer into that part of the
Speaker 8: city to knock on every door and talk to every
Speaker 8: person who was remotely possible of committing crime. And there
Speaker 8: was no real regard for probable cause or legal connection
Speaker 8: to the crime. They literally would interview everybody and if
Speaker 8: anybody was even remotely suspicious, they would bring them into
Speaker 8: the police station and hold them until the person could
Speaker 8: verify their alibi until the time of the crime. So
Speaker 8: that whole process of just scooping up large numbers of
Speaker 8: people and shifting through them was called a dragnet, and
Speaker 8: they certainly initiated a very intense dragnet, obviously because of
Speaker 8: the heneousness of the crime, and then the process of
Speaker 8: doing that. They actually interviewed Hickman without realizing he was
Speaker 8: the suspect, and part of the dragnet process was to
Speaker 8: fingerprint everybody, you know, and again with little or no
Speaker 8: probable cause. So at the time Hickman was that he
Speaker 8: was first interviewed, he was fingerprinted, and he's Hitman started
Speaker 8: the panic, so he stole a car to leave the city,
Speaker 8: and it was really almost blind luck. You know, fingerprint
Speaker 8: files now are computerized, so you kind of stick a
Speaker 8: fingerprint in the computer and you wait until it sorts
Speaker 8: of the files. It is a relatively click process. But
Speaker 8: in those days you had to you had with the
Speaker 8: fingerprint experts who could analyze what they're called the worlds
Speaker 8: and swirls on a fingerprint, and there were certain general
Speaker 8: categories of worlds and swirls, and they were kind of
Speaker 8: organized based on those general categories. But within a general
Speaker 8: category there could be a thousand samples, and the only
Speaker 8: way you could match a fingerprint was to literally check
Speaker 8: by hand and by eyeball every fingerprints you had on
Speaker 8: a record against the fingerprints you were trying to identify sottifically.
Speaker 8: It was a slow and laborious process that could take
Speaker 8: days in the weeks. But one of the detectives involved
Speaker 8: in the case felt that because the car was stolen
Speaker 8: near the crime scene, that there was a chance that
Speaker 8: the car that was stolen by the kidnapper, and he
Speaker 8: took a fingerprint car and relatively quickly matched it to
Speaker 8: the suspect, at which point they went back to re
Speaker 8: interview him. He had left in the in another stolen car,
Speaker 8: and they found evidence of the crime at his apartment,
Speaker 8: so that identified him very quickly and early on as
Speaker 8: the primary assessment.
Speaker 7: Now, this is part of the controversy for throughout this
Speaker 7: whole book and throughout the whole trial is the confessions.
Speaker 7: And so right away he starts talking and what does
Speaker 7: he say in that first confession, and who was the
Speaker 7: first conficient confession too?
Speaker 8: Well, he uh backed up a little bit. He steals
Speaker 8: at least as I recall two cars, I think maybe three.
Speaker 8: But he also picks up hitchhackers, thinking that that would
Speaker 8: give him a cover. He's driving a loan, he'll be
Speaker 8: too obvious a suspect, so he picks up hitchhikers. Two
Speaker 8: hitchhikers called the police in Pendleton Argument say that they
Speaker 8: were given a ride by someone they thought with suspicions
Speaker 8: is someone that they thought matched the description of the suspect,
Speaker 8: and they gave the description of the car the chief police.
Speaker 8: So he staked out the only road through town, saw
Speaker 8: the car. The car didn't have California plates. He pulls
Speaker 8: car over anyway, When Hickman opens the door, his gun
Speaker 8: falls out of his lap on to the ground, and
Speaker 8: he gives his first kind of center my confession at
Speaker 8: that point by indicating that yeah, you got me, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean, he definitely gave evidence of the guilty conscience.
Speaker 8: But when he goes into the police station, you know,
Speaker 8: in nineteen twenty nine, critinal investigation wasn't very sophisticated and
Speaker 8: in Pendleton, organ the chief of police was the chief
Speaker 8: and the only patrolman in the entire police force, and
Speaker 8: I'm sure had no experience at all with a homicide investigation,
Speaker 8: so this was all kinds of news. And he also
Speaker 8: had a very hostile environment that the citizens of the
Speaker 8: city were ready to lynch the guy, and he was
Speaker 8: trying to appease them and also do what he thought
Speaker 8: was his duty as a police officer and a homicide
Speaker 8: detective investigator the whole thing. So he brought a reporter
Speaker 8: in and Hickman confesses to the reporter, which is, you know,
Speaker 8: beyond inappropriate, really absurd, And it was confessed to the
Speaker 8: reporter obviously without being read any kind of rights, even
Speaker 8: though Miranda rights were not effective of things, but you
Speaker 8: still need to guarantee an englandman and the the contestion
Speaker 8: was given circumstances that could be used in court, which
Speaker 8: talking to a reporter was not that circumstances. So the
Speaker 8: reporter didn't even take notes. He wrote his impressions of
Speaker 8: the confession by memory and when he got back to
Speaker 8: his office, So it was far from what I would
Speaker 8: call it defenditive confession. But during that confession, Pickman tried
Speaker 8: to deflect the crime to someone else, who he said
Speaker 8: freshured him into going along with it, and the confession
Speaker 8: was immediately printed in the local newspapers. So the district
Speaker 8: attorney in Los Angeles was less than pleased with how
Speaker 8: the arrest and the interrogations were handled. With that.
Speaker 7: Now, as you write, they decide to go on to
Speaker 7: transport him, and during that transport ride, they have numerous
Speaker 7: people there, including the district attorney, and they want to
Speaker 7: get a confession from when they're confident that he will
Speaker 7: give it to them, that he will give them details.
Speaker 7: So does he give it to him? What does he
Speaker 7: give him? What does he do? Does he give authorities?
Speaker 8: He gives He gives actually two confessions. His first one,
Speaker 8: it's fairly straightforward. There's some indication that he was pressured
Speaker 8: with strets to give the confession, which in those days
Speaker 8: would have been normal, I have to say. And then
Speaker 8: he needed the district attorney wanted a motive, which is
Speaker 8: actually not required in the perfect case, but he wanted
Speaker 8: one to kind of lock the case in. And so
Speaker 8: he made a second confession. I mean, I didn't say
Speaker 8: it specifically the more, but the implication was the threats
Speaker 8: got more intense, and that's kind of a if you're
Speaker 8: going to make that allegation, historically, you need a little
Speaker 8: more evidence than the most available. But he certainly didn't
Speaker 8: have any defense. Jorney didn't have anybody that was advocating
Speaker 8: for him. He didn't have anybody that was advising him.
Speaker 8: And he was alone on train and a long train
Speaker 8: ride with three detectives, the chief of police in the
Speaker 8: district attorney. That hasn't been a bit intimidating for anybody,
Speaker 8: let alone a young man who had just submitted the
Speaker 8: crime and who was clearly grappling with his own mental
Speaker 8: health issues.
Speaker 7: And this is the time they find out, because I
Speaker 7: thought there was only way to find out is that
Speaker 7: they actually went to the movies together. He's got that victim,
Speaker 7: as you mentioned, Yes, yes, So how does he explain
Speaker 7: how he how does he explain how he got her
Speaker 7: to be able to do that?
Speaker 8: Though well, he claims that he was treating her nicely. Also,
Speaker 8: he had the self reception of himself as a being religious.
Speaker 8: He considered himself a Christian gentleman, and he in fact,
Speaker 8: I mean, the story gets real bizarre at this point
Speaker 8: he asked for the fifteen hundred dollars because that was
Speaker 8: the amount of tuition for him to go to Bible schools.
Speaker 8: So they've become a minister. So in a sense, you'd
Speaker 8: ave us call the doctor Jekyl mister ha Hide. There
Speaker 8: was the persona of the good religious boy raised in Kansas,
Speaker 8: who had good manners and good home training and wanted
Speaker 8: to act politely and proper around people, and then the
Speaker 8: vicious criminal who came unglued and committed mutilation on the
Speaker 8: body of the victim. I mean real broad dichotomy there,
Speaker 8: which actually is not that uncommon among sociopaths. Such a
Speaker 8: pass have no real conscience, so they pretend to behave appropriately,
Speaker 8: but if something triggers them, there's no real filter in
Speaker 8: terms of expressing their emotions. And he seemed to be
Speaker 8: certainly struggling with that ken dition.
Speaker 7: What we didn't mention too, is that when you talk
Speaker 7: about the Christian gentleman, that's what he had said to
Speaker 7: mister Parker. He said, And again what I thought was
Speaker 7: a horrifying fact was the police at that time obviously
Speaker 7: leaked details that he was not about to tell police.
Speaker 7: They leaked it to the media, and he the night before,
Speaker 7: sat there for hours and hours with a supposed exchange
Speaker 7: of his daughter. And but so we when you mentioned
Speaker 7: that Christian gentleman, that's the language he used. If you
Speaker 7: you know, I want you to give you my word
Speaker 7: as a Christian gentleman. And that was his last I
Speaker 7: guess the tipping point for him was that he was
Speaker 7: humiliated and also disobeyed so blatantly by having those facts.
Speaker 7: He thought it certainly must have come from Parker or not.
Speaker 7: He couldn't imagine any other reason why where they would
Speaker 7: get that information.
Speaker 8: Right right, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then all it
Speaker 8: contributed to his reaction to the case. He went through
Speaker 8: a bit of an arc himself. I don't know if
Speaker 8: you want to jump ahead on that, but he seemed
Speaker 8: to recognize that he didn't have a real strong moral filter.
Speaker 8: But he also believed that his right to do whatever
Speaker 8: he wanted to do was divinely ordained, that God is
Speaker 8: considered him special, and that he had the right pretty
Speaker 8: much do whatever he wanted because he was gonna do
Speaker 8: great things.
Speaker 7: Yes, well, let's get to the philosophy in a bit.
Speaker 7: What's also very fascinating again, we've got to get the
Speaker 7: motive part in me the media and also the public's reaction.
Speaker 7: Here now while he's on this train, doing this confession
Speaker 7: on the train, giving the motive in his again narcissistic,
Speaker 7: sociopathic mind, some rationale he's trying to convey to these
Speaker 7: to the police chief and the district attorney and the detectives.
Speaker 7: This train stopped at every major city you write, allowing
Speaker 7: media and the public to gaze at the vehicle of justice.
Speaker 8: It was what I would consider the ground zero for
Speaker 8: the whole idea of media circus and the purple wash,
Speaker 8: I mean. And they took it literally to the bus stuff,
Speaker 8: and it was extreme, and it was so bad that
Speaker 8: it actually the reaction from the public were so bad
Speaker 8: that the chief started to get nervous about the safety
Speaker 8: of his prisoner and actually set up a ruse to
Speaker 8: arrive at the main station, but actually stopped before they
Speaker 8: got there and get the suspect off the train so
Speaker 8: there wouldn't be a big crown crowd and any threat
Speaker 8: to his safety.
Speaker 7: Interesting, and you right too, that Hickman went to find
Speaker 7: a lawyer. Missus Hickman went to find a lawyer for
Speaker 7: a son. So how does she get the great Defender
Speaker 7: her very first choice was Clarence Darrow. Now he said, oh,
Speaker 7: I can't, I can't do it, you know, I can't
Speaker 7: be involved. But really, as you write, he couldn't be involved,
Speaker 7: he couldn't practice law in California. But Darrow did recommend somebody,
Speaker 7: So you write that he recommended this Jerome Walsh. So
Speaker 7: so tell us again, this is what we mentioned. This
Speaker 7: is the very first time that an insanity defense is
Speaker 7: used in California. You also do a little bit of
Speaker 7: the background. We give that context as well. So tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about the law just previous to that,
Speaker 7: and then this insanity defense as might be.
Speaker 8: Yes, the I think we need to give a little background.
Speaker 8: Daryl was truly one of the great lawyers in the
Speaker 8: American jurist students, and he was famous for the Scopes
Speaker 8: monkey trial. But he had been uh, he had been
Speaker 8: excused the Jerry tampering in California and actually bribing a juror,
Speaker 8: and so he couldn't even come to California because I remember,
Speaker 8: there was a warrant for his arrest, so he had
Speaker 8: to stay out of the state. Which is kind of
Speaker 8: an interesting kind addition because he was a social reformer
Speaker 8: and a brilliant lawyer, but obviously not above corruption at
Speaker 8: some level. But he was also committed to a social
Speaker 8: movement at the time which was in favor of eliminating
Speaker 8: the death penalty, and he picked Walsh because Walsh was
Speaker 8: also against the death penalty, you know. And that raises
Speaker 8: an interesting question in terms of the viability of the council,
Speaker 8: because they both had an agenda of wanting to use
Speaker 8: the case to kind of publicize their cause, which I
Speaker 8: have to say is not always the best agenda for
Speaker 8: someone who's going to defend you in a criminal case.
Speaker 8: I mean, the lawyer has to be free to make
Speaker 8: decisions that ultimately support the situation of the client, not
Speaker 8: their own personal political views.
Speaker 7: Well you may be correct there, but it's done all
Speaker 7: the time.
Speaker 8: For yes, absolutely, and I've seen it and I've seen
Speaker 8: it work to the betterment of clients, you know. Uh.
Speaker 8: But you know, on the other side of that, he
Speaker 8: was indigent, he couldn't afford attorney. The representation he got
Speaker 8: was ultimately confident and skilled. Uh. I Just in looking
Speaker 8: over the trial strategy, I'm not convinced that the lawyers
Speaker 8: had the best strategy that have been possible for him
Speaker 8: at the time, and that was in fact criminal defense.
Speaker 8: In defending people charged to homicide was my specialty as
Speaker 8: an investigator. So I've got some experience and expertise and entering.
Speaker 7: But to consider the time, and to consider the potential jury,
Speaker 7: and to consider the outrage. You talk about the outrage
Speaker 7: at that time as twelve year old girl dismembers mutilated
Speaker 7: left the bank. You know, so, and everything is political,
Speaker 7: I mean the das everything he says, every press release
Speaker 7: is politically motivated and calculated to a certain degrees. So
Speaker 7: what do they do with in terms of this insanity defense?
Speaker 7: You say you don't agree on their strategy, but you
Speaker 7: talk about the McNaughton rule. Not everybody knows that, but
Speaker 7: that clear definition of insanity in terms of distinction knowing
Speaker 7: right from wrong. So it's a pretty hard hurdle to
Speaker 7: overcome that. Somehow, you approve the onus is on you,
Speaker 7: the defense, to prove you didn't know right from wrong
Speaker 7: at the time of that crime. So how do they
Speaker 7: proceed with this didn't know right from wrong? What is
Speaker 7: their course?
Speaker 8: Yeah? Let me let me let me back that up
Speaker 8: this a little bit. The mcnoton rule originally was established
Speaker 8: in the law in England, and England has a different
Speaker 8: system than we do. In England, there's no there's very
Speaker 8: few statutory laws of the laws are based on what's
Speaker 8: called case laws or the ruling of judges from the bench.
Speaker 8: Does that make sense, I hope explain that prove so
Speaker 8: that thenoton rule was a case involved in someone who
Speaker 8: attempted a clinical assassination and the judge determined that he
Speaker 8: was insane, didn't know the difference between right and wrong
Speaker 8: and therefore not capable of forming intensing. Okay. In the
Speaker 8: United States, you can't be charged with any crime that's
Speaker 8: not written down as a statuette in something illegal. So
Speaker 8: the crime of murder is actually a homicide of intention,
Speaker 8: and then there can be different forms of intention. And
Speaker 8: there's actually some variation from state to state on what
Speaker 8: constitutes a homicide and what the level of intention is.
Speaker 8: But just before Pickman was arrested, the state legislature had
Speaker 8: passed a new law defining how the mcnoton rule could
Speaker 8: be used in a murder case. So, if you go
Speaker 8: to most criminal trials, the prosecutor presents the case and
Speaker 8: then the defense tries to rebutt it based on the
Speaker 8: legislation in California at the time. The only the oh,
Speaker 8: the only way, can you still hear me? Yes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 8: the only way. The only way you could fleet in
Speaker 8: Sandy is if you first gave a full confession to
Speaker 8: the crime, and that instead of having the prosecute to
Speaker 8: present the chase first, the defense presented their case from
Speaker 8: Sandy first, which is complete reversal of the normal criminal process.
Speaker 8: And in those days, there wasn't a big budget for
Speaker 8: preparing the defense. You know, he required expert testimony in
Speaker 8: psychiatrist and so on, as I would call. I think
Speaker 8: they had thirty days to prepare. He had one or
Speaker 8: two interviews with a minimal number of doctors. And I
Speaker 8: just think at the very least the defense eternity attorneys
Speaker 8: could have asked for a delay and more time for
Speaker 8: preparation and put the issue insanity into a broader context.
Speaker 8: But the thing that you couldn't do, and the president
Speaker 8: that was set and which is still true, you can't
Speaker 8: have a normal homicide trial where you plead innocent, then
Speaker 8: you get convicted, and then at that point in the
Speaker 8: proceedings you decide you're insane. You have to go into
Speaker 8: the trial with that defense from that point of view,
Speaker 8: and then the judge has to make a determination if
Speaker 8: there's sufficient evidence for an the sanity plea to allow
Speaker 8: that to proceed. And I have to say, the judge
Speaker 8: you did rule on it was very articulate and very thorough,
Speaker 8: and in fact established the precedent for that process to
Speaker 8: this day.
Speaker 7: Now you also talk about which complicates this story as well,
Speaker 7: is that this narcissistic sociopath here in prison writes a
Speaker 7: letter right handed for his friend, but the guards find
Speaker 7: it beforehand. I want you to get the exact words
Speaker 7: that he says, but what's basically the gist of what
Speaker 7: he has said in that letter to his friend.
Speaker 8: Well, it was actually the second time he approached the subject.
Speaker 8: He was looking for reasons, he's looking for behavior that
Speaker 8: would indicate insanity. And in fact, he had asked, I
Speaker 8: believe the reporter when he was initially arrested the same question,
Speaker 8: and that he had a he was obviously looking for.
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Speaker 8: Reasons to sit in that category that apparently he was
Speaker 8: trying to take. I mean, that's the logical surmise from
Speaker 8: those kinds of questions.
Speaker 7: Now you talked about what was interesting. We haven't mentioned
Speaker 7: this either, but we alluded to it was that there's
Speaker 7: a doctor Wagner, and he is the person that, if
Speaker 7: we go back, had to look at the body of
Speaker 7: this child and tell us what the coincidence is before
Speaker 7: we talk about the other friendship be Aga Keys.
Speaker 8: Yes, the doctor was Parker's neighbor. He knew the victim,
Speaker 8: he knew the victim's daughter, he'd watched them growing up,
Speaker 8: grow up. And also, as I recall, his initial autopsy,
Speaker 8: they only had portions of the body and the the
Speaker 8: disarticulated limbs were delivered the next day in wrapped in newspapers. So,
Speaker 8: in addition to it being a gruesome autopsy, one that
Speaker 8: was probably unpresented, unprecedented for him in the sense that
Speaker 8: that was an uncommon crime and he probably never had
Speaker 8: a similar autopsy. To actually do an autopsy and someone,
Speaker 8: you know, that wouldn't be allowed nowadays. And I'm sure
Speaker 8: it was extremely to his credit. I mean, he was
Speaker 8: able to do it. I'm sure it was extremely upsetting,
Speaker 8: and he said as much. You know. So, but you know,
Speaker 8: if you're going to present your testimony in court and
Speaker 8: it comes out if you knew the victim, that would
Speaker 8: just be hugely prejudicial towards the jury. So, you know,
Speaker 8: that would just it was one of many precedents that
Speaker 8: was set in that case.
Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about a little bit about the main
Speaker 7: character here, and this is this Hickman. Hickman makes numerous statements,
Speaker 7: but the one he makes a statement to the jury
Speaker 7: about his great providence all his life, and this statement
Speaker 7: is read out tell us about his self importance and
Speaker 7: his idea of providence.
Speaker 8: Yeah, providence was his language for I would describe it
Speaker 8: as for it was his language for his description of
Speaker 8: his belief that he had been touched by God, that
Speaker 8: he had been chosen God by God for special destiny,
Speaker 8: and that the support of what he called divine providence
Speaker 8: lifted him above the normal rules of society and morality
Speaker 8: and gave him a blanket permission to do whatever he
Speaker 8: needed to do to get what it was he wanted
Speaker 8: in any particular moment.
Speaker 7: You also write about it at the time that to
Speaker 7: explain extreme criminal behavior, it was considered the result of
Speaker 7: the influence of the devil. And so then when we
Speaker 7: look at the psychiatrists at the time, they had a term,
Speaker 7: a psychiatric term dementia pray Coox right, and this is
Speaker 7: the forerunner of schizophrenia. So what I mean, even though
Speaker 7: they don't have much of a budget, he still got
Speaker 7: a couple of psychiatrists to diagnose him and to say
Speaker 7: that he has a disease that would render him insane,
Speaker 7: doesn't he?
Speaker 8: Right? Yes, listen, that's actually a disease, even though it's
Speaker 8: no longer recognized. I've studied it a bit that the disease,
Speaker 8: it's essentially a Latin term referring to the fact that
Speaker 8: the patient believes that they're possessed by something or someone,
Speaker 8: either spirits or right, a god or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 8: the thing that's interesting is that the definitive study of
Speaker 8: that phenomena and the psychiatrists who defined the conditions of
Speaker 8: that phenomena was Carl Jung, who was one of the
Speaker 8: founders of psychiatry, and he actually when he initially wrote
Speaker 8: it was his doctoral thesis was to define the symptoms
Speaker 8: of demetria para corint And in his doctoral thesis he
Speaker 8: lists I think of about thirty symptoms. Twenty of those
Speaker 8: he can explain psychologically and as causing mental illness, but
Speaker 8: about ten of them he leaves unanswered and unresolved, kind
Speaker 8: of opening the door to the fact that some forms
Speaker 8: of altered consciousness can actually transcend the consciousness of the patient.
Speaker 8: Now that's not to justify the behavior, to say that
Speaker 8: he was in fact touched by God, But even at
Speaker 8: that time, the diagnosis itself was not particularly definitive, not
Speaker 8: particularly widespread, and certainly not accepted by all psychiatrists who
Speaker 8: would be called on participant.
Speaker 7: Now you also write and you juxtapose these to separate
Speaker 7: parts in terms of having the Hollywood, the fledging Hollywood
Speaker 7: want to counter again this story is not going away.
Speaker 7: You mentioned the newsreels. Some states won't run these newsreels.
Speaker 7: And then there's also talk because we've mentioned in Canada
Speaker 7: where the Roman Catholic Church gets involved and starts calling
Speaker 7: and it seems so tell us what basically they say
Speaker 7: about films, which again really just seems obvious ominously like
Speaker 7: not so long ago in America, right.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, it was actually the beginning of the
Speaker 8: debate that I'm not really sure has been resolved, and
Speaker 8: I have to say that personally, I have mixed feelings
Speaker 8: on it. There was a concern of the influence of
Speaker 8: films on the development of young Marines. I think a
Speaker 8: case can be made that that might be true, you know,
Speaker 8: but you have to juxtapose of that against the right
Speaker 8: of freedom expression, and then you of course have to
Speaker 8: juxtapose that again against the parenial guidance and who's monitoring
Speaker 8: what their kids are doing and what they're watching. I
Speaker 8: really think that was the beginning dialogue and the conversation
Speaker 8: that's led up to some of the questioning about whether
Speaker 8: or not violent video games has influenced some of the
Speaker 8: mass killings we've seen in the last twenty years or so,
Speaker 8: and I have to say, from my experience again with
Speaker 8: murder cases, it seems to me that that influence could
Speaker 8: be there hasn't been fully studied, certainly wasn't understood, and
Speaker 8: at the time literally terrified Hollywood and the thought that
Speaker 8: certain films would have a negative influence on child the
Speaker 8: development was seen as a serious threat to the industry.
Speaker 7: Now back at the court case, you talk about the
Speaker 7: media being interested, in the public being interested. So this
Speaker 7: courthouse is full, and so there's more of people very,
Speaker 7: very interested in this. What is the demeanor of the
Speaker 7: defendant at this trial?
Speaker 8: You know, he seemed more or less kind of oblivious.
Speaker 8: I don't want to say amused, but be amused if
Speaker 8: you know the difference. I mean, he was starting I
Speaker 8: believe that he was trying to project a persano being
Speaker 8: above it all, and that he probably had kind of
Speaker 8: made his peace with the fact that he was going
Speaker 8: to be convicted and execut You did, and I think
Speaker 8: he tried to. He made a clear shift from me
Speaker 8: trying to justify what he did, to try and blame
Speaker 8: the father and to blame his circumstances, to trying to
Speaker 8: make the case that the thing that divine Providence had
Speaker 8: chose for him to do was to be kind of
Speaker 8: a role model for what not to do and how
Speaker 8: not to behave if you were a young man growing
Speaker 8: up at the time. I mean, he kind of book
Speaker 8: made some effort to transform what he did into something noble,
Speaker 8: which you know, it's kind of hard to identify with
Speaker 8: or except. But the thing that was ironic about that
Speaker 8: is he was actually praised for what he did by
Speaker 8: Anne Ran, who wrote the book Actless Atlas Shrugged, which
Speaker 8: was kind of again a precursor for a lot of
Speaker 8: the self help books and the kind of the help
Speaker 8: help seminars and the whole life coach movement of you know,
Speaker 8: taking charge of your life. Anne Rand thought that he
Speaker 8: was the first example of what she called the fully developed,
Speaker 8: evolving male. I think I actually think she called it
Speaker 8: a superman. But she spoke of people acting on their
Speaker 8: own impulse and that being a noble thing. So she
Speaker 8: she held press conferences where she praised Hickman and offered
Speaker 8: her support and felt that he had was someone to emulate,
Speaker 8: not someone to condemn. And it actually caused a controversy
Speaker 8: within her own movement, and I think it lost her
Speaker 8: some following but the fact that people were even entertainment
Speaker 8: at the time kind of it was one of many
Speaker 8: kind of ground zero discussions that emerged around the case
Speaker 8: that you know, it's a certain extent remain unresolved. I
Speaker 8: don't think anybody would argue that he's a great person,
Speaker 8: but certainly the notion that self interest is to be
Speaker 8: elevated and explored is still commonly accepted in certain expressions
Speaker 8: of self help literature.
Speaker 7: I was totally shocked. Not that I'm an expert on
Speaker 7: Ann Ran, but I couldn't see why she would have
Speaker 7: see any justification for any admiration for this guy at all,
Speaker 7: and it hurt her movement. I could understand that because
Speaker 7: I can't see the rationalization for it now. What was
Speaker 7: interesting too, is that, again, like you say, there's so
Speaker 7: many issues involved with this. It's like a confluence of
Speaker 7: events hers and this case represents so many so much
Speaker 7: groundbreaking precedent in here as well in terms of they
Speaker 7: talked about the insanity at that time, and they called
Speaker 7: the delusional insanity, and the lawyers tried to argue that
Speaker 7: he'd inherited it from his grandmother, who had been institutionalized
Speaker 7: for fifteen years earlier, and they also cited because at
Speaker 7: that time they didn't know anything about epilepsy, so they said, well,
Speaker 7: his first cousin is epileptic, so there was a couple
Speaker 7: cases of epilepsy. Grandfather was insane. So somehow they tried
Speaker 7: every angle at this insanity that he was delusional from
Speaker 7: the movies, but also from genetically he was insane or
Speaker 7: predisposed to insanity, didn't they argue?
Speaker 8: Right? I've think you know, for me, having dealt with
Speaker 8: some of those cases, you can know the difference between
Speaker 8: right and wrong, and it'll be delusional and mentally ill.
Speaker 8: And I think it remains an unresolved question of whether
Speaker 8: or not we're going to treat mental illness in criminal
Speaker 8: cases which is clearly manifest but does not meet the
Speaker 8: standard of the mgnoton ual. I think that's an issue
Speaker 8: that we haven't really fully come to terms with as
Speaker 8: a society. Now, go ahead, I'm just gonna say then
Speaker 8: that doesn't mitigate either way for or against the death penalty,
Speaker 8: but there's certainly you know, I've dealt with cases where
Speaker 8: I knew my client was not dealing with a full
Speaker 8: deck and not dealing with reality, and yet understood that
Speaker 8: they had done something wrong. That becomes a hard kind
Speaker 8: of tastes and negotiate hard to know how to proceed
Speaker 8: with it. And you know, your choices of insanity play
Speaker 8: are so limited that that doesn't really become an option.
Speaker 8: So I think it's it's a topic that warrants for
Speaker 8: the discussion, for sure. And I'd also say that along
Speaker 8: with that, when people exhibit what I would call an
Speaker 8: odd or a parrent or deviant behavior, it becomes such
Speaker 8: a hot ticket for the media that I'm not sure
Speaker 8: that that what I call becoming a celebrity criminal speaks
Speaker 8: well for the possibility of creating justice for the defendant either.
Speaker 8: I think that becomes increasingly difficult, especially as media becomes
Speaker 8: more easily available, more widespread, more instantaneous, and more opinionated.
Speaker 8: You know, it's again, it's another topic that this case
Speaker 8: kind of was grounds here before that I don't think
Speaker 8: it's been fully resolved.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, you have we don't have the debate raging,
Speaker 7: I think in terms of sty but you see more
Speaker 7: and more of these cases like you you talk about,
Speaker 7: And we'll mention it again because it's interesting you talk
Speaker 7: at the end of this case, and we'll talk about it,
Speaker 7: James Egan Holmes July twentieth, twenty twelve. And why you
Speaker 7: mentioned that? Tell us why you mentioned the Holmes case.
Speaker 7: July twentieth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 8: Oh, remind me what was that about.
Speaker 7: Well, that's he killed twelve people at a movie theater
Speaker 7: in Aurora, Colorado.
Speaker 8: Yes, right, yes, listen, yes, I think I think that well,
Speaker 8: and that's really gets to the heart of my perspective
Speaker 8: on the thing. I think Holmes was clearly insane. I
Speaker 8: think he knew the difference between right and wrong. And
Speaker 8: if the risk is sounding a little conspiratorial, there is
Speaker 8: some indication that he may have had some pressure and
Speaker 8: help and some people that were pushing him in the
Speaker 8: direction of being violent. And I'm not really sure that
Speaker 8: we have the legal perspective to pursue that to the
Speaker 8: extent that it needs to be looked at addressed.
Speaker 7: Well, what's interesting is that, uh, and this is by coincidence,
Speaker 7: sheer coincidence that January fourth, Joyce and Stephen Singular he's
Speaker 7: written a book called The Spiral Notebook and it includes
Speaker 7: the story of James Holmes. So we have he's a
Speaker 7: fine investigative journalist. So we'll get the story right. At
Speaker 7: least I know a lot more than I know I
Speaker 7: don't know anything of the story.
Speaker 8: So well, listen, I don't want to go off too
Speaker 8: far on attention. But my mentor as an investigator was
Speaker 8: Bill Turner, who I worked with him. He was the
Speaker 8: lead investigator for Jim Garrison on the Clay Show trial
Speaker 8: on the of the assassination, and then defended Sir Hand
Speaker 8: and Arthur Bermer and James Errol Ray. There's elements of
Speaker 8: all those cases that have not come fully to light
Speaker 8: that I think a broader perspective on insanity would bring
Speaker 8: to light. You know, for Sir Hand, we use hypnosis
Speaker 8: because Sir Hand had no memory of what happened that day.
Speaker 8: I mean he still does and he convincingly doesn't have
Speaker 8: any memory. And every time an expert, a psychiatrist was
Speaker 8: brought in to hypnotize him, rather than remember what happened,
Speaker 8: he went into a deeper trance. That's an extremely sophisticated
Speaker 8: form of hypnosis that probably involved in arco hypnosis. And
Speaker 8: so the whole issue of the ability to manipulate people
Speaker 8: or create man sharing and candidates are to exploit insanity,
Speaker 8: I think we're barely stretching the surface on understanding that
Speaker 8: whole topic.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, I can't argue with that because that
Speaker 7: those are extraordinary cases. But when you are again, I
Speaker 7: don't want again, I don't want to go off on
Speaker 7: too much of a tangent because no, I.
Speaker 8: Don't either there and I'm certainly look at implying, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm not lying that was the case with Hicken, but
Speaker 8: he certainly initiated the conversation absolutely well, certainly.
Speaker 7: And the thing is, I agree with you that the
Speaker 7: conversation has to be ongoing because we're seeing you know,
Speaker 7: there's always forces at play. You always see this psychiatric
Speaker 7: industry will say, or the industry itself is pushing to
Speaker 7: include more people to have disorders, so it's a creeping
Speaker 7: sort of mental illness. And then that, of course, then
Speaker 7: you use those many many attorneys successfully use for mitigating
Speaker 7: circumstances to say, well, this is the horrible background that
Speaker 7: my client had, but Canada has taken to another level
Speaker 7: because we never we do not adhere to the right
Speaker 7: and wrong version, right in sanity. But also I've done
Speaker 7: a story where doctor Turcotte received six months in a
Speaker 7: institution after killing his two children, now he's just been
Speaker 7: convicted again after the outrage of a certain segment of
Speaker 7: the population and his wife being a doctor herself. He
Speaker 7: was convicted of second lead murder with exactly same evidence
Speaker 7: but six months insanity, and the premise was that he
Speaker 7: was depressed. So you can see that this is what
Speaker 7: I don't think Americans know of that case unless they
Speaker 7: listen to this program. But I think there is that fear.
Speaker 7: Americans fear that that somebody would be put into a
Speaker 7: mental into an institution and then released some day, whereas
Speaker 7: in Canada we have that as a's it's not the
Speaker 7: exception to the rule, it is the rule. They will
Speaker 7: be released and as we see the Greyhound cannibal killer
Speaker 7: in six years released on the streets in Canada. So
Speaker 7: I think that the because as you say, how how
Speaker 7: can you how can you discern who is mentally ill?
Speaker 7: If you if you say, well, right and wrong is
Speaker 7: just not enough.
Speaker 8: Well listen, I think here here's my perspective on it.
Speaker 8: You raised some really good points and shape the dialogue
Speaker 8: on this issue, because it's getting to the heart of
Speaker 8: the manner. There's been an in my lifetime, there's been
Speaker 8: a huge increase in what I would call they're called
Speaker 8: spree killings, where people just randomly start shooting people. I mean,
Speaker 8: it happens all the time. You know. In the last
Speaker 8: few years, we've attributed some of it to terrorism and
Speaker 8: political acts of violence, but there's still a lot less
Speaker 8: to people that just wake up one day and decide
Speaker 8: to start killing people. You understand. Now, that's take the
Speaker 8: issue of insanity off the tape from a minute, and
Speaker 8: take the issue of how to proceed with the court
Speaker 8: case off the table. We still need to understand why
Speaker 8: that's happening, and we need to understand why that's happening nowadays.
Speaker 8: We need to understand why it's happening, particularly in America
Speaker 8: where many of there's many countries that just it's a
Speaker 8: non existent issue, you know, and we need to understand
Speaker 8: one of the forces that come to play that would
Speaker 8: trigger that kind of response. I mean, if it was
Speaker 8: an isolated incident, understanding that maybe we'll never know. But
Speaker 8: for it to be so painfully common, I think really
Speaker 8: raises the bar in terms of the importance of the issue.
Speaker 8: And you know that's certainly you know, as an author,
Speaker 8: I don't like to hammer the message on people's heads
Speaker 8: but that's certainly one of the concerns I had in
Speaker 8: writing the book, and it's certainly my hope that those
Speaker 8: issues will be looked at more astutely than they have been.
Speaker 7: Well, I certainly agree with you that the new move
Speaker 7: towards these I don't know, it's not one off, but
Speaker 7: it's the incredible amount of fame they that these killers
Speaker 7: want to gain instantly. They don't want to wait, they
Speaker 7: don't want to do twenty years and then come forward
Speaker 7: and say I killed fifty people. They have to make
Speaker 7: a big splash. So they're killing people in big numbers
Speaker 7: and to increasingly big numbers, and so and then shock value.
Speaker 7: So it is a I think there's a confluence of
Speaker 7: things going on there, and again you're right there is.
Speaker 7: It may not be that you ban video games, but
Speaker 7: to say that violent video games have no influence on
Speaker 7: anyone is absurd. Everybody's idea of fame, and even if
Speaker 7: a person is a will say who's a loser, but
Speaker 7: they may believe they're a loser. Well, this is the
Speaker 7: way to get beyond that, because any kind of fame
Speaker 7: is fame these days. So there's another bunch of phenomenas
Speaker 7: almost going on at the same time to not really
Speaker 7: well explained, but to somewhat explain this new phenomena of
Speaker 7: why people would resort to this in these big numbers,
Speaker 7: it looks like, and you.
Speaker 8: Have the seeds about all that interesting enough in this
Speaker 8: particular case, you know, you have the seeds of the
Speaker 8: question of insanity and what does that look like. You
Speaker 8: have the discussion of what causes insanity, You have the
Speaker 8: discussion of what kind of insanity legitimately mitigates a sentence.
Speaker 8: And then, I think, more importantly, and this is something
Speaker 8: that I think is rarely discussed, you have the whole
Speaker 8: issue of the birth of what I would call the
Speaker 8: celebrity criminal, and you have the birth of the paparazzi
Speaker 8: covering the celebrity criminal more from a entertainment perspective than
Speaker 8: a real effort to understand jurisprudence. And I think those
Speaker 8: are things that started back then that have gone unchecked,
Speaker 8: that are not serving our culture wealth. Well, let me
Speaker 8: put it like that, and that a more are deliberated
Speaker 8: and conscious discussion of those issues I think is important.
Speaker 8: And also, you know, you also have the issue of
Speaker 8: what I call talking heads, are the self styled experts.
Speaker 8: You know, you have a situation where there's a lot
Speaker 8: of news shows where guilt innocence is declared before the
Speaker 8: trial even starts. I mean, personally, I find that to
Speaker 8: be inappropriate, and I think the quickness of the news cycle,
Speaker 8: the need for celebrities, and the whole issue of properazzi.
Speaker 8: I mean, we can look the trend towards that led
Speaker 8: to the whole failure of the media to predict the
Speaker 8: outcome of the last presidential election. I mean, the whole
Speaker 8: issue goes way behind beyond criminal justice, in law and order, insanity.
Speaker 8: It's I think it's a didn't see that threats our
Speaker 8: perception of reality in some ways.
Speaker 7: You also have the issue of the media treatment. We
Speaker 7: haven't mentioned too much, but this poor mister Parker and
Speaker 7: his wife and family. I mean, he not only was suspect,
Speaker 7: but also the treatment in the media, just the treatment period.
Speaker 7: It was like the media could care less. There was
Speaker 7: no sympathy for really for the.
Speaker 8: Parker family, No, not at all, and I'm not sure
Speaker 8: that that's improved all that since then. But I think
Speaker 8: more significantly for me anyway, was the fact that Myers
Speaker 8: hired Edgar Rice Burroughs the creator of Tarzan to function
Speaker 8: as a reporter during the trial, and Burrows slammed the guy.
Speaker 8: I mean, there was nothing journalistic at all about his
Speaker 8: approach to the trial. It's not to say he wasn't
Speaker 8: a good writer or the Tarzan isn't a great story,
Speaker 8: but he was hired to do a hatch the job
Speaker 8: and that's what he did, you know. And I'm not
Speaker 8: you know, I again, I'm not defending Hickman by any
Speaker 8: stretch of the imagination, but I think there's a certain
Speaker 8: amount of fairness of the treatment of suspects that we
Speaker 8: should expect. It's nothing else to keep from tainting the
Speaker 8: jury pool. I mean, my goodness, you know, if he's
Speaker 8: convicted before he select the jury, the chances of a
Speaker 8: fair trial, said rather quickly.
Speaker 7: We haven't mentioned this, but imagine people might guess, but
Speaker 7: we might as well state because this is an important
Speaker 7: part of the trial as well. This in Sandy did defense.
Speaker 7: He had a vigorous defense. He had two good attorneys.
Speaker 7: They did good closing arguments. Asa Keys as you right, though,
Speaker 7: got famous from this. But that isn't the end of
Speaker 7: his story. And he was a friend of ours as well.
Speaker 7: It's all right, you say, just forty five minutes.
Speaker 8: What was the verdict, Well, the verdict was guilty, and
Speaker 8: excuse me, he pleaded guilty. The verdict was to execute him.
Speaker 8: He died by hanging. The thing that there's not real
Speaker 8: strong evidence of, but it really it appeared that Miners
Speaker 8: may have made inappropriate financial contributions to Keys during the trial.
Speaker 8: It's also clear that Keys did a lot to cover
Speaker 8: up major crimes among the Hollywood elite at the time.
Speaker 8: And then he was actually convicted for taking bribes in
Speaker 8: one of the first Ponzi schemes in California. And the
Speaker 8: irony is that he served the time in San Quentin,
Speaker 8: which is the place where Hickman was execute.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thats an amazing fourteen year sentence.
Speaker 8: To so yes, and you know, when he came out,
Speaker 8: he was given a job in Hollywood as a script
Speaker 8: consultant on the movies that involved the legal issues, which
Speaker 8: is really a non existent job that was further payoff
Speaker 8: or whatever he contributed to the media perception of that
Speaker 8: whole trial. But I want to say too maybe or
Speaker 8: I mean, the thing that really struck me is that
Speaker 8: Hickman's psychiatrist, the one that the defense attorney's hired really
Speaker 8: sabotaged the case. I mean totally. Remember when Clinton was
Speaker 8: asked about the affair with Donica Lewinsky and he answered
Speaker 8: by saying, what it depends on the meaning of what
Speaker 8: is is becoming that? Yeah? Sure, Well the same thing
Speaker 8: in the Hickman drap the doctor said are you sure
Speaker 8: of your diagnosis? And the doctor said, I can't really
Speaker 8: be sure of anything. It's like what you know? It
Speaker 8: was like, I don't want to accuse him of anything,
Speaker 8: but I have to say going there was very suspicious,
Speaker 8: unpreceded and unprecedented, and gave the jury all the opening
Speaker 8: they needed to convict him without qualification.
Speaker 7: Was there any supporters of the idea that he was insane?
Speaker 7: And at that time, was there many supporters that he
Speaker 7: should not be put to death?
Speaker 8: You know, I think that that issue broke down around
Speaker 8: the question of the morality of the death penalty and
Speaker 8: not the question of his guilt or innocence. Uh. He's
Speaker 8: certain it was certainly hard to except for Anne Ran,
Speaker 8: it was certainly hard to generate any kind of sympathy
Speaker 8: or support for what he did, especially the henelessness of
Speaker 8: the crime itself. He didn't he didn't help himself by
Speaker 8: talking too much, and uh.
Speaker 7: His uh.
Speaker 8: Appeal to divine justification, I'm sure offended a lot of
Speaker 8: people for religious reasons. So if the intention of the
Speaker 8: lawyers was to use it as a test case for
Speaker 8: ending the death penalty, it wasn't the best choice on
Speaker 8: that pint.
Speaker 7: Now, now you say that this took quite a bit
Speaker 7: of your life, this book, I'll were you involved with
Speaker 7: this kid?
Speaker 8: You know, let me tell you this. Two weeks ago
Speaker 8: I turned seventy. I wrote my first book when I
Speaker 8: was nineteen. I've self published about a dozen books, and
Speaker 8: you know, fifty years after writing my first book, I
Speaker 8: got picked up by a major publisher. So in the
Speaker 8: literary world they called that an overnight success. But you know,
Speaker 8: I've spent a couple of years working on the book.
Speaker 8: Once I got started and I recruited my brother got
Speaker 8: to help me with the research. We had to kind
Speaker 8: of petition a lot of files from Sacramento where they
Speaker 8: were in archives, and you know, kind of sort through it.
Speaker 8: And I have to say, did a really good job.
Speaker 8: I think my initial draft I may have put too
Speaker 8: much emphasis on the Hollywood and the history of Hollywood,
Speaker 8: which was not really as germane to the story as
Speaker 8: I initially thought. So you know, there was some starting
Speaker 8: out and rethinking. But you know, the thing that's exciting
Speaker 8: for me is that I've got another book already finishes
Speaker 8: to kind of a follow up. Remember did you see
Speaker 8: the movie Gangster Squad? Yes, my father was a member
Speaker 8: of Gangsters Squad and he made a deathbed confession which
Speaker 8: I believe is the true Stary. I think the Hollywood
Speaker 8: movie was kind of a cartoon, and I feel a
Speaker 8: commitment to him who to write the true Stary. He
Speaker 8: was really a good man, He had good intentions and
Speaker 8: they got some caught up into some stuff that was
Speaker 8: kind of epic in its tragic consequences. But you know,
Speaker 8: I think there are historical moments that we can learn from.
Speaker 8: I think this was one of them. I think his
Speaker 8: story is another example of that. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 8: kind of being forward in a similar line.
Speaker 7: Give a pentitive title for that.
Speaker 8: Yes, it's called almost a perfect murder, uh the Mick. Uh.
Speaker 8: It's about the Samuel Roumel, who was Mickey Cohen's attorney,
Speaker 8: was murdered in front of his house. It's it is
Speaker 8: an un h solved murder in Los Angeles, and based
Speaker 8: on things my father told me, I'm able to solve
Speaker 8: the murder absolutely, and uh, scuse me, I'll go ahead. Sorry, no,
Speaker 8: I'm just saying. And again, it had huge implications for
Speaker 8: the whole issue of dealing with corruption in law enforcement,
Speaker 8: dealing with organized crime. You know, at the time they
Speaker 8: set up the task force, the media consensus and the
Speaker 8: FBI consensus was that organized crime did not exist on
Speaker 8: a national level. And U my father, who was involved
Speaker 8: in wire tapping members of the mob, I certainly knew
Speaker 8: that it was a real phenomena. There was real bad
Speaker 8: things going on. There was real corruption with in the
Speaker 8: police department. There was real violence that was going unchecked
Speaker 8: as a result of the corruption, and there was an
Speaker 8: effort to kind of deal with those things in a
Speaker 8: noble way that got sidetracked was safe And you know,
Speaker 8: to me, that's a very compelling story.
Speaker 7: What was interesting, I guess in dis spookily too, is
Speaker 7: the this was six days before Christmas that this murder happened,
Speaker 7: and we're.
Speaker 8: Talking about Hello, yeah, we were talking about tonight, aren't we.
Speaker 8: I don't know, it's closed or we may have passed
Speaker 8: the day. Yeah, but yeah, that was five days. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 8: so it's uh. I called young called that synchronisity a
Speaker 8: significant coincidence. That's certainly that, And believe me, I'm really
Speaker 8: really grateful for the opportunity to talk about it. I'm sad,
Speaker 8: but there's some nibbles at making in a movie. So
Speaker 8: I'm kind of hopeful about that too. That would be wonderful.
Speaker 8: That's it's on my bucket list. I'm actually surprised that
Speaker 8: to an extent, the story is struck a nerve with
Speaker 8: a lot of people. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback.
Speaker 8: I thought it would be kind of a niche book
Speaker 8: with a few people to be interested and then because
Speaker 8: that's what they were into. But I have to say
Speaker 8: at this point the interest has moved beyond that. It's
Speaker 8: market to people that kind of get the social overtones
Speaker 8: that I was trying to raise in telling the story.
Speaker 7: You have a very interesting killer though too. It really
Speaker 7: is ahead of his time in combining a lot of
Speaker 7: the things. The narcissism that we see that we think
Speaker 7: is very modern, We really see they're the idea of
Speaker 7: the movies and not the idea that to use the
Speaker 7: excuse of the movies. He actually he was an arm
Speaker 7: robber just so he could go to the movies every
Speaker 7: day for three dollars.
Speaker 8: I think today exactly, and I think, I think that
Speaker 8: anything that encourages critical self of evaluation, both individually looking
Speaker 8: at their own lives and also how we relate to
Speaker 8: each other and how we process problems as a community.
Speaker 8: I mean anything that supports that is a worthy endeavor.
Speaker 8: And that was certainly, if I may say so, my
Speaker 8: intention was to stimulate some dialogue on those issues, because
Speaker 8: I think if they remain unconscious, that we run the
Speaker 8: risk of not having the higher aspiration of our culture
Speaker 8: went out in the end, if that makes sense.
Speaker 7: Certainly this book is important, like I say, because it
Speaker 7: just seems to be in the harbinger of things to come,
Speaker 7: all wrapped up in this one case. And as you say,
Speaker 7: as you, as you, as you say, with mister Holmes
Speaker 7: coming up, and this case that happened in twenty twelve,
Speaker 7: it's still in the public eye, is an indication that
Speaker 7: these issues that were there in nineteen twenty seven are
Speaker 7: still today evident in two.
Speaker 8: And you have the issue of and I can remember
Speaker 8: the fellow that shot that Ronald Reagan wanting to impress
Speaker 8: Jodi Fossip. I was at the guy that shot John Lennon.
Speaker 8: I don't remember that, but you know, it's not a
Speaker 8: scene that hasn't reoccurred since then, you know, And it
Speaker 8: was Yeah, people hadentify with the movie figures as a
Speaker 8: justification for crimes. That's I've seen that more than once
Speaker 8: in my career.
Speaker 7: And uh, yeah, it's a it's a it's a completely
Speaker 7: disturbing trend what we have. I mean, and not that
Speaker 7: Serial Killers wasn't a bad enough trend, this new trend
Speaker 7: is even more disturbing in that how many people you
Speaker 7: can't see it coming. It's impossible to see it coming.
Speaker 7: And then we are talking about the issues of I mean,
Speaker 7: I think there you personally could be a psychopath and
Speaker 7: be insane as well, and be paranoid schizophrenic as well.
Speaker 7: And I think that's what we're getting. We're getting a
Speaker 7: combination of things that we haven't seen before.
Speaker 8: And as a society, we could come to the conclusion
Speaker 8: that despite those illnesses, we want to punish people as
Speaker 8: a criminals. We can. We can make that judgment, but
Speaker 8: I think it needs to be an informed judgment. And
Speaker 8: I'm an unconscious judgment and not a judgment that uses
Speaker 8: any political, social, or economic reason for not fully examining
Speaker 8: the forces that are at plugged.
Speaker 7: Absolutely I agree with you, and I want to thank
Speaker 7: you very much David for coming on and talking about
Speaker 7: not just evil, and we look forward to having you
Speaker 7: on in the near future with almost the perfect murder
Speaker 7: for I might want to contact you have Do you
Speaker 7: do Facebook? Do you have a Facebook page? Website?
Speaker 8: You know? I do? I have a Facebook page, this
Speaker 8: under Dave Wilson d A ve E W I L
Speaker 8: S O N. On Facebook. You can front me there.
Speaker 8: We can talk about these issues at more at length.
Speaker 8: I'd really enjoy doing that. In fact, I've started kind
Speaker 8: of a blog on that Facebook page where I trace
Speaker 8: the history of the justicestem of America and some of
Speaker 8: the issues that the WALLD like racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's a whole history art of how we've
Speaker 8: approached those issues legally, and I think it's worthy of
Speaker 8: studying and examination because it's really informative in some of
Speaker 8: the reasons for some of the laws that we still
Speaker 8: grapple with are less than nobles. So I think that's
Speaker 8: worth examining it as well.
Speaker 7: Absolutely well, thank you very much, David. You have a
Speaker 7: great evening and a great holiday season and hope.
Speaker 8: Yes, and I really really want to thank you. It
Speaker 8: was a great interview. You'd asked the right questions, the
Speaker 8: good questions. It was a great dialogue, and I was
Speaker 8: blessed by the imitation. Thank you, it was my pleasure.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much, you too. Good night.
Speaker 7: For those the True Murder fans, I want to thank
Speaker 7: you for wrapping up the year of twenty and sixteen,
Speaker 7: and I just wanted to give you my heartfelt thank you.
Speaker 7: To all the people that listen to these programs who
Speaker 7: have listened to these programs and been supporter, contacting me
Speaker 7: with compliments and messages of support, I really really do
Speaker 7: appreciate it, and stay tuned for more True Murder in
Speaker 7: the new year. January is going to knock your socks off.
Speaker 7: We have Steven Singular the Spiral Notebook about James Holmes,
Speaker 7: as we mentioned, Catherine Casey with her book Possessed Harold
Speaker 7: Scheckter incredible, don't miss this, depraved about HH Holmes. And
Speaker 7: then the Politics a Murder with Margot Nash And that's
Speaker 7: January and just a next year, a blockbuster year of
Speaker 7: more fantastic authors talking about their incredible books. And I
Speaker 7: also wanted to mention thanks to the incredible True Murder fans,
Speaker 7: over forty two million downloads so far of the program,
Speaker 7: and we're well over four million listeners per month, so
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much. Have yourself a
Speaker 7: great holidays. I'll see you back in January. Good Night,
Speaker 7: m