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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 Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. 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.
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Speaker 5: slash true Murder for a free trial Today. Misfit Jeremiah
Speaker 5: Rodgers twenty one and Racist Devil worshiper Jonathan Lawrence twenty three,
Speaker 5: we're serving time for petty crimes. When they met in
Speaker 5: the Florida Penal System mental hospital, a friendship grew from
Speaker 5: their shared lust for sadistic brutality, and once released, they
Speaker 5: teamed up to hunt human prey. In March nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: in Pensacola, Florida, while quietly watching TV, Leyton Smitherman was
Speaker 5: shot in the back by assailants hiding outside his home. Amazingly,
Speaker 5: he survived, not knowing that he had been chosen at
Speaker 5: random by would be thrill killers. Their next target wasn't
Speaker 5: so lucky. Justin Livingston twenty died from multiple stab wounds,
Speaker 5: some more than six inches deep. The horror peaked on
Speaker 5: May seventh, nineteen ninety nine, when Rogers went out on
Speaker 5: a date with pretty Jennifer Robinson eighteen, with Lawrence tagging along.
Speaker 5: The young woman was drugged and assaulted first by Rogers
Speaker 5: then Lawrence, before Rogers shot her execution style. But the
Speaker 5: worst was yet to come, an unspeakable act of mutilation
Speaker 5: that followed in the bloody footsteps of one of the
Speaker 5: most infamous serial killers of our time. The book that
Speaker 5: we were profiling this evening is Flesh Collectors, Cannibalism and
Speaker 5: Further Depravity on the Redneck Riviera with my special guest,
Speaker 5: journalist and author and show favorite Fred Rosen. Welcome back
Speaker 5: to the program. Thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 5: Fred Rosen.
Speaker 4: Well, Dan, it's always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 4: How are you tonight.
Speaker 5: It's always a pleasure to speak with you again, Fred,
Speaker 5: And I'm doing great. This is a wild, wild story
Speaker 5: that come to expect it from you, but this is
Speaker 5: one wild story. I've got to warn people right off
Speaker 5: the hop without giving anything away. I always say this,
Speaker 5: but we really don't want to give too much away
Speaker 5: because there's a lot to give away here. Tell us
Speaker 5: how you came to be in a position to write
Speaker 5: this book, Flesh Collectors.
Speaker 4: Well, what happened was I had already written a couple
Speaker 4: of books about crime and Florida and I I've always
Speaker 4: been attracted to the state, and I eventually discovered that
Speaker 4: Florida has some rather interesting crimes, to put it mildly,
Speaker 4: and I was looking for an idea. It was just
Speaker 4: like one of those things, you know, where you're just
Speaker 4: sitting there and you're saying, Okay, what's my next project
Speaker 4: going to be, and I wound up going to I
Speaker 4: want to say. I want to say I went online,
Speaker 4: but this is like, you know, fifteen years ago, so
Speaker 4: that would play me way ahead of the curve. But
Speaker 4: whatever it was, whether it was online or I did
Speaker 4: some you know, regular old fashioned research, you know, through
Speaker 4: paper copies. I was looking for people on Florida's death
Speaker 4: row and I was interested in what the stories might be,
Speaker 4: and that's when I ran into Rogers and Lawrence. And
Speaker 4: when I read it, I went, oh boy, and I
Speaker 4: pitched it to my editor. And it's funny, I'm sitting
Speaker 4: here talking to you about it, and I can I
Speaker 4: can see myself pitching to her. It was at the
Speaker 4: Big Book Expo show that they have every year. It
Speaker 4: floats around that year. It was in New York, and
Speaker 4: I just talked to the editor there and she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I really like that boom. Next thing, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: working on the story. And then I you know, I
Speaker 4: started getting into it.
Speaker 5: Now. I really love the way you layled this. And
Speaker 5: of course, of like so many of these incredible crimes
Speaker 5: are in really unsuspecting or at least you would least
Speaker 5: suspect kind of places. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about Milton, Florida, just to demonstrate when we talk about
Speaker 5: Saul talk about Milton, Florida.
Speaker 4: Milton, Florida is a small town in Florida Panhandle, which
Speaker 4: is the northernmost part of the state. It's the part
Speaker 4: of Florida that sort of juts out and it's known,
Speaker 4: I discovered as the Redneck Riviera because right above Milton,
Speaker 4: Florida and that section of the state is Alabama, and
Speaker 4: of course Alabama is next you know, it's next to
Speaker 4: you know, Mississippi and so forth, and so people from
Speaker 4: that area would go down to the Milton area, which
Speaker 4: is right across the bay from Pensacola, and they call
Speaker 4: that the Redneck Riviera because it's a heck of a
Speaker 4: lot cheaper to go there than it is the Riviera
Speaker 4: of in France. So it is it certainly gets a
Speaker 4: certain amount of tourism from those states. And so that
Speaker 4: was a very interesting bedan, you know, milieu, and it
Speaker 4: was very different from the western part of the state
Speaker 4: and the Tampa area that I was more familiar with.
Speaker 4: This is very rural, very small, very very self contained.
Speaker 4: Everybody knew everybody. There's the kind of place where well,
Speaker 4: if somebody was a bad guy or somebody belonged to
Speaker 4: a family that had problems, everybody knew about it and
Speaker 4: talked about it. And that's what I discovered as I
Speaker 4: got into it. And the Lawrence family was one of
Speaker 4: those families. And so it's a very small, small place,
Speaker 4: and it just was a very interesting place to go
Speaker 4: down and do the interviews and so forth and discover
Speaker 4: what really happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you mentioned the Lawrence name, and you said that
Speaker 5: in that area they would say there was a bad line.
Speaker 5: You know, that would be the Lawrence name. So we'll
Speaker 5: talk about the bad line a little bit later when
Speaker 5: we have Todd hand discover a little bit about the
Speaker 5: bad line. But let's talk about just the first meeting
Speaker 5: you have is very very interesting. You have Jonathan Lawrence
Speaker 5: and Jeremiah Rogers Lawrences, and so they meet around a
Speaker 5: little party, I guess a little bonfire party.
Speaker 4: And uh so, no, they tell us Lawrence Lawrence. May
Speaker 4: I interrupted, said, Lawrence and Rodgers meet. They meet initially
Speaker 4: in a place in Florida called the Bedbug Factory. Boy, Dan,
Speaker 4: you can't make this stuff up. And the reason they
Speaker 4: called the bedbug Factory is the Florida Hospital for the
Speaker 4: criminally Insane. So we got too bad guys Chatoocie, right,
Speaker 4: they got two bad guys who are in jail for
Speaker 4: various essentially petty crime, but they got a screw loose
Speaker 4: and they just hit it off, hit it off in
Speaker 4: this in this, in this mental hospital for the criminally insane,
Speaker 4: and eventually they are released. And h Lawrence is from
Speaker 4: as as we said, he's from Milton in Florida. So
Speaker 4: he goes home and his buddy Jeremiah comes with him,
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, and they're sort of they sort
Speaker 4: of link up, and they're they're looking, you know, they're
Speaker 4: cruising for bruising. Basically, they're they're looking to make some
Speaker 4: sort of a score. What's so frightening to me is
Speaker 4: just the you know, the the that chance meeting of
Speaker 4: these two Adharan personalities and what it's going to lead to.
Speaker 4: That was what got.
Speaker 5: Now, unlike the way you lay out the book, Let's
Speaker 5: talk about Jonathan Lawrence first and tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about his upbringing so we can introduce these two
Speaker 5: main characters here.
Speaker 4: Well, mister Lawrence came from a family where there are
Speaker 4: a number of people involved a number of people in
Speaker 4: the family that were of a criminal najor and he
Speaker 4: he was the He was brought up without the kind
Speaker 4: of boundaries one would hope to have, and he got
Speaker 4: into a lot of problems, you know, early in his
Speaker 4: in his life as a teenager, and that's what eventually
Speaker 4: will leave him to uh go to prison and eventually
Speaker 4: get over to the hospital for the criminally insane. The
Speaker 4: problem is to Rogers, not that mister Rogers volks, but
Speaker 4: this mister Rogers is they're both psychopaths. So you've got
Speaker 4: two psychopaths that see something in each other, and it's
Speaker 4: it's another one of those situations where you have two killers.
Speaker 4: And I think to myself about about the Perry Smith
Speaker 4: and Dick Hickock, the killers of of in Cold Blood,
Speaker 4: who when they link up, and it's essentially it's almost
Speaker 4: like they make one criminal personality, and that leads to
Speaker 4: the murders in Cold Blood and the same thing with
Speaker 4: Chris here So and mister Rogers, Jeremiah Rodgers, he had
Speaker 4: gone to UH prison. He put some oh it was
Speaker 4: I believe it was racist graffiti, some anti anti Semitic graffiti,
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. He put that on buildings and
Speaker 4: so forth, and other petty crimes. And he also didn't
Speaker 4: come from the kind of background where he was given
Speaker 4: any sort of boundaries by his parents. And you know,
Speaker 4: I probably sound like some sort of fundamental with but
Speaker 4: it's true, you know. I mean, if you've got to
Speaker 4: have those boundaries, you've got to be taught right from wrong.
Speaker 4: And quite frankly, Dan, I believe that you also have
Speaker 4: to have heroes in your life and people that you
Speaker 4: can look up to, that you can admire and that
Speaker 4: you can emulate, and whose values you will emulate. And unfortunately,
Speaker 4: both of these individuals were not around people who were
Speaker 4: of that nature who could give them proper values and
Speaker 4: Bbrow models for them. And of course we again we
Speaker 4: see this continually with criminal personalities. As you know, it's
Speaker 4: a commonality I would certainly say with this kind of
Speaker 4: you know, with violent crime, and the only way to
Speaker 4: mediate it is to recognize it as it was when
Speaker 4: they were in prison. But what do you do when
Speaker 4: someone has a certain sentence and that they you know,
Speaker 4: however many years it might be, and then they get
Speaker 4: to the limit of it and they seem to be okay,
Speaker 4: if you're the therapist, what do you do. You can't
Speaker 4: just keep somebody. You know, we we we live, we
Speaker 4: all live in a democracy. You have to have a
Speaker 4: reason to keep someone behind bars. So even though you
Speaker 4: think something can happen, this isn't the you know, that's
Speaker 4: that that TV show person of Interest, you know, where
Speaker 4: you can stop a crime in advance. You know, those
Speaker 4: things don't happen. So uh So, as a result of
Speaker 4: their lack of I would certainly say of the lack
Speaker 4: of proper role models were growing up, they wind up
Speaker 4: going the wrong way. But again, up until the time
Speaker 4: they get out of the bed buck factory, they haven't.
Speaker 4: They haven't you know, hurt anybody physically. Yet that's all
Speaker 4: yet to come. It builds, and it builds.
Speaker 5: One interesting thing that I just wanted to point out,
Speaker 5: though it's revealed later in the book, though, that John
Speaker 5: was witnessed to one of his other brothers just fooling
Speaker 5: around with a gun and blew his other brother's head off.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, that John was a witness the one brother.
Speaker 4: He had a couple of other brothers, the two other
Speaker 4: brothers brother and he sold one of them falling around
Speaker 4: with a gun, and it goes up by accident and
Speaker 4: kills the other brother. Now that's got to be an incredibly,
Speaker 4: incredibly traumatic event. But there's one thing that I keep
Speaker 4: thinking about then, and you know, please weigh in on
Speaker 4: this too, which is as I go through these the
Speaker 4: personalities of the criminals that I've written about and certainly
Speaker 4: others have and that we read about it all the time,
Speaker 4: the one thing I always think about is this, no
Speaker 4: matter what hand, bad hand, your dealt in life, you
Speaker 4: get a choice at some point, always a choice between
Speaker 4: down the road of criminality and especially going down the
Speaker 4: road of murder and not. And so for every individual
Speaker 4: who's who's seen a brother or another relative accidentally killed
Speaker 4: by a firearm, for example, well you can have ten
Speaker 4: people like that and maybe one turns out bad. You
Speaker 4: see what I'm saying. People make a decision about what
Speaker 4: they're going to do at some point, somebody, if you've
Speaker 4: got that gun in your hand, you make a decision.
Speaker 4: Unless it's a self defense situation, and what we're talking about,
Speaker 4: you make a decision whether you're gonna pull that trigger.
Speaker 4: And certainly that's that's that's what happens here. These are
Speaker 4: very very very conscious decisions.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about these conscious decisions. And again this
Speaker 5: is it's revealed later by Todd Hand, the detective that
Speaker 5: does this investigation. But for our audience to learn the
Speaker 5: characters of these two killers, what is some of the
Speaker 5: things that are influencing these young impressionable minds. Not to
Speaker 5: give them them any excuse whatsoever, but what are the
Speaker 5: kinds of things that these guys are doing. This is
Speaker 5: not I mean, young people could do video games and
Speaker 5: you could have a lot of things. But tell us
Speaker 5: about some of the literature and some of the evidence
Speaker 5: that there was a little bit We're a lot more
Speaker 5: going on psychologically and otherwise in terms of murderous thoughts
Speaker 5: with these guys. Literature and choice of things to view
Speaker 5: and consume.
Speaker 4: Well, again, it's indicative of the personalities involved. There was
Speaker 4: a certain amount of Oh boy, there was a certain
Speaker 4: amount of certainly Satanism, you know, devil worshiping, that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. Mister Lawrence have a thing for collecting books
Speaker 4: about anatomy, curiously, and that was very very curious. You
Speaker 4: know what, this guy didn't seem to want to be
Speaker 4: a doctor, so why is he collecting books about anatomy?
Speaker 4: And he would you know, he'd go through the books,
Speaker 4: and he would sort of check off things that he
Speaker 4: was interested in. And I recall that one of the
Speaker 4: books he was looking in particular at a diagram of
Speaker 4: the muscles of the leg and I don't know, maybe
Speaker 4: the guy, you know, if you look at it from
Speaker 4: a distance, you could say, well, gee, maybe he's thinking
Speaker 4: of being a north orthopedist or something like that. But
Speaker 4: that was not where it was leading. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was really not leading in direction. And so these guys
Speaker 4: were very they were very much into stuff that most
Speaker 4: normal people wouldn't be into in terms of the literature
Speaker 4: that they would read. And again, you know, I would
Speaker 4: emphasize that the whole the whole situation with worshiping Satan
Speaker 4: and you know, and that sort of thing. And of
Speaker 4: course I'm not giving away where the Anami books were about,
Speaker 4: but perhaps that the listeners can deduce where we're going
Speaker 4: with this.
Speaker 5: Well, the other thing was too part of the literature
Speaker 5: was that these guys were serious enough to have incredibly
Speaker 5: I've never seen this before, but memberships pending in the
Speaker 5: KKK and you know, the United Satan International or something
Speaker 5: like some official devil worship group. The guy hadn't filled
Speaker 5: it out, but these and some interesting movies again, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean horror movies. A lot of people like horror movies.
Speaker 5: But we'll talk about that a little bit later because
Speaker 5: there are a couple of movies that are again I
Speaker 5: don't know if it's irony or just just incredible part
Speaker 5: of the story that some of the movie choices that
Speaker 5: they do during this incredible story. So let's we basically
Speaker 5: know that these guys after. You know, what's interesting too
Speaker 5: is the length of time they got for their petty crimes.
Speaker 5: Four years and four and a half years. I was
Speaker 5: pretty surprised. But anyway, they meet in this hospital, they
Speaker 5: have this in common, they join up, and then in
Speaker 5: your book we have them as I mentioned, at this party,
Speaker 5: and I guess it's it's time for these guys to
Speaker 5: put some of their fantasies into play. So we learn about, yeah,
Speaker 5: Jonathan Jonathan's cousin which is named Justin, and tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about Justin and his and his disability
Speaker 5: and his relationship with Jonathan, Lawrence Sure and is Rogers Fellow.
Speaker 4: Well, they're cousins. Justin as a younger cousin. Justin has
Speaker 4: some learning disabilities, but he is a high school graduate.
Speaker 4: He's about I believe he's nineteen at the time, and
Speaker 4: he was a very nice guy walking around the neighborhood
Speaker 4: and open. He talked to everybody. Everybody liked them. He
Speaker 4: would go over to his cousin to hang out. He'd
Speaker 4: go over to to Lawrence's and hang out and he
Speaker 4: would watch TV, whatever it might be. They'd have a beer,
Speaker 4: they smoke joint, whatever it might be. And Rogers began
Speaker 4: to look at him in a very as a lower
Speaker 4: order of life. He looked at him as somebody who
Speaker 4: was expendable, and he didn't like him very much. And
Speaker 4: it would be certainly, it certainly would would be accurate
Speaker 4: to say that Lawrence was not the greatest cousin in
Speaker 4: the world. But you know, they they had whatever their
Speaker 4: relationship was, and so he would go over and he'd
Speaker 4: hang out with them and everything would be cool. At
Speaker 4: least he thought everything would be cool, and so they had,
Speaker 4: you know, it was it was a pretty good relationship.
Speaker 4: But the thing is in that area, kids hang out
Speaker 4: in the back country and what they do is they'll
Speaker 4: go into the into the back country and they'll have
Speaker 4: a bonfire and they'll sit around and they'll talk and
Speaker 4: whatever else they might want to do. But the difference
Speaker 4: is that Lodges and Lines are talking about doing things
Speaker 4: other than going to school, dating girls, going to the movies,
Speaker 4: listening to music, whatever it might be. They're talking about
Speaker 4: other things that there's something inside them that seek that's
Speaker 4: pushing them to commit a crime, to commit a murder,
Speaker 4: to see what it's like. In fact, in some ways,
Speaker 4: and I mentioned this in the book, they reminded me
Speaker 4: of Leopold and Low, the famous Chicago thrill killers they
Speaker 4: would get. They felt that they were going to get
Speaker 4: a big thrill out of it. I can't I can't
Speaker 4: relate to it, obviously, and I'm sure most people can't.
Speaker 4: But we're dealing with a barren, psychopathic personality. So they
Speaker 4: think that it's going to be a really cool thing
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 5: Now, the plan is is that they want to deal
Speaker 5: with again. You say, Rogers is thinking this guy's a mooch.
Speaker 5: He's coming over bumbing cigarettes and he's just a bum
Speaker 5: me anyway. But obviously and his cousin are in on
Speaker 5: this plan. And and so the plan is that Jonathan
Speaker 5: has an upcoming birthday, so they call Jonathan, calls his
Speaker 5: cousin Justin and tells him about the birthday party. So
Speaker 5: take it from there. What what does does he tell
Speaker 5: us about this birthday party and the plan, Well.
Speaker 4: The plan the player, well the birthday, the birthday party
Speaker 4: is the idea is to is to lure him over
Speaker 4: for a birthday party. Right, and then they have.
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Speaker 4: Have something in mind, and what they have in mind
Speaker 4: is murder, and they planted out so that they lure
Speaker 4: him in this particular section of Milton, Florida. Again, it's
Speaker 4: across the abandoned Air force Field, and so they wind
Speaker 4: up going over there. And the thing I emphasize right
Speaker 4: now is that the Air Force because it's it's still
Speaker 4: with the property of the United States government, it's federal land.
Speaker 4: So if something happens on federal land, it's a different
Speaker 4: police force that would deal with it. Obviously, to be
Speaker 4: the federal government. Now they're not thinking this, you know,
Speaker 4: but in any case, they run him over to this
Speaker 4: place looks like a landing strip, you know, small landing strip,
Speaker 4: and Rogers is talking to him. He's he's sort of
Speaker 4: conning justin into thinking that everything is cool. And then
Speaker 4: he takes out a knife. Should I say what happens now?
Speaker 5: Yeah? What I wanted to you know, what I wanted
Speaker 5: to say too, because it is important. A little bit
Speaker 5: later to the story is that they had lured him
Speaker 5: over with this idea. There was a party. He came
Speaker 5: there all dressed up in his finest cowboy.
Speaker 4: Where he was really proud of the boots and reminding me,
Speaker 4: I forgot that. But yes, that's true. They've larned him.
Speaker 4: Over comes over. He thinks he's going to a party.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no party, and he wonders about that because
Speaker 5: he's he's you know, he might be slow, but he's not,
Speaker 5: he's not stupid. So he says, where's the party? He said, well,
Speaker 5: don't worry about it. Where it's It's going to be okay.
Speaker 5: And so they're watching a movie. But there's an obstacle,
Speaker 5: and that is that Jonathan's brother is there, Ricky and
Speaker 5: also his uncle and his uncle Roy. So they have
Speaker 5: to wait till Ricky and Roy finish fixing a car
Speaker 5: in the yard, and then they take off and then
Speaker 5: they around eight o'clock they put this plan into or
Speaker 5: sunset they put this plan in and go to this
Speaker 5: field and so and now what's interesting in your book
Speaker 5: is you talk about you really get the inside scoop
Speaker 5: on the dialogue from these psychopathic killers and what they're
Speaker 5: saying to this poor disabled boy because he knows something's up.
Speaker 5: And even Roger says to him, you know you did
Speaker 5: something wrong, So he almost can't kill the young man
Speaker 5: because he knows the young man knows that there's there's
Speaker 5: something wrong, so maybe he can continue there that the
Speaker 5: level of deception you probly do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're playing mind games with him and they're saying
Speaker 4: he did something wrong, and he's wondering what the heck
Speaker 4: they're talking about. And the I think the important point
Speaker 4: here is that he's a very trusting person, Justine. In
Speaker 4: a sense, why wouldn't he be. It's his cousin, and
Speaker 4: the last thing he's expecting would be that something is
Speaker 4: physically going to happen to him. I mean, up until
Speaker 4: this point he'd go over and he just have a
Speaker 4: good time with them. But now what's happening is Rogers
Speaker 4: is playing my games. You know you did something wrong,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. And of course Justin would we would
Speaker 4: prob was probably confused by it. And the reason that
Speaker 4: I was able to write about the dialogue was because
Speaker 4: write the dialogue is it's all in the h it's
Speaker 4: all the public record. He's a statements that were given
Speaker 4: by the by the dead guys. So luckily we have
Speaker 4: that material. So you actually when you read the book,
Speaker 4: to read the actual dialogue between the killers and their
Speaker 4: first victory, which is pretty unusual, and and and but
Speaker 4: it's chilling. And as we're talking, what's kidding me about
Speaker 4: this case is that it was it was it was this.
Speaker 4: This was the most difficult book I ever wrote, ever wrote.
Speaker 4: And I'll talk more about that as we go along.
Speaker 4: And so what I've discovered since is that other people
Speaker 4: who worked on cases like this we tend to we
Speaker 4: block out, which you know, we're just the same as
Speaker 4: anybody else. When when you hear something that's particularly traumatic
Speaker 4: the details, the writer, just like police officers will do this.
Speaker 4: You tend to block it out, you know what I mean, Dan,
Speaker 4: because it really gets to you. And we're only dealing
Speaker 4: with the first murder, and so if I'm a little lighter,
Speaker 4: I'm recalling some of that. That's the reason why, Okay,
Speaker 4: because this was a very this this book was very
Speaker 4: difficult and I might even say a little bit traumatic
Speaker 4: to write. I just, you know, I just never expected it.
Speaker 4: It just, you know, it just was something that you know,
Speaker 4: I just I just never expected it. And when when
Speaker 4: I read about how they killed oh boy, how they
Speaker 4: killed Justin and how he was just he was totally histified, surprised.
Speaker 4: I don't have any adjectives or adverts at what was occurring,
Speaker 4: even as his lifeblood was seeping out of him. It's
Speaker 4: it's it was a real it's a real tragedy, quite frankly,
Speaker 4: because this kid, hey had a lot of potential, and
Speaker 4: he was and he was a good kid. And I
Speaker 4: mean not that that should make any difference. One life
Speaker 4: is the same as another, but he was somebody who
Speaker 4: had a couple of strikes against him, who was doing
Speaker 4: the best that he could and then you know, boom,
Speaker 4: he gets trayed by by his brother and his brother's
Speaker 4: best friend, by his cousin and his cousin's best friend.
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Speaker 5: true murder. Now, when we last left off Fred, we
Speaker 5: were just going to get into the gory details of
Speaker 5: what these despicable psychopathic fantasizing about murder. I guess Satan
Speaker 5: himself will be proud of these guys. So tell us,
Speaker 5: well the actual details of this poor disabled man. Again,
Speaker 5: you say he was right to the very end not
Speaker 5: realizing why his cousin and his seeming friend would be
Speaker 5: doing what they did to him. So tell us what
Speaker 5: you write in the book in terms of what they
Speaker 5: actually did to this man and what they did in
Speaker 5: the end to dispose of him too.
Speaker 4: To uh when they judged it, when they welled it? Yeah,
Speaker 4: when when they killed him, was they stabbed him a
Speaker 4: number of times? And as as Rogers again, it's it's
Speaker 4: all in the book that the dialogue, it is Rogers
Speaker 4: is stabbing him. He's making him think that he did
Speaker 4: something that he shouldn't have done. And and it there
Speaker 4: he he stabs him and goes down to his to
Speaker 4: his knees, and he he knows that he's in trouble certainly,
Speaker 4: and he of course would love to have his cousin
Speaker 4: help him, except that his cousin delivers the fatal wound
Speaker 4: fatle stabbing means. And once they have killed him, just
Speaker 4: like in any situation like this, you have to dispose
Speaker 4: of the body. And so they take the body and
Speaker 4: they dispose of it at someplace in the that country
Speaker 4: in a shallow grave.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting, Jeremiah Rogers. You say he's five foot seven,
Speaker 5: but he's a stockyar bild he's about almost one hundred
Speaker 5: and seventy pounds, so he's a pretty built guy. And
Speaker 5: he's got tattoos, and he's not worked out in prison,
Speaker 5: so he's a pretty tough guy. And he eagerly you
Speaker 5: say in the book again from the evidence that you uncovered.
Speaker 5: He eagerly dug that grave himself, and then they placed
Speaker 5: Justin livingstone in the grave. He couldn't quite fit, so
Speaker 5: they compartmentalized him, kind of cramped him into that grave.
Speaker 5: And then, as you read in the book, don't one
Speaker 5: of them wanted to do nobody No. But what I
Speaker 5: found interesting is that you it's a juxtapose between this
Speaker 5: ghastly deed. And then one of them said, geez, you
Speaker 5: know they got those new Doritos three D chips. I
Speaker 5: like to try those. So that was their next The
Speaker 5: next goal was to try those specific potato chips.
Speaker 4: But see that again. Yeah, And and what that show is,
Speaker 4: of course, is the knack orse. There is no empathy.
Speaker 4: There is no empathy, there is no feeling for Justin
Speaker 4: as a human being, which again is very very typical
Speaker 4: kind of these kinds of this kind of murderer, murderers
Speaker 4: where they can't relate, and so to them, they get
Speaker 4: their kick doing it. And then what's the next thing
Speaker 4: that that happens. The next elemental thing that happens is, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm hungry, let's get some Doritos. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 4: the Dorito's people are not gonna like that very much.
Speaker 4: But in any case, you know that's what they decide
Speaker 4: to do, and you know they're able to do this
Speaker 4: and then go to sleep and you know, not worry
Speaker 4: about it. I mean, it's ridiculous when you think about it.
Speaker 4: I mean not ridiculous, but it's it's unfathomable. You know,
Speaker 4: it's unfathomable. And this is just the beginning. Now.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, again you always do this. Meanwhile, you cut a
Speaker 5: way back to Elizabeth Livingstone and her boyfriend Corey little
Speaker 5: A Laddell and basically be there, you know, just beginning nightmare.
Speaker 5: So they know that uh, Justin's supposed to come back
Speaker 5: for his medication. He's schizophrenic and he's a d D
Speaker 5: and he does understand he needs the medication and it's
Speaker 5: very very unusual for him not to be back. And
Speaker 5: so what do they do.
Speaker 4: They contact police, they've contact the police, they contact you know,
Speaker 4: they try to backtrack his movements through the neighborhood. They
Speaker 4: and they wind up talking to two to the bad guys,
Speaker 4: who of course are or specifically mister mister Livingston and
Speaker 4: I'm not living mister Lawrence Livingston, Lawrence boy boy. It
Speaker 4: gets confusing sometimes and again because of the these guys
Speaker 4: are liars, so I mean, you know, like again like
Speaker 4: many killers, they're they're great conness, and of course the
Speaker 4: family is tremendous. They worry about where this this kid wait,
Speaker 4: like you said, you know, he needs his medication, and
Speaker 4: they notify the police, and the police start an investigation,
Speaker 4: and it really doesn't go any place, at least at first.
Speaker 5: What's fascinating about this book is again all the amazing
Speaker 5: characters that come out of this tragedy and out of
Speaker 5: necessity they become detectives on their own and do the
Speaker 5: work of police before the police can even get to it.
Speaker 5: So Elizabeth Livingston says, well, I'm going to take matters
Speaker 5: into my own hands, and she makes up a poster
Speaker 5: and on this poster's description of her boy, but also
Speaker 5: a couple of contact numbers with Jonathan and Jonathan Lawrence's
Speaker 5: number and Jeremiah Rodgers' number. So with this effort, then
Speaker 5: what happens in terms of this poster and the result
Speaker 5: of that poster, Well, I mean, what's what's.
Speaker 4: The result of the of the of the poster, the
Speaker 4: result of of you know, they're they're trying again. They
Speaker 4: they wind up of being able to figure out through
Speaker 4: information that they get that Justin had gone over to
Speaker 4: Lawrence's house. So the question becomes, well, what happened there
Speaker 4: after he went to Lawrence's house, And of course Lawrence
Speaker 4: is not gonna say anything, He's gonna lie through his teeth,
Speaker 4: which is exactly what happens. He says that that the
Speaker 4: kid went to rent a video, so this is you know,
Speaker 4: we're going back a couple of years, so people could
Speaker 4: still rent the videos and videotapes and uh, and the
Speaker 4: police keep trying to track it that way. They're sending
Speaker 4: him on a wild goose chase, obviously, and while that
Speaker 4: is happening. While that is happening, mister mister Rogers has
Speaker 4: his eye on a young girl, so that is also happening.
Speaker 4: At the same time, the young girl works in a
Speaker 4: nearby convenience store.
Speaker 5: What's interesting is Elizabeth Livingstone, though with the poster, has
Speaker 5: those contact numbers, and those two characters come by her
Speaker 5: house and say, listen, we want you to take our
Speaker 5: names off of those posters, which had a little light
Speaker 5: bulb go off in Elizabeth's mind to say these characters
Speaker 5: are involved. They have something to do with this, So
Speaker 5: she's the first person that could almost definitely sense that
Speaker 5: there was something with them.
Speaker 4: Well she combles to it, but it still doesn't mean
Speaker 4: anything without any sort of evidence. So sure she tumbles
Speaker 4: to it. And again, you know, she would know that
Speaker 4: the you know, obviously she knows the family, So she
Speaker 4: tumbles to it about they're involved in some way. But
Speaker 4: does any parent want to believe that they're missing, child
Speaker 4: is dead, let alone that their cousin had anything to
Speaker 4: do with it. And of course that's the challenge for
Speaker 4: the police, which is to try to find a way
Speaker 4: to put this together. You've got to have evidence. You
Speaker 4: can't you know, just because just because these two guys
Speaker 4: serve time in a criminal hospital, sure they would be suspects.
Speaker 4: But that's all it is. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 4: still have to have some sort of evidence. You know,
Speaker 4: you could probably make an argument that, well, it doesn't
Speaker 4: make any difference. They sure of arrest them. Well, no,
Speaker 4: that's not the way the system works. You know. The
Speaker 4: way the system works is you've got to have something.
Speaker 4: You've got to have evidence. You've got to have something
Speaker 4: physical or confession or some think of that nature. And
Speaker 4: they don't have anything, and That is the real tragedy
Speaker 4: is that these guys were small enough to cover their tracks.
Speaker 4: And yes they did go over and say to missus Livingston,
Speaker 4: take our names off, et cetera, et cetera. And sure
Speaker 4: they would, that would that would point the finger of
Speaker 4: suspicion at them. That's all it is, is the finger
Speaker 4: of suspicion. That's the that's the frustrating part. And that's
Speaker 4: the part that really hurt as I was writing the book,
Speaker 4: because you start, I don't know how it is to
Speaker 4: anybody else, but I start living some of it, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, thinking about what's it like to
Speaker 4: be bending down there and your cousin's over you, you know,
Speaker 4: with a knife, I mean what you know. And I'm
Speaker 4: just talking about what the victim was was thinking about
Speaker 4: what the victim was feeling. I mean, we all have
Speaker 4: problematic relatives that you know, problematic relationships with relatives. I
Speaker 4: mean we all do, including me. But did that mean
Speaker 4: that one of them would would kill me? Well, let's see,
Speaker 4: I'm a true crime author. Let me think wouldn't even
Speaker 4: kill me? Yeah, I don't think so. But I do
Speaker 4: have a cousin who is a crazy cop. But that's
Speaker 4: another story. I'm sorry, a crazy former cop, but he's
Speaker 4: not listening to who cares? There you go.
Speaker 5: Now, one of these heroic one of the heroic characters
Speaker 5: in this book, if there is is one, is a
Speaker 5: detective hand and Todd is in nineteen ninety seven. You
Speaker 5: write what he's doing is he's working in security. He
Speaker 5: had followed his ex wife to be with his child,
Speaker 5: to have more access to his child. So he had
Speaker 5: quit a job he loved as a detective and went
Speaker 5: to Pennsylvania. And at the time you introduced this character,
Speaker 5: Todd is working and having a pretty good time and
Speaker 5: he meets Michael Keaton working on the set of the
Speaker 5: movie Desperate Measures. So after this meeting with with with
Speaker 5: Michael Keaton, he comes to a revelation. Maybe tell us
Speaker 5: about that and and how he comes to be involved
Speaker 5: in inextricably involved in this case.
Speaker 4: Well, just that, just that Todd. In fact, I spoke
Speaker 4: with Todd. He called me up recently. He was giving
Speaker 4: a presentation on this case, uh to some police organization
Speaker 4: and Todd I, I, you know. The thing I would
Speaker 4: simply say is that Todd is first he's a very
Speaker 4: very smart guy, very smart guy he is a person
Speaker 4: who takes responsibility for his actions and for his children.
Speaker 4: He feels that he can make a contribution in law enforcement.
Speaker 4: And again you point as you know, as as I mentioned,
Speaker 4: he wanted to be closer to his his child. So
Speaker 4: he winds up moving down to h to Clorida, and
Speaker 4: in fact, he let's see, he's working uh as as
Speaker 4: as a detective and uh In in that area, in
Speaker 4: that county, and later on he winds up, well, I'm
Speaker 4: not getting anything away, it's not a book, but I'm
Speaker 4: just saying that he progresses, you know, and he winds
Speaker 4: up being like, you know, he's like a captain lieutenant
Speaker 4: or a captain of detectives right now on the west
Speaker 4: coast of Florida, and he works for the state. So
Speaker 4: he just has this calling to help people as a
Speaker 4: police officer, and he certainly has a talent for what hand.
Speaker 5: The first case that he works, he's handed the case
Speaker 5: about Justin Livingston. He reviews that case, he goes to work.
Speaker 5: He starts trying to track down, eliminate where Justin could
Speaker 5: have been in the last place he could have been.
Speaker 5: He goes to the video store, so he finds a
Speaker 5: neighbor named Jim Kelly, and Jim Kelly says that he
Speaker 5: witnessed a truck stop dropped Justin off. Wait a few minutes,
Speaker 5: Justin went back into the truck. When he's speaking to Elizabeth,
Speaker 5: Elizabeth says, well, that sounds like Ricky Lawrence's truck. He
Speaker 5: lives with his brother Jonathan. So now Todd Hand tries
Speaker 5: to contact Jonathan Lawrence Jeremiah Rodgers. What is his first
Speaker 5: impressions in the contacts with these guys. He doesn't speak
Speaker 5: to them face to face, So what's his impression, Like,
Speaker 5: what does he get from this meeting or these conversations
Speaker 5: with these two characters.
Speaker 4: Doesn't trust him? I mean, you know, he doesn't trust him,
Speaker 4: and they're trying to put him off, and they're trying
Speaker 4: to be essen about about about Justin. So if he's
Speaker 4: he's suspicious. But again we've got a big problem. It's
Speaker 4: cold Evans, and you know they're not you know, they're
Speaker 4: not about to admit to anything. They're really not about
Speaker 4: to do something like that. So he's you know, he's
Speaker 4: terribly terribly frustrated. In fact, he was telling me the
Speaker 4: other day when I spoke with him or a couple
Speaker 4: of weeks ago that he still regrets that he wasn't
Speaker 4: able to put the case together against them earlier.
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Speaker 4: For Justin's debts, which would have prevented another crime from happening.
Speaker 4: See that's what's so interesting to me, Dan, which is see,
Speaker 4: I don't know how it is in other places. Okay,
Speaker 4: I can just tell you that the police officers I've
Speaker 4: dealt with in Florida, Uh, there is a a level
Speaker 4: of professionalism and a level of humanity that I found here,
Speaker 4: and I I I can't explain it. I honestly can't
Speaker 4: explain it. But every police officer, every prosecutor I've met
Speaker 4: in Florida has had that kind of commitment. I don't know.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're a writer, you can come up
Speaker 4: with the right word. And so he's very, very, very frustrated,
Speaker 4: and of course he knows that if if they are involved,
Speaker 4: they could easily do this again. But again, what are
Speaker 4: you gonna do. You gotta have evidence, You've got to
Speaker 4: have a confession, you gotta have something. So it so's
Speaker 4: he's doing his interviews with with you know, with with
Speaker 4: the people around these guys, and eventually he talks to
Speaker 4: these guys. But it doesn't make any difference. It really,
Speaker 4: it doesn't make any difference. I mean, all the details
Speaker 4: from the book, but it doesn't. You know. The point is,
Speaker 4: what do you do? You know? And unless it's it's
Speaker 4: a TV series like Person of Interest? There I go
Speaker 4: again promoting CBS. I think they should save me some money. Uh,
Speaker 4: unless you have you know, unless you can you can
Speaker 4: stop a crime before it happens? What do you do?
Speaker 4: You know? That's that stuff. That's the hard thing about this,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean? I mean, when you're coming,
Speaker 4: you know you've got the bad guys and you know
Speaker 4: that there.
Speaker 5: Are involved in something fascinating is todd again as it's
Speaker 5: always a meanwhile in this juxtaposition between law and disorder.
Speaker 5: Here while he is and he goes to these lengths,
Speaker 5: like you say, he can only do so much, but
Speaker 5: they try everything they do voice stress analysis, which is
Speaker 5: again I read I learned a lot from this book
Speaker 5: in itself in terms of this is supposed to be
Speaker 5: more accurate than a lie detector test, and you're actually
Speaker 5: your body temperature raises to this certain levels that can
Speaker 5: be detected and be regarded as lying. So they give
Speaker 5: Jonathan Lawrence. He submits to it. Todd hand says, listen,
Speaker 5: I think this guy's more helpful. This is the guy
Speaker 5: I'm going to go for. Their stories are line up completely,
Speaker 5: but Todd is very suspicious because he knows that the
Speaker 5: movie they said they were watching, ironically, is The Shining
Speaker 5: with Jack Nicholson, and they claim both of them that
Speaker 5: supposedly at the climax of the movie which he wanted
Speaker 5: to watch this movie justin apparently this guy that really
Speaker 5: wanted to watch this movie got up right before the
Speaker 5: climax and went to go rent another movie. That's Todd
Speaker 5: believe it, sure.
Speaker 4: Because sure, and it makes absolute sense because in that
Speaker 4: particular that's of course, that's the Stanley Kubrick film, and
Speaker 4: in that film, the climax of the film. Sorry, folks,
Speaker 4: I feel comfortable giving it away that we're thirty some
Speaker 4: years old and besides, read the book. The ending is
Speaker 4: much better in the book, by the way. But anyway,
Speaker 4: you know, the in the ending of the film you're
Speaker 4: talking about Nicholson's character has gone nutty and you're waiting
Speaker 4: to see what's going to happen, and of course he
Speaker 4: goes after his son in the film book about a betrayal. Okay,
Speaker 4: and we won't give away that final closing, right, but
Speaker 4: that's the sort of thing you wait around for. You know,
Speaker 4: you're sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting to
Speaker 4: see what's gonna happen, and suddenly Justin leaves Well, yeah,
Speaker 4: Todd's right, it doesn't make any sense, especially especially considering
Speaker 4: it was the Stanley Kubrick film. For god's sakes, Cooper's
Speaker 4: the kind of guy that when he made a movie,
Speaker 4: you sat, you set, you sat with your you know
Speaker 4: know what in the chair. So yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 4: one of the things I noticed them. And so in
Speaker 4: any case, you know, we're back to square one. Essentially,
Speaker 4: we're back to square one. We got to wait it out.
Speaker 5: Now. These psychopaths don't seem to feel this heat. Jeremiah
Speaker 5: Rodgers and Jonathan Lawrence and Todd hands On them, and
Speaker 5: he's done a voice stress analysis. They're being asked to
Speaker 5: come in and be questioned, and and yet they're planning
Speaker 5: something else. And like you had mentioned just a few
Speaker 5: minutes before, Jeremiah Rogers spot is a young girl world
Speaker 5: that's just getting out of high school. She works at
Speaker 5: a convenience store that her uncle has something to do with.
Speaker 5: She's got red hair. She's a vivacious fun girl, but
Speaker 5: not an experienced girl. And she doesn't She's from a
Speaker 5: good family. And Jeremiah Rodgers meets her at the corner store.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit more about this.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, this is the hard part. I'll do the
Speaker 4: best I can. Close to to Jennifer's mom, and you
Speaker 4: know it happens. You know, you get close to the
Speaker 4: families of the victims, you know when you talk to
Speaker 4: them because you want to find out what the victim
Speaker 4: was about, you know, so you can so you can
Speaker 4: paint it accurately. What happened is Jennifer Robinson is working
Speaker 4: in this convenience store and Rogers comes in and he's
Speaker 4: a really convincing dude. He's a con man, and he
Speaker 4: decides eventually to ask her out on a date. And
Speaker 4: Jennifer says, you got to come to the house and
Speaker 4: meet my mom. And Rogers again, he's so smart because
Speaker 4: he's got tattoos all over the place, as you mentioned.
Speaker 4: But this but when he comes over to pick her
Speaker 4: up for the date, he's he's wearing long sleeves, so
Speaker 4: is the So Jennifer's mom can't see that, and of
Speaker 4: course some of them are prison tattoos. And he just
Speaker 4: seems like a very well spoken young man, and and
Speaker 4: so and so the mom says, oh, that's cool, you know.
Speaker 4: And and she's eighteen years old, and I wouldn't you know,
Speaker 4: there's no there's no evident she was very experienced with boys.
Speaker 4: But I mean, she's eighteen years old, for God's sakes.
Speaker 4: So they decide they're just gonna, you know, go out
Speaker 4: and you know, maybe you know, Rogers bss the mom
Speaker 4: with some you know, some story I don't recall what
Speaker 4: it is, but doesn't make any difference. And what happens
Speaker 4: is now, this is where it gets. It's dicey here,
Speaker 4: Dan and interrupt anytime you want. When she gets to that,
Speaker 4: you know, she sees it's the car, it's mister Lawrence
Speaker 4: is there, and so he's coming along, so's it's just
Speaker 4: essentially like as he's the best buddy of you know,
Speaker 4: you know, it's his best buddy, and he says it
Speaker 4: will come along to whatever, and she gets in. So
Speaker 4: I think maybe the first thing we should say here
Speaker 4: is if your child is going on a date and
Speaker 4: he's going to start on dating, tell your child to
Speaker 4: make sure that if you if the boyfriend pulls a
Speaker 4: fast one like another dude's in the I don't want
Speaker 4: to see anything happen to anybody, because this girl does
Speaker 4: get in. And what happens is this is where I
Speaker 4: discovered this thing. I'd never heard of it. I'd never
Speaker 4: heard it ever Clear? Did you ever hear that ever Clear?
Speaker 4: I must be the most naive guy in the world.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize it was pure alcohol and there's no
Speaker 4: real taste to it. And so what mister Rogers does
Speaker 4: is every time I say that, I'm thinking of Fred
Speaker 4: and Rogers, please forgive me Fred. And but what Jeremiah
Speaker 4: Rogers does is he spikes her drink with ever Clear,
Speaker 4: and the drink is I I can't it's like seven
Speaker 4: uppers or you know, whatever it is, and they wind
Speaker 4: up going out into the cane break the Florida Panhandle,
Speaker 4: which means they're in the middle of no place with
Speaker 4: a lot of bushes and trees and all that other stuff.
Speaker 4: And she gets loaded to the point that she doesn't
Speaker 4: really offer any according to Rogers resistance when he sexually
Speaker 4: assaults her. And then mister Lawrence does the same thing,
Speaker 4: and she gets out of the car and he wants
Speaker 4: to show her something. I think what he says is
Speaker 4: he wants to show us some marijuana or something like that.
Speaker 4: You know, that's right, You know that that's been what
Speaker 4: he called plant in someplace which wouldn't be unusual nearby.
Speaker 4: And they and what she doesn't realize is he's got
Speaker 4: a weapon. He's got a gun, and they walk down.
Speaker 4: She follows him to where this marijuana patch is supposed
Speaker 4: to be and she's wondering where it is, and he
Speaker 4: takes out the gun and shoots her. You can read
Speaker 4: all the details of the book, but that's just the beginning.
Speaker 5: We won't go into that's good. What we'll do, though,
Speaker 5: is that what I'm just going to go backwards just
Speaker 5: a slight bit. What's interesting is while Romeo Jeremiah Rodgers
Speaker 5: is picking up his date. He's trying to avoid, like
Speaker 5: the plague, meeting the mother, but she insists, well, no,
Speaker 5: my mother has to meet you. So they meet. But meanwhile, meanwhile,
Speaker 5: what you have, and this is going to be you
Speaker 5: can't get any more striking evidence. You really can't. John
Speaker 5: Lawrence is making a list and checking it twice. Number
Speaker 5: one cooler vice for her meet, two strawberry wine, three
Speaker 5: ever clear.
Speaker 4: Four.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 5: He needs to clean the blade and clean the saw
Speaker 5: and tomahawk sharpen. Yeah, he wants to sharpen the blade
Speaker 5: and clean the saw on tomahawk, a film for Polaroid camera,
Speaker 5: gallon sized zip lock bags, once washrags, rope, juggle water,
Speaker 5: extra round post, shovel and he put.
Speaker 4: All that in his trunk. That's right, that's right, And
Speaker 4: he's of course that You're right. You can't get any
Speaker 4: better than than that for evidence. They're planning this out now, Now,
Speaker 4: why boy, that's a whole other story. You know, there's
Speaker 4: a reason why these guys are in the bed pub factor.
Speaker 4: So yes, I mean he's planning all this out. And
Speaker 4: this also goes back to what we mentioned earlier about
Speaker 4: his anatomy folks and a couple of things happened after
Speaker 4: she shot mister mister Lawrence commits necrophilia. And then which
Speaker 4: I keep going. And then what he does is he
Speaker 4: puts into action, hm, what he has read in those books,
Speaker 4: and he flays one of Jennifer's calf muscles and cuts
Speaker 4: out part of the calf muscle, puts it in the cooler.
Speaker 4: Purpose of that is to take it home and cook
Speaker 4: it and eat it. And then of course they they
Speaker 4: bury the body in a shallow grave and then they
Speaker 4: leave just like nothing has happened. And now two young
Speaker 4: wives have been lost to these individuals, these criminals.
Speaker 5: It's amazing too. He goes home and of course he
Speaker 5: once unwined after the murder, so he pops in a
Speaker 5: video and he watches the Donner Party. The spell our
Speaker 5: audience again, I'll ultimate irony. I mean, what's the Donner
Speaker 5: Party about?
Speaker 4: If you don't know, The Donner Party was a group
Speaker 4: of pioneers who were trying to go through the Sierra
Speaker 4: Madre Mountains in the middle eighteen hundreds and they hit
Speaker 4: they hit bad snows and they could not get through
Speaker 4: and as a result, they had to lay over until
Speaker 4: things got the weather got better, and as people would die,
Speaker 4: they would eat them in order to survive. They would
Speaker 4: cannibalize the individuals in order to survive. So there's certainly
Speaker 4: a certain irony in that he's watching that movie after
Speaker 4: what just happened to Jennifer.
Speaker 5: Incredible now again, Meanwhile, Dennis Randall's waking up. Diane believes
Speaker 5: her daughter went out. The next day, she had a
Speaker 5: they call a skip senior day, so she didn't have
Speaker 5: to go to school. But she was up and Diane's boyfriend, Diane,
Speaker 5: Dennis Randall looked in on Jennifer Jenny and she wasn't there,
Speaker 5: so she hadn't made it home. So the panic began
Speaker 5: for Diane and Dennis. There was a clerk at the
Speaker 5: store where she worked, where Jenny worked, and Elijah walked
Speaker 5: in and she she she said, have you seen Jenny
Speaker 5: because she didn't come home last night. She had, and
Speaker 5: she told him that Jenny had gone out with Jeremiah
Speaker 5: er Rogers, right, that of which Elijah is his brother. Right,
Speaker 5: We've got to say, so this is through Elijah is
Speaker 5: his brother. Now he hears about this story, and Elijah
Speaker 5: goes and tries to find Jeremiah find out what's going on.
Speaker 5: So what happens when he finds him, And what does
Speaker 5: Jeremiah tell him about Jonathan's involvement and Jennifer.
Speaker 4: You know what, I wrote the book and I'm and
Speaker 4: I'm blinking. But well, basically, he's he's he's lying through
Speaker 4: his teeth. Anything he's gonna say, he's gonna lie through
Speaker 4: his teeth. He claims that that he dropped her off
Speaker 4: someplace the night before. He claims that he dropped her
Speaker 4: up someplace the night before, and that that's basically, in
Speaker 4: a nutshell, he just lies through his teeth. You know that,
Speaker 4: you know nothing, nothing happened.
Speaker 5: Well, there's an incredible Again, this this story just gets
Speaker 5: wilder and more wild as you go on, and so
Speaker 5: it's it's hard to remember everything, but I just read
Speaker 5: this really fresh, So I that's why I have the advantage.
Speaker 5: But but what he does too is when he sees
Speaker 5: his brother, Jeremiah Rodgers, the twisted psychopath that he is,
Speaker 5: pulls out about ten polaroids. Remember we had they, We
Speaker 5: made sure they had a polaroid camera. So he hands
Speaker 5: his brother these poolaroights. What are what's what are on
Speaker 5: these polaroids?
Speaker 6: Of course.
Speaker 5: The kind of the polaroids?
Speaker 4: Yeah, death.
Speaker 5: Yeah, mutilation, mutilation.
Speaker 4: Death, that's what's on those polaris. I mean, the guy
Speaker 4: is nuts. The guy is just absolutely out of his mind.
Speaker 4: First off, it just made if his brother, his brother
Speaker 4: now has knowledge about this, which makes him an accessory
Speaker 4: after the fact if he doesn't, you know, if if
Speaker 4: in any way he helps his brother. So it's it's
Speaker 4: you know again, you the reason that they bring that,
Speaker 4: you know, the camera, Well, boy, we're talking about old
Speaker 4: technology polaroid is you know, hey, we've we've got to
Speaker 4: get some pictures of of the of the murder, and
Speaker 4: we got to get some pictures of the mutilation, and
Speaker 4: you know, we need some some souvenirs. We need to
Speaker 4: take that stuff home. We need to show everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And you what you really talk about too, And
Speaker 5: you make this point because like it's true, is that
Speaker 5: Roger seemed to really covet these polaroids as prize possessions.
Speaker 5: He was even wiping the dirt off to make sure
Speaker 5: there was no smudges so they could put them back
Speaker 5: in his pocket. And Elijah is overwhelmed and says, listen,
Speaker 5: because Jeremiah says, listen, I'll take you to the bodies
Speaker 5: come into the woods and I'll take you to where
Speaker 5: the bodies are. And Elijah's going, no, no, no, no, no, listen,
Speaker 5: we got to go see our other brother, Lamar. And
Speaker 5: so they go see Lamar again. Jeremiah pulls out his
Speaker 5: prize possessions, tries to give him the photos. Lamar looks
Speaker 5: at the first one. You know, he didn't look at
Speaker 5: any other than just the first photo. He said, that's enough.
Speaker 5: I don't want to see these. And they said they
Speaker 5: had to do the responsible thing. You know, there was
Speaker 5: another person named Wix that was involved. These people just
Speaker 5: decided that this was way beyond any kind of loyalty
Speaker 5: that they needed to get the police involved. They also said, listen,
Speaker 5: you got to go talk to Jenny's mother, because another
Speaker 5: horriffic part of this was the responds that she got
Speaker 5: Jenny's mother from Colin Jeremiah, Wheremiah first pretended that he
Speaker 5: had didn't even know who she was. Then he said yes,
Speaker 5: and I'm not efing responsible for your daughter. So her
Speaker 5: nightmare was being exacerbated. Not only she thinks he's missing,
Speaker 5: she might have been raped. And here's this callous clown
Speaker 5: that's obviously involved.
Speaker 4: So well, there's no place, you know, the only place
Speaker 4: for her to go with that is to let mister
Speaker 4: Hand know what's going on, to put it in his hands,
Speaker 4: no pun intended.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So by this time, there's enough evidence that todd
Speaker 5: Hand can get involved. So just tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about what happens in terms of these guys. Obviously
Speaker 5: there's gonna be these guys are charged, So tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit more about todd Hand and what he
Speaker 5: does with these guys.
Speaker 4: Well, the thing is he decides to, uh, he's certainly
Speaker 4: going to question them. And for some reason, I always
Speaker 4: remember the stop sticks and when and what happens is
Speaker 4: Jeremiah Rogers decides to flee, and the police eventually give chase,
Speaker 4: and this is eventually going to be a police chase,
Speaker 4: just like in the movies and on television and even
Speaker 4: and when they finally corner this guy, he holds them
Speaker 4: off off by claiming he's going to kill himself. That's
Speaker 4: how he holds them off, by claiming he's going to
Speaker 4: kill himself. Of course he doesn't need to do it,
Speaker 4: he just has to hold the cops off and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, of course that's not gonna work, you know,
Speaker 4: they're gonna stay there as long as possible until they
Speaker 4: can get him out of the car and arrest them.
Speaker 4: And they use these stopsticks to eventually stop the car,
Speaker 4: you know, you know the the and uh, it's it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 4: It's a pretty dramatic scene, certainly the chase.
Speaker 5: No, eventually, guys are sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4: No, I'm I was just gonna say that Todd. Todd
Speaker 4: is very very directed in doing this and to say
Speaker 4: something about this case, which is I uh I. I
Speaker 4: didn't write another truth after I I wrote this book. Well, no,
Speaker 4: before I wrote the book, I spoke to John Moulshon MLHN,
Speaker 4: who was the state's attorney, and before I left Florida,
Speaker 4: I said to him, I don't know if I can
Speaker 4: ever write another true crime book again. It's what happened
Speaker 4: since Jennifer just has got to me. I identified too much.
Speaker 4: And I said, I just don't know if I can
Speaker 4: do this work anymore. And he looked at me. I'll
Speaker 4: never forget it, and he said, Fred, we speak for
Speaker 4: the dead. And and so I went and I wrote
Speaker 4: the book, but I didn't write another true crime book
Speaker 4: for four years. I wrote other things. I was able
Speaker 4: to get into history, which I love writing about. But
Speaker 4: what John Moulshon said kept going around in my head dance,
Speaker 4: you know, which is we speak for the dead, And
Speaker 4: eventually I realized that that was one of the things
Speaker 4: that I'm called upon to do. And and so I,
Speaker 4: you know, I got back into into writing and investigating
Speaker 4: true crime because I realized it's one of the you know, John,
Speaker 4: John was right about it. Ask me a question, but.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm it too again you said it was it
Speaker 5: was traumatic, and I can understand that the more details
Speaker 5: in it. Of course, you're you're letting the reader in
Speaker 5: on this, and it's it's so vivid that it's you're
Speaker 5: you're almost feeling it and you're almost experiencing it. So
Speaker 5: I can only imagine what you go through having to
Speaker 5: research it and really get close to the families to
Speaker 5: be able to get this kind of material and and
Speaker 5: and the story. So it has take. It has to
Speaker 5: take its toll. If an actor talks about playing some
Speaker 5: fictional role in it taking its toll, how about a
Speaker 5: non fictional role where you're there with your sleeves rolled
Speaker 5: up and this this is tragedy at some kind of
Speaker 5: colossal level. When you when you talk about Justin's mother
Speaker 5: looking around and her boyfriend, and then Jenny's mother right
Speaker 5: out of high school on really one of her real
Speaker 5: first dates, really never really had a boyfriend. Everybody wishing
Speaker 5: to be best for the children. Yeah, just incredible, now,
Speaker 5: very much, Yeah, very much like every true crime book
Speaker 5: has to have the trial, and there are no as
Speaker 5: we know, in true crime books. Just when you think
Speaker 5: it might be a foregone conclusion, it really isn't that simple.
Speaker 5: The death row, the capital case makes a huge difference
Speaker 5: on how everything proceeds. But again, in Florida, they are
Speaker 5: a very serious capital case state, aren't there.
Speaker 4: As I pointed out earlier, Uh, Justin's death occurs on
Speaker 4: federal land, which means he then asked if they have
Speaker 4: to be then be tried in a federal court, whereas
Speaker 4: with with Jenny it's a state court. And in Florida, Uh,
Speaker 4: then and now, the only difference is that you know,
Speaker 4: then and now there is capital punishment if you're convicted
Speaker 4: of murder. I now, when this occurred, they still had
Speaker 4: the electric chair, so they would have gone if they
Speaker 4: were convicted, they would have they would go to the
Speaker 4: you know, to the electric chair. Now of course that's changed.
Speaker 4: They call it the death chamber and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: But again, it's it's it's it's you know, it's putting
Speaker 4: the case together, and nothing is ever a foregone conclusion.
Speaker 4: When you've got twelve women and men who get to
Speaker 4: pronounce guilt or innocence, you know, nobody there isn't any
Speaker 4: prosecutey for that manner who goes into something like this
Speaker 4: expecting that the jury will absolutely positively see things their way,
Speaker 4: because if that were the case, they'd be pretty damn
Speaker 4: rich by Beton Vegas or whatever. So you just never
Speaker 4: know how these things can turn out. How do you
Speaker 4: know that if the if the defense puts up mitigating
Speaker 4: evidence about the backgrounds of these individuals, that the jury
Speaker 4: might take pity on them. Look at what's happening right
Speaker 4: now in Boston, Massachusetts, where Zolkarstarnaev is being tried for
Speaker 4: the Boston massacre, and the defense is not arguing that
Speaker 4: he didn't do it. They're going to argue that they're
Speaker 4: mitigating circumstances during the penalty phase because he's going to
Speaker 4: be convicted. So you don't know, See that's the point.
Speaker 4: You can convict somebody of murder as you do in
Speaker 4: this case, that's what does that mean they're going to
Speaker 4: give them the death penalty? You don't know. I mean
Speaker 4: if a good you know, it's a good, terrific, use
Speaker 4: any adjective you want, defense attorney, they can get somebody off,
Speaker 4: you know. And if the goal is to put them
Speaker 4: in the death chamber, it's not going to happen if
Speaker 4: the defense can make a case for what are called
Speaker 4: mitigators or mitigating circumstances, whatever those might be.
Speaker 5: Certainly, and again I urge people not to if this
Speaker 5: is an incredible book from start to finish. Like I
Speaker 5: mentioned to you, fred I, you usually don't use this
Speaker 5: because I think it's too cliche and lots of times
Speaker 5: it really isn't true. But this is an absolute page turner.
Speaker 5: This book just sucks you in with all the characterization,
Speaker 5: all the really sad stories. And again I guess I
Speaker 5: liked these stories where the psychology is just off the charts.
Speaker 5: These guys are very very interesting. What I wanted to
Speaker 5: ask you too, because I just wanted to mention that
Speaker 5: these guys again have these heroes, you know, Bundy, pardon me.
Speaker 5: Gasey im Nielsen, a son of Sam and yeah, maybe
Speaker 5: it was Bundy or I'm not sure. So anyway, which
Speaker 5: of these serial murders were these psychopathic devotees really enamored with,
Speaker 5: because you allude to that in this book.
Speaker 4: Boy, oh boy, it's been a while. I want to
Speaker 4: say Dahmer because this is too fat. This is back
Speaker 4: before the boy. I can't believe this that before the
Speaker 4: turn of the century. Uh, Dahmer. It's certainly one of
Speaker 4: the people that was involved that they that they liked.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to remember. Quite frankly, I think also mister Bundy.
Speaker 5: They like Bundy. But you can as you can see
Speaker 5: that they're one of their favorite movies. And you point this, well,
Speaker 5: you mentioned all of them, and and really the only
Speaker 5: guy that comes out is Dahmer because his favorite movie
Speaker 5: was Silence of the Lambs. And at that same time
Speaker 5: the Silence of the Lambs was was released. It was
Speaker 5: the real life for her story of Jeffrey Dahmer. And
Speaker 5: if you're gonna eat, there's no bigger, no bigger role
Speaker 5: model than Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 4: I would think, well, certainly, yes, I think that's probably true.
Speaker 4: I mean, I you know that I don't know, that's
Speaker 4: sort of that's sort of a conversation that probably there's
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of other Cannibals that were not recalling.
Speaker 4: I think ed Geene is in there too, but they're
Speaker 4: inadmored of these individuals. And I guess what's so interesting
Speaker 4: is how up until this happened, it all goes under
Speaker 4: the radar. Nobody really suspects what these people are capable
Speaker 4: of doing. And I think that again that when they
Speaker 4: got together, they formed one murderous personality. That's what I
Speaker 4: think happened. I mean, that was you know, you know,
Speaker 4: my impression of the whole thing. And but I'll tell
Speaker 4: you what I took away from this was just the incredible,
Speaker 4: the incredible tragedy of the whole thing. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you could tell from my voice, but
Speaker 4: sometimes when I took a back Jennifer, I have to
Speaker 4: watch myself because I thought breaking up. Yeah, because what
Speaker 4: I wanted to do go.
Speaker 5: Oh sorry sorry, no, no, no, no, no, finish what
Speaker 5: you're okay? I I wanted to ask bad sorry, there
Speaker 5: must be like an overlap here with our signals. But
Speaker 5: what I wanted to ask was when you last spoke
Speaker 5: to Todd hand he was using this He was discussing
Speaker 5: this case many many years later with an audience. So
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit about what about the case
Speaker 5: he was discussing, And tell us a little bit more
Speaker 5: about him discussing a case many years later.
Speaker 4: What was he.
Speaker 5: What was the nature of this meeting that he had
Speaker 5: or this talk that he had explaining this case to
Speaker 5: an audience.
Speaker 4: Well, what Todd was explaining to me was he was
Speaker 4: going to talk about the uh, the psychology involved, the
Speaker 4: psychology involved, and you know, and and and how what
Speaker 4: you know, what the what their cycle the indications of
Speaker 4: their psychopathic tendencies, because in any in any of these conferences,
Speaker 4: the idea is to try to try to find the
Speaker 4: idea was to try to show them what these people's,
Speaker 4: what these individuals personalities were, so that in their own
Speaker 4: so that when these other police officers are going out
Speaker 4: and doing their work and so forth, they can spot
Speaker 4: it and maybe stop it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: And and and it's I mean, but you see, we
Speaker 4: go back to this same thing, which is that's all
Speaker 4: very that's all well and good. Okay, I can spot
Speaker 4: a psychopathic personality. What the hell does that mean? It
Speaker 4: doesn't mean anything, unless you find a way to follow
Speaker 4: the individual. See, that's the problem. These two dudes get
Speaker 4: released from the state hospital. Nobody follows them. Now, somebody,
Speaker 4: if there was some way of checking in, of following
Speaker 4: because they're not, you know, of checking in or whatever,
Speaker 4: then maybe you can you can go someplace, you know,
Speaker 4: because of the fact that we live in a free society.
Speaker 4: Thank god, we can't just you know, so we can't,
Speaker 4: you know, just because somebody's got a psychopathic personality. And
Speaker 4: let's just say for the sake of discussion, it's a
Speaker 4: situation where talk is talking to these individuals. He says, Okay,
Speaker 4: look for this, this, this and this this, you know,
Speaker 4: and then the next thing, you know, fade out, fade in.
Speaker 4: A coup sees some dude and he beats the crap
Speaker 4: out of somebody, and he says, oh, that's a psychopath. Okay, fine,
Speaker 4: the guy's a psychopath. And now I used to be
Speaker 4: charging with assault battery or something like that. Okay, and
Speaker 4: he and he, But but what happens from that point
Speaker 4: onward is the individual going to get some sort of therapy?
Speaker 4: Are they going to put him on medication? What are
Speaker 4: they gonna do? You see what I'm saying. It doesn't.
Speaker 4: This is there's an inherent flaw in the in the
Speaker 4: system here in this country where we're all about punishment.
Speaker 4: We're not about prevention. We're about punishment. How do you
Speaker 4: let's talk about preventing it, guy, Let's talk about preventing it.
Speaker 4: You know, the best way of my explaining where I'm
Speaker 4: coming from is to say that Lee Harvey Oswald went
Speaker 4: to junior high school in the Bronx, New York. And
Speaker 4: you know what happened. He was taken to the school
Speaker 4: shrink who said he's a psychle path. But what you know,
Speaker 4: he acted out in some way. And this is in
Speaker 4: Gerald Poe's his book Case Closed. And when I read that,
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe it because all I said to myself is,
Speaker 4: wait a second, this guy's a psychopath. What they knew
Speaker 4: about it, well, they didn't do anything about it. See
Speaker 4: my point, it's like, what do you do? You know
Speaker 4: what followed somebody physically? But yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I have a whole problem. I have a whole problem
Speaker 5: with Robert Hare's whole idea about this psychopathic personality, which
Speaker 5: means not only were we talking about Jeffrey Dahmer and
Speaker 5: Ted Bundy and these guys. No, we're talking about your boss,
Speaker 5: you're talking about yourself. Because it's so generalized to say
Speaker 5: that somebody doesn't have remorse. All of us don't have
Speaker 5: remorse all the time, or empathy. We can be self centered,
Speaker 5: we can be selfish, we can be cruel different times
Speaker 5: of our life. What I think is that what you're
Speaker 5: talking about is the only thing you can get from
Speaker 5: these people, and getting the very much like I did
Speaker 5: with with the killer that I profiled in my book,
Speaker 5: you get a glimpse of how these people really really think.
Speaker 5: And it's rare to not have that buffered by these
Speaker 5: people lying to get out eventually, or lying to avoid
Speaker 5: the death penalty, or very much like Jeremiah did initially
Speaker 5: try to put the blame on his partner. But really,
Speaker 5: when you get this opportunity, and this is an opportunity
Speaker 5: where you see a list and to see a really
Speaker 5: good glimpse into the mindset of these psychopathic killers, and
Speaker 5: that's the difference. There's psychopathic killers, not just psychopaths.
Speaker 4: That and the only thing I mean, go ahead, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: go ahead, no, go ahead, No, I was just going
Speaker 4: to say, we need to make a differentiation between a
Speaker 4: sociopathic personality, which is different from a psychopathic personality. The
Speaker 4: words are or have been used interchangeably, but they're not.
Speaker 4: When we talk about sociopaths, we're talking about exactly what
Speaker 4: you were saying. Individuals you'll see in the course of
Speaker 4: your daily lives who have no no who don't feel
Speaker 4: any guilt, who don't feel empathy. Well, that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: they're gonna go out and kill somebody. But when you
Speaker 4: have a psychopathic personality criminal tendency, there's your difference. There's
Speaker 4: your difference that they'll they'll act out in that respect. Now,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's certainly beyond you know, my uh
Speaker 4: uh powers to say what you're going to do when
Speaker 4: you identify these individuals except maybe find a way to
Speaker 4: track them, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 4: we're talking, that's that's almost talking. You know. Then we're
Speaker 4: getting again into a into sort of a futuristic kind
Speaker 4: of thing, you know what I mean, preventing the crime
Speaker 4: it happened.
Speaker 5: Well, like science fiction in Canada believes in that kind
Speaker 5: of stuff. That sence the science fiction of rehabilitating everyone
Speaker 5: no matter what, either with drugs or through talk therapy.
Speaker 5: But my point is that I think what Todd Hand
Speaker 5: can learn and what you have learned and anybody that
Speaker 5: reads this book, and a lot of this audience is
Speaker 5: criminologists and students of law, and some lawyers, but people
Speaker 5: that are very, very interested.
Speaker 4: In the law.
Speaker 5: And I think what we can find is that when
Speaker 5: we have an understanding of this mindset, you got to
Speaker 5: think the normal police procedure when they encounter a person
Speaker 5: like this and they're not familiar with these type of personalities,
Speaker 5: is when you've got a body in the back like
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Dahmer had, he coolly can deal with the police
Speaker 5: because he is a psychopathic character that's cool, calm and
Speaker 5: collect where a police officers trained to deal and sense
Speaker 5: or recognize when a person is usually lying, usually is
Speaker 5: under pressure. So almost everyone ninety nine thousand and you know,
Speaker 5: I mean ninety nine percent of the people are not
Speaker 5: going to be feel cool and calm and easily get
Speaker 5: out of a jam like a body in the back seat.
Speaker 5: But what we can learn is that when police are
Speaker 5: initially interviewing guys like this that seemed to be there's
Speaker 5: no Wow, we don't have any warrant. We don't have
Speaker 5: any real grounds that we can You could see that
Speaker 5: behavior for what it is and what it may not be.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what the only thing we can
Speaker 5: learn in terms of prevention. It's like a movie when
Speaker 5: we recognize that the psychopathic but with criminal tendencies exactly
Speaker 5: define what criminal tendencies would be. And what would we
Speaker 5: do if a guy was lighting fires and breaking into
Speaker 5: homes and.
Speaker 4: Beaten up dogs.
Speaker 5: I mean, what would we legally be able to do?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: And again when you say that, it's you know, we're
Speaker 5: talking about a draconian system in a lot of areas anyway.
Speaker 5: So I think we would be on a very slippery
Speaker 5: slope of a draconian system if we start right, you know.
Speaker 5: So I think there's no such thing as prevention. I
Speaker 5: think the only thing can happen is if, again, with
Speaker 5: responsible family, when somebody said, listen, I'm fantasizing about killing people,
Speaker 5: most famili they would know if their son was reading
Speaker 5: KKK literature or devil worshiping. I mean, again, you can't really,
Speaker 5: you know, you can't legislate responsible parenting or anything like that.
Speaker 5: So I think the only thing you can learn is
Speaker 5: that when you're talking to these people, despite their good looks,
Speaker 5: despite their charm, despite they look harmless, they may be
Speaker 5: the exact opposite of all those three things.
Speaker 4: I couldn't say it any better, No wonder, you're a
Speaker 4: terrific writer.
Speaker 5: Now I've read I just I really really love this book.
Speaker 5: There's so much more for the audience to read in
Speaker 5: this jam packed action non fiction examination of two very
Speaker 5: very interesting killers and very very sad backdrop of the
Speaker 5: families of Justin and Jennifer and all the people that
Speaker 5: were involved. That these people touch their lives, they're very
Speaker 5: very again, it's a very extreme example of how innocent
Speaker 5: some people are that get killed the most undeserving, not
Speaker 5: that there is any deserving people.
Speaker 4: Fred.
Speaker 5: What I wanted to ask too, is that what are
Speaker 5: you working on now? I know we won't any mention,
Speaker 5: We won't mention anything about a case that people have
Speaker 5: asked for updates, but we won't be talking about that.
Speaker 5: But what are you working on right now? And let
Speaker 5: us know and tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 5: this reissue that's brought this great book back to everyone's attention.
Speaker 5: With the reissue, sure.
Speaker 4: Well, First, as far as the book is concerned, Flesh
Speaker 4: Collectors has been republished by Open Road which Open Road
Speaker 4: Media as a an e book and as well as
Speaker 4: a print on demand and very affordably priced. I might
Speaker 4: add it's also going to be an audible book. And
Speaker 4: they've they've republished a lot of my backlist, meaning a
Speaker 4: lot of older books that I've done that haven't been
Speaker 4: out for a couple of years. At the same time,
Speaker 4: I'm working on a book about uh being about the
Speaker 4: murder of President James Garfield, and I'm going I'm going
Speaker 4: to name the real murderer in the book, and it's
Speaker 4: not the person that history says murdered him. Ah and
Speaker 4: I and I got access to certain information and even
Speaker 4: though it's it's a little bit perhaps, I'm gonna na
Speaker 4: the murderer. And I've got the help of the president's
Speaker 4: great great grandson. He's been very helpful helping me with this.
Speaker 4: And uh So I'm working on this book and it'll
Speaker 4: be out some time next year.
Speaker 5: Wow, what a scoop. That sounds amazing. So it will
Speaker 5: be another another good reason to speak to you about that.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's that's incredible. We've had a few historical
Speaker 5: crimes that just it's it's amazing the stuff that's une
Speaker 5: earthed thanks to the Internet. It really helps that spend
Speaker 5: that called the library. So yeah, so it's incredible. If
Speaker 5: people want to find out all the list of the
Speaker 5: fantastic true crime books you have written so far and
Speaker 5: and and you would like to maybe even send you
Speaker 5: a message or note, how would they contact you and
Speaker 5: find out more about Fred Rosen.
Speaker 4: Well, first off, if you if you're interested in in
Speaker 4: in any of the books that I've written, just go
Speaker 4: to Amazon dot com A Barnesonnoble dot com in my
Speaker 4: name Fred Rosen and all the books will come up
Speaker 4: list of the books. Or you can go to open
Speaker 4: road I think it's opad dot Openrooadmedia dot com, which
Speaker 4: is their website, so you can get it from those places.
Speaker 4: And if you'd like to get in touch with me,
Speaker 4: that's a pretty easy thing to do. Just go to
Speaker 4: Facebook to look up Fred Rosen. Then just send me
Speaker 4: an email. You know, yeah, I think that's go with
Speaker 4: email right and just send me I'd love to hear
Speaker 4: from you.
Speaker 5: Great. Well, I want to thank you very much Fred
Speaker 5: for coming back on and it's always a pleasure, and
Speaker 5: this book is I just had a fantastic time reading
Speaker 5: this book. I wish it was maybe three or four
Speaker 5: times as long so that I could have read it
Speaker 5: for more than just a couple of days, because the
Speaker 5: man was a page turner. So thank you very much,
Speaker 5: Fred for coming on and talking about this very very
Speaker 5: touching and I know, still very tender. You know, you're
Speaker 5: still it's still emotional. I can hear that emotionality in
Speaker 5: your voice over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's Dan, it's it's it's always a pleasure
Speaker 4: to speak with you because you know so much and
Speaker 4: you're and you're so smart, and I'm not just you know,
Speaker 4: kissing your you know what. It's just that you know,
Speaker 4: when you do enough of this work, you begin to
Speaker 4: realize there's some people who get it and some don't,
Speaker 4: and you really get it. And I think you do
Speaker 4: a service, uh, for the for the listeners, because you're
Speaker 4: point them in I'm not talking about myself, but some
Speaker 4: of the other offices that you've had on like mister
Speaker 4: Burl Bear and others, you point them in the right
Speaker 4: direction to individuals who are really committed to writing good stuff.
Speaker 4: And I thank you for that. Well, I just.
Speaker 5: Feel like I'm just privileged to be a part of
Speaker 5: this true crime community of the fans, the fantastic writers,
Speaker 5: the people like Burl Bear that do it all basically
Speaker 5: have a radio show as well, the new generation of
Speaker 5: stuff that's again Generation Why Sword and Scale Crime Beat,
Speaker 5: some really good shows, and it's it's a really good
Speaker 5: community of true crime authors, fans, people that appreciate true crime,
Speaker 5: and people that are helping support that whole thing. So
Speaker 5: I just feel privileged, and I know the audience is
Speaker 5: very appreciative. I get messages from all over the world
Speaker 5: talking about enjoying the interviews with the authors and the
Speaker 5: fantastic stories that therein lie in these books. So I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much again, Fred, you have
Speaker 5: yourself a great evening.
Speaker 4: You too, sir, Thank you very much. Good night.
Speaker 5: This episode is over, and it means it's time to
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