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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. In March two
Speaker 7: thousand and nine, pretty vivacious Ronda Casto plunged to her
Speaker 7: death from a three hundred foot cliff.
Speaker 8: In the Oregon Woods. The only witness, Stephen Nichols, the
Speaker 8: father of her nine month baby Annie, told police investigators
Speaker 8: she slipped and fell. Yet Nicholls's story didn't quite mesh
Speaker 8: with the facts, and some of his other actions raised
Speaker 8: suspicions as well, including just days after her death, trying
Speaker 8: to collect on a million dollar life insurance policy he'd
Speaker 8: taken out on his unemployed twenty three year old girlfriend
Speaker 8: four months earlier. What had begun with a nine one
Speaker 8: one called report and accident quickly turned into a homicide investigation. However,
Speaker 8: in part due to lackluster police work, the case grew cold.
Speaker 8: Then in twenty eleven, Dardy Robinson, a tenacious investigator with
Speaker 8: a Portland law firm, began digging into the circumstances surrounding
Speaker 8: Ronda's death. The law firm represented Ronda's mother, who believed
Speaker 8: that Nichols, thirty four at the time, had murdered her daughter.
Speaker 8: She wanted to prevent him from gaining custody of Annie
Speaker 8: and the life insurance money. What Robinson discovered, including an
Speaker 8: attempt by Nichols to throw his first wife off a
Speaker 8: high rise balcony in China, as well as sexual abuse
Speaker 8: allegations with Ronda's underage sister, convinced her that Ronda's death
Speaker 8: was no accident. So began her six year battle to
Speaker 8: save Annie from her father and fine justice for Ronda.
Speaker 8: In the meantime, a parallel investigation into the case by
Speaker 8: co author Steve Jackson, an award winning journalist in New
Speaker 8: York Times, bestselling author and private investigator Tom McCallum posed
Speaker 8: the same questions, what really happened to Ronda Castle on
Speaker 8: that cold, rainy afternoon on the Eagle Creek trail and
Speaker 8: what would become of her child? The book that we're
Speaker 8: featuring this evening is Saving Annie, Book one the Fall,
Speaker 8: a true crime series with my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 8: author and publisher Steve Jackson. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 8: thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 9: Jackson, Hi, there, Dan, as always a pleasure to talk
Speaker 9: to you.
Speaker 8: It's always a pleasure for myself and I know it's
Speaker 8: a real treat for the audience. You only deal with
Speaker 8: extraordinary cases, and this is no exception. Let's start right
Speaker 8: away with I guess we won't give too much away,
Speaker 8: but we want to talk about that Saving Annie is
Speaker 8: being published as a series of four books broken into
Speaker 8: distinct parts of the investigation. So just explain what Saving
Speaker 8: Annie is is as part of that four book series.
Speaker 9: Well, okay, yeah, we're trying something new here, which is
Speaker 9: the serialization of this book, the entire books called Saving Annie,
Speaker 9: and then each one of the four parts, which we're
Speaker 9: also calling the book as you sometimes do, it is
Speaker 9: a distinct part of this case. It was even before
Speaker 9: I made this decision to try to do this, it was, uh,
Speaker 9: it just lays itself out that way naturally, as as
Speaker 9: four parts. So I kind of came up with this
Speaker 9: idea of uh, you know, I've been kind of watching
Speaker 9: the the serialization of podcasts such as Serial which became
Speaker 9: very well known, and noticed how each part of the
Speaker 9: series sort of created buzz and people uh talking about
Speaker 9: the first part and then and then looking forward to
Speaker 9: the second part. And and I remember back when I
Speaker 9: was a kid, and I used to subscribe to Boy's Life,
Speaker 9: and they'd have a story in there, and and and
Speaker 9: I couldn't wait till the next month, and I talked
Speaker 9: to my friends about it, and we'd wonder, you know,
Speaker 9: what happens in the next part. So I thought I
Speaker 9: would try this little experiment in publishing and see, you
Speaker 9: know how it's how it worked this way. There are
Speaker 9: several other reasons. One is it is a there's a
Speaker 9: lot of material to this book. If you take all
Speaker 9: four parts of the book, it's a very large book,
Speaker 9: especially in the way I wanted to write about it,
Speaker 9: in the detail I wanted to include, So you know
Speaker 9: that was sort of the impetus behind it.
Speaker 8: Now, let's talk about the genesis of this entire project.
Speaker 8: And December twenty eleven, you got a call from an
Speaker 8: old friend, Tom McCollum. But you were surprised, but you
Speaker 8: hadn't heard from him for about twenty years. Now, tell
Speaker 8: us who he was and when you met, in the
Speaker 8: circumstances and just of your friendship. And before you talk
Speaker 8: about the content of that call, it originally hit called
Speaker 8: for advice, you'd say, you said, after all these years,
Speaker 8: But tell us a little bit about this relationship, and
Speaker 8: tell us then about that call and what he had
Speaker 8: to say.
Speaker 9: Well, I'd originally met Tom in nineteen ninety. The head
Speaker 9: of the Oregon Corrections Department had been murdered in January
Speaker 9: of nineteen eighty nine, and I was an investigative reporter
Speaker 9: for a newspaper in Salem, organ at the time and
Speaker 9: had been covering this story for quite a bit. It
Speaker 9: was a very.
Speaker 3: Different story in that it.
Speaker 9: Had quickly become apparent to me that the police were
Speaker 9: sort of had settled on Oh, it must have been
Speaker 9: a stranger came upon the Corrections Department director Michael Frankie
Speaker 9: in the parking lot at night, robbed him as a
Speaker 9: robbery gone bad. But there are a lot of things
Speaker 9: were going on at that time that indicated it might
Speaker 9: be something more of a conspiracy. And so I have
Speaker 9: been working on this story for about a year.
Speaker 3: When the police had arrested a.
Speaker 9: Young man, a metheatic small time criminal named Frank.
Speaker 3: Gable and.
Speaker 9: And had settled on him as as the suspect. Not
Speaker 9: just the suspect that but you know, this this idea
Speaker 9: that he had, you know, come upon Frankie, tried to
Speaker 9: rob him, got in a fight, killed him, and and
Speaker 9: a lot of that just didn't didn't add up. And
Speaker 9: it's a great story itself. It's one I plan on
Speaker 9: writing someday. And even though it's been, like you said,
Speaker 9: it's been twenty some odd years. Anyway, as I was
Speaker 9: writing about this story and Frank Gable had been arrested,
Speaker 9: I get a call from a guy identifies himself as
Speaker 9: Tom McCollum and says he's an investigator for Gable's defense
Speaker 9: attorney and wants to know if I can talk to
Speaker 9: if he can talk to me. And you know, I'm
Speaker 9: an investigative reporter and I was doing my own work,
Speaker 9: spends a year doing this, and this guy calls up
Speaker 9: and wants to know everything I know. So I basically
Speaker 9: told him, in several choice words, where he could go
Speaker 9: with that, and hung up the phone.
Speaker 3: He called back and tried.
Speaker 9: To get a little bit farther, and I repeated the
Speaker 9: process of hanging up the phone, and he called the
Speaker 9: next day and he kept at it and said, hey,
Speaker 9: I'll buy you lunch. You know that we don't even
Speaker 9: have to talk about this. And from there, you know,
Speaker 9: I he gained my trust, I gained his trust.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 9: We both were working from different ways, different avenues on
Speaker 9: this same story when overtime became friends and fishing, buddies
Speaker 9: and everything else, even long after that story was gone,
Speaker 9: and then I moved from Oregon and back to Colorado,
Speaker 9: and we didn't completely lose in a while on the
Speaker 9: phone or emailed or something like that. But when he
Speaker 9: called in December twenty eleven, I hadn't heard from him
Speaker 9: for quite some time, and as you note, it was
Speaker 9: a different kind of phone call.
Speaker 8: Now he talks about he's asking you about advice about
Speaker 8: a book. So he's endeavoring to do that, and of
Speaker 8: course it's a good person to call for advice would
Speaker 8: be you. But he also has a conversation with you
Speaker 8: about a client, this Gary Caster, who was an extremely
Speaker 8: rich guy, I can see, a multi billionaire, and he
Speaker 8: had employed Tom and asked Tom to help him look
Speaker 8: into a guy that was being a private investigator, look
Speaker 8: into this guy who was dating his daughter. Mindy, now
Speaker 8: you must have found this interesting. What did he say
Speaker 8: about this person and who was this person that he
Speaker 8: had found and what had had found out about this
Speaker 8: person who was dating his daughter?
Speaker 9: Right, basically, Gary Caster, which isn't an alias for someone else,
Speaker 9: you know, was very concerned. You know, he's very wealthy man,
Speaker 9: as you pointed out, so you know, he's got to
Speaker 9: be careful about who gets close to his family. And
Speaker 9: his daughter had brought this guy over he had a
Speaker 9: young daughter, three or four years old at the time,
Speaker 9: and brought her to you know, a family Christmas thing,
Speaker 9: or brought him to the family Christmas thing his daughter
Speaker 9: and and nobody got a good feeling from him. They
Speaker 9: just felt he was, you know, creepy, and he's sort
Speaker 9: of monotone and emotionless, and and and a number of
Speaker 9: people there, including the ranch foreman where this wealthy person
Speaker 9: in his family have a ranch there in central organ
Speaker 9: And so he just called Tom to sort of run
Speaker 9: a background check on this guy and see if there
Speaker 9: was anything notable or maybe he was just an odd
Speaker 9: duck and and they're all, you know, misjudging him or
Speaker 9: something along those lines. But Tom started to look into
Speaker 9: this guy, ran some crime checks on him and found
Speaker 9: some restraining orders for violence, domestic violence, there were some
Speaker 9: allegations of sexual improprieties, and and and started finding more
Speaker 9: and more about this guy that you know, obviously red
Speaker 9: flags with the domestic violence and the restraining orders and.
Speaker 3: So basically and.
Speaker 9: Then right toward the end of it, they discovered because
Speaker 9: this guy was involved in a custody case over the child,
Speaker 9: found out that he was also had been suspected of
Speaker 9: having girlfriend the child's mother off a cliff. And as
Speaker 9: Tom looked into this, it seemed like, you know, okay,
Speaker 9: whatever happened to this case. Did they resolve it, did
Speaker 9: they close it, did they determine it was an accident?
Speaker 9: Was it still going? And Tom found out that it
Speaker 9: was still an open investigation, but they didn't seem to
Speaker 9: be doing much.
Speaker 8: Now as a result, when you heard this story and
Speaker 8: you got this information, he's planning to write a book.
Speaker 8: It's the agreement between the two. What do you guys
Speaker 8: decide to do as a result of what you've just
Speaker 8: heard and everything, all the information that he has, and
Speaker 8: both of you in the position that you are at
Speaker 8: that time, what do you decide to do?
Speaker 9: Actually Tom was working on a different book, a different
Speaker 9: true crime. I was the one, well sort of together,
Speaker 9: I guess he how you know, I started talking about
Speaker 9: it's an interesting case, maybe I'd be interested in it
Speaker 9: as a book, and Tom was also seemed that he
Speaker 9: could use some help on the investigative end, as far
Speaker 9: as I'm pretty good at paper chases and finding documents
Speaker 9: and as well as interviews, and that maybe coming at
Speaker 9: it from not together necessarily. I wasn't working as a
Speaker 9: PI and he wasn't necessarily working as a journalists, even
Speaker 9: though at a different point he's been wanting to write
Speaker 9: true crime books. And I said, well, you know, why
Speaker 9: don't you learn by working with me on this book
Speaker 9: as a writer and journalist as well. So basically we
Speaker 9: just sort of combined forces, if you will, and started
Speaker 9: looking into the case. There was a lot to run
Speaker 9: down as far as documents and and finding people who
Speaker 9: could have been witnesses, some people who would have popped
Speaker 9: up on the witness list if I was a detective,
Speaker 9: and who hadn't even been talked to by the police
Speaker 9: at this point, though they would at a point. And
Speaker 9: so that's that's sort of how we got started on
Speaker 9: it and started finding more and more, and you know,
Speaker 9: there's the little girl was sort of central in this,
Speaker 9: Annie and as we started looking into this, we're wondering,
Speaker 9: did the mother, ron de Casto, you know, had the
Speaker 9: police done everything they could to make sure that, you
Speaker 9: know her the case was closed one way or the other,
Speaker 9: either through justice or if they ruled it in some
Speaker 9: other ways than fine, But also for the little girl's sake.
Speaker 8: Yes, you write that she was nine months old when
Speaker 8: her mother died, and Annie was living currently with her father, Nichols.
Speaker 8: So that was a big reason for writing this book
Speaker 8: and wanting to do this investigation. As you write, now
Speaker 8: tell us a little about what you find about the
Speaker 8: investigation itself. Obviously, this was March sixteenth, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 8: in the Hood River County. Of course, you were re
Speaker 8: examining this after the fact. What's tell us about the
Speaker 8: actual crime itself? Well, the.
Speaker 9: Right the ninety one one call is that on March sixteenth,
Speaker 9: two thousand and nine, about six o'clock in the evening,
Speaker 9: that this is in Hood River, Oregon, which is a
Speaker 9: town in the Columbia River Gorge, and this calls. They
Speaker 9: get a call from the parking lot of a popular
Speaker 9: trail there called the Eagle Creek Trail from a man
Speaker 9: who first talks about that he needs help and can
Speaker 9: you send somebody and all this sort of thing, and
Speaker 9: kind of takes him a minute or two before he
Speaker 9: lets them know that his girlfriend has fallen from the
Speaker 9: cliff and he believes that she's dead, and and that
Speaker 9: kind of starts the whole process, obviously the police showing
Speaker 9: up and eventually a search and rescue team showing up.
Speaker 9: But it's it's it's not nine to one one call, just.
Speaker 3: There's some aspects about it.
Speaker 9: You know, he's obviously more concerned that he's cold and wet,
Speaker 9: and and some other things that will come into play
Speaker 9: later on in this investigation.
Speaker 3: M h.
Speaker 8: Of course, that nine one one call is recorded, and
Speaker 8: of course people, investigators, police, everyone will look at that
Speaker 8: and review that later. You talked about the idea that
Speaker 8: one of the first things that people can judge the
Speaker 8: police do and they do put in their reports is
Speaker 8: the behavior. And you talked about the coldness. So maybe
Speaker 8: he could tell us a little bit more about what
Speaker 8: this whole idea that he was so cold and preoccupied
Speaker 8: with his own condition rather than what some people might
Speaker 8: think is a normal response to his girlfriend, his fiance
Speaker 8: just being dead. So tell us what the first responders
Speaker 8: or he's talking to the nine one one operator and
Speaker 8: then there's the first responder, and what does that first
Speaker 8: responder encounter in terms of behavior from this person.
Speaker 9: Well, again, it's this person who we learned by this
Speaker 9: time as Stephen nickels Is. He talked about that, you know,
Speaker 9: he tried to get to the body, and he tried
Speaker 9: to swim up a creek, and he's wet and cold,
Speaker 9: and it is March in Oregons and it had rained
Speaker 9: and some even some sleep that day, so it's chilly outside.
Speaker 9: But you know, i'd ask anybody out there, if you're
Speaker 9: hiking on a trail and the person you love, your fiance,
Speaker 9: plunges off the cliff.
Speaker 3: What is your uh first thing You're.
Speaker 9: Probably gonna say to the nine one one call uh operator,
Speaker 9: uh that you're cold and can somebody please help you?
Speaker 9: Or are you going to say, uh, my girlfriend fell
Speaker 9: off a cliff and I think she's dead, and and
Speaker 9: then maybe, by the way, I'm cold and I need
Speaker 9: some help. It's just it's just, you know, those sorts
Speaker 9: of things that you know, you look at as an investigator.
Speaker 9: It's it's the demeanor evidence, if you will, and and
Speaker 9: demeanor evidence does count in the courtroom, by the way,
Speaker 9: and and and so these sorts of things that some
Speaker 9: people were almost right away. And by people, I mean
Speaker 9: the first responders were kind of taken back a little
Speaker 9: bit by this guy who is sort of phlegmatic when
Speaker 9: he speaks is monotone. He's still more concerned about how
Speaker 9: cold he is. And then when they get him in
Speaker 9: the ambulance, now he's had a little bit of time
Speaker 9: in his car with the heater warmed up, but his
Speaker 9: body temperatures are normal.
Speaker 8: Yeah, right away too. You have one of the first
Speaker 8: responders is a person from an interesting unit they called
Speaker 8: the crag Rats. And these guys are experienced with rescue,
Speaker 8: and also this person personally is experienced with the trail
Speaker 8: itself and where it might be more difficult or more
Speaker 8: prone to somebody having any kind of situation, since there
Speaker 8: is a place called suicide point on this trail. Tell
Speaker 8: us what his impression was. You say about other people doubting,
Speaker 8: you talk about doubting the story, but this person, and
Speaker 8: based on that experience, has even more of a I
Speaker 8: would say a stronger opinion about that.
Speaker 3: Well. Yes, Jeff Pritcher, who was both the.
Speaker 9: Chief of the Cascade Locks, which is the nearest small
Speaker 9: town to this trail, of their fire departments and a
Speaker 9: paramedic as well as being one of these crag Rats,
Speaker 9: which is one of the top search and rescue teams
Speaker 9: probably in the country. They've they've been at it a
Speaker 9: long time. They have They do mountains, they do rivers,
Speaker 9: they do just about everywhere. They have a lot of
Speaker 9: territory they cover.
Speaker 3: And he's struck too, just.
Speaker 9: When he talks to Nichols at the parking lot about
Speaker 9: this guy's demeanor and some of the things he's saying,
Speaker 9: as far as you know, he pulled her from the
Speaker 9: river and that he tried to get up the river
Speaker 9: and tried to swim up the river, and a number
Speaker 9: of little things that, you know, he just kind of
Speaker 9: at that moment files the back of his head as
Speaker 9: sort of strange. And then when another volunteer shows up,
Speaker 9: apparently quickly after that, they head up the trail to
Speaker 9: see if they can find the point where she went
Speaker 9: off so they can locate her body. Nichols had said
Speaker 9: he thought it was a mile up the trail, or
Speaker 9: a mile and a half or or something along these lines.
Speaker 3: So they had to and.
Speaker 9: It's getting starting to get dark, so they had to
Speaker 9: kind of hurry up there and see if they can
Speaker 9: spot her from the trail up above.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you say that they have difficulty even getting down there,
Speaker 8: so we'll talk about that. But at the same time,
Speaker 8: you have that a deputy smith Is has heard the
Speaker 8: nine to one one call. Now he wants to know
Speaker 8: to hear the story. So police want to hear the
Speaker 8: story from from Steve Nichols. And so what does he
Speaker 8: say about Rhonda, their hike, her behavior, and the accident
Speaker 8: itself as he describes.
Speaker 9: It well, Nicol first, and he will change his story
Speaker 9: a number of times throughout this talking to officers until
Speaker 9: he finally quits talking at all, but you know, his
Speaker 9: basic things. They went up there and she was acting crazy,
Speaker 9: even though he says he doesn't remember her doing any
Speaker 9: drugs or smoking any pot or anything else like that.
Speaker 9: And if she's running down the trail with a towel
Speaker 9: around her neck, playing like she's Supergirl or Superman and
Speaker 9: running down this trail and whips and goes over the edge,
Speaker 9: and and and that's his basically his story, that they
Speaker 9: were having a hike, they're trying to lose weight.
Speaker 3: She's doesn't mention any In.
Speaker 9: Fact, he denies there's any sort of argument or fight
Speaker 9: or or anything else along those lines. So you know,
Speaker 9: basically that's that's his story, is that she's acting a
Speaker 9: little crazy and running down the trail before she falls.
Speaker 8: He also is is witnessed to Steve Nichols not answering
Speaker 8: his phone and then inquiring who that would be and
Speaker 8: why he wouldn't be answering his phone, And that's the
Speaker 8: first we hear of the sister that Ronda has, Melanie,
Speaker 8: but also that that he's going to have a hard
Speaker 8: time telling Ronda's mother what has happened. Tell us about
Speaker 8: this phone call and what Smith maybe surmises from this
Speaker 8: if anything.
Speaker 9: Well, during this time when they're talking, he does receive
Speaker 9: a couple of calls, and he basically tells the officer, well,
Speaker 9: that's that's her mom wondering where she is, and you
Speaker 9: know what do I tell her and do I contact her?
Speaker 9: At that time?
Speaker 3: It's not terribly suspicious other than.
Speaker 9: The police officer notes it and that you know, and
Speaker 9: tells Nichols, don't worry, we'll have a once we've confirmed
Speaker 9: all of this, we'll have a law enforcement get in
Speaker 9: touch with the family and let them know later on.
Speaker 9: It will become kind of interesting in that when they
Speaker 9: do look at his phone again, when they ask to
Speaker 9: see his phone and he hands it over for a
Speaker 9: little bit, all of the messages that he'd received or
Speaker 9: since weren't on the phone. They weren't on the caller ID.
Speaker 9: And so that made me wonder, well, where did they
Speaker 9: all go?
Speaker 3: And did he erase them all? And then so why
Speaker 3: did he erase them all?
Speaker 8: Right? What are the We get back to the crag
Speaker 8: rats again. So when they go down and finally find
Speaker 8: the body, what is the condition of Randa's body? What
Speaker 8: do they note? And of course they've already spoken to
Speaker 8: Steve Nichols, and he has given them account of how
Speaker 8: she got down there under what circumstances tell us what
Speaker 8: they just even see immediately?
Speaker 3: Well, and don't I don't want to give too much
Speaker 3: away here.
Speaker 9: It's an important part of the book, but we can
Speaker 9: get into for one thing, it was very difficult. And
Speaker 9: these guys, I mean, they they climb mountain, they rope in, they.
Speaker 3: They do everything.
Speaker 9: It was very, very difficult to find a place one
Speaker 9: to even get down the cliff. And then they had
Speaker 9: to make their way back towards the body, which was
Speaker 9: which was a struggle for even two very experienced mountaineers.
Speaker 9: And then when they find her. One of the one
Speaker 9: of the main things that they that they noted that
Speaker 9: I'll reveal here is that Nickel told a couple of
Speaker 9: different first responders that when he looked over the edge,
Speaker 9: he saw her laying in the water of Eagle Creek.
Speaker 9: The distance between the cliff and the Eagle Creek was
Speaker 9: probably about one hundred and sixty feet, so almost what's
Speaker 9: sixty yards or something home, they're not quite twoty five,
Speaker 9: but anyway, there's quite a distance between the cliff and
Speaker 9: the creek. When they find Ronda's body, she's about halfway
Speaker 9: between the cliff and the creek. So if you're going
Speaker 9: to go with Nicol's story, well then she's was. He
Speaker 9: found her laying in the water, and one of the
Speaker 9: crag rats, Jeff Pitcher, that he pulled her from the water,
Speaker 9: and then she's a good eighty feet from the creek
Speaker 9: towards the cliff, dragged up a slope with a with
Speaker 9: a one of her leg bones jutting from her thigh
Speaker 9: and obviously not not alive, even though he said that
Speaker 9: he tried to give her CPR, so it struck the crag.
Speaker 3: Rats as well.
Speaker 9: You found her in the water, one would you just
Speaker 9: pull her up on the bank and turn her over
Speaker 9: and try to do CPR there, And then if that
Speaker 9: didn't work, why would you then try drag her eighty
Speaker 9: feet up the hill only to leave her where she
Speaker 9: was left and then make your way back to the
Speaker 9: parking lot. They didn't see any evidence of any disturbance
Speaker 9: of the ground either on.
Speaker 3: The way to her body, and they had to cross a.
Speaker 9: Couple of different places where it's likely that some sort
Speaker 9: of track would have been left, but even around the
Speaker 9: body none of the area had been disturbed, and that
Speaker 9: was one of the clues that they had that, you know,
Speaker 9: this story just isn't working the way that you know
Speaker 9: Nichols was saying it did, and so they quickly determined
Speaker 9: that it was a good possibility this was a crime scene,
Speaker 9: so they took photographs and bagged up out of there.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 9: There were a number of other details that I'll let
Speaker 9: readers find in the book as to what how they
Speaker 9: came to that conclusion, but that was one of the
Speaker 9: main ones, is that he said, oh, she's laying in
Speaker 9: the water, and so if she was lying in the water,
Speaker 9: why did he drag her so far up there where
Speaker 9: she's obviously got these horrendous injuries and and leave her
Speaker 9: where she was.
Speaker 8: You talk about the ensuing investigation, and again not to
Speaker 8: give anything away, but you talk about the deputy Smith
Speaker 8: is at the hospital and an interesting drug Gamba penton.
Speaker 8: You say it's anti seizure antidepressant, nerve pain medication. How
Speaker 8: does this drug play into this? And can we talk
Speaker 8: about the autopsy and its results, especially given what Nichols
Speaker 8: has said that he is more than intimated that she
Speaker 8: was high on drugs on that cliff Or on that trail.
Speaker 9: Well, I guess that it comes down to the Gaba
Speaker 9: Penson is. It's actually more of a used more as
Speaker 9: a pain medication, though there's some anti depressed qualities in it.
Speaker 9: She had Ronda did have some postpartum issues. But remember
Speaker 9: this is nine months later and she'd actually stopped taking
Speaker 9: it for a while, was back taking it she on
Speaker 9: her Dodger's advice. But even in the autopsy it was
Speaker 9: it barely registered. In fact, she barely registered for anything.
Speaker 9: She had a little bit of cannabcal, cannaboid or what
Speaker 9: am I saying here, the residue left over from marijuana.
Speaker 3: But it was at such a low level that it
Speaker 3: also could have been either.
Speaker 9: A false positive or that she was around people that smoked.
Speaker 9: She had told people, and most people believed her that,
Speaker 9: especially after the birth of her daughter, she had stopped
Speaker 9: taking any kind of drugs and but what she did
Speaker 9: have in her system was legally prescribed.
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Speaker 9: As far as as anything else, and in such minimal
Speaker 9: amounts that it's hard to madge that she was having
Speaker 9: some sort of drug reaction. He certainly didn't have any
Speaker 9: sort of hallucinogens in her or anything along those lines,
Speaker 9: or enough pot residue to you know, have caused her
Speaker 9: to run down the trail like Superman.
Speaker 8: Right now. In the ensuing investigation, of course that you
Speaker 8: have the Deputy Smith, but he's he's enjoined by a
Speaker 8: guy named Deputy English, and these guys want to find
Speaker 8: out what he does for a living. And of course
Speaker 8: they have to investigate all the possible motives for this
Speaker 8: crime if it's not going to be an accident, so
Speaker 8: they're doing their due diligence. Tell us about what kinds
Speaker 8: of questions they're asking and what kind of answers they're
Speaker 8: getting from Steve Nichols regarding what he does, what she does,
Speaker 8: things of that sort.
Speaker 9: Well, early on in the initiation the investigation, he's these
Speaker 9: first interviews are they don't delve too too deeply, but
Speaker 9: they you know, he tells them he's a day trader
Speaker 9: and he makes that's how he makes his money. And
Speaker 9: a day trader is someone who buys and sells thoughts,
Speaker 9: all within a few hours, trying to make a little
Speaker 9: bit that on these transactions. In that Ronda basically did
Speaker 9: not work, she was unemployed, she took care of the baby,
Speaker 9: she spent Uh, we find out that she's spent time
Speaker 9: both with Nichols and lived with her mom part of
Speaker 9: the time. And uh, and so that's that's sort of
Speaker 9: their financial situation at this time. And then I'll let
Speaker 9: you lead me into the next part where I think
Speaker 9: you're going.
Speaker 8: Let's just use this as an opportunity. Steve, stop for
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Speaker 8: dot com slash murder. Now, Steve, we were talking about
Speaker 8: the ensuing investigation and what Steve Nichols had to say,
Speaker 8: how do they get to the point where they you
Speaker 8: talk about another person becoming involved, a corporal Michelson. When
Speaker 8: do they first hear some rumblings of the real motive
Speaker 8: or in their mind a motive for this murder? Who
Speaker 8: do they talk to and what do those people say?
Speaker 9: Well, the initial investigators are with Cood River County Sheriff's Office,
Speaker 9: and that's Detective Uh Tiffany and Deputies English and Deputy Smith,
Speaker 9: who you've you've discussed. Ronda and Steve and Ronda's mom
Speaker 9: and family all live in Portland, which is Washington County,
Speaker 9: so there's there's some inter office dealings here. And one
Speaker 9: of the Washington County deputies, Nicholson, who you've talked about,
Speaker 9: calls English and and this is within you know, uh,
Speaker 9: a very short amount of time, within a.
Speaker 3: Couple of hours of.
Speaker 9: Reaching the trailhead talking to Nichols, and then finally they
Speaker 9: are able to locate Ronda's mom and through her, the
Speaker 9: rest of the family and start talking to them. And
Speaker 9: right away the family says they think that he did it,
Speaker 9: and they note that he had taken out a large
Speaker 9: million dollar they thought it might even be more life
Speaker 9: insurance policy on Ronda, and this, of course immediately sends up.
Speaker 3: A red flag.
Speaker 8: Now, at the same time or soon after, they talked
Speaker 8: to the mother, Julia Simmons, then there is at Ronda's sister, Melanie.
Speaker 8: How do they get to the point where they hear
Speaker 8: any rumblings of the relationship with Melanie and Steve.
Speaker 9: Well both a little bit from the family, but also
Speaker 9: one of Melanie's former boyfriends, calls the police after he
Speaker 9: sees a broadcast television broadcast about Ronda falling, even though
Speaker 9: it did not mentioned Nichols by name at that time,
Speaker 9: he sort of guessed, and he knew about the insurance policy,
Speaker 9: and he knew about some other things. But what he
Speaker 9: knew that the detectives didn't have as much of at
Speaker 9: that time was that when Melanie was fifteen years old,
Speaker 9: and this was would have been four years earlier, Nichols
Speaker 9: had had a sexual affair with her and had continued
Speaker 9: this affair for quite some time, and that Melanie had
Speaker 9: actually at one point got angry and told Ronda in
Speaker 9: front of her mom and Nichols that they were having
Speaker 9: this affair. And obviously Melanie is underaged, and Steve Nichols
Speaker 9: at the time of this affair started was thirty years old,
Speaker 9: and it became obvious in some of the investigation that
Speaker 9: ensued from that that Nichols was had an infatuation with
Speaker 9: Melanie Casto, who was Ronda's younger sister, and to the
Speaker 9: point where he was texting her within uh you know what,
Speaker 9: Actually he picked her up and took her over to
Speaker 9: her mom's house after Ronda died. Melanie said he said
Speaker 9: a number of odd things, such as it only takes
Speaker 9: a baby six months to forget someone.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 9: And it's it's uh, what's really odd is he's a
Speaker 9: number of texts to her afterwards, and there's the you know, hey,
Speaker 9: we're friends still, and you know, can I talk to you?
Speaker 9: And and these are things. Nowhere in there does he
Speaker 9: say I'm grieving for Ronda. And this is supposedly his
Speaker 9: fiance that he, you know, allegedly was taking on this
Speaker 9: hike to as a romantic place to propose to her.
Speaker 9: And uh, you know, there's the there's just another one
Speaker 9: of these flags that the police are seeing. Uh, you know,
Speaker 9: why why do none of these texts say anything about Ronda.
Speaker 9: They're all about you know, getting together with Melanie and
Speaker 9: you know, inviting her up to uh where he's living
Speaker 9: now with his family, and helping him take care of
Speaker 9: Annie and and all of these sorts of things. So
Speaker 9: now the police start working on two different uh uh motivators,
Speaker 9: and uh one is the million dollar insurance policy, and
Speaker 9: the other one is that he obviously wants to be
Speaker 9: together with Melanie, Ronda's younger sister, and in of course
Speaker 9: mean to Melanie now had told her that they couldn't
Speaker 9: be together as long as Ronda was around.
Speaker 8: What Micholson is hearing and the police are hearing too,
Speaker 8: is incredibly our joke shared between Ronda and Steve that
Speaker 8: the family is privy too. What kind of jokes would
Speaker 8: these people make and how cryptic would they be considering well.
Speaker 9: This insurance policy that we've talked about, Steve arranged for
Speaker 9: this in Steve Nichols arranged for this in November of
Speaker 9: two thousand and eight, just four months before. In fact,
Speaker 9: the policies, which is a whole noother can of worms
Speaker 9: and its sulf. Just how they got these policies A
Speaker 9: million dollars on someone who was unemployed is pretty unusual,
Speaker 9: but yeah, going forward from there, they didn't even receive
Speaker 9: the policy until January. But anyway they have, you know,
Speaker 9: they both took out a they made Nichols originally only
Speaker 9: wanted to have about two hundred and fifty thousand on
Speaker 9: his policy and a million on Rondas, but the insurance
Speaker 9: company made them both have million dollars equal policies. So
Speaker 9: they now have these million dollar policies. And and Melanie
Speaker 9: says she's around when they're this couple. Randa, her sister,
Speaker 9: and Nichols are joking about, you know, who's going to
Speaker 9: kill who as far as to get the life insurance policy,
Speaker 9: and enough to the point where Melanie was actually concerned
Speaker 9: about it. She thought, you know that this this couple
Speaker 9: fought a lot. They really did not belong.
Speaker 3: Together just to start with.
Speaker 9: But anyway, they you know, so they're joking about killing
Speaker 9: each other. Nichols at some points talks about shoving Ronda
Speaker 9: off a cliff. According to Melodie, now we have to
Speaker 9: always remember that some of this is coming along after
Speaker 9: the fact, that these are stories and anecdotes that are
Speaker 9: being told to the police after the fact.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 9: Very you know, one of the facts is that these
Speaker 9: are being told within a day, two days after Ronda's death.
Speaker 9: So again it's it's how quickly these you know, if
Speaker 9: these stories are being made up, they're being made up
Speaker 9: very quickly, and everybody is getting their story together very quickly.
Speaker 9: All all apparently, you know, trying to to get Steve Nickels,
Speaker 9: at least that from his side, that's what he would
Speaker 9: be saying on that.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 8: At the same time, too, we have this other idea
Speaker 8: that they have to investigate, the idea of to looking
Speaker 8: at Ronda's sister Melanie and that love triangle possibility motive.
Speaker 8: But also they find out information regarding a jeweler named
Speaker 8: Cassab Jewelry. Jeweler tell us about this story and what
Speaker 8: they find and what Steve has to say about it
Speaker 8: and what they find contrary to.
Speaker 9: That, well, part of that, as I mentioned a little earlier,
Speaker 9: part of it was that Nicol was going to ask
Speaker 9: Ronda to marry him, and uh, Ronda told her grandmother
Speaker 9: before they left on this high key's either going to
Speaker 9: give me a ring or push me off a cliff.
Speaker 9: Sort of happened justin and sort of you wonder, you know,
Speaker 9: is this thing she was really thinking about? But Nichols
Speaker 9: told Julius Simmons, who is Ronda's mother, that he had
Speaker 9: purchased an engagement ring from this jeweler, cassav Jeweler, which
Speaker 9: is a very nice jeweler in downtown Portland, Oregon, and
Speaker 9: that you know, they picked out the ring and that
Speaker 9: he'd purchased it for her and he was taking her
Speaker 9: on this trail. Julia's boyfriend noted a jewelry bag in
Speaker 9: the back of the car on the seat when they left,
Speaker 9: and so everybody maybe he did buy a ring and
Speaker 9: was going to propose to her, and they did know
Speaker 9: that they had been the couple. Rond in particular, had
Speaker 9: been to the jeweler looking at various cuts and settings.
Speaker 9: Steve had gone a couple of times that always seemed
Speaker 9: sort of, you know, his least favorite thing to do,
Speaker 9: and so Julia asked him, well, okay, well where is
Speaker 9: the ring? And this is within a day or so,
Speaker 9: maybe two after Ronda's death, and he told her, according
Speaker 9: to Julia, that he had already taken the ring back
Speaker 9: and I got a refund for it, which is, you know,
Speaker 9: if you think about it, as awfully quick to decide,
Speaker 9: I'm taking the ring back for my fiance who just
Speaker 9: fell off the cliff. Anyway, Julia tells a police officer
Speaker 9: that she called the jeweler and asked them about this,
Speaker 9: and that they'd said, well, we remember the couple because
Speaker 9: we keep a very detailed log of who comes in
Speaker 9: and looks for jewelry and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 9: they never purchased one, much less ever come into return
Speaker 9: a ring. There was no ring bot for him to return. Right.
Speaker 8: Also, what they find is that and you say, this
Speaker 8: is it's going to be difficult to get around this
Speaker 8: or this is going to be problematic. Is what you
Speaker 8: say is that when Melanie made these allegations when she
Speaker 8: was fifteen years of age, a lot of people didn't
Speaker 8: believe her, including her mother, but someone did and called
Speaker 8: authorities and police.
Speaker 3: Why is that right?
Speaker 9: Tell us, well, there's actually two crimes that are being
Speaker 9: investigated at this point. One is, or put two potential crimes.
Speaker 9: One is what happened to Ronda? Did?
Speaker 10: Was she did she slip and fall?
Speaker 9: D did she was she pushed?
Speaker 3: So that's a homicide investigation.
Speaker 9: But now there's this secondary investigation into whether Nichols is
Speaker 9: guilty of sexual abuse of a minor, which is also
Speaker 9: a felony. And and so there's that investigation going on
Speaker 9: as well. Now you know they're they're thinking ahead, looking
Speaker 9: at the possibilities of this charge and if it gets
Speaker 9: to court. And what in the problematic part was is
Speaker 9: that when Melanie told everybody that I'm having an affair
Speaker 9: with Nichols, he denied it, immediately said.
Speaker 3: She was a liar, and.
Speaker 9: No one else believed her either at that point when
Speaker 9: she said it. But Melanie also told one of her
Speaker 9: friends who told her mom, and the mom called the
Speaker 9: police and social services to look into this. When the
Speaker 9: police and social services asked Julia about it, Golnda's mom,
Speaker 9: she said that Melanie, she thought Melanie was lying about it,
Speaker 9: and that Melanie was using drugs and basically she took Nicols.
Speaker 3: Word that he didn't do it.
Speaker 9: And you know Ronda at uh, you know, at that point,
Speaker 9: you know, she's she's engaged to this guy, She's going
Speaker 9: to have a baby with this guy. At some point
Speaker 9: it is also denies it. So you know they're looking
Speaker 9: at well to get this in the court. The first
Speaker 9: thing a defense attorney's going to do is is called
Speaker 9: Julia Simmons up and say didn't you tell police at
Speaker 9: that time that she was a liar and she was
Speaker 9: on drugs. So this is going to it's a it's
Speaker 9: not a cut and dry case of you know that
Speaker 9: where you don't have the girl's own mother saying she's.
Speaker 8: A liar, you also have another police official or detective
Speaker 8: Rosebra that becomes involved too. And to further complicate this too,
Speaker 8: is that there was different times where she lived with
Speaker 8: the couple, her sister and Steve Nichols, and engaged in
Speaker 8: sexual relations with him and then moved out and so
Speaker 8: and her story changed and till this Rosebra, I guess,
Speaker 8: really dug in and got the facts behind this. You
Speaker 8: also talk about a third motive as this investigation proceeds amazingly.
Speaker 8: If it wasn't enough motivation that they found all this
Speaker 8: evidence that there's another motive. Tell us what this third
Speaker 8: motive was and what they found in that part of
Speaker 8: the investigation.
Speaker 9: Well, the third.
Speaker 3: Motive is that.
Speaker 9: Nichols had been appointed the trustee or a trust that
Speaker 9: his mother had set up on behalf of his sister
Speaker 9: and half sister, which was a rental building in San Diego,
Speaker 9: and basically he was supposed to be, you know, kind
Speaker 9: of managing it for them.
Speaker 3: He would get the.
Speaker 9: Statements from the property manager and all these sorts of
Speaker 9: things and making you know, as a trust, the year
Speaker 9: is supposed to be watching out for the interests of
Speaker 9: the people involved in the trust. But in this property
Speaker 9: was mortgaged to it's about a million dollar property, and
Speaker 9: it was mortgage to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 9: You know, at the time that it went into the trust,
Speaker 9: that the mother had died. Now we get to the
Speaker 9: summer of two thousand and eight and the sisters find
Speaker 9: out that for some reason, there's now the property now
Speaker 9: has an eight hundred thousand dollars mortgage against it. Because
Speaker 9: and slowly this takes a number of months, they find
Speaker 9: out it's because Nichols has taken out two personal loans
Speaker 9: against the property, and he had no.
Speaker 3: Right to do that.
Speaker 9: He wasn't supposed to be getting money out of this,
Speaker 9: And now this property is obviously much less valuable. In fact,
Speaker 9: most of the profits coming from the rentals are going
Speaker 9: to pay the loans that he took out on it.
Speaker 9: So he's obviously using this money.
Speaker 3: To do his day trading and whatever else he was
Speaker 3: doing with it.
Speaker 9: To the tune up, he had taken out about another
Speaker 9: five hundred thousand dollars against his property, and so they
Speaker 9: weren't getting payments except for every once in a while,
Speaker 9: a little bit here and a little bit there. So
Speaker 9: they eventually, while this is going on, file a lawsuit
Speaker 9: against Nichols to get to get in their names the
Speaker 9: deeds away from him, as well as to force him
Speaker 9: to do an accounting of whatever happened to this five
Speaker 9: hundred thousand plus all the money that came into it,
Speaker 9: which essentially went to paying the loans. So all this
Speaker 9: money over the course of how many years, and I
Speaker 9: believe its close to about forty thousand dollars a month
Speaker 9: was coming in that went somewhere else, and so did
Speaker 9: the equity, and this property went somewhere else.
Speaker 3: So they sued.
Speaker 9: But and here's the big button on this one is
Speaker 9: the police didn't find us. They did not know about
Speaker 9: this possible motive, which is that in shortly before he
Speaker 9: went to he looked into life insurance. He's been confronted
Speaker 9: by his siblings who said, hey, we're on to you.
Speaker 9: Whatever happened to this money, and we want to know
Speaker 9: about it now. So if you put it all together,
Speaker 9: is he's confronted in October by his siblings about this November,
Speaker 9: he goes and gets life insurance against uh on Ronda's
Speaker 9: life in uh just I think less than two weeks
Speaker 9: before Ronda died. Uh, he gets they filed a lawsuit
Speaker 9: against him, requite you know, asking for a judgment that
Speaker 9: he uh, you know, providing accounting for all of this
Speaker 9: and uh uh and also hand over the deed. So
Speaker 9: he's in serious financial trouble with his siblings when he
Speaker 9: signs up for life insurance policy his policy and then uh,
Speaker 9: you know, shortly after Ronda's death, Uh, there's a judgment
Speaker 9: against him saying, you know, give over the deeds and
Speaker 9: account for the money. But at this time the police
Speaker 9: don't even know about it. And this is one of
Speaker 9: those things where you know, if they'd asked one of
Speaker 9: his siblings anything about him, they would have found out
Speaker 9: about this. You know, that's a pretty powerful motive for
Speaker 9: wanting money and needing to come up with a lot
Speaker 9: of money.
Speaker 8: Fast, exactly. You Also in this include on August twenty fifth,
Speaker 8: two thousand and nine, Sherry Lee and her daughter Beth
Speaker 8: tell us about this story.
Speaker 9: Well, while all this is going on, Steve Nichols moves
Speaker 9: up to a community near Bend, Oregon to live with
Speaker 9: his parents half brother, and he has Annie with him
Speaker 9: at this point. And one night he takes his half
Speaker 9: brother and his friends and a young girl, a thirteen
Speaker 9: year old swimming to a pool at a pool obviously,
Speaker 9: and they're in the pool playing Marco polo. He decides
Speaker 9: to join the kids. His half brother's fourteen. I believe
Speaker 9: the other boy was as well. There's the thirteen year
Speaker 9: old and he and she feels him grab her butt
Speaker 9: during this play and at first she thinks it's an accident,
Speaker 9: but he does it again and she tells him to stop,
Speaker 9: and he's sort of, you know, okay, but at the
Speaker 9: end she would later say that he did it several
Speaker 9: more times. Anyway, he gets her home about our fight.
Speaker 9: The mom's upset, but you know, doesn't know what to
Speaker 9: make of it. And then a few days later, ah,
Speaker 9: hold on just a minute. A few days later, Uh.
Speaker 4: She.
Speaker 9: Is kind of snooping to her daughter's text from Uh,
Speaker 9: some man who you know, just goes by Steve and
Speaker 9: he's all sorts of things. He's he's asking her for
Speaker 9: hot photos of her and her friends. He sends her
Speaker 9: a text asking if she wants to get in a
Speaker 9: hot tub with him and and three hot men, including
Speaker 9: the two boys teenage boys and his friend. And he
Speaker 9: sends a photograph of himself shirt lists in his bedroom,
Speaker 9: you know, and taking a photo of himself in a mirror. Obviously,
Speaker 9: a thirty four year old man sending these sorts of
Speaker 9: photos to a thirteen year old girl is pretty inappropriate.
Speaker 9: And and finally she breaks down and tells her mom, well,
Speaker 9: this is what happened that night. He grabs them to
Speaker 9: grab me, uh uh, and then he was sending me
Speaker 9: these texts. And you know, when she's thirteen years old,
Speaker 9: it's not like she didn't she didn't respond at all,
Speaker 9: but she did finally stop breaking off with him because
Speaker 9: she found he was just weirdly creepy and got uncomfortable
Speaker 9: with this whole thing. And and eventually, so the mom
Speaker 9: calls the police, and the police look into it. And
Speaker 9: this is in Dashoot's County Sheriff's office, which is where
Speaker 9: Bend is, and they come over they listen to these stories.
Speaker 9: Nicholas doesn't realize that they know about the text and
Speaker 9: have seen the text, and so he lies about it.
Speaker 9: He's that's one of the things. He he is particularly
Speaker 9: good at his lying, and so he lies about this
Speaker 9: and they catch him in these lives and he's arrested
Speaker 9: and charged with felony counts those sexual abuse to a
Speaker 9: minor and he tries to explain it as, oh, well,
Speaker 9: my girlfriend died recently, and you know, I'm upset and
Speaker 9: this girl is a friend, and we talk, and once
Speaker 9: again you get around to why is a thirty four
Speaker 9: year old man feel that his closest confidant is a
Speaker 9: thirteen year old girl that he's sending half naked photos
Speaker 9: of himself to.
Speaker 8: Yeah, certainly nonsense. You say that he was released on
Speaker 8: fifty thousand dollars bail, but each one of these sexual
Speaker 8: abuse one charges each could net him a possible ten years.
Speaker 8: But you say, investigation of weever.
Speaker 10: Goes cold, and that sort of where we end Book
Speaker 10: one is that the at this stage, whether it is.
Speaker 9: The uh all these different sheriff's offices at this time,
Speaker 9: Hood River, Washington County and the shoots, the shoots is
Speaker 9: made aware that he is under investigation in.
Speaker 3: Some of these other cases, and.
Speaker 9: Will leave it at that. There. They sort of stopped
Speaker 9: doing much of anything as they watched the process of
Speaker 9: what's going on in the Shoots County with this underage
Speaker 9: minor case.
Speaker 3: Obviously that's very ki to the Washington.
Speaker 9: County case where Melanie Castos says he was doing the
Speaker 9: same thing, actually much more than they had actually had
Speaker 9: a sexual affair, you know, uh, but a very similar case.
Speaker 9: And obviously Nichols, from his text and everything else, was
Speaker 9: attempting to groom this, uh, this other young young woman.
Speaker 9: You know, the invitations say let's go out, He's send me,
Speaker 9: you know, hot photos of yourself and uh, and these
Speaker 9: sorts of things. So that's where book one ends, with
Speaker 9: the case growing cold or scaled or I don't know
Speaker 9: how you want to describe it, but both of those work.
Speaker 9: But Nichols is he's under investigation for homicide, he's under
Speaker 9: investigation in two different places for sexual abuse of a minor,
Speaker 9: and he's been sued by his siblings, and uh in
Speaker 9: book two will pick up from there.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much, Steve Jackson
Speaker 8: of coming on and talking about the first book in
Speaker 8: the series, Saving Annie the Fall, and the next book
Speaker 8: will be the called The Investigator of the Saving Annie series.
Speaker 8: I want to thank you very much, Steve for coming
Speaker 8: on and talking about this, it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 9: Well, thanks, Dan, it's always great talking to you.
Speaker 3: You have a great show.
Speaker 8: For those that might not know, this is a Wild
Speaker 8: Blue Press production publication. You are the publisher, so tell
Speaker 8: us maybe how they can just go see what more
Speaker 8: work you have and other very very deserving authors that
Speaker 8: are run Wild Blue Press.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, you can go to wild blue Press dot com.
Speaker 9: That's wild blue Press dot com. And you know, we
Speaker 9: have a lot of great true crime authors and books.
Speaker 9: Now we're we've been in business since twenty fourteen and
Speaker 9: have been picking up steam ever since. We're now putting
Speaker 9: out about to true crimes a month and the occasional
Speaker 9: crime thriller as well. But yeah, you can find my
Speaker 9: work there. You can find the work of a number
Speaker 9: of both well known true crime authors as well as
Speaker 9: we take on the deserving rookie from time to time,
Speaker 9: and there are some really good books in there.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, you've been doing a great job, and especially with
Speaker 8: all the great authors that really didn't have a publisher
Speaker 8: that understood true crime and understood the genre as well
Speaker 8: as you, and so you've put out some really really
Speaker 8: good titles and with a great roster of really really
Speaker 8: good authors. Thank you very much for another well Blue
Speaker 8: Press production, Saving Annie. Thank you very much Steve Jackson.
Speaker 8: Hope to talk to you again soon. You have a
Speaker 8: great evening.
Speaker 10: Good night, Thanks Dan Ay bye bye bye
Speaker 9: Sa