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Speaker 1: What's every You are now listening to True Murder, the
Speaker 1: most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors
Speaker 1: that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker
Speaker 1: BTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most
Speaker 1: shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder
Speaker 1: with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 3: As a soft spoken, highly intelligent son of missionaries in Morganton,
Speaker 3: North Carolina, Luke Chang gave no indication of the killer
Speaker 3: he would become, but after hacking into a teacher's computer
Speaker 3: at his school, a stint in the Marines was his
Speaker 3: only option. As a young recruit, Luke was taunted for
Speaker 3: being a virgin who didn't cuss, drink, or smoke. Pot
Speaker 3: That all change when Luke met Casey Byrams, a fun
Speaker 3: loving musician and fellow marine from Coleman, Alabama. The friendship
Speaker 3: set off a series of events that would eventually lead
Speaker 3: Luke to Pendleton, Oregon, where he brutally murdered nineteen year
Speaker 3: old Amy jan Brand Higgen in August twenty twelve. When
Speaker 3: Luke attempted to kill another woman almost a year later,
Speaker 3: Pendleton police knew they had a serial killer wannabe on
Speaker 3: their hands. Some forty years prior to Amy Jane's murder,
Speaker 3: Luke's maternal grandfather, Jean Dale Lincoln murdered a young Michigan
Speaker 3: woman and attempted to abduct the twelve year old girl.
Speaker 3: The similarities between the violent actions of grandfather and grandson
Speaker 3: compels the question is there such a thing as a
Speaker 3: murder Jan. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 3: The Murder Jan, A true story with my special guest,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Karen Spears Zachari. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 3: and thank you very much for this interview. Karen Zacharias,
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 4: It's good to be with you again.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us for this incredible tale.
Speaker 3: First off, tell us how you came to be involved
Speaker 3: in this story and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 3: your meeting with police Chief Stuart Roberts.
Speaker 4: Well. I was at one point I am reporter on
Speaker 4: the crime beat in Pendleton, Oregon, where the murder took place,
Speaker 4: and over the years of my crime reporting had developed
Speaker 4: relationships with several of the law enforcement people in the community.
Speaker 4: Stewart Roberts was chief of the Pendulton Police and very
Speaker 4: well respected. I had worked with Chief Roberts on my
Speaker 4: previous crime book of Silence and Mocking Bird, about the
Speaker 4: death of three year old Curly Sheehan. When Amy Jane
Speaker 4: brand Again was murdered in August twenty twelve. I actually
Speaker 4: knew Amy Jane, you her family very well. My daughter
Speaker 4: had baby, said Amy Jane when she was younger, and
Speaker 4: so much like the Carly Shehan, I had this connection
Speaker 4: to the victim. I called up Chief Roberts and as
Speaker 4: could be for coffee shortly after Amy Jane's murder. So
Speaker 4: we did, and at that time no arrest had been made,
Speaker 4: and very little details about the murder had been released.
Speaker 4: And when I questioned Stewart as to whether there was
Speaker 4: a story in all of those he told me then
Speaker 4: in twenty twelve that yes, there was a story, and
Speaker 4: he feared that what they had on their hands was
Speaker 4: a serial killer because of the low cow of Pendleton.
Speaker 4: It's located right along the Interstate four that runs between
Speaker 4: Boys Idaho and Portland, Oregon, and it would be very
Speaker 4: easy for someone to jump off that interstate do a crime.
Speaker 4: In Amy's case, so it's the middle of the afternoon
Speaker 4: on our bright sunny August day, and the killer had
Speaker 4: walked away completely unseen.
Speaker 3: Now part of the research for this book is that
Speaker 3: we call it the murder gene and you did some
Speaker 3: extensive research from all the latest experts doing this research,
Speaker 3: conducting this research tell us basically the research that you
Speaker 3: delve into regarding DNA.
Speaker 4: Well, what happened when I began researching the story of
Speaker 4: Luke Chain the killer. I found out that his grandfather
Speaker 4: was in prison and had been imprisoned at one point,
Speaker 4: and I didn't know why that was why he would
Speaker 4: event so I had gone back to Chief Roberts and said,
Speaker 4: what was Luke's grandfather in prison? Pork And Chief Roberts
Speaker 4: didn't even know at that point that he had been
Speaker 4: I had just come across, said in a brief note
Speaker 4: in pages and pages of documents, and then he came
Speaker 4: back and told me that he had been arrested and
Speaker 4: put in prison for murders. So I began collecting the
Speaker 4: information on Luke's grandfather, and that immediate led me to
Speaker 4: think what an oddity that was to have a grandfather
Speaker 4: and a grandson both committing pretty violent murders of women
Speaker 4: neither one of them knew or having connection to. I
Speaker 4: was immediately traut to the fact that there might be
Speaker 4: a genetic connection to that kind of violence. And so
Speaker 4: I'm not a scientist, not an expert in DNA. I
Speaker 4: began researching, and of course it took me ten years
Speaker 4: of research. DNA is, as you will know, changing hour
Speaker 4: by hour the discoveries that we are making in DNA.
Speaker 4: And the first person I got a hold of was
Speaker 4: specialist at Florida State University, doctor Kevin Bick, and he
Speaker 4: explained to me that it is an uncomfortable subject for
Speaker 4: us to talk about that there might be a connection
Speaker 4: of violence in families, that we prefer to think of
Speaker 4: that as all environmental. But the way the doctor explained
Speaker 4: it to me was that it's very much like if
Speaker 4: you say, have a grandfather who has diabetes, you won't
Speaker 4: necessarily get diabetes, but you will have a perpensity toward diabetes, right,
Speaker 4: And it's the same with violence. It doesn't mean if
Speaker 4: your grandfather is a serial killer that you're going to
Speaker 4: be a serial killer, but you have a higher propensity
Speaker 4: for aggression and violence as significantly higher according to doctor
Speaker 4: Bacon and the others that I interviewed.
Speaker 3: And many people call this m ao a gene, the
Speaker 3: warrior gene. But you say, other people regard this or
Speaker 3: refer to this as the psychogene.
Speaker 4: Well, it's called some people call it the psychogene. It
Speaker 4: is really an enzyme within the gene. It's the moxomain
Speaker 4: oxidize a and for it to be a warrior gene,
Speaker 4: that's most commonly referred to as a t R variant,
Speaker 4: meaning it repeats twice or more. It is carried. We
Speaker 4: all have it, but in women it doesn't show up
Speaker 4: as commonly because women have two of the It comes
Speaker 4: on the X chromosome. Women have two, so if I
Speaker 4: were to have it one of the X chromosomes, make
Speaker 4: cancel it out in me. But it is carried through
Speaker 4: the mother's line and past. Like I said, all of
Speaker 4: us have the moa m aoa gene, but we don't
Speaker 4: all have the to are variant, and we see it
Speaker 4: most commonly and meant it's highly valued and referred to
Speaker 4: as a warrior gene because it makes men more aggressive,
Speaker 4: more willing on the battlefield. That kind of thing is
Speaker 4: the light it has been up until this point put
Speaker 4: into a very positive light as being that thing you
Speaker 4: want your warriors to have. Well, it would be really
Speaker 4: interesting to know how many of these white supremacists we're
Speaker 4: dealing with and these mass shootings are dealing with that
Speaker 4: to our variant right now.
Speaker 3: You talk about this to our variant, but it's also
Speaker 3: called a mutation.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is a mutation. And these just like with
Speaker 4: arthritis or diabetes or apress cancer, these are there is
Speaker 4: an inheritability to that variant. But the having that variant
Speaker 4: alone isn't enough. It is a marker on the gene
Speaker 4: and how that marker responds to the environmental factors, just
Speaker 4: as with other inheritable factors. Just as with diabetes, lifestyle
Speaker 4: would be a fact doctor that would come into play
Speaker 4: as to whether the diabetes became full blown or not.
Speaker 4: The same thing with this mutant ensign or marker on
Speaker 4: the gene is influenced by those environmental factors.
Speaker 3: You pose the question, though, is it possible that grandfather
Speaker 3: and grandson shared a code for murder. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: gene Dale Lincoln and what you did find out about
Speaker 3: his crimes. And you take us to Nancy Ellen Laws
Speaker 3: and she is camping at Michigan's King Lake. Tell us
Speaker 3: what happens when she meets Jean and how she meets
Speaker 3: gene Dale Lincoln.
Speaker 4: So in the week prior to Jeen meeting with Nancy,
Speaker 4: he was a father of four kids and married the time,
Speaker 4: and had even been at one point the tax assessor
Speaker 4: in his county. I mean he was employed did a
Speaker 4: machine company at the point of Nancy's death, but was
Speaker 4: it was someone you would consider well established. He had
Speaker 4: a job. He had been in the military, although he
Speaker 4: had been discharged I think dishonorably. I have those records
Speaker 4: that he was discharged from the army for unknown reasons. Anyway,
Speaker 4: he had had a variety of jobs and seemed like
Speaker 4: the kind of guy who would live next door to you.
Speaker 4: That he and his wife got into a huge fight
Speaker 4: and he left their home, left the kids and went
Speaker 4: to see a friend, and did you know, just explain
Speaker 4: that they had a disagreement and drank and so did she,
Speaker 4: And I think the alcohol certainly was a contributing factor
Speaker 4: and probably their fighting and their resulting imprisonment. But after
Speaker 4: staying with a friend, he then went off and campaign
Speaker 4: at King's Lake. It's a lot of popular campsite. Our
Speaker 4: recreation site did not have a lot of campsites. Nancy
Speaker 4: Laws grew up in Waukeshaw and was very well known
Speaker 4: in Waukeshaw. She was the college co ed attractive, she
Speaker 4: had a great voice, was a singer and an artist,
Speaker 4: and she it was getting to be break time for her,
Speaker 4: and she had made arrangements to meet some friends. And
Speaker 4: she had this hobby where she liked to go and
Speaker 4: visit what we considered ghost towns. We have a couple
Speaker 4: of those in our area in Oregon. You probably have
Speaker 4: some too, all settled areas where the housings and things
Speaker 4: still remained, but nobody's particularly living in them. So she
Speaker 4: had left Waukeshaw. She had packed up to go camping,
Speaker 4: and she went up and she had gotten to the
Speaker 4: campsite later than she had planned and was setting up
Speaker 4: her campsite when she came over and introduced himself and
Speaker 4: offered to help her. There were only ten, i think
Speaker 4: ten campsites. There were some fisher some people out fishing,
Speaker 4: but it was getting on towards dark. They got her
Speaker 4: tent set up. He had offered her a beer and
Speaker 4: they had been talking. At some point in the evening,
Speaker 4: he made a pass at her. She had thought he
Speaker 4: was married because he had a wedding ring on, so
Speaker 4: she didn't realize he was out there camping alone. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure she would have pitched her tent there. Had
Speaker 4: she known that he made a pass setter, she rejected him.
Speaker 4: He ended up killing her violently and then sexually assaulting
Speaker 4: her after she was dead, put her body in the
Speaker 4: trunk of his car, driven around first day and disposed
Speaker 4: of it very far away from the camps.
Speaker 3: Now, not long after there is this Doni and her
Speaker 3: friend Pam, and they want to go camping as well.
Speaker 3: So what happens in the interim in terms of police
Speaker 3: looking for this killer about this crime? Tell us what
Speaker 3: happens after that after Nancy Law's disappearance, and how many
Speaker 3: days it is till Dony and Pam decide to go
Speaker 3: camping and bump into Gene Lincoln.
Speaker 4: Well, there were actually months that had passed before that
Speaker 4: encounter happens. Jean Lincoln did not go back to comb
Speaker 4: after the murder of Nancy Laws. He hit her car
Speaker 4: and began hitch hiking around and going from campsite to campsite.
Speaker 4: In Donie's case, Dony lived at the lake and in
Speaker 4: a different county, and she was young, teen girl, beautiful,
Speaker 4: and she and her friend, I mean you when you
Speaker 4: live at the lake, like is your backyard, It's just
Speaker 4: your lifestyle. She knew the area very very well, and
Speaker 4: like a lot of teenagers, she was spending her summer
Speaker 4: at the lake. She had gotten permission to spend the
Speaker 4: night with her girlfriend, Pam, who also lived up to
Speaker 4: the lake, but they were actually spending the night at
Speaker 4: Pam's house, like Dony's parents thought she was. They had
Speaker 4: made arrangements with a friend to stay at his campsite.
Speaker 4: He was gone, so they were just going to use
Speaker 4: his tent and stay at there at his campsite that night,
Speaker 4: and that is what they did. And at some point,
Speaker 4: this was a very crowded campsite, by the way, there
Speaker 4: are lots of people there. A lot of people lived
Speaker 4: in the lake year round. And in this case, they
Speaker 4: had asked the man at the campsite near them to
Speaker 4: help them with problem they were having with their kerosene
Speaker 4: lamb or not their kerosene, but their camp plan, and
Speaker 4: he had helped, and they were kind of repulsed by
Speaker 4: this guy. Was obviously not clean and kind of scary
Speaker 4: all of that. But at some point they went to bed,
Speaker 4: and the next morning, nearly before daybreak, they had heard
Speaker 4: a noise outside their tent, and Tony got up to
Speaker 4: see what it was, and at that point Jean Lincoln
Speaker 4: grabbed her and began the process of an abduction. She
Speaker 4: was twelve at the time, but TONI, you know, was
Speaker 4: a twelve going on eighteen, right, so very attractive and
Speaker 4: because she was at the lake all the time, very athletic,
Speaker 4: and she was able through She believes the intervention of
Speaker 4: God and I believe the stream of her sure will
Speaker 4: to make an escape. Had she not made the escape,
Speaker 4: he would have killed her. But she escaped the abduction
Speaker 4: and then began an all out pursuit for this man.
Speaker 4: I don't know that they had initially put his connection
Speaker 4: to Nancy Laws together, but they because it was different jurdictions, jurisdictions.
Speaker 4: There was Waukeshaw, Kingsleg, Newago, Baga, there were different counties
Speaker 4: and different jurisdictions all working on these two cases. But
Speaker 4: at some point the police were a law enforcement I
Speaker 4: think it was the state police actually who picked him
Speaker 4: up for age hiking. He was charged initially with the
Speaker 4: abduction of Doni, but eventually, of course, was charged with
Speaker 4: the murder of Nancy Laws.
Speaker 3: You talk about his friend Bill Olsen that he initially
Speaker 3: after he broke up with his wife. He went, and
Speaker 3: Bill offered him a place at his home, and what
Speaker 3: he had brought along was a big trunk, you say,
Speaker 3: And so he left that trunk behind suspiciously, Bill thought,
Speaker 3: his friend thought, And when he had heard about the
Speaker 3: abduction about DONI, he decided to open that trunk and
Speaker 3: then called police. So what did he find in that trunk?
Speaker 3: And that call to police help police put this together,
Speaker 3: didn't it?
Speaker 4: Yes, that call definitely did, and that trunk had been
Speaker 4: at Bill's for quite some time before, you know, it
Speaker 4: was his friend. I suppose most of us would never
Speaker 4: suspect our friends as being serial killers or you know,
Speaker 4: a murder of any sort. Remember interviewing and Rolle once
Speaker 4: about her connection, you know, to Ted Bundy, and how
Speaker 4: surprised she was that this was someone she knew. And
Speaker 4: certainly that was the case with Bill. He had no idea.
Speaker 4: He knew his friend had a volatile temper. He knew
Speaker 4: he drank too much, but then so did Bill. Sure,
Speaker 4: so it was just as drink advite anyway. It wasn't
Speaker 4: until after the young girl was abducted, and I suspect,
Speaker 4: although I don't know this for sure, but I suspect
Speaker 4: what most have come to Bill's mind was the timeline
Speaker 4: of things. You know, that Jean would have come to
Speaker 4: see him after the fight with Doris, his wife, and
Speaker 4: then a girl ends a murdered, and then Jean comes
Speaker 4: to see him again, leaves his trunk, and a child
Speaker 4: is abducted. You know, these kind of things. The timeline
Speaker 4: began to seem suspicious to Bill. He had not opened
Speaker 4: the trunk, but after the abduction of Doni, he did
Speaker 4: go in the trunk, and in it was a shoe box.
Speaker 4: And in that shoe box had been those shoes Nancy
Speaker 4: Law's mother had bought her right. And it was really
Speaker 4: when he called police and said, you know, there was
Speaker 4: women's clothing in those which he knew not to be
Speaker 4: gen Del's wife, sure, because it was teenager, you know,
Speaker 4: young girl, co ed kind of clothing, couples, sketch books,
Speaker 4: some identification kind of things, not driver's license, but you know,
Speaker 4: just things that would not have belonged to missus Lincoln.
Speaker 4: And so at that point he called police. And it
Speaker 4: was when the police showed the shoebox to Nancy's mother
Speaker 4: that they positively identified the belonging. Since belonging to Nancy you.
Speaker 3: Right that the county prosecutor Springsted part of the investigation.
Speaker 3: He begins an investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Laws
Speaker 3: and so in this they find the car, and you
Speaker 3: talk about this incredible deal that has offered him through
Speaker 3: his attorneys, through the prosecutor Mather. So this is a
Speaker 3: fascinating this is unique. I mean, a lot of books
Speaker 3: about I've never seen this. So anyway, please tell us
Speaker 3: about what happens and this incredible offer and why.
Speaker 4: Well they did financing Laws car that they had not
Speaker 4: found your body. And as the case in a lot
Speaker 4: of murders, situations like this where the body is now found,
Speaker 4: prosecutors will often offer a deal to the suspects because
Speaker 4: they want to be able to return that body to
Speaker 4: the family. And sometimes those deals, I think often times
Speaker 4: those families feel, yes, they want the bodies, but they
Speaker 4: don't like the deals being made because it often feels
Speaker 4: like these people are not going to be held accountable
Speaker 4: for the great wrongs they have done. And what happened
Speaker 4: in this particular case is that the prosecutor had offered
Speaker 4: Jean Lencoln a deal to find out where Nancy's body was,
Speaker 4: but he had not done that with the court's approval.
Speaker 4: The judge had not agreed to this ahead of time.
Speaker 4: There has been no discussion, so he's just offering this
Speaker 4: on his own to get to that body. And Gene
Speaker 4: does reveal where Nancy's body is at. But then the
Speaker 4: judge is furious over the deal that has been cut
Speaker 4: and he rejects it because the deal was to charge
Speaker 4: Gene with the abduction of Doni, but to let him
Speaker 4: off lightly on the murder of Nancy, which had been
Speaker 4: extremely violent. As I pointed out, he's sexually assaulted her
Speaker 4: after she was murdered. He probably assaulted her before she
Speaker 4: was murdered, but he didn't want to say that. He
Speaker 4: didn't really want to say that he had assaulted her
Speaker 4: after she was murdered either, but he said he couldn't remember.
Speaker 4: But in this case, the judge threw it out and said, no,
Speaker 4: you know, we're not going to cut that deal because
Speaker 4: this is too light of a sentence. It was ten
Speaker 4: years for an extremely painous act. And so the judge
Speaker 4: and the attorneys got into it in the courtroom and
Speaker 4: the judge just rejected it. Well, that put the attorney
Speaker 4: in the bands situation with the Jean, who had already
Speaker 4: told them where the body was at. So what happens
Speaker 4: is the attorney then gets moved to a different judge
Speaker 4: who then does approve it.
Speaker 3: So incredibly, he keeps this deal and honors this deal,
Speaker 3: and so Jeene Lincoln is sent to prison.
Speaker 4: You right for only ten years?
Speaker 3: Yes, you're right, for the minimum of ten years. He
Speaker 3: had a maximum of fifteen and a minimum of ten,
Speaker 3: I believe, And he's released in ten Interestingly, who welcomes
Speaker 3: him into their home after he is released?
Speaker 4: Well, that was shocking to me. Actually, it was Luke's sister, Leah,
Speaker 4: who explained to me that her grandfather came to live
Speaker 4: with the family in North Morgan to North Carolina after
Speaker 4: he's released from prison. Now, when I interviewed Leah, she
Speaker 4: maintained that nobody in the family, she and Luke, didn't
Speaker 4: know what their grandfather was in prison for. In fact,
Speaker 4: didn't even know they had a grandfather till he showed up.
Speaker 4: According to Leah, the only grandparents she had any contact
Speaker 4: with had been her grandmother's. She had only she could
Speaker 4: only remember seen Doris one or two times. Apparently she
Speaker 4: was quite an alcoholic and it was Leah's mom, Heidi,
Speaker 4: who became the primary, you know, maternal figure in the household,
Speaker 4: having to do a lot and take care of a
Speaker 4: lot of things, and their lives were completely disrupted, as
Speaker 4: you can imagine with any situation where head of a
Speaker 4: household that's in prison. So LEAs said, she didn't know
Speaker 4: she had any grandfather's. Her contact with her paternal grandmother
Speaker 4: was limited because her paternal grandmother was a Harmong refugee
Speaker 4: from South Vietnam and did not speak English, and Lanne
Speaker 4: did not speak come Up or Vietnamese, so whatever contact
Speaker 4: she had with that particular grandmother was very limited. Leya's father, Jay,
Speaker 4: had moved the family to Morganton, North Carolina, from Illinois,
Speaker 4: where his family had emigrated to following the Vietnam War,
Speaker 4: and they and Heide had gone to Morganton. Initially, Jay
Speaker 4: was called to be the pastor there at the Baptist
Speaker 4: church there in Morganton for whatever reason that nobody would
Speaker 4: talk about, including the church folks. He did not last
Speaker 4: in that job for more than a year and began
Speaker 4: working instead at one of the many furniture factories there
Speaker 4: in foothills of Appalachia, and so all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you know, when Lea' is about four or five years old,
Speaker 4: her grandmother shows up out of nowhere, arrives on a bus,
Speaker 4: and her mom and family then just go and welcome
Speaker 4: him like you would any long lost relative you hadn't
Speaker 4: seen it in a dozen years. And he comes and
Speaker 4: lives at Leah with the Chain family there for a
Speaker 4: while until he gets out on his own. There's never
Speaker 4: any mention of the of why there had been no contact,
Speaker 4: and if you take Leyah's story at face value, she
Speaker 4: claimed even during our many many interviews, that she nor
Speaker 4: Luke knew why their grandfather had ever been in prison.
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Speaker 3: smartest way to hire. Now, we just introduced that the grandfather,
Speaker 3: Jean Lincoln, came to live with Leah and Luke, Luke
Speaker 3: being six years six years old and Leah, his sister,
Speaker 3: being four years old. Tell us, as you write in
Speaker 3: the book a little bit about their life living with
Speaker 3: their parents and what that consisted of. You talk about
Speaker 3: poverty that you talk about them their parents being missionaries
Speaker 3: tell us about life growing up.
Speaker 4: So Jay and Heidi met at a church in the
Speaker 4: Jack Kyles Church up in Indiana area, and Jack Kyles
Speaker 4: ran one of the biggest, what we would consider today
Speaker 4: mega church and it ran those huge bus ministry that
Speaker 4: went around collecting kids from neighborhoods all throughout the area.
Speaker 4: So they had met there and their marriage had been
Speaker 4: bonded in a large degree by the shared values they
Speaker 4: had as evangelical Christians, and Jay had long felt the
Speaker 4: call to be a pastor and missionary, to return to
Speaker 4: the countries and to the peoples that he had grown
Speaker 4: up with prior to his dad's death during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 4: So they took that call and came to Morganton, North Carolina,
Speaker 4: had a huge among refugee community during that time that
Speaker 4: it was a large settlement and you could see why
Speaker 4: there's a lot of similar ilarities geographically culturally to the
Speaker 4: kind of community that Jay was familiar with. So they
Speaker 4: moved there, but like I said, didn't work out very
Speaker 4: well with the ministry. So he began working in a
Speaker 4: furniture factory. He did not make a lot of money.
Speaker 4: Heidi and Ja part of the Jack Hyles ministry. It
Speaker 4: was extremely fundamental and what happens with fundamentalism is that
Speaker 4: there comes a deep isolation. It's built on an US
Speaker 4: and them paradigm. And so it's the notion that my
Speaker 4: beliefs are right and your beliefs are wrong. And in
Speaker 4: order for me to raise my family, I have to
Speaker 4: protect them from beliefs that are in what I would
Speaker 4: consider contrary to the Word of God. So their family
Speaker 4: environment was very exclusionary. According to Leah, they had bought
Speaker 4: property out just outside of Morganton. It's some beautiful piece
Speaker 4: of land. There was a branch house on it. Leah
Speaker 4: talked about, you know, having wooded areas, about an acre
Speaker 4: of woods to roam through. Not uncommon for a lot
Speaker 4: of kids growing up in those rural areas of Appalachia
Speaker 4: to talk about their you know, connection to the land.
Speaker 4: And so what happened is they were not in enrolled
Speaker 4: in school that Heidi homeschooled. Now Lea would say they
Speaker 4: would get their homework done, our school work done within
Speaker 4: the first couple hours of the day and the rest
Speaker 4: of the day, Sheet and Luke roamed those woods, played outside, explored.
Speaker 4: They were just together all the time. They were only
Speaker 4: I think eighteen months apart. They are what you know,
Speaker 4: I would refer to as Irish twins. They even look
Speaker 4: quite a bit alike both our care dark eyed, great smiles,
Speaker 4: very cherub looking children. And she recalls those days fondly
Speaker 4: as being a great time togetherness and family. But Leah
Speaker 4: was much more social than either her mother or her brother,
Speaker 4: and she felt the need to be with other people,
Speaker 4: to have connections and friendships outside of just the family.
Speaker 4: But that was not something that Heidi was open to.
Speaker 4: Heidi did not want her kids engaged in a broadway
Speaker 4: with other kids, particularly so for any kids who would
Speaker 4: not adhere to the kind of protective evangelical view that
Speaker 4: she and Jay had for their kids. So there was
Speaker 4: a lot of loneliness to that environment as well. Luke
Speaker 4: built that loneliness with books. Leah felt that loneliness with
Speaker 4: a longing to be with friends, to have girlfriends. They
Speaker 4: were always very actively involved in a church, and the
Speaker 4: church they settled on was a church it's still in
Speaker 4: operations called New Manna and it is about forty miles
Speaker 4: maybe thirty thirty to forty miles from their home there
Speaker 4: in Morganton. The church has a large Christian school, and
Speaker 4: eventually when Leah's in high school and Luke is a senior,
Speaker 4: Heidi and Jay Do enrolled them in that private school.
Speaker 3: You talk about that Christian school, the New Mana and
Speaker 3: the strict adherence to the King James version of the Bible.
Speaker 3: So they're very literal believers in this. But unfortunately he
Speaker 3: gets busted for hacking into a teacher's computer right and
Speaker 3: is expelled. So as a result, they're poor, and so
Speaker 3: scholarships are the way that he would be able to
Speaker 3: go to school. So no scholarships, no school. What does
Speaker 3: Heidi recommend that Luke do as a result.
Speaker 4: As a result of that, I mean, Luke was brilliant,
Speaker 4: very smart, extremely well read that he wasn't going to
Speaker 4: He needed the degree from New Manna in order to
Speaker 4: get into a college to begin with, because they weren't
Speaker 4: at that point accepting homeschooling degrees as viable degrees or
Speaker 4: college entrants. So that's why he would send you Manna
Speaker 4: to start with. When he hacked into that computer, and
Speaker 4: I don't know. No one would say whether he hacked
Speaker 4: into the computer for porn reasons or whether he hacked
Speaker 4: into the computer to change grades. I know the reason
Speaker 4: why he hacked into the computer, but he did get
Speaker 4: caught and he got expelled. And at that point how
Speaker 4: he told him his only option was to join the military. Well,
Speaker 4: you're already in North Carolina. Your closest military base for
Speaker 4: that group. What's going to be the Marines at Camp Lajune.
Speaker 4: So while Jay did not want his son to join,
Speaker 4: the Marines had no desire for Luke to do that.
Speaker 4: Because Jay had lost his father's South Vietnamese soldier to
Speaker 4: the war in Vietnam. He was opposed to it, and
Speaker 4: Leah was not included in on that decision. But Luke
Speaker 4: decided to do what his mother recommended and joined the Marine.
Speaker 4: So you've taken a kid who has had this very isolating,
Speaker 4: very strict environment, and now you've put him in Camp Pleash.
Speaker 4: You I've been to Camp Plash, and I don't know
Speaker 4: about you. I know a few Marines, Dan, I mean,
Speaker 4: it had to be quite the culture shot for Luke.
Speaker 3: We have to talk about his friend, Casey Lee Byrom's
Speaker 3: complete opposite as you write of Luke. Yet they become friends.
Speaker 3: While they're in the military, they get moved around to
Speaker 3: various places, and Casey is a guy that had smoked
Speaker 3: pot and done other drugs. He has a reputation for
Speaker 3: doing some other drugs or has a history of doing
Speaker 3: other drugs. However, he's still smoking pot. But as a
Speaker 3: diametrically opposed opposite, Luke doesn't drink, cuss, do drugs anything
Speaker 3: like that. He's a quiet guy and Casey's a fun, loving,
Speaker 3: friendly guy. They decide to move in together, and he
Speaker 3: is married to a woman named Megan. I know when
Speaker 3: we're compressing this into a short period of time, but
Speaker 3: tell us the dynamics. What happens to put these people
Speaker 3: all together in one place.
Speaker 4: So this group of people all in dub at Camp
Speaker 4: Pendleton in southern California, and it's Casey Byrons and his
Speaker 4: then wife Megan, and Megan's best friend Desiree, and California
Speaker 4: is a dispenser place to live. En listies don't make
Speaker 4: that much money, moving in togethers seem like a good
Speaker 4: option for them. Because Megan and Casey were having financial
Speaker 4: troubles Desiree didn't. They were all Desirae, Casey, and Megan.
Speaker 4: We're all from the same town in Alabama, Coman, Alabama,
Speaker 4: which is a great town. I've been to him many
Speaker 4: times and it's a fun, loving, very social, very hospitable community.
Speaker 4: Casey was the very first friend Luke ever had, and
Speaker 4: Casey made it his goal to introduce Luke to all
Speaker 4: the ways of the world, and he did so. It
Speaker 4: was with Casey that Luke started drinking. It was with
Speaker 4: Casey that Luke started smoking pot. It was with Casey
Speaker 4: that Key and Desiree and Megan all started using the spice,
Speaker 4: which at that time was a drug. You could go
Speaker 4: down to the seven ELEVENU pick it up. It was
Speaker 4: not considered in those days. It was not considered unlessit drug.
Speaker 4: The Marines didn't even test for it, but they began
Speaker 4: doing that. Desiree was born with diabetes had been sickly
Speaker 4: most of her life. She had come to California just
Speaker 4: for the adventure to get out of Culeman, Alabama, but
Speaker 4: she had extreme diabetes and did not have health insurance.
Speaker 4: So the four of them devised the plan that Luke
Speaker 4: would marry Desiree that would give him the ability to
Speaker 4: live off base, because if you weren't married, you didn't
Speaker 4: get to live off base. Right, so he could live
Speaker 4: off base and Desiree could have health insurance. Now, according
Speaker 4: to Desiree, they never consummated that marriage. That it was
Speaker 4: just a contractual marriage period. It was not something that
Speaker 4: Luke had told his parents about. He had told Leah,
Speaker 4: but even Leah understood it to be a contract marriage.
Speaker 4: But it was understood by all involved that Luke had
Speaker 4: feelings for Desiree that Desiree did not have for Luke.
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Speaker 3: Now, you talked about Desiree not returning the affection or
Speaker 3: the interest or the love that Luke felt for Desiree.
Speaker 3: Yet he posted on Facebook announcing the marriage, which she
Speaker 3: was enraged over because it was just a contract, real
Speaker 3: contractual marriage, not not anything of any real desire. What
Speaker 3: happens Casey BYRMS tell us what happens to Casey and
Speaker 3: what is the effect on Luke.
Speaker 4: So the process evolved four of them living together as
Speaker 4: you might imagine young people doing illicit things. It didn't farewell.
Speaker 4: Megan got homesick for Coleman. She and Casey were fighting
Speaker 4: all the time. She eventually leaves Casey, Desiree and Luke
Speaker 4: to move out to their own place. Casey spirals out
Speaker 4: of control when Megan leaves him. He's desperately in love
Speaker 4: with her, but not mature enough to handle marriage, and
Speaker 4: he had a long history of drug abuse that he
Speaker 4: could not seem to get over. We do know now,
Speaker 4: We didn't know it at the time, but we do
Speaker 4: know now that spice, especially the abuse of spice, can
Speaker 4: cause all kinds of psychotic problems for yearss. And so
Speaker 4: Casey goes back to Coleman because he's kicked out of
Speaker 4: the military for his drug use. He goes back to
Speaker 4: Coleman but doesn't get in touch with Megan, who's moved
Speaker 4: back with her family, and he has an overdose hooked
Speaker 4: up with his friends back in Coleman and he ods
Speaker 4: and dies and does. Ray and Luke are are still
Speaker 4: living together. Luke still carrying a lot of the financial
Speaker 4: although it does Ray at this point as a job,
Speaker 4: but she is seeing other people. They're not divorced, but
Speaker 4: she has seen other people and made it clear you
Speaker 4: know that she doesn't want a relationship of any romantic
Speaker 4: nature with Luke. Luke is still attracted to her. When
Speaker 4: she finds out through Facebook that Casey has odeed, she
Speaker 4: calls Luke and tells Luke that she's crying, she's upset
Speaker 4: that she's leaving, that she's going back to Coleman, that
Speaker 4: you know, she's going to go be with Casey's mom
Speaker 4: and family and do what she can to help, and
Speaker 4: she invites Luke to go along with her. But then
Speaker 4: she never hears from Lok again, and Luke goes a
Speaker 4: wall from the Marines and he he's told no one.
Speaker 4: It's like he's had some sort of mental break at
Speaker 4: that point, and he just disappears. He doesn't tell it.
Speaker 4: He doesn't get in touch with his family, he doesn't
Speaker 4: get in touch with any friends. He writes a Facebook
Speaker 4: post about how much he loves Casey and how Casey
Speaker 4: turned him into University of Alabama fan, and he signs
Speaker 4: it off roll time, and he disappears. He doesn't show
Speaker 4: up again and un till sometime later when he's found
Speaker 4: sleeping on benches in the yu Matilla River there in Pendleton,
Speaker 4: and police get him from loitering, but he has no
Speaker 4: idea on him so they don't know him as anyone
Speaker 4: other than Danny Wu. Danny Wo's the name he gives
Speaker 4: for himself. But we know now that what happened was
Speaker 4: following Casey's death, Luke gone on a bus and went
Speaker 4: as far as Pendleton, Oregon. He has told police that
Speaker 4: the reason he chose Pendleton was he ran out of money.
Speaker 4: But I believe that he stopped at Pendleton, Oregon because
Speaker 4: he had left and gone a wall from Camp Pendleton.
Speaker 4: I think the familiarity of the name this what drew him.
Speaker 3: To the town sounds like it. You talk about Amy
Speaker 3: Jane Brandhagen, nineteen years old, living on our own, worked
Speaker 3: at a travelogue in Pendleton cleaning rooms. Didn't like the
Speaker 3: job at all. She is ambushed from behind and killed.
Speaker 3: The police have no idea. There's so many complications with
Speaker 3: the autopsy. They find drugs in her system, which is
Speaker 3: a surprise to everybody, but they also find that she
Speaker 3: has romantic or relationship connections with so many people. So
Speaker 3: very much like a police investigation, they have to start
Speaker 3: at family, boyfriends, friends, ex boyfriends, and they have to
Speaker 3: follow every lead, whether it's good or whether it's bad.
Speaker 3: They have to make sure that this lead is not
Speaker 3: something to their advantage. So with this, it takes quite
Speaker 3: a bit of time to lead up to finding Luke
Speaker 3: and his responsibility for this. How does that happen?
Speaker 4: The way it happens is that almost a year to
Speaker 4: the date answer Amy Jane's murder, another woman is attacked
Speaker 4: on the Yumatilla River walkway again in daylight. Now the
Speaker 4: walkway has cameras on it. I know that walkway very well.
Speaker 4: I used to walk in quite a better run it
Speaker 4: with my children. It's a very popular area and well used.
Speaker 4: And a gal named Karen Lane who I also knew
Speaker 4: who Amy Jane had gone to church with. We had
Speaker 4: all gone to the same church. As matter of fact,
Speaker 4: Karen Lane had told her husband she was going out
Speaker 4: for a walk. It was August again in twenty thirteen
Speaker 4: this time, and she didn't return home from that walk,
Speaker 4: and so Dan, her husband, got worried. They called out
Speaker 4: a search party then evening, but it was getting on dark.
Speaker 4: They searched for hours in the dark and never found
Speaker 4: anything again. As soon as daylight rolled around the next morning,
Speaker 4: the police have started searching for her as well, and
Speaker 4: ball games are going on. It's summer morning and the
Speaker 4: walkway again is busy, but a police officer has gone
Speaker 4: you know, it's a river walkway, so there's a lot
Speaker 4: of vegetation. He has gone over and around from a
Speaker 4: ballpark area on one part of the walkway where the
Speaker 4: cameras did not catch and he's looking through that and
Speaker 4: he hears us. He hears something and looks in the
Speaker 4: brush and he sees Karen Lane there. She's almost bled out.
Speaker 4: She had been beaten badly with the metal pipe and
Speaker 4: so all of this ebolms and through cameras they're able
Speaker 4: to see this guy that they know as Danny Wu,
Speaker 4: exiting onto the walkway shortly after they had seen Karen
Speaker 4: Lang on the repeat video. And then they see him
Speaker 4: again exiting from the bathrooms. Looks like he had gone
Speaker 4: in and cleaned up and then come back out. Because
Speaker 4: he had had numerous contact with the police over that
Speaker 4: year period, always as a Lloyd, always without ID, one
Speaker 4: time being jailed, but fingerprints weren't taken through some CAROLSS
Speaker 4: police where someone one of the police officers who had
Speaker 4: previous contact with him, recognizing him, called him Danny Wu,
Speaker 4: which is actually a martial arts star, and so they
Speaker 4: put out an all points bulletin throughout oreon throughout the
Speaker 4: Pacific Northwest in search of Danny Wu, who has disappeared
Speaker 4: once more. Karen Lang has been life flighted to the
Speaker 4: hospital at OHSU in Portland, where she's given a one
Speaker 4: percent chance of survival.
Speaker 3: Now they're looking for Danny Wu. How is it they
Speaker 3: someone recognizes who Danny Wu is? How do they get
Speaker 3: him into custody?
Speaker 4: He's gone for several days, they're you know, searching for him.
Speaker 4: But people at the roundup grounds. Pendleton's well known for
Speaker 4: its Pendleton round Up, the largest round up rodeo outside
Speaker 4: of Calgary and then in the Northwest. So they have
Speaker 4: a lot of activity at the roundup grounds, particularly in
Speaker 4: August and September, because the rodeo is in September. So
Speaker 4: the women who were working there started noticing food missing
Speaker 4: from the kitchen and they are in the employees fridge
Speaker 4: and one afternoon they walk in and there's this Asian
Speaker 4: guy sitting in a chair eating from employee fridge. They
Speaker 4: knew immediately who he was. Of course that frightened them.
Speaker 4: He just stood up very calmly and said time to go,
Speaker 4: and he bolted out the door. They called the police
Speaker 4: in right away. The police brought in the dogs and
Speaker 4: the guns and a swap team and they surrounded the
Speaker 4: round up crowns and it was actually with a dog
Speaker 4: who had helped find Luke. He had been hiding up
Speaker 4: in the ceiling, you know, moving the ceiling tile and
Speaker 4: had been living up in the ceiling of the rounded
Speaker 4: ground facility and convention center facility. And they found him
Speaker 4: with one leg hanging out of that ceiling tile. And
Speaker 4: I think he was afraid. I think the officer told
Speaker 4: me he was afraid they would let the dog out
Speaker 4: on him. So he came down and he identified himself.
Speaker 3: Now he was taking the court and didn't have luck
Speaker 3: that his grandfather had. In sentence, he.
Speaker 4: Did not have the luck his grandfather had. I know
Speaker 4: that judge who oversaw his case. And so Luke is
Speaker 4: now sitting up the Organ State Penitentiary in Salem. He
Speaker 4: is there for forty years, which again you could argue
Speaker 4: still isn't long enough. Shouldn't he have life in prison
Speaker 4: for killing one woman and attempting and believed he had
Speaker 4: killed another woman, certainly wanted to kill the other woman again,
Speaker 4: somebody he didn't even know. Unlike his father grandfather, Luke
Speaker 4: had not sexually abused his victims. So there was that
Speaker 4: component that was totally different. And in his you know,
Speaker 4: confession about it, Luke was proud of what he had
Speaker 4: done and he admitted that, you know, he just felt
Speaker 4: compelled to.
Speaker 3: Incredible and so very much a good argument for the
Speaker 3: murder gene that there is some connection DNA wise.
Speaker 4: I definitely believe after researching, spending all this time and
Speaker 4: doing all of this research, I think that the more
Speaker 4: we find out about DNA, the more we all have
Speaker 4: to come to a belief that a lot of our
Speaker 4: decision making is not just based on our independent thoughts
Speaker 4: like we prefer to believe, but a lot of what
Speaker 4: we do, the decisions we make, our behaviors, have a
Speaker 4: lot to do with our DNA connections. We know, for instance,
Speaker 4: now that the trauma of slavery can be carried on
Speaker 4: passed through those gene markers to offspring and their offspring
Speaker 4: and that offspring. So trauma that happens to you can
Speaker 4: be carried forward. You know, if you believe in the Bible,
Speaker 4: it's to your children's children. So we know that these
Speaker 4: things can be carried forward. We are seen every single
Speaker 4: day the variety of health impacts that are inherited or
Speaker 4: shaped by our DNA markers. So of course it makes
Speaker 4: perfect sense that if we have violence in our history,
Speaker 4: that there's an inheritability factor toward violence.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much Karen Spear
Speaker 3: Zacharias for coming on and talking about the murder gene
Speaker 3: A true story for those that might want to take
Speaker 3: a look at this. Is there a website for this
Speaker 3: for this book?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean you can always order The Bagtor your
Speaker 4: low cool favorite independent bookseller. It's available at Barnes and
Speaker 4: Noble and through Amazon, but you can also go to
Speaker 4: my website at karenzach dot com. You can find me
Speaker 4: on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Karen Spears Zacharias the Murder Geen,
Speaker 3: a true story. Thank you so much for this interview,
Speaker 3: and goodnight.
Speaker 4: Thank you,